The promise of yesterday

Tomorrow is ethereal and familiar. It shines on horizons, shimmers just past fingertips, glows in morning light and casts pearly sparkles of future bliss in your eyes today. Tomorrow's promise is flimsy as air, vanishing like mist as the sun rises over the ocean.

Yesterday is what remains. Like stubble that leaves your skin raw, like the warm smell of a lover's skin that rises up in your mind the next day. Like thorns prickling in the crook of your elbow, like old aches that stab your flesh when it rains. Like the feel of an old gift against your skin, like healing bruises that catch the nip in the air today a little harder. Like breath catching in your throat as you remember. Yesterday is forever, regrets and all. Yesterday promises that you will remember pain, know fear, be fearless. Yesterday promises to remind you that you are wiser, and you may even be braver by tomorrow.

Get the coffee to go

Show me a person who's good at "networking", and at least half the time you can be sure you're looking at someone who has learnt how to talk to themselves in private- In parking lots, restroom stalls, broom closets and for those lucky enough to have them, office with doors that close (and aren't made of glass).

What they say to themselves you may never know, and it would be rather self-defeating to spend this post telling you what I tell myself before I must do this thing called being nice to people I don't know very well. Instead, for my own reference and possibly yours, a list of things to remember (this may or may not be the list you read to yourself before you open that door) about networking, in no particular order:

• Note from an incredibly wise person, read by twelve-year-old-me, paraphrased from memory: "Introversion is a form of a vanity. It means you spend more time thinking about yourself and your reactions than you do about other things/people."  
• Networking isn't about "putting yourself out there". It's about opening the doors so other people can step in if they choose. 
• Most people love to talk about themselves (introverts included. We're often the worst offenders). Ask about them. Learn who they are. Genuinely want to know this other person.
• Just for a while, forget your frame of reference. Know them from their shoes. When they offer a bit of themselves, receive it gracefully. Graciously. Not with, "Oh, interesting, because I feel the same way/disagree/think that..". Just "Interesting, tell me more about.."
• When they feel comfortable, they will want to know you too, this person they have let in. Then you have a connection that works- a "network" of two, if you will. 
• Networking is about believing that just for a little while, you have a dream that is strong enough to push you past the limits you've set for yourself. You have to "want to fly so much that you're willing to give up being a caterpillar." Yes, it hurts, and so what? And yes, your dream may crash and die tomorrow. But for now, it is here and alive, so give it a chance.
• Networking is about knowing that you, the you that wants whatever it is you're reaching for, is (most likely) going to be in a better place than the you that would rather curl up on the couch with the ice-cream. 
• Sometimes, before you take that call/ pick up the phone/ answer that email/ open the door to the meeting room, networking is just about telling yourself to just do this now, and tomorrow, tomorrow you can get the coffee to go and not speak to a soul, and today will be just fine.  

How you read me

I'm reading a book about how we, as readers and writers, read stories. The writer describes the process of reading in metaphors of painting, moving through landscapes physical and emotional. He recounts Anna Karenina sitting on a train with her book, how she jostles back and forth between the world of her moving train and her book until the book story grows strong enough to pull her into it, away from her own. I, of course, read this on my own jostling, moving train ride.

He writes as a writer who reads, weaving words through classic essays and novels to tell a tale of how we write. He tells of his own journey from naive writer to sentimental and finding equilibrium between the two. Somewhere, this swing of his narrative echoes my own. Reading this is a bit like walking a long trail and finding a little pile of stones that says someone else was here.

And somewhere in this arc it is no longer I who read the book, but the words that find a part of my journey. They name this road and its travelers with their meaning, and in this naming we are read, and we are known. In this knowing I read, and find a self in the words.

 (the book: 'The naive and the sentimental novelist', Orhan Pamuk)