It’s that time of year again. Celebrations, gift giving (and receiving), end of year charitable contributions, and general “taking stock” and moving forward. We go readily from the bright lights and merriment to the self-satisfying feelings of gratitude and sharing our wealth with others less fortunate. That’s the easy part.Aside from the usual weight loss and exercise promises we make as we recover from total exhaustion (or for the youth, a hangover and headache), how many of us really take stock and make our plans to move forward?
Indulge me while I do so with hopes that you will share, too.
Diversions and detours is the best way to describe my 2011. Witness to the 55th UN Conference on the Status of Women where a new UN agency for women was established as I sat in the General Assembly. Humbled by the enormous challenges women face in the world, I shared these moments with friends old and new.
Meeting Kimber Lim, Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen, Andrea Hertz Payne and Albertine Phan, the energy behind our now best selling amazing anthology on Amazon, Get Your Woman On! brought a whole new west coast dimension to my life.
We then re-convened in Dallas in July during the worst heat wave and kicked it up a degree or two with a most successful book launch. I learned as much about the challenges and triumphs of the 38 other authors as I did about multi-media on-line publishing and the world of women entrepreneurs–thousands of them.
I traveled to Florida to convene with other women surgeons, helping each other realize their career aspirations in a still male dominated world that still does not want to adapt to a new reality coming upon them. The side conversations of needs unmet, challenges faced, and barriers still unbroken confirmed my belief that launching Expediting the Inevitable (May 2011) was what I was meant to do next.
And we did it. More than 20 clients and collaborators, half dozen “hear our stories later, many meaningful posts, and not too few ETI “members.” I am stepping back and taking stock.
What’s next? What do I need to do? What do I want to do?
A re-named, re-designed website (stay tuned), better focused, more informative.
Focus on the basic and the essential–no major diversions or detours, notwithstanding the inevitable unplanned bump.
Get an agent and publish my first book–Grievance? A Gun At My Head? Fiction? Memoir? (My first challenge. to choose and focus.)
Getting on and off course is natural for women with lots to do. We have and raise children while we work and create. We tend to our parents and our friends. We share. We dream. These are mine, what are yours?
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One Comment
Yes, and to ‘keep fighting’ as Nancy Gertner wrote in my copy of her book, In Defense of Women: Memoirs of an Unrepentant Advocate.