Category: Life

What The Middle Looks Like (and Happy Saint Patty’s!)

Posted on by Sarah K Peck


I’ve been running pretty thin lately – it’s an exciting Spring, with several new projects under foot. I’m really excited to finally take some time to share some great news with you.  At the same time, it’s been a challenge to make it all happen – and I’m at work, late nights galore, trying to figure out a way to get it all done and maintain the “Sarah sanity” that I so desperately crave.

Happiness and a quick celebration!

For those of you who don’t know, I’ll talk briefly about some exciting news:

1. New Job! I started a new position on March 1st. I’ll be coordinating the communications strategy + marketing at the international landscape architecture firm that I work at.  (Whew! That’s a mouthful.) So what do I do? I write, design, and build. I combine business + strategy insights to deliver powerful messages about the meaning and need for landscape architecture and spatial design throughout the world. In the broadest sense, I tell stories about the world we live in – and I love it.

Many of you know that here on this blog, I write about about strategies for work success, staying sane, creating the type of work you want to do, entrepreneurship, and life. I’m very happy to be able to transition to a new position where writing, storytelling, web design, and board layout design are the focus of my job. (As for sanity and balance, sometimes I feel like a terrible example of that – but more on that, below).

Wahoo! Time to do some handstands! :)

2. Also: A REALLY exciting project! One of the projects I’m working on – that I started in early 2010  – is the building of a new website for a hot topic in the architecture world, landscape urbanism. The website is taking shape, and there has been an overwhelmingly positive response to the work we’ve done so far.  (If you want to check out the website, take a look at this page). This is my HUGE project that’s finally becoming real.

After work closes – and the new job has started up at high speed! – I’m up late to work on this project: I’m writing, emailing the team, interviewing new writers, talking to contributors, and poring over the web design with a red pen and making changes to the layout and back end before the launch in 2 months (holy shit! so soon!) – but I’m so excited that this project I’ve dreamed about for (now 2 years!) is finally on it’s way to fruition. It will launch in phases this summer.

I am unbelievably thankful and happy to have such great opportunities in front of me so quickly.

Each project is a hundred different, layered lessons in project management, communication, coordination, execution, design layout, user interface, editing, and ultimately, shipping great ideas and products.

The work effort as of late, however, has been immense. I say this not to complain – I can hardly complain about being busy! – but as a means to talk about how difficult it can be to persevere during the really hard moments.

It’s not always easy.

In fact, it’s hardly ever easy. These past few weeks have been exceptionally rough, as I test my limits and mental capacities, my organization skills, my ability to press on, my systems of time management.

I’ll be honest, it gets really hard.

Notes on Loneliness and Sometimes Wanting to Cry

There are nights, like this week, that I get home from work very late, and I open up one of the three (do I admit this?) computers I have at home (multi-browser and computer testing for macs and pcs, they are all OLD!). I’m up late, writing, and I close a browser, pace the house, try to sleep, and then I come back to the little office closet in our apartment and I start writing again, this time polishing up something else new, trying to figure out how I’m going to execute all of the tasks over the next few months.

My brain is a series of multi-layered Excel sheets.

I dream in G-Queues.

My email inbox overflows with hundreds of ‘urgent’ tasks that seem to each yell at me to work more, to work better, to work faster.

I wake up in the middle of the night, teeth grinding, trying to figure out how to get it all done.

Tonight, I sit behind the computer, terrified that I won’t make my next deadline, exhausted from the effort, again skipping an event I’d love to attend and missing my friends.

In the dark moments, in the despair, I sit, unshowered, my back hurting, and I want to cry. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it. I also don’t know if what I imagine will work. I can’t tell yet if any of these projects will be successful.

And I’m really, really tired.

There’s no guarantee that it will all work out. I can try it all and work my hardest and these projects could be ephemeral efforts, lasting less than a few seconds in any memory.

And that’s okay.

At least I hope that it’s okay. That’s what I tell myself.

In these moments, in these wander-through-the-city-I-can’t-sleep-moments, I do wish there was someone could tell me that it’s all gonna be okay. When I was younger, my mom would run her fingers through my hair and she was the one who would tell me would all be okay.

And now we’re twenty, thirty-something, and our parents aren’t there to tell us what’s exactly what’s right and wrong and when to work harder and when to chalk it up to a learning experience.

You just press on, do your best, and figure it out as you go.

Because that’s what it looks like.

Making things happen takes energy, toil, and it tests your patience and endurance. Even if you fail a hundred times before you get there, you will get there.  I’m in The Middle somewhere, and I don’t know what the end looks like.

But I know what The Middle looks like.

It’s not the fuzzy good feeling of the beginning, when you’re still high on the adrenaline of starting. And it’s not the calm of the finish, when you’re done and you’ve done the best you can do and you’re proud of your efforts.  The Middle is the struggle, when most people give up, when the test between the do-ers and the quitters really takes shape. The Middle is the part, in marathon training, when you have to get up and run again even though your whole body is exhausted and you want to just sleep or stop.

The Middle is the space where your demons come in and question why you’re even doing it, anyways. And sometimes it’s lonely nights, late nights, cereal dinner in hand, falling asleep on my bed so late in the night that the San Francisco skyline has turned pink from the fog’s misty glow. Sometimes it’s a presentation due in 6 hours and only you to figure it out.

Sometimes, my Friday nights are filled simply with books. I sit in my reading chair and I study one of the 12 books my new boss has put on my desk, on advertising, management, business, positioning, branding. I’m scrambling to figure out what I’m doing while implementing new processes and the pace of change is sometimes maddening. It’s like an MBA in the making – and I love it – but learning and doing all at once feels something like balancing two intense full time jobs.

The Middle is hard.  There’s no way out but through.

I have the blessing of having been through this before, something inside me that knows that The Middle is the hard part and is able to trust in the process.  My experience tells me that I won’t be in this hustle forever. The cyclical nature of production will yield a few moments of respite, hopefully soon, hopefully sometime midsummer, post launch.

And for my own sanity’s sake, I have to carve out moments of escape, rest, and a break – in order to do my best work.

But tonight, it’s the grind. Because that’s what The Middle looks like.

So, reader, have a beer for me tonight. And enjoy your wonderful St. Patty’s day. I’m somewhere in The Middle, working.

One Year From Today.

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

March 10, 2010.

One year from today. Not a year from now, in the future.  A year before today. March 10th – last year. What were you doing?

More importantly, what were you planning on doing? Take stock in your actions. Have you made changes? Have you made progress? Are you on your way towards your goals?

If you haven’t made progress, then the things you’re doing each day aren’t adding up.

So you’re going to need to make your day look a little bit different.

What does change look like? What does it look like to reach your goals?

If you’re not there yet, then something different needs to happen.

*** *** ***

A year ago, today, I didn’t have a blog. I had a different job. I hadn’t run a half marathon or done a triathlon. I’d never swum across the Bay before, and in fact, had only started open water swimming in 2008. I joined the SF Tri Club and I started track workouts with great people – one of whom became my new roommate in San Francisco.  In May this last year I moved back to San Francisco. I traveled to four new cities. I signed up for a new class (which I’m nervous about admitting on here just yet) and I’ve learned a lot about myself and other people. I’ve met dozens of fabulous people and I’m thrilled about the potential for change.

Change.

Things change, whether we like it or not. Are you making changes that you want to see happen?

If you had told me last year what today would have looked like, I would have laughed. Me, write a blog? Get out.  Run a half marathon? In my dreams. Move – again – and risk being called out for my wanderlust? Yup, guess it happened.

But I also see the flaws of the last year: I’ve barely made the dents I want to in the student loan debt that I have. I bought a car that I’m not sure that I want. I applied to dozens of fellowships and grants – and even a teaching program – and heard back negatively for most of them. I had doubts and fears about my abilities and my progress and what I’ll ultimately end up doing and being. And, I wrote less than I wanted to – a lot less. I went through paralysis, writer’s block, and insecurities.

But nothing really stayed the same.

The constant is change.

*** *** ***

What about you? What is the most significant thing that you’ve done or changed over the past year?

What does 1 year from today look like, for you?

What do you want to do differently?

What will be different, one year from today?

And how are you going to get there?

Anyway.

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies.
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and sincere, people may deceive you.
Be honest and sincere anyway.

What you spend years creating, others will destroy overnight.
Create anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous.
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today will often be forgotten.
Do good anyway.

Give the best you have and it will never be enough.
Give your best anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God.
It was never between you and them anyway.

Written on the wall in Mother Teresa’s home for children in Calcutta, also known as The Paradoxical Commandments.

*** *** ***

Inspired by the preamble in the book “Do It Anyway,” by Courtney E. Martin (2010).

We all need white space.

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

White space, in graphic design, is the space on the page that isn’t.

It’s the space on the page that’s blank, that echos the thoughts and points of the content by giving it space.

White space is that delicious break, that rest, the recapitulation of ideas by doing nothing at all.

White space gives the words meaning and play, letting light, color, balance, shadow, and emphasis dance across the page in new ways.

I love white space.

Sometimes, in my designs, my boss calls me a minimalist.

I find this funny that my writing is so abundant and my designs so crisp and precise.

White space, in our lives, is the buffer of time we give to ourselves between projects.

Unplanned weekends are white space.

Three hours between the end of work and the next task – that’s white space.

Planning only one activity – perhaps yoga- and then being open to the activities beyond – is white space.

White space is play.

It’s space to breathe.
It’s space to be.

White space gives definition to our activities by forcing us to be more selective, not to cram, and to CHOOSE.
Above all else, choose what fits on your page and what is eliminated.

Beautiful uses of white space come from copious amounts of editing, revision, and re-drawing. Words don’t always land perfectly on a page the first time. Trial and error is good.

Different days and tasks and chores require different amounts of white space.

But we all need white space. Sometimes more, sometimes less.

White space makes the other stuff matter more.

White space make your life activities better.

White space makes you better.

2010 in review: ordinary joy

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

#Reverb10 offers a month of reflection and prompts for each day. I’m slowly catching up, and enjoying the prompts, however delayed. December 27 is ordinary joy.

*** *** ***

Yesterday I ran to the bus stop, almost missing the bus, to jump on the 38L and transverse San Francisco, east to west. My apartment is close to downtown, and the pool I teach swim lessons in is out in the boonies – also known as the Inner Richmond.

(I look silly, when I’m running in the rain in this city. I dress for warmth and function, not glamour, when I’m in the middle of DO-ing. And I am vaguely aware of the strange looks I get as I run by people on the sidewalks – but why walk when you can RUN?

My typical rainy weather attire includes a long blue jacket, a bright red vest, and a rain slicker. Oh, and I tuck my hair upwards into a brown hat. Mostly because these items of clothing are WARM.  And it keeps me dry. Oh, and my Sauconys. You can’t find me without my Sauconys.)

And then I ran.

On the bus, I tagged the bus card, pulled out the book I’m currently reading out of my backpack (forgot to mention: backpack adds to nerdiness, above). I started reading. Somewhere in the middle of the book, I looked up.

The man across from me was looking at me.  Well, I think he was looking at me.

I glanced at his face and then at his clothes – his soft, tan cargo pants full of crinkles and his 5 or 6 year old, unassuming shoes  – before my eyes automatically darted back up to his face and his head.  My eyes inadvertently widened slightly as I noticed his complete figure.

His face was a dimpled carcass of tans, reds, and taught pinks, with a small slit for his left eye and a slightly bigger opening for the right eye. The entire left side of his face was covered in tight, stretched, charred skin. His hair was missing from one side of his head, with a tuft of hair spouting off the right side, uncombed and probably due for a hair cut. His ear was burned off with nothing but a hole left.  Instead of an ear, it was one continuous surface with a small, dark inlet where the ear canal would have been. It looked as though his ear had been cleanly sliced off and the remains of his face was a burn mark.

And he smiled at me.

He smiled, and then pointed down to his lap, where he was holding a big black box with stickers and numbers and sounds. The bus pulled up to a stop. The box declared, “Franklin.”

Then the bus announcer, in an echo, announced “Next stop, Franklin, Franklin, Next Stop.”

The man giggled.

*** *** ***

We all carry scars, wounds, and trauma. Some of it is emotional, some physical. Some of us have healed, some of us are healing, some of us are still struggling. Much of it we can cover up – with clothing, with a stance, with a smile, with an attitude. But the face: the face you can’t hide, you can’t cover up as easily.

Scars on the face beget curious stares, shocked stares, long looks and wide eyes. It’s disrupting to see something out of the ordinary, something different, something unusual. I admire this gentleman, because of the poise and happiness he carried with him through his movements. He sat, at ease, enjoying the noise and the announcement of the bus stop.

Laguna.

He laughed again, and pointed to the box.

The woman next to him adjusted her seat without looking up. The bus rattled over potholes and creaked to a stop.

Webster.

“Webster!” He cried, throwing his hands up.

What fun, what play, to get on a bus and enjoy the stops and the starts and the ride it gives you through the city.

What an unexpected joy for me, to run into such happiness unplanned. Riding the bus always presents characters, but sometimes, on rare lucky days, it presents moments.

And people – raw people.

To enjoy life with such unabashed pleasure – that is the goal.

To experiences of ordinary joy.

It Starts With Small

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

It starts with small.

Sometimes the smallest, most insignificant changes are really the most important.

Not all good things start with a bang. This reduction of things in my life – saying yes and saying no – is a bit of a bang. Although I’m trying to keep it reigned in, a bit. Small changes, small days at a time.

Not all things happen with a bang.

Sometimes the best idea begins with a kernel.

Sometimes that kernel comes from a place of dissonance or discontent. Something’s out of place. Something’s wrong. You notice that something is off. It’s just not quite right.

Changes happen slowly. Today, one thing, one small, very small thing, is all you need to focus on.

Perhaps you get into bed 15 minutes earlier. And you wake up 15 minutes earlier.

What is the cumulative affect of this small change, daily, on the next three weeks of your life? Perhaps in 3 weeks, you’re getting up 2 hours earlier every day.

Perhaps you want to be a runner. Think and dream big, but start small. Today, just walk. Today, just put the sneakers on. Today, just go for a short jog. Put the shoes on, take a few small steps, and then get home quickly and shower.

You did it. That wasn’t so hard, was it?

Small steps.

It starts with small.

Small is better than nothing at all.

*** *** ***

Photography by Alexandra Sklar, on her blog Bancroft & Ivy.

Read the first post, “Yes + No, More + Less” about my decision to give up digital communication (for a short time), and give up a few other things in order to make more space in my life. I did this so that I can say yes to the things that really matter.

If you’d like to join me on the ride, or need help figuring out where to start, feel free to send me an email. You can also find me on twitter (soon! I’m taking a break right now), like this on facebook or subscribe to new posts.

2010: one word

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

2010.

This was … this was.

This was, i say again to myself.

This was a strange year.

*** *** ***

There is one thing, one big thing this year, and I am still at a loss for words. A loss for words. Not for lack of speaking, or explaining, or talking or walking or wondering or being. A loss for words.

Or maybe I’m just afraid of writing about it.

But writing, writing seems to be so, so

Final.

I only laugh because I’m so open, and I share so much with so many friends, that when I reconnect with someone far and away and we get to talking, sometimes, one of them will say,

Hey Sarah! I heard you got married – congratulations!

And that’s enough to startle me back to the end of 2009, when I was getting married and I have to stumble around in my brain a bit, and sort through some of those boxes. I mentally scroll through my calendar of this year, past the Fellowship and the three moves and the trips to Seattle and Portland and Philadelphia and Taipei, past the hospital stay for dystenery, past the triathlons and the open water swims, past the belly-aching floor-lying painful days of that month, the month when I realized I wasn’t getting married and it wasn’t happening, and then, way back there in my calendar, I look at it. I look back at my friend and then inward at myself and think,

Wait, I was going to get married?

I pull that self out from within myself and look at it, strangely, and I try to recollect where, and how, and when I could have been at a place where I thought a wedding band on my finger was actually happening.

Oh yeah. And all those wedding dresses.

There is a folder of photographs, on my hard drive, of my sister and I. I’m standing on a box and I’ve tried on seven different wedding dresses and she’s next to me in purples and pinks and blues, and all I can think is how awkward I felt standing up on that box, and how the dresses made my swimmer arms look fat, and how they squeezed tight in the middle and made me feel like a big poofy ball of cinderella lace and glitter. Enough to make me want to barf.  The matching bridesmaids’ dresses – all I could think was that they were all so ugly.

And that I hate wedding dresses.

And I’m not so keen on the idea of weddings, in general.

Who wants to spend $50,000 on a wedding?

But it happened so fast.

I suppose I’m afraid to write about it, because it’s as if I write it, in one story, in one way, then that’s the only way that it happened.

What story do I start with? What comes first?

Should I work backwards, and tell you how it is now, now that I’m standing up? Now that I’m laughing, living, talking, and brighter than I’ve ever been? I can kiss your ass with rose-colored glasses and tell you the moral first, the moral that is the hard things in life really do make you better, and, sweetheart, don’t worry, because you’re gonna get through this just fine, because you know that I did. I’ve laughed my way straight through dysentery and death and rib removal and all the other stuff you think I haven’t been through, because it’s been one of those years. And I can smile, annoyingly at you and still not.really.get.it, because to be there, to be in that place, is something that only you can pull yourself out of.

Maybe I can tell you about a time in my life when things weren’t fine, and I really was quite upset. It takes a lot of digging for me to find that place again, because I don’t feel that mad or sad or lonely or anything anymore – I guess I just am. I am where I am. But then, then, then.

Oh, then.

The kind of what-the-fuck-just-happened-to-my-life upset, where I drove around in my car just to drive and I couldn’t make eye contact with the drivers around me because I was afraid if they looked at me, not only would they see that tears were streaming down my face, but they would see that my mouth was open, wide open and I was bawling. Bawling so hard I couldn’t barely keep my head above the steering wheel, hiccuping in that disgusting get-yourself-together kind of way, so I would just pull over at the next stoplight or drive in and park and sob. I would pull over the car to any side of the road, even the freeway sometimes (I’m sorry Dad, I know it was dangerous!) and stand and drive and stare for a very long time and just wonder. Wonder who I was, and why I was, and where the fuck I was going if I couldn’t even figure this part out.

Somewhere in the middle of the very loud silence that is the world when two people separate, a tinny noise came out of a strange technological device and I could hear my friends talking to me, consoling me, calling me, telling me that this was for the best and that engagements are broken more often than most people talk about.

I just remember being really cold. It was a cold, brisk water-front month in Sausalito. The kind of weather that makes the grass stand tall, brown and still, where the water on the bay moves so little the ripples almost apologize for being. I wore a sweater that wasn’t warm enough for the season and leggings and my gray flats, the shoes I bought from downtown San Francisco’s DSW to wear as a bridesmaid in my other friends wedding. It’s stupid to wear flats at all – who wears shoes without socks when it’s cold? Girls do, I guess. Girls can be stupid, I suppose.

The brutality of a break up is that you’re ripped out of forward thinking and shoved straight into the present time. It’s as though someone has robbed you of all your future memories that you have yet to make, and after they’ve stolen them, they run circles around you with your dreams and wishes and fantasies tied up in their little goblin bag, and then they make sure to come back and hit you and prod you when you least expect it.

Then, then.

I kicked the rocks on the waterfront, angry at the water, telling it to move out of my way.

Now I just stare at it.

So fuck, I can’t think of one word for 2010.

One word?

Well, how about a hundred.

Because 2010 was the year I became a writer.

And I thought I wouldn’t be able to write about this.

*** *** ***

Photography credit: The amazingly talented Alexandra Sklar, who blogs at Bancroft & Ivy

Listen to yourself, above all else.

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

You must listen to yourself, above all else.

Listen to the words in your heart.

Your true self is screaming to get out. Your essential self, as described so eloquently by Martha Beck, will stamp it’s feet and come out in ways that aren’t apparent to you yet. If you don’t listen to it now, you’ll have to listen to it later. And later might be harder, not easier.

No one can pick your journey for you.

No one is waiting for you to give you a ride to the life you’re meant to live.

You must listen to yourself. You must listen to your desires. When you stretch and run and scream and bend, when you wander the hallways wondering what to do, when you turn to a glass of wine at night or stare stupidly at the television for an extra hour, ask yourself:

Why?

Why are you doing what you do?

What is it that pulls you, compels you, motivates you, excites you?

Listen to yourself. Follow your instincts. Do what’s not been done before. Be daring. Be different. But most importantly, listen to what’s in your heart.

Your heart won’t stand up and shout to the world what it wants.  You have to be ready to listen to it. Find spaces to listen, and listen carefully, to the teacher inside yourself. If you can’t hear what it’s saying, find a quieter place to listen.

Practice listening.

Listen to yourself, above all else.

***

My spaces for listening are during swimming, writing, and yoga. I gave these elements up in a big way during the last few months, and the dissonance in my life was too loud to bear. I was busy for the sake of being busy, without a clear goal, direction, or understanding of why I was doing what I was doing.

I’m trying to get back to a place where I know what I want. All I know right now is that this means saying YES to yoga, swimming, and writing. I write a lot more now – at least these past few weeks – and I’m much happier for it. I can’t tell you how you will work best – all I know is this truism: find a way to listen to yourself first.

If you’re curious, and want to send me an email with ramblings, I’m always happy to listen.

—-

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