I can see it just over the fence — a swimming pool. A lonely swimming pool.
I’m being taunted by swimming pools.
I love pools.
In my “win the lottery” fantasy, I have an enormous pool with a hot tub and water slides. I float around in a comfy inflatable raft and a handsome cabana boy brings me blender drinks.
Even a modest pool would make me giddy, though.
Imagine the torture that out our bedroom window, I can see a neighbor’s in-ground pool — and that in three years living here, I’ve never seen a human in that pool.
Now let’s compound it. At the house we rented in New Orleans for three months last year, it’s a nearly identical scene: just behind a fence is an even-nicer in-ground pool that I don’t think anyone ever uses.
Having big, lonely swimming pools close enough to hear the filter running caused me to think about the cliché of the grass always being greener on the other side.
Is it the reality or the fantasy that’s calling to me? Do I just fantasize about having a pool because I don’t have one? If I had one of these pools, would I resent the maintenance involved and eventually decide it’s not worth the bother?
What is it about seeing someone else (seemingly) underappreciate something that makes you want it more? Have you ever seen someone push away an uneaten piece of cake and suddenly become consumed with desire for that cake?
What do I have in my life that someone else is looking at longingly and wondering why I don’t appreciate it more? What wonderful things do I take for granted? What am I not taking advantage of that’s right in my own backyard?
Throughout this year, several bloggers will engage in a conversation here and on their blogs — asking questions of each other and responding. Others are absolutely welcome to join the conversation, as well. Learn more about the ladies of Blogversation 2012.
Today’s question comes from Amy Throndsen, on Twitter as @amyserves:
Amy Throndsen asks what you do when you get in a food rut.
One of my most inspiring dinner parties was a few weeks ago when I invited a friend over for “Refrigerator Review.”
She brought a few things from her fridge and we mixed them with mine and came up with a meal that neither of us would have prepared had it not been for the other person’s ingredients.
I often find myself buying the same things at the grocery store (kale, kale and more kale – I’ve already confessed my addiction) and making the same meals.
When you’re in a food rut, where do you turn for inspiration?
Throughout this year, several bloggers will engage in a conversation here and on their blogs — asking questions of each other and responding. Others are absolutely welcome to join the conversation, as well. Learn more about the ladies of Blogversation 2012.
We’re rotating through the Blogversation participants a second time, with each blogger posing a question to the others and to any visitors who’d like to weigh in.
The schedule calls for a question from Lauren McCabe (mermaidchronicles.com, @mermaidtales on Twitter) but Lauren has an incredible convergence of goodness going on right now — she recently started a new job that’s got her immersed, she’s just bought a house and she’s newly engaged.
Wow.
So in honor of Lauren and her fiance — and for all of us — I’m asking the following question: What’s your best piece of relationship advice?
Several years ago, an elderly married couple who’d been together many decades told me the key to a happy marriage was for each partner to think they’ve gotten the better end of the bargain.
On the surface, it’s a cute little quip.
But the deeper meaning, I think, is that both partners should feel like they somehow lucked into marrying someone better than they deserve and they’ve got to hustle to keep that out-of-my-league mate happy.
By staying on your game, you keep your mate feeling that he’s the one who’s gotten the better deal — and it’s the very definition of a virtuous circle.
The alternative is the all-too-common marriage where each partner feels he or she is the only one doing anything around the house … he never brings me flowers any more and she stopped taking care of her appearance as soon as we had kids … each partner feels like they’ve got the worse end of the bargain.
Incidentally, I think this works in other relationships, too. If you treat your job like you’re lucky to be there, or treat your best friend like you’re lucky to have her, it might also have lovely benefits.
Throughout this year, several bloggers will engage in a conversation here and on their blogs — asking questions of each other and responding. Others are absolutely welcome to join the conversation, as well. Learn more about the ladies of Blogversation 2012.
Lesley Ware asks today's Blogversation question about your work environment
For as long as I can remember I’ve always been hugely sensitive to the look and feel of my workspace. Lighting, sound, artwork, the chair, and sometimes even what’s around my feet all affect my mood and ultimately my ability to get stuff done.
In less than two weeks my family will be moving to another Brooklyn abode and I’m excited about having a new dedicated creative space for work. To prepare, I’ve been collecting swatches, magazine pages, paint chips and pinning inspiration on Pinterest. (http://pinterest.com/lesleyw/space-is-the-place/).
I know responses will vary based on if you work from home or an office building but I’m curious to know:
How do you set the stage for your personal workspace? Do you go for a conservative or creative office space? How does space affect your creative expression? What are your top must-haves for a blog-friendly work environment?
My mom liked to tell a story that made it sound like I was named on a bet. Or more accurately, as a permanent “I told you so.”
If you’d met my mom, you’d buy this as totally plausible.
My mother was pregnant before ultrasounds became routine and our family doctor told her I’d be a boy born around March 1. No, my ever-cocky mom replied, it’s a girl and she’ll be born on March 17. We’ll name her Colleen because that’s St. Patrick’s Day.
I arrived one day before that, but that was close enough, apparently.
My dad disputes this story, which also isn’t surprising given how few things they agreed on in my childhood.
But it doesn’t really matter whether this is a story my mom made up later or if she concealed her true motives for liking the name Colleen from my dad.
I think the main reason she told me the story was the frustration I had with carrying such an unusual name.
According to the Social Security Administration, Colleen was the 121st most popular baby name in 1971 -- and it's dropped to 897th since then.
In an era when it seemed 97 percent of my female classmates were Michelle/Shelly, Elizabeth/Lisa, Jennifer/Jenny, I was the odd girl out.
I constantly faced people calling me something close but not quite — Kathryn, Kathleen, Kelly, Corinne, Katie — and each time I had to spell my name for someone, I wished again that my parents could have gone for Amy, Melissa or Julie.
Would you believe search engine optimization and social media helped me come around?
Whenever I sign up for a new online service, I’m virtually guaranteed of getting my preferred username cnewvine, because not only is Colleen usual, so is Newvine. Put the two together and my name is the like the vanishing point in a drawing. If I ever try to register for something and find cnewvine taken, I go back to my email to see if I previously signed up and forgot. That’s almost always the case.
Do a Google search for “Colleen Newvine” and you’ll find pages and pages of results, 99 percent of it about me. There might be another woman with my name in Fort Collins, Colo., but I’ve never been able to actually track her down to figure out if it was an attempt at identity theft or if she really exists.
Look for me on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Skype — Colleen Newvine is always me. Only me. Not hundreds of Michelles and Jennifers, but just weird-named me.
So whether it was a “told you so” by my mom or not, I appreciate that the name my parents picked 41 years ago helped me do this new media stuff a little more effectively.
Throughout this year, several bloggers will engage in a conversation here and on their blogs — asking questions of each other and responding. Others are absolutely welcome to join the conversation, as well. Learn more about the ladies of Blogversation 2012.
Today’s question — like last week’s installment, actually a series of related questions — comes from Amy Throndsen, on Twitter as @amyserves:
Amy Throndsen poses this week's Blogversation questions about the definition of community and how to nurture community.
Since graduating college in 2003, I joined an AmeriCorps program where lived in four different communities on the west coast over the course of 11 months, and I spent almost three years in China as a Peace Corps Volunteer. After Peace Corps I traveled for five months through Southeast Asia, putting everything I had into a backpack and regularly hitting the dusty trail. I lived in Washington, D.C. for two years after returning to the U.S. and am now in Madison, Wisc.
I’ve found that as I’ve lived and worked in multiple places, my “community” is spread out over the globe. I’m grateful have those shared experiences (they’ve shaped my perspective and make me who I am today), but I’ve been focusing on how to make Madison my home and connect with a deeper sense of community here.
My question for you is about community: How do you define it? How do some people or places rise to the top of your list, as to where you’ll spend time and energy developing and nurturing those relationships? What are some tips you’d give someone who is looking to establish themselves in a new community?
Brook Eddy founded Bhakti Chai after a trip to India taught her to love spicy chai tea
Brook Eddy went to India looking for inspiration. She got it, just in a different way than she expected.
In India, Eddy fell in love with chai — spicy, sweetened tea served with milk — and today her Colorado-based Bhakti Chai is approaching $2 million in sales and Bon Appetit magazine namechecked Bhakti in naming Boulder America’s Foodiest Town in 2010.
The path to tea mogul was challenging and unexpected.
The divorced mother of twins had no background in manufacturing, and her experience in food was limited to small-scale catering. But she trusted her heart as her chai business grew from a hobby to a multi-product line with 16 employees.
In 2002, made plans to go to India to pursue her writing passion. She applied for a $10,000 Lange-Taylor grant through Duke University to research Swadhyay villages, while her photographer brother took photos for a creative collaboration on the experience.
“I had faith it would all work out. I felt like I’d been working since I was 15, finished undergrad in an honors program, went to grad school, and started to work full time two weeks after graduation,” Eddy recalled. “So I did feel like I deserved to take three months and travel – and did think that the trip would on some level lead me to my next opportunity.”
Off she went, halfway around the world, to pursue creativity and experience a totally different culture.
“India was like going home. I’d never been there before, but some part of me had been there and resonated with the sights, sounds, smells, chaos, colors, vibrancy. I learned so much about my inner strength and my inner voice in India,” Eddy recalled. “It was also the first time I had ever traveled with my biological father and brother. I did not know them growing up, so it was a beautiful opportunity to get to know them better.”
Eddy found she hadn’t been chosen for the Lange-Taylor grant, which left her searching for the next thing, but still committed to writing a book, using the inspiration and stories she collected in India.
Meanwhile, she’d also returned from India with a taste for the Indian spiced tea the way it’s authentically served there. She looked around when she returned home and couldn’t find a product that was spicy enough or fresh.
That had pushed her to the kitchen to make her own. She started by making a traditional chai recipe and added fresh ginger and black pepper. It took about four months in 2005 before she felt she’d hit on the right proportion of spice and sweet, for a fresh-tasting tea.
In 2006, she was writing a story entitled “Bhakti Trampoline” at a coffee shop in Boulder and was wishing she could sip on her homemade chai while she was writing and not the watery, preservative laden, spice-less chai they served. She asked the cafe owner about trying her chai.
“They had a sample the following week and signed up as my first customer. This is when I remember walking out of the cafe thinking, ‘Do I really want to start a chai company?’ I thought about this and that yes, I could actually rock a chai company and make extra money and have my chai more readily available for my consumption in Boulder,” Eddy recalled.
Bhakti Chai has some of the most beautiful labels you'll see. It's not just the tea that's inspired by India. Look at those colors.
She launched her business with the name “Bhakti,” which means devotion through social action. She came to understand this meaning from the Swadhyay movement, which she studied while in India.
“When the chai company came to me, it was only natural to build it around Bhakti. I knew I could create a company that was profitable, sustainable, and that invested in social change. I always was so confused why companies couldn’t do all three,” Eddy said. “Now, we hear about triple bottom line companies and the three Ps – People, Planet, Profit – but then it was me thinking, ‘why not? Why not build something meaningful while providing an interesting fresh product reminiscent of India.’”
On the Bhakti website, Eddy tells the story of her learning about Swadhyay movement, including:
“Devotion shouldn’t just be an introverted experience but should be a social force fostering universal family. Societal transformation then derives from this ideal of universal respect and unity, compelling individuals to serve their community by donating two days a month for the good of their community. “
“We started very small,” Eddy told the Denver Post. But, “as we grow our giving grows.” In 2010, Bhakti donations totaled 25 percent of net income, going to groups like the Global Fund for Women and Colorado Youth Matter.
Eddy stayed committed to this business philosophy even after she and her husband divorced in 2007 and she faced supporting her kids as a divorced mother, along with the common challenges of underfinanced start ups.
“The hardest part was being hand to mouth for a long time and feeling so on the edge of not making it due to cash flow issues and not having any investment or loan money for the first two years,” Eddy said. “Banks would not touch us because all they looked at was my credit score. I kept trying to get them to look at our P&L and balance sheet, but they wouldn’t. Didn’t even care how successful we were, only wanted to know my social security number and my assets — which were none.”
Since she couldn’t get traditional funding through banks, Eddy told Reuters, she reached out to her network for funding.
Bhakti Chai was experiencing growing pains in the form of cash flow shortages as increasingly larger accounts put in ever-larger orders, sometimes taking more than a month to pay. After failing to secure bank loans, Eddy drew on her development skills to drum up support from local investors, eventually raising a total of about $250,000. She also tapped Boulder’s enthusiastic network of food entrepreneurs, who were eager to help fill her void in business experience by giving freely of their time.
“It was also hard because I felt alone for the first couple of years – but now I have a great team of employees, advisors, investor members and consultants which makes me feel more balanced and supported.”
Bhakti's newest product line are these ready-to-drink chai blends. I'm a dirty chai addict so I love the coffee blend. It sounds weird but coffee and chai are delicious together.
That team has helped put Bhakti on a growth path that includes now making chai ice cream, as well as beverages both for consumer and commercial channels. They recently launched a ready-to-drink line of products — bottled already blended with soy milk — in three new Whole Foods regions, adding 80 new stores in Texas, southern California, Arizona, Nevada and Louisiana, as well as Portland and Seattle.
Running a company that’s doubling its sales each year while caring for 7-year-old twins is a juggling act, but Eddy says her children feel part of Bhakti.
“They already have so much pride in Bhakti and in me. Every time we go to Whole Foods they love to tell the check out person that their mother started Bhakti Chai. The reason is that they always get such a fabulous response and they smile so wide feeling like a little celebrity themselves,” she said.
Learn more about Bhakti:
Blogging disclosure: I am rarely unbiased about anything I write about. Think of Newvine Growing as my version of Oprah’s favorite things. In the case of Brook and Bhakti, we’ve been friends with Brook since she worked with my husband, John, more than 10 years ago at Michigan Radio. She’s given us her spicy tea several times. I approached her about a profile several months ago and she offered to help sponsor my blogging efforts, but did not ask for nor did I offer editorial control over what I would write.
Throughout this year, several bloggers will engage in a conversation here and on their blogs — asking questions of each other and responding. Others are absolutely welcome to join the conversation, as well. Learn more about the ladies of Blogversation 2012.
Since it’s a commonly accepted goal in our culture to find a mate for a monogamous marriage, most people understand that when you’re dating you’re auditioning potential partners and if he or she isn’t “the one,” you’ll eventually break up.
With the goal of choosing a single partner, you need to make a decision.
But with friends, it seems there’s no similar social expectation of evaluating and moving on. Facebook has shown us it’s possible to have thousands of friends, bounded only by our interest in their Farmville requests and pictures of their children.
Because there’s no expectation of friendship monogamy, it seems in some ways like a deeper rejection to end a friendship. I’m capable of having lots of friends, but I choose not to have you among them.
So what if you realize you have friends you would not choose as friends today?
In a recent article headlined It’s Not Me, It’s You, Alex Williams wrote for the New York Times:
Thanks to Facebook, the concept of “defriending” has become part of the online culture. With a click of a mouse, you can remove someone from your friends roster and never again see an annoying status update or another vacation photo from a person you want out of your life.
Not so in the real world. Even though research shows that it is natural, and perhaps inevitable, for people to prune the weeds from their social groups as they move through adulthood, those who actually attempt to defriend in real life find that it often plays out like a divorce in miniature — a tangle of awkward exchanges, made-up excuses, hurt feelings and lingering ill will.
I count a couple of friendships among my life’s most painful break ups, and I think it’s because we didn’t have a socially agreed upon way to be grown up and say “this isn’t working for me any more.”
We also didn’t have a good way to explain to mutual friends what had happened, so they were left trying to figure out how to navigate invitations to social events and what it meant to them.
In recent years, I have worked to draw smart, creative, inspirational people closer to me. I’ve also tried to reduce the time I spend with negative people, to make more time for the positive ones.
I want to come away from social events energized and uplifted, having learned something or having laughed hard. This is not to say I’m against supporting friends going through life’s challenges, but there’s a difference between a basically positive person having a rough patch at work and someone who always finds something to grouse about.
Since we’re pretty busy people, it’s reasonably easy to pick and choose our social outings. We’re honestly too busy to do everything, and we really value having downtime at home.
But sometimes when I demure on an invitation, I feel this awkward lack of social conventions about ending friendships — does the person on the other end wonder whether I’m really too busy or if I just don’t want to hang out with them? If we were more open with one another when we’ve outgrown a friendship, I wouldn’t have to worry about whether I’m sending mixed signals.
Similarly, when I reach out repeatedly to someone I like, I anxiously wonder if it’s me, not their calendar, that’s driving them to decline plans. Should I just stop trying? Without clear communication, it’s hard to know.
Related, when I’ve had a couple of friendships that hit bumpy patches, communication has been essential in maintaining the friendship — sometimes making it better than ever, because it speaks to valuing the other person enough to fix what’s broken.
Maybe that makes friendship more like dating than I thought. You’re thinking about a break up but first you have a talk about your concerns, and then evaluate whether the problem feels better or worse before you figure out what’s next.
What’s your experience with ending friendships? Have you ended a friendship, and did it go well? Have you had someone end a friendship with you?
Throughout this year, several bloggers will engage in a conversation here and on their blogs — asking questions of each other and responding. Others are absolutely welcome to join the conversation, as well. Learn more about the ladies of Blogversation 2012.
We kicked off this online salon a few weeks back, so the Blogversationists are still getting to know each other and introducing themselves here.
To get a flavor for what each blogger does when she’s really hitting her mark, today’s question is “What is one of your favorite blog posts and why?”
It was an excellent opportunity for me to reflect on what I’d learned in my first decade as a wife, and to celebrate that we still like and love each other. Though it hasn’t all been sunshine and unicorns, I’m grateful we’ve had and continue to have a good partnership. Writing about lessons learned helped me appreciate how far we’ve come as a team.
Once I shared the post, it was fun to see the comments on my blog and on Facebook — friends sharing their own lessons or thanking me for sharing. A few said things like John and I are role models for a good marriage, and I was honored to think that might be true.
As a bonus, the second half of that post features romantic advice one of the Blogversationists, Maria Stuart, gave me when I was in my early 20s. She helped me understand that romance isn’t the big showoffy display once in a while but how your partner treats you every day. That powerful distinction has stayed with me. Thanks, Maria.
Tara Parker-Pope wrote about not what makes a marriage last but what makes it meaningful, including the ways your partner makes your life better:
Dr. Aron and Gary W. Lewandowski Jr., a professor at Monmouth University in New Jersey, have studied how individuals use a relationship to accumulate knowledge and experiences, a process called “self-expansion.” Research shows that the more self-expansion people experience from their partner, the more committed and satisfied they are in the relationship.
To measure this, Dr. Lewandowski developed a series of questions for couples: How much has being with your partner resulted in your learning new things? How much has knowing your partner made you a better person? (Take the full quiz measuring self-expansion.)
“If you’re seeking self-growth and obtain it from your partner, then that puts your partner in a pretty important position,” he explains. “And being able to help your partner’s self-expansion would be pretty pleasing to yourself.”
This notion of self expansion being correlated to relationship satisfaction makes so much sense to me. A good mate should help you be a better version of yourself, including experiencing things you might not otherwise.
Maintaining a healthy marriage takes work, and we want some payoff for that effort. Having a partner who makes your life richer than it would be if you’re alone seems like the return on the investment of your effort.
