#EDCMOOC - MOOC on e-learning and Digital Culture

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Day 1

So far, the MOOC is over-stimulating in a good way -- all topics and people that interest me, and it's embarrassing that I don't already know how to make sure this blog ends up in the RSS, aggregated EDC MOOC News page. All four of the first four short films felt dark to me and I'm typically a hugely optimistic person re: technology's potential for good, so maybe this is a good reality-check, this course, or just a buzz-kill. Not yet sure which.

Having a purring cat on my lap as I type humanizes the alone-ness so far. Am excited by the many hundreds of new people whose viewpoints I'm being exposed to, and need to guard against self-consciousness in my posts in response to others' posts.

That's the tricky part: to acknowledge others' contributions without feeling like I'm just responding without posting original thoughts of my own. I think from now on, I'll ignore the tip, "Search before you post" because then I just get caught up in what others think and feel blocked in spouting my thoughts.

Instead, first I'll post and then I'll trawl through others' input and add selected responses to theirs. I also need to guard against feeling competitive and trying to write to attract votes....Still, earlier, I thought that at least one of my two posts was somewhat clever and was disappointed to check later and see no votes. The lesson, if it's like other online, asynchronous learning I've done, is to get in early. I don't think I'll be able to do that with this course, since psychologically, I know that there is relatively little consequence for not giving it my all vs. ensuring that I'm focusing on my job.

#edcmooc

Emotional Leadership

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

The Delegate Couldn't Know How Deeply His Comment Resonated with Me

Just prior to our saying goodbye, one of the IBM Global LGBT Leadership Workshop delegates, remarked to me one on one, "American culture has a different way of public speaking... and the way you facilitated -- I would call it -- 'emotional leadership'."

Is it part of American culture to facilitate warmly, or is it just my style, and I happen to be American?

It's true that I touch participants on the shoulder and back occasionally and also laugh easily as well as hope to move people -- to activate them -- but it's not even fully conscious on my part...until now, as I'm reflecting on what the delegate said.

In terms of emotions themselves, I always feel so many when facilitating learning, and perhaps, more than ever with this series: a summit for openly lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) IBM executives, and a global leadership development workshop for LGBT not-yet-exec. leaders.

For the workshop I co-designed and facilitated last Friday, I felt sad, desirous, anxious, competitive, thrilled, super-invested, touched and loving. And then afterward, while sitting in the hotel bar with a number of delegates, I felt the same emotions, plus exhausted.

Sad: My father of blessed memory died at ~11:20 pm, November 1st, 1982 and had grown up in D.C., 40 minutes from where I was facilitating in Baltimore. Could I do all I did on November 1st and 2nd to honor his memory? Would he be proud of me, or would we be estranged if he did not approve of my lesbian identity?

Desirous: All of the female delegates and even a few of the male ones are attractive to me. It's exciting to know that none of them is heterosexual -- never happens in any other learning arena. Please God, let me remain appropriate and not cause anyone to feel harassed verbally. Please don't let me embarrass myself by leaking any of these feelings, even as I have a pact with Pat never to act on any such feelings, and haven't in the 20 years we've been together. Don't want to express 'em either.

Anxious: Will I be able to be a great agent for their learning and activation? Am I reaching all of them, or am I leaving some behind? Will the timing of the agenda work out? Can I adjust it effectively if need be? Are they finding the exercises meaningful? Are they willingly opting in to one of the teams being formed around the 2013 Vital Few? Is this learning experience one of the best they've ever had or not? And if not, why not?

Competitive: What is it about the execs. that enabled them to lead such huge missions? What would it take for me to be recognized as worthy of leading one? Which one could it be? Will I ever be recognized as meriting the exec. stripe? Do I look as fit as the other women? Why am I one of the only women in the entire room with short hair? Who am I better-/worse-looking than? How can I stay quiet instead of revealing competitiveness by what I say? How can I remain poised and just listen and be happy for others' success?

Thrilled: What a rush to see them enter the ballroom and pick up their name-badges and tent-cards and to know that it's really happening: nearly 50 LGBT IBMers from around the world, together -- just us -- for a whole day. And thrilled by the international panel -- charming, lovely delegates from Bangalore, Moscow, Vienna and Tel Aviv. How lucky am I to get to ask questions that make me curious and to invite questions from participants! What a privilege to be the moderator!

Super-invested: I want these learners to succeed, especially because they are my people. Also, am concerned that being one of them, I will be judged even more strictly by them than I might be if I weren't one of them.

-- Disclaimer -- : I'm sitting in front of a football game on TV because Pat and I want to be together this evening after my having been away for half a week, and so it's harder to focus on my feelings for this blog-entry. By the way, her Green Bay Packers won, so the mood around here is buoyant.

Touched: When one of the executive panelists -- who's responsible this year for 3/4 of a billion dollars of IBM revenue -- responded to my moderator-question about when he first became aware of his gender identity, I was moved because he spoke of how abused he'd been as a kid by peers, since they saw him as effeminate. Most of all, I was touched that the delegates apparently bought in to my upfront premise of the workshop -- that self-awareness leads to authenticity, which leads to premier leadership -- as demonstrated by their willingness to reflect with one another so openly, especially since a good number of them had never met one another prior to the workshop.

Loving: Just before kicking off the workshop, I sat down next to a delegate with whom I wasn't previously acquainted, introduced myself and asked, "How's it going?"

"It's all sort of a whirlwind," she said, "I'm just taking it all in." She looked like I remember feeling in the early days of my coming out: bombarded. I felt flooded with compassion, listening to her. At the end of the day, when she said goodbye, I saw that she had dimples. They were visible, now that she no longer seemed overwhelmed.

And after the international panel was done, I stood and looked at each of the panelists from Austria, India, Israel and Russia, and felt tearful with a rush of affection; it seemed that they were similarly moved when I looked in their eyes.

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I've been sitting on this blog-entry for weeks, wondering why I couldn't write something more perfectly expressive of my feelings post-Baltimore and as self-revealing and honest as I've been above, I didn't post the above prior to now because it was missing the full expression of my most embarrassing feelings of all (though I did leak a bit of it above in the "Competitive" section....) In the spirit of my friend Richard's belief that it's the things about which we're most embarrassed that are most interesting about us, I'll express it finally, 23 days later:

Am I a hypocrite? Am I practicing what I preached, about pursuing our potential? I invested imagination-time x 2, design-time x 2, sponsor-review-time x 2, room-setup-time x 2, facilitation-time x 2 and all-of-the-above-emotions-time x 2 in dedicating sessions to the advancement of IBM, the LGBT community at large, and very specifically to a selected group of LGBT IBMers, but when will I know when I've fully advanced and reached my own potential? What *is* my own potential? What is healthy ambition vs. unhealthy ego? How much ego do I get to have before it's unhealthy?

I am qualified and repeatedly invited to help develop premier leaders, but am I recognized as a leader myself? And if so, why am I not literally leading people again, with a title to match? And is it enough to me if I myself recognize myself as a leader? And when did I gain this craving for outward status? When I joined the company, I did not even aspire to be a first-line people manager, and then did, but for pastoral reasons -- really -- and the people-manager role did satisfy my pastoral bent. And I left management to help start up the LGBT business development mission, and didn't return. Why am I thinking so literally now?

Would it wreck the amazing experience a number of delegates told me they had if they knew that their facilitator had these questions? Or might it paradoxically reinforce my credibility?

And what will I do with these questions? How can I answer them in a way that benefits my work and me altogether? All I can do is make a personal pledge that co-designing and delivering the sessions is rededicating me to further pursue my own potential in addition to having promoted that the delegates pursue theirs. Time for more prayer, too, I think: God, please help me follow your direction. Amen.

In a State of Anticipation

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Anticipation and Agitation

Ever since graduating, I have been reading whatever I want, including Billy Collins' poetry, the rest of *Carry the One* by Carol Anshaw, the science fiction issue of "The New Yorker" even though I'm not historically a big sci-fi fan, and now, a few Dara Horn novels from the library at my sister Deb's recommendation. Otherwise, though, I'm agitated by the bonus time I have. Just writing about it decreases the agitation a bit, though, so I'll keep going.

It's like I'm uncomfortable with sitting still till I figure out how to spend the time. An IBM mentor said, "You could spend more time with Pat, you could become a volunteer...." Another friend to whom I bemoaned my less-than-routine exercise regimen over the past several months said, "Now, you'll have more time for exercise."

I have been trying to spend more time with Pat, though I'm finding that I keep feeling compelled to do more in the work realm to fill the gap, like last night: We were going to eat out and I was doing LGBT Community stuff for IBM past 6 pm on a Friday. And I didn't even realize Pat was waiting for us to head to dinner.

As far as volunteering, do I work with LGBT youth? Do I do something with animals? Do I become a docent?

Certainly, I have more time to blog now. Do I start vlogging (video-blogging)? This might be among my more tedious posts, but it's actually helping me to splay my anxieties here. If I have time back, I need to be using it well. What if I just get swept up into the mindless part of Facebook? What if I use social media as a tranquilizer, rather than as a way to feel more connected to humanity? What if I just become average again? When I was in school, I was special because I was heroic -- working full-time while studying part-time. How virtuous. Now, I'm just another person, going to and coming from work.

I want to be special always. I want not to pressure myself so much. Why can't I just relax? The classic observation that therapists and all of my close friends have made is: "You're very hard on yourself." I want to be more at peace. After all, I'm far from how I was in my early-20s: daydreaming with a spoon of ice cream in my hand, then mouth, then hand, then mouth, telling myself, Any day, I'm going to start writing. And it'll be published and loved by millions, and I'll be famous. A childhood friend remarked recently that she just assumed she'd be famous and it hasn't happened yet. Me neither. Still, since my 30s, I have written and then blogged routinely, have had a creative job, and since my mid-20s, no longer numbed myself with sugar, so that's huge. Who am I trying to convince? Myself.

More to Anticipate Anxiously

The other thing that's happening is I'm feeling agitated about Pat's and my upcoming trip to Israel, which Pat is giving me as a graduation present. I want so badly for her to love it like I do. I find Israel to be an addictive place. I need to go back there at least every decade, now that I can afford to. This is Pat's first trip and I wish I could wipe away her worries about terrorism. She's coming with me to Israel with the same attitude I had about going with her to Alaska: I knew she wanted to go, so I went. Last night, Pat said, "But you liked the glaciers and the whales." She realized that those were the high-points for me. I also liked swimming in a community pool in Juneau and reading on the ship. And the ship's naturalist, who looked and sounded vaguely like Alfred Hitchcock and who gave great lectures.

I keep saying, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised, and I hope she is. In addition to wanting to control Pat's reaction to a whole country, I'm feeling anxious about seeing family while we're there. Pat & I have been together for just about 20 years and yet these relatives, other than my first cousin Maishe, who's been here for a Bar Mitzvah, have never met her.

Israel can be fraught with danger for me, too, though different from the danger that worries Pat -- the danger of flashbacks to my early, tortured romantic reaches, all of which were ultimately thwarted there: a lovely Israeli girl at 15; at 20: a Costa-Rican guy on his way to Jewish conversion; a Jewish-American guy, who also went to the University of Michigan; a Jewish-Australian guy with Israeli parents; a French woman, who was also deeply closeted then, and who was also on her way to Jewish conversion; a tall, handsome Orthodox-Jewish-American guy for whom I wore a modest skirt on our one date; two Jewish-American women I met through my program, a couple of months apart; and a wonderful Israeli childhood friend who became a gorgeous, rugged-looking, gracious-acting man -- the ultimate clue that I could not be attracted to men sufficiently to make a life with one.

If I catalog all of this Israel-based romantic fumbling, maybe I'll feel less haunted by it. Instead of feeling celebratory about this trip, I'm feeling overwhelmed at the prospect of being in Israel for the first time with someone who loves me back and with whom I've been in a healthy, 20-year relationship. In all of those cases of misbegotten cupidity, the people loved Israel, but didn't love me. Finally, I'm with someone who loves me, but who does not necessarily love Israel. It's not that she dislikes Israel, it's just that she isn't drawn to it -- kind of like how the objects of my affection in Israel ultimately felt about me. I have to go meet some friends shortly, by 9:30, so I wonder if I will want to write more later, or if I've already said more than enough....

Last Night I Dreamt I Wore a Mini-skirt to Work...

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

...and Stood in Front of a Breezy, Full Classroom Sans Underpants

Perhaps it will take some time to decompress from work-mode, but this blog-entry's heading and sub-heading sum up the anxiety that comes with three good problems: my being on vacation; thinking about an upcoming trip, where I need to stand in front of a classroom and be effective, so that the participants can be effective; and day-dreaming about my upcoming marriage to Pat.

I left my ThinkPad at home while we're in Florida and so cannot look at work e-mail even if I wanted to do so; was thinking that I should have brought my modules with me to practice for the trip; and am puzzling over what to wear when Pat and I get married on in July. In reaction to my clothing dilemma, a new friend said the other day, "I think that as humans, we need to be feeling some struggle at all times, and another friend said more practically, "Sometimes, it's more about the color and the fabric...."

The dream, I guess, was trying to tell me to spend time, preparing for the class I'll facilitate, and that no matter what I choose to wear to get married to Pat, be sure the outfit includes underwear.

Analyzing Myself with a Little Help

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies.

Dropping into the Middle of Therapy

"You don't want to adapt, or you say you can't....So you are just hard-wired to be verbose?"

"Yes, congenitally. I don't want to learn to be succinct. [It's too hard.]"

"What if you could get a bigger repertoire?"

"No."

"These things you're telling me, they've probably been with you since the beginning of time, right?"

"Yes." [So how can you possibly think you're going to help me change them?]

At the Session's Start:

"I think this is interesting."

"It is."

"Last time, you nodded so understandingly -- or maybe that was a standard nod -- when I talked about breathing, and how I forget to when I'm afraid....And, also, last time, when you said you thought I'd win the competition, that is, that I'd tell stories and gain nothing from you, so I'd win, I was taken aback. Did I sound like I was trying to compete with you, or was that your stuff?"

"I *am* a very competitive person, but I'm not sure it was mine because usually, when it is, I have to think about what happened for days.

At the End of the Session

"See? I did it again. I do that to therapists. I just talk & talk & talk."

"Well, we need to know your story."

And then, since I had not really let her get a word in edge-wise for nearly 45 minutes, she responded to my observation about the breathing problem:

"The reason I shook my head so vigorously about the breathing is because it's so common."

"Can you fix it?"

"Usually, it fixes itself when you get to the bottom of the anxiety."

Suffering's Payoff

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

Safety Against Unexpected Disappointment

When did my fetish for suffering begin? Up until recently, I wanted to rid myself of self-defeating competitiveness, which is perfectionism's conjoined twin and jealousy's breath...until I figured out the umbrella-/macro-problem: suffering...from an unhealthy sense of competition, from anxiety, from loneliness; all of these maladies have my suffering from them in common.

Loneliness? Yes. I've written here before that I'm a lonely soul -- probably, that's like calling oneself a klutz, i.e., a self-fulfilling prophecy, and yet I do feel lonely routinely, no matter how beloved I am by Pat and the rest of my family and friends. And my loneliness fuels my art.

Anxiety? I find it the most comfortable, most natural state. The moment I lose it, I fear something really terrible will happen.

Being overly-competitive/-comparative, and then envious? Routinely. For example, on Grove and Watchung in Montclair, coming in either direction, I like to be the first car in the line of however many of us are waiting for the light to change, sometimes by practically any means necessary.

Reading these descriptions of the associated challenges of my suffering, I see the payoff: I'm not necessarily suffering from them...except when it comes to envy....

How can I channel envy? What can I do about it in the present? How can envy be an agent for good instead of disappointment? By being absent. More prayers.

Anxiety in Its Glory

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

Might As Well Honor It

Tonight, I just need to write what I need to write out of self-respect, rather than out of disrespect for my mother:

Turning the corner at 8:15 am, and heading up the hill to Stamford Hospital, I imagined the river-side park across the road, full of pink tents, like it was every summer when I was a young child. My mom used to take me to the Pink Tent Festival there every year. It was a wonderful time, when I felt solidly like the child and saw my mother solidly as the mother. She held my hand as we walked by all of the booths and even once bought me The [Winnie the] Pooh Party Book, which a friend of hers had authored and was selling at the Festival.

Other times, our roles often were reversed, including today....

Blasting Kirk Franklin's "Looking for You" while racing up 287, anyone, including Jesus was welcome to help me. Oh, God, please don't let her look like a snapped-neck rag-doll. Please don't let her die. Please don't make me have to face things I don't want to deal with by myself today. Please let me rise to her occasion.

It feels good to cry with pre-grief. Can the other drivers see me? Why do I care?

Why did she back into a tree? How long was she by herself in the crashed car before someone helped? Why isn't she living with us? Because it would be unlivable for everyone. Still, why couldn't I have kept this from happening?

"The doctor's coming at 7 to tell me if I need surgery," she tells me at 6:40 am. She'd been there since 5 pm the previous day, but didn't want to worry her children till morning.

"OK, Mom. I'll be there soon. I'm leaving now," I say breezily while really wanting to collapse. I'm coming from New Jersey during rush-hour, so it won't be that soon in reality.

Sarah, you can't have an accident. You just can't. You have to reach the hospital safely. You have to!

iPod to the rescue. Favorite song after favorite song accompanied me on the drive while I tried not to imagine that this was the call I'd been dreading for the past few years.

My mother's fast asleep when I arrive. Her head is held up by a neck-brace and her face is whiter than I've ever seen it. She looks just about dead, God forbid.

I put my stuff down and go out to the nurse's station, where I see the doctor heading toward her room. "How is she?" I ask and he comes back out of the room.

"Who are you?"

"Her daughter."

"The neurosurgeon will come in a bit to determine if her neck needs surgery because it might be fractured, and she also broke her knee and sustained a lot of bruises."

Calmly: "There was a truism that once an older person broke a bone, that was the beginning of the end..." I said. "Is she going to die?"

"It *was* true -- and most typically for hips -- but now, with physical therapy, she should be fine.

I don't believe him, but I shake his hand and thank him. The orthopedic surgeon, who knows my mother, though I don't know why, comes in, saying, "Edythe, what have you done? You were supposed to be at home."

He squeezes her everywhere and concludes that more is broken than the X-rays saw, including some ribs. My little mother is lying there, just taking it. He sets her leg in a splint with a pump under it to keep her circulation going and I see gashes in her shin and ankle. I've never seen my mother cut before. How did those happen? "For someone your age, it's a big accident," he says in conclusion.

Later: "I went to get my prescription at Genovese yesterday before the accident and I hope no one opened the bag on the front seat of the car because Genovese had a sale on Valentine's items and I bought a set of red, plastic 'love hand-cuffs' as a joke for [my sister] Kathy. They were 26 cents."

How is it that my mother always gets to be the playful one, and I'm always the mother? And then she'll surprise me serendipitously, but not reliably, switching roles: "You're so cute; you're so professional, but you're really still just a little girl," says my mother, after hearing me leave voicemail for her swim-physical therapist, letting her know that my mom's had an accident and will miss the next few months of sessions as a result.

I guess that when I left the message, I sounded like a troubled daughter, rather than like a troubled mother, sibling or friend, which are the other roles I play often. The neurosurgeon concluded that she tore a ligament in her neck, but fractured no bones, and so there will be no surgery these first six weeks, and then he'll evaluate whether or not it's needed.

My sister Deb does daughter-duty on Wednesday and I'll go back on Thursday after work to see my mom once again. Meanwhile, I've earned another golden medal....When my sister Kathy became ill with breast cancer, which thank God, she survived, she gave me an extra key to her apartment. Tonight, my mom gave me an extra [gold-colored] key to her house.

I went there this evening to get some things my mother needed/wanted and the car, sitting in its destroyed state in the driveway, was sobering. On my mom's dresser, while hunting for something else, I found a photo of my mom at 19. She was really cute. And vigorous. Now, just her mind and grip still feel strong.

Why isn't there still a Pink Tent Festival in Stamford? Why can't I be a kid again?

Blogging Before We Go

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Once More While on American Soil

I just splashed on Forest Essentials Aloe Vera & Mint Natural Astringent from the Himalayas, which I still had from my hotel stay during my last (and first) trip to Bangalore in July, 2005.

Now, I'm exhausted and olfactorily stimulated in parallel -- an odd combination...but no more odd than the other combinations I'm feeling during this last, pre-flight hour in our home; I am queasy and bold and anxious and psyched and jangled and calm and my throat hurts and I feel like singing and laughing and sleeping for hours.

My carry-on has my bathingsuit and goggles, to ensure I can swim when we get there, if my throat calms down.

Happily, we've already got plans to have lunch on Saturday with an Irish friend, who's also in Bangalore on assignment, and then we hope to meet with an Indian friend and colleague and her daughters on Sunday.

Please, God, let our flight leave on time, let our luggage not be delayed, let our ride show up at the airport (which did not happen last time), keep our families' health stable and let my sinus' health be restored. Amen.