Today Is My Birthday!

and I started this newsletter

Hi, it’s me. I’m coming to you today from my cattop. You’ve heard of the MacBook Air? This is the Special Edition, CatBook Meow. 

This is Charlie. He’s not allowed on the table.

Today is my birthday and the official launch day for this corner of the internet where I talk about myself and ask probing questions. Special shoutout to the 45 of you who subscribed early so I could practice in front of a live audience, so to speak. You get extra points! If you’re new here since the pre-funk editions went out, last week I wrote about why launching on my birthday is significant, and you can read more about me here. It feels good to be writing publicly again. I’ve missed you.

So I guess we should get on with it…

There’s a scene I love in the movie, Trainwreck. Amy Schumer’s character is at a baby shower for her sister, and the ladies gather in the living room to play a baby shower game.

If you’re unfamiliar with how baby shower games work, think of them as team building exercises for the mom-to-be and her friends – like The Amazing Race, but the final destination is a 4am drive to the hospital across town over every pothole that exists in the city while someone yells JUST RUN THE RED LIGHT NOBODY IS AWAKE RIGHT NOW and someone else points out that it’s against the rules and we’ll get there when we get there. 

Baby shower game examples include: guess the chocolate candy bar brands that are melted into diapers like poop (is that a raisin or a peanut?); memorize all the baby-related items on a tray, then write them down from memory (treasure your beautiful short term memory while you still have it); and my personal favorite for women who can’t see their feet much less put on their shoes: guess how big the pregnant lady is by eyeballing the length of toilet paper that will wrap around her whale of a body. 

Left: 2001 at my bridal shower; Right: 2003 at my baby shower.

Back to Amy Schumer at a baby shower…

Their game is to confess something they’ve never told anyone before. Schumer looks visibly nervous as the first gal shares how she sometimes eats Skinny Cow Ice Cream Sandwiches after everyone has gone to bed. The second gal confesses that she let her six-year-old watch Glee. GASP! SHOCK! TOO SOON!

It is now Schumer’s turn. She puts on a fake voice and says, “I don’t know how I can follow these. You guys are so brave! Thank you for trusting.” Her sister gives her a suspicious side eye.

Then Schumer’s character proceeds to tell the story of how she had sex with a guy and three days later realized the condom had been “pounded up there” and was stuck in her cervix. After googling how to get it out, she explains how she had to bear down, hook her finger, and dig it out.

There is silent shock as the group absorbs this confession. Schumer sips her Pinot Grigio.

Then the gal next to her breaks the silence and confesses, “I let Tim and his brothers tag team me on Christmas morning. And you know what? It was wonderful!”

Photo from the Internet.

I love everything about this scene. When I look past the comedic absurdity, I see a circle of women who are willing to exist in the shallow end of life, then Schumer’s character cannonballs into the deep end with her authentic self. She’s offensive, and maybe a little mocking, but she’s incapable of existing outside of something real.

As I reflect on the meaningful connections I’ve made over the years, I can see now that I made them from the deep end, a place where I feel comfortable -- and perhaps even compelled -- to swim. I didn’t understand this when I was younger. My inability to Small Talk made me awkward at parties and useless as a small business owner whose livelihood depended on networking to bring in new clients. I know now that I’m wired for deep connections, but for a long time I thought I was failing to do what everyone else could do with relative ease.

A long time ago when I was struggling to find my writing voice, I heard a radio interview with an author who’s been hugely influential to me: Anne Lamott. She talked about how the essays and memoirs she writes are her own personal stories, but they’re also universal stories. She writes them because she knows others will see themselves and not feel so alone. 

As a developing writer, this helped me understand what I was experiencing through the blog I wrote at the time (this was probably around 2007). Women wrote comments thanking me for sharing the messier side of parenting and mental health – some version of “I thought I was the only one.” I had been worrying that I talked about myself too much, but Anne Lamott helped me see I was writing things that resonated.

I wrote things like, “I thought long and hard about abandoning my four year old in the deodorant aisle at Target today,” which made people laugh, but also nod and inhale deeply. I’ve encountered plenty of moms who react to me like the baby shower ladies in Trainwreck – GASP! SHOCK! TOO SOON! Sometimes I’m a little mocking, but I know I can’t exist outside of something real, and real is sometimes messy.

I don’t have this newsletter situation fully figured out yet, but I plan on writing about things I know, a few things I don’t know, and we’ll see what resonates. 

I sincerely hope you’ll join me for lively conversations in the comments - that’s my favorite part.

Until next time,

Jen

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Question of the Week

I’m curious: What’s your Big Group Energy like? Are you awkward like me or life of the party?

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News + Notes

I love celebrating friends who write books! This is our friend, Marina! And she wrote a book! Exclamation point!

Marina (middle) says, “Find your paperclip!”

For those of us who love making an impact through our work but often get sidelined by things like tradition, process, or risk aversion, I deeply appreciate Marina and Nick’s mission to offer practical tactics for breaking through the bureaucracy as a means to achieve job satisfaction and improve our impact.

I recognized and used a few of these tactics before reading the book (“play the newbie card,” “find the doers,” “write a one-pager,” and “use the bureaucracy against itself”), and have appreciated the opportunity to add new ones to my tool belt, like “try the normal way first,” “understand the org chart,” and “don’t try to make the bureaucracy care.”

Hack Your Bureaucracy is a great practical handbook for anyone who’s in the middle of a frustrating project or team culture, but you’re not ready to give up on it just yet.