My Retrospective

Still in Portland...

Had drinks with my friend Molly last night. Every time I come to Portland, I have to see Molly. She's my touchstone when I come back to town. We both are going through similar changes in our lives that involve starting new chapters. She is looking to start a new career perhaps. I'm ready to involve myself fully in the path that I have chosen. It's not like I've been lazy. I have been working hard. But I haven't put my passion into my work because I exchanged that for trying to become a salesman (for more on this, read my guest blog at ).

Molly and I had a good talk. It's one of those conversations with someone who has known you for years. You know, the kind where there's a shorthand because that person has seen you through thick and through thin. That person knows all of your secrets, has seen you through various parts of your life. Sometimes it's just good to know that in the midst of the struggle to hold on to your identity, that a friend understands exactly what you've been through.

Part of that is forgiving yourself for not being a superstar at 25. Part of that is realizing that life is about the journey. And if you're a person who has truly lived all the experiences of his life, fully in the moment, then that kind of living is successful living. It's only when I start comparing myself to other people that I start feeling like a failure. But there are still things to learn from prior incarnations.

That's why I feel like the Universe is sending me some sort of message. I feel like the past seven or eight months have been about a retrospective, going back to past experiences and looking at them again. The first one was college. Back in August, I had gotten a phone call to come back to my alma mater and teach in the Fall. By teaching students, I came face to face with the ambitious, hard working student I was who was producing work at a rapid pace and just running on pure passion. There's something about that 20 year old self and about the 20 year olds I was teaching that I needed to connect to. I also needed to realize in the time that has passed, I had amassed a shit ton of knowledge and that I had to own the fact that I was no longer a student. It was time to take my authority and use it.

I have made several trips to Portland over the past 12 months, mainly to see my brother and his family. This trip involved meeting my brand new nephew for the first time. And on every trip, I would see old college friends who live here. And I would also see my friend Andrea, who I used to work with. It's one thing to reminisce about the old times and to talk about those crazy work experiences when I was in my early 20s. But it's a whole other thing to relive some of those experiences and to reunite with those people.

That's the other reason I'm here on this trip. Andrea told me I had to come out for the 30th Anniversary of Wieden + Kennedy, the ad agency we used to work at. The thought of reconnecting with people who had a significant amount of influence in how I saw my world open up was exciting. And if I had just come to town to see Andrea and catch up with a few old co-workers, then I was fine with that. Because at the time, I didn't know who would come out.

The party is this Sunday, April Fools Day. It turns out that one of our co-horts, the other woman I worked with, Kimberly is flying out from Vermont. The thought of the Three Musketeers, as it were getting back together was enough to make me puke pixie dust. And then my friends, Joe and Andy, said they were coming. I also had lived in New York at the same time they moved to New York. Then Kimberly set me up on an email chain that was going around. Holy shitballs! There were tons of people flying out for this thing. And it seems like we were working there during a sort of Golden Era for the agency, which also meant that a lot of folks who were there when I was there were making it a priority to come back for the party. Then my friend Tess facebooked me and said she was flying in this morning. This thing is going to be better than my high school reunion in a lot of ways (no offense to my high school classmates, but this is a global company with a ton of resources to spend on this party).

Retrospective. I'm looking back at another significant time in my life with some perspective. I lived in Portland right before I moved to New York. I worked on a major World Cup campaign for Latin America. I had been in the trenches with people. I was young and really stretching my capabilities. My life could have gone in the advertising direction at that time, but I was laid off due to cut backs and I moved to New York, where another part of my destiny awaited me.

New York. If I'm in the midst of some sort of Life Review/Retrospective, then is New York next? I asked this question out loud with Molly last night. Is New York going to come back to me in some significant way?

For the time being, I'm just going to get to Sunday. Actually, Saturday Night the gang is all getting together to hang out before the big party the next day. But I just need to focus on seeing Andrea, Kimberly, Joe, Andy, Tess and other friends from that era to celebrate an experience that we all shared together in this small city that still had yet to come into its own. Now Portland certainly has its own identity as a city and now people know of its charms, like we all did when we lived here and it was our playground.

The other thing that Molly and I talked about last night is patterns. For me, significant changes in my life happen in 13 year cycles. I was thirteen when I saw the high school I wanted to attend which was out of the way and inconvenient for my parents to send me to. But it changed my life and it opened up my world to something bigger. It really set the stage. Then at twenty six I started graduate school and that opened up my world even more. I studied the thing I had been dreaming about my whole life. And now thirteen years later, I am at a crossroads, a place where my world can even open up more. Because now I have the education behind me, the drive to put myself into the world I want to be a part of and the next step is that action. It's ready for me now. It has taken some time, but now in this next cycle it's time for me to claim myself, my authority, my knowledge, my ability.

One more thing to share, an analogy. When you're making a gumbo, you need to make what is called a roux. A roux is a thickening agent which is made from flour and fat, mainly butter. In order for your gumbo to have a depth of flavor and not to taste raw (therefore signifying that it's not ready), you have to cook your roux until it gets nice and dark. But if you cook it too long, it's going to burn.

I told Molly it was like our roux was ready. It was too raw before and if we had taken if off the stove earlier, it would have tasted unfinished and it wouldn't have had the depth and richness it needed to make a great gumbo. But if we leave it on any longer, it's going to burn. So it's the perfect time to take it off the stove and incorporate it into our gumbo. Our roux is ready.

When I think about it that way (because I love everything about food), I feel good about the amount of time this gumbo has taken to prepare.

Ready for take off...more accounts from this reunion to come.