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The Fear of We

01. October 2012 · 2 comments · Categories: Inspiration, Thought of the Day · Tags: , , , ,

I had partially drafted this blog post, but felt inspired to finish it and schedule it when I read Clare’s Forever Goals.

Screen shot 2012 09 18 at 6.40.55 PM The Fear of We

On one end of the spectrum, there are girls who are dying to be part of a “We.” We love that movie. We vacation in the Outer Banks. We’re staying in tonight to cuddle. 

On the end side, you have girls like me. The girls who fear “We.” Girls who pride themselves on being independent: making their own decisions and being in control of their schedules.

I think girls like me are fighting hard against age-old stereotypes of “typical” females: we’re not willing to give up our lives, our interests, or our time to ingratiate ourselves to men.

And in some ways, it’s great that women are taking a stand for independence. But there are drawbacks- like preventing yourself from fully committing to someone because you fear that you will lose yourself.

I know a happy medium exists because I’ve seen it. Like my one friend, who lives with her boyfriend but has no qualms about having a silly girls’ night out. Who has used the phrase “We love that show,” but watches Bethenny Ever After without her boyfriend. Who doesn’t make the fact that she’s in a relationship the first thing people know about her, but doesn’t hide it either.

As with many things I blog about, it’s about finding the fine healthy line between independence and co-dependence.

In Clare’s words, I strive to “Be independently successful but even better together.” Cheers to finding that balance!

How Recruiting Is Like Dating

01. August 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Recruiting · Tags: , , , , ,

Over the past year in recruiting, I have honed key skills skills and qualities. What began as a relatively dry blog post on the transferrable skills I’ve learned quickly turned into a comparison between recruiting and dating. Who knew they required the same skills?!

How Recruiting Is Like DatingPhoto credit

Resourcefulness: Also known as super-sleuthing. Give me a name and I can find the person’s contact information and their 10,567 social media profiles. Handy for finding a dream candidate on LinkedIn; handy for stalking a new guy before your first date.

Tact: Rejecting candidates requires a certain level of diplomacy, as does working with hiring managers. Rejecting a second date or initiating a break-up takes a similar level of finesse.

Networking: Critical in life; perfected in recruiting icon smile How Recruiting Is Like Dating The best way to find a candidate and a date for the weekend.

Intuition: Call it what you will, but it’s a key quality that recruiters tend to have. Trusting your gut can prevent the hiring of a perfect-on-paper candidate and enable you to just say no to the seemingly sweet but possibly sketchy guy who keeps texting you.

Multi-tasking: The vast majority of recruiters are managing multiple requisitions simultaneously, so time management and the ability to multi-task are key. Multi-tasking helps in the dating world too: balancing your everyday life and your dating schedule or even helping you date multiple guys at once, if that’s your cup of tea.

Understanding of technology: Unless a company or agency is stuck in the dark ages of recruiting, their recruiters will be familiar and comfortable with technology, including applicant tracking systems, social media, and job boards. Today’s dating world requires the same skill set: the ability to navigate Match.com, eHarmony, OK Cupid, and do your due diligence on each guy {see resourcefulness}.

Metric-driven: Like salespeople, recruiters need to know and be able to articulate the ROI of their work through  qualitative and quantitative metrics {cost-per-hire, retention rates, source-of-hire, etc}. In terms of dating? Uh, some people keep spreadsheets of their online dating interactions…

Ability to close: Hiring a candidate takes persistence, patience, and maybe even some hand-holding. Again, like a good salesperson, a recruiter must be able to close by working with different parties, soothing worries, and facilitating compromise. Securing a second date or taking a casual dating situation to a full-fledged relationship requires the same skills.

What other parallels can you think of? How is your job like dating? 

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Does It Really Come When You Least Expect It?

28. June 2012 · 4 comments · Categories: Thought of the Day · Tags: , , ,

As the adage goes, things {like relationships} happen when you least expect them. Accordingly, people tell you to stop searching and just wait for something great to come along.

But when you move to a new city, do you wait for friends to come along? No, you join Meetup groups and kickball teams and go to classes at the Y. When you get fired, do you wait for a job opportunity to come along? No, you find networking events and search CareerBuilder religiously.

So why doesn’t this logic apply to relationships? Why is putting yourself out there, testing out speed dating, or joining an online dating site often considered desperate instead of just taking control of your dating life?

I’m all about the philosophy that things happen for a reason and often things do come when you least expect them. But I don’t use that mentality as justification for sitting back and hoping luck takes over. On the flip side, I do think there’s a big difference between getting out there and being flat-out desperate.

I also think there’s something to be said for living a full, engaged life and having side benefits {like a relationship!} be part of your “reward.”

What do you think? Do things happen when you least expect them or do you need to put yourself out there? 

Whenever I write my Thought of the Day posts, I think about the fact that you can find a piece of wisdom to match anything you feel. Ever noticed that?

For more on my philosophy on created luck, see this post!

creative {romantic & friend} date ideas, part ii

14. June 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Inspiration, Life Advice, Raleigh, North Carolina, Tips · Tags: , , , , , ,

for part i of creative {romantic & friend} date ideas, click here!

rent sunfish sailboats at lake crabtree

lake crabtree canoe sunset creative {romantic & friend} date ideas, part iiphoto credit

bring wine and cheese and watch planes from the observation deck at the rdu airport

listen to live music:

jazz at koka booth amphitheater on wednesday evenings

sunday evenings at fred fletcher

music on the porch at carolina theater on friday evenings

seaboard station on friday evenings

*visit the morehead planetarium and science center in chapel hill

planetarium creative {romantic & friend} date ideas, part iiphoto credit

*take a trip to the new wing of the museum of natural sciences

go to an amusement park [carowinds or king’s dominion are manageable from raleigh]

hike at umstead or pilot mountain

pilot mountain nc creative {romantic & friend} date ideas, part iiphoto credit

*go rollerskating at jellybeans

ice skate at the raleigh winterfest ice rink

tour the the jc raulston arboretum

do a wine tasting at a vineyard [try hinnant family vineyards]

creative {romantic & friend} date ideas, part ii

take a daytrip to the beach

visit tucker lake

feed the ducks at shelley lake

watch an outdoor movie [go to the north carolina museum of art, the summer movie series on hillsborough st, or movies by moonlight at koka booth amphitheatre]

*peruse awesome clothes at thrift stores or vintage stores [check out father and sons]

*spend a rainy afternoon reading at barnes & noble or starbucks

starbucks cup creative {romantic & friend} date ideas, part iiphoto credit

* = good rainy day activity!

What’s the best date you ever had? What other ideas do you have for a great date? What is your favorite way to spend a day with friends? 

P.S. My birthday is a month from today! See it on my calendar icon smile creative {romantic & friend} date ideas, part ii

creative {romantic & friend} date ideas

07. June 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Inspiration, Life Advice, Raleigh, North Carolina, Tips · Tags: , , , , , , ,

I’m always looking for fun, new things to do- both on dates and with friends, so I assume my friends and readers are too! It’s easy to get stuck in a rut [dinner and a movie anyone?], but I always find it enjoyable to branch out, discover new things in my city, and have funny stories to share!

Thank you to Sara Rose for helping me compile this list! 

visit the asheboro zoo

do go-karts, putt putt, laser tag, and/or bumper boats at frankie’s fun park

*visit the museum of life and science

take a segway tour [check out triangle glides]

segway tour creative {romantic & friend} date ideas photo credit

try stand-up paddleboarding [check out triangle glides at lake johnson or lake wheeler or ride stride at falls lake]

take a ghost tour [check out tobacco road ghost tours]

go berry picking or apple picking [depending on the season]

visit a corn maze and go on a hayride

corn maze creative {romantic & friend} date ideas photo credit

*watch a movie in imax 3d or at blue ridge 14, the $2 movie theatre

rent paddle boats at pullen park [bonus- they have a few gluten-free options at the pullen place cafe!]

attend a hurricanes hockey games or a durham bulls baseball game

go for bike ride and picnic on the capital area greenway trail system or at the raleigh rose garden

*go bowling [try sparians bowling boutique and bistro for a classy date or amf for a more casual experience]

play tennis

fly a kite

kite flying in sky creative {romantic & friend} date ideas photo credit

*attend a comedy show [go to goodnights on wednesdays to get a free ticket with the purchase of dinner. or try improv at comedy worx]

take a trip to the farmers’ market [look here for a calendar of events]

attend an event at lafayette village, a cute european style village in raleigh

canoe or kayak at lake johnson

lake johnson boats creative {romantic & friend} date ideas photo credit

take coffee and bagels (gluten-free of course) and eat them on the rocking chairs at lake johnson

sit on the deck at boylan bridge brewpub to watch the sunset

* = good rainy day activity!

What’s the best date you ever had? What other ideas do you have for a great date? What is your favorite way to spend a day with friends? 

comfort.

15. February 2012 · 1 comment · Categories: Thought of the Day · Tags: ,

{This is a pre-scheduled post. I am currently road tripping to Charleston, where I will be boarding a cruise liner to the Bahamas! Eek!}

Reading Kaileen Elise’s post entitled Comfortable Boldness made me think about the word comfort. It’s something I write about often but don’t often stop to ponder.

Comfort- a seemingly innocuous word that actually carries two very different connotations.

On one side, you have the positive associations. Comfort food- the kind that warms your soul. The idea of a comfortable home, {“It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience” -Sydney Smith}. Feeling comfortable in your own skin. The kind of comfortable love John Mayer sings about {“Our love was comfortable and so broken in”}. Those insanely comfy sweats you pull on at the end of a long day- or on Saturday night icon smile comfort. That feeling of pure, unadulterated comfort you feel around family and your closest friends.

But then there’s the negative connotation of being stuck in your comfort zone. Of being stuck in a too comfortable place with no desire to push forward.

Do these two associations of comfort juxtapose each other? Are they on the same spectrum or two totally different ideas? Something to ponder…

Do you generally see comfort as a negative or positive thing? 

missed opportunities

30. December 2011 · Write a comment · Categories: Thought of the Day · Tags: ,

I was talking to a friend the other day about missed opportunities and I couldn’t help but wonder {did you get that reference, SATC fans?}: is there a window of, well, opportunity to reclaim supposedly missed opportunities?

Like the time last year when my friend and I baked blondie brownies to take to the local fire station in DC. We knocked on the door and were greeted by boisterous, fun firemen who invited us in for dinner. If  you know me at all, you know I’m usually one to take full advantage of a fun opportunity like that. One of my old friends taught me the motto “DIFTS” meaning Do it for the story and I generally think of that expression when cool opportunities present themselves.

But for some odd reason, I said no! A year later, I still think about how much fun we could have had if we had taken the firemen up on their offer for dinner. Maybe nothing major would have come out of it, but we’d at least have a fun story, the opportunity to talk to these guys about their honorable work, and hey- maybe we’d be dating two nice Midwestern twin firemen icon smile missed opportunities

Likewise, my friend recently told me about how a cute stunningly attractive guy approached her at Harris Teeter. She was so startled by his breathtakingly good looks and the fact that this happening in the middle of a grocery store that she mumbled awkwardly and went on her way.

So here’s my question- is there a socially appropriate window where you can turn back around and reverse your decision? Could we have walked back through that door and told the firemen we changed our minds and were in fact starving? Could my friend find the cute guy in the dairy section and strike up a conversation, maybe joking about how taken aback she’d been before? Or is that just too socially awkward?

This question applies to other areas of life to- what if you turned down a job offer and instantly regretted it?

Has anything like this ever happened to you? How did you handle it? 

They’re going to find out anyway.

23. September 2011 · Write a comment · Categories: Business, Personal Development, Thought of the Day · Tags: ,

As my sister was editing a column that I wrote on behalf on The Raleigh Forum for Business Leader magazine, she worried about striking a balance between a professional tone that still showed our personalities. The conclusion we came to was this: the article should be well-written and articulate but still playful- just like we are. After all, we don’t want to alienate potential members by putting on an overly professional front. Or worse, we don’t want to attract tightly-wound individuals who won’t mesh with our laid-back but productive and collaborative environment.

This got me thinking about dating. As a side note, I find that a lot of sage business advice can apply equally to one’s personal life.

When I go on dates, I’m myself. I say a cringe-worthy “That’s what she said!” if it’s fitting. I glow sweat profusely while playing tennis. Because if someone’s with me long enough, they’re going to see this side of me. Why not ease them in from the beginning? No sense in wasting both of our times frontin’. Oh, I also occasionally showcase my splendidly gangster rap skills.

I think it takes a lot of maturity, self-confidence, and perhaps even some letdowns to realize this seemingly painfully easy life lesson: attract people to who you are, not who you pretend to be. They’re going to find out anyway.

pixel Theyre going to find out anyway.
+Cristina Roman