Today’s Morning Buzz is brought to you by Dr. Sarah Story, Executive Director of the Jefferson County, CO Public Health Department. Find Sarah on LinkedIn, Medium, or Instagram.
What I’m Reading: I finally just finished the epic that is My Name is Barbra, clocking in at roughly 9000 pages. I still gave it 5 stars on Goodreads, and it is now my first finished book of 2024, even though it spanned two different calendar years. I’ve never been a Barbra stan, but I think I am now. While she had some friendships that I might side eye (Bill Maher?!), we’re all complicated people. I often find myself saying things like “do you know what Barbra said about the color blue?” or things to that effect.
What I’m Working On: A totally new way to organize the work of my department. Also, Wheel Pose in yoga. I can’t for the life of me figure it out.
What I’m Drinking: The most satisfying herbal sparkling water made in Colorado. It’s called Dram, and the cardamom and black tea flavor makes Dry January extremely enjoyable. Also on the Dry January starting lineup: Clear Mind Kombucha, Mango Chile Tepache, Sodastream water with Scrappy’s Orleans Bitters, Ollipop Tropical Punch, Rowdy Mermaid Alpine Lavender and Ration Ale’s AF Cerveza. I don’t think Dry January costs me any less money than drinking, given my predilection for stupidly overpriced bubbly drinks, but I sure do sleep and feel better every year.
The nails that type this essay today are a pale brown color–what some might refer to as “greige”. I think the official name for it in the Dip Nails book is Taupe it Off or something equally silly. It’s quite close to OPI’s “Tickle my France-y” but with a tad more brown. I am in my beige era. My favorite Christmas present was an off-white Stanley cup (my second favorite present was also a Stanley cup, although this one is very close in color to the Pantone color of the year, Peach Fuzz). I recently purchased a “stone” (read: beige) colored tiny fan for drying my skin care. I regularly curl up in a light brown (read: beige) electric blanket and drink tea. I am feeling delicate in a soft-girl aesthetic, as my daughter would say.
Basically, I’m basic.
A central tenet of basic girl culture is The Vision Board. In my defense, I’ve been doing vision boards longer than some of these GRWM kids have been alive. Conveniently, my favorite annual planner has a page at the front dedicated to a New Year’s vision board, so I can always look at it throughout the year.
I try not to come into vision boarding with an agenda. Some folks do, and that’s OK. They meditate on what they want for the year and find images accordingly. I take the opposite approach. I grab a magazine and flip through and clip what tickles my france-y in the moment. I toss them about and pile them up and then sift through and create a wall of imagery and words without overthinking it. It’s only when I step back from it that I can see a theme or palette emerge. It’s like a surprise insight into my heart.
I am a Basic B – and B stands for boss.
When I started working my way up in my career, I thought I had to be hard edges… like Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada. I mean, if i wasn’t Meryl, then I would default to Anne Hathaway. Nobody wants to be Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada. I wanted pointy stilettos and red pencil skirts. Give me power blazers with shoulder pads. Comprise me of sharp lines.
Playing Meryl is fun sometimes. Maybe if I’m testifying in congress or whatnot, this power posing would come in handy as a shield. But I think, in reality, I am soft edges with immovable values these days. I know what’s right, and I know where I want to go, but I’m a little more fluid in the way to get there. I love beautiful things. I’m kind. I feel very deeply. I waffle between an Enneagram 4 and 7, which are by their nature very different from each other. I’ve tried to bring more of the 4 side of me into my workplace, but there’s this nagging insecurity hanging on my heart that the world expects a hard 7 out of me when, truly at my core, I’m a fuzzy 4.
Which brings me back to my yearly vision boarding.
One day in December after one of the many staff holiday parties I was delighted to attend (endless White Elephants being an unforeseen perk of the job), I thought “what if I made my vision board alongside the staff?” At first I was delighted at my own idea. I saw it as a nice respite from our daily work – a time to just clock out mentally and use our hands to create something beautiful. But then, the doubts. Is that a stupid idea? Would anyone even want to come hang out with me? If people did come, were they showing up because they thought it sounded fun or would they come because I’m the boss and they felt forced? Is this what real bosses do?
I low key agonized over it. Is this going to jeopardize my authority? Since I started this job, I’ve wrestled with this tension of “real” vs. “silly” boss. There’s a whole list of things I do that I think real bosses don’t do:
- Reapply lip gloss during a meeting
- Tell someone “sorry I’m late I burst into tears alone in my office and needed to fix my mascara in between meetings”
- Start a meeting by saying “gosh, I just have a real visceral urge to go dancing and be covered in glitter!”
- Pray over decisions sometimes instead of creating a detailed pros and cons analysis
- Ignore my check engine light for an ungodly amount of time
- Ask our graphic designer to use Peach Fuzz color in a project instead of our brand colors because “it’s relevant”
- Create a “mood board” for a disease PSA campaign with images from fashion photographers
- Start emails with tl;dr or end Teams messages with an lol
- Tapback virtual meeting chats with heart emojis instead of the more professional thumbs up emoji
- Quote Peloton instructors in meetings with a straight face
- Ensure my favorite pens are color coordinated with my various moleskine notebooks
Given all this hand-wringing and the advent of my beige era, I expected my 2024 vision board would shape up to be a pale, milky mashup. I clipped magazines with confidence, not stopping to think, just flowing off of feel.
I expected beige, but that’s not what I got.
What I got were dark greens and a lot of wild animals – tigers and bears and tropical birds. My vision board felt lush and exciting and protective. Where did THIS come from? This power and strength wasn’t forefront for me, but the more I thought about it the more it made sense. Just that morning I had breakfast with a bunch of very inspiring nonprofit CEOs, and one of them was on fire with passion aimed at injustices in the social safety net. I left that breakfast deeply moved, as if it had reignited something in my belly… the girl who used to protest on street corners and hand out leaflets for the ACLU, she’s still in there. The girl who used to escort other girls into Planned Parenthood so they could get birth control, she’s inside me. I am a protector. I can be a tiger or a mama grizzly, not just a Golden Retriever. I can be fiercely determined without being blinded by anger. I can be a soft beige emotional support pillow and a glorious green snake. I can be minimalist and maximalist at the same time. I am learning how to soften my edges and maintain my solid center.
I grabbed my 2023 vision board on a whim afterwards to compare. The difference was clear. I predicted my beige era a year ago, and it’s looking like life is about to get a lot more exciting in 2024.
As it turns out, other people did want to vision board with me, and it was a blast. I put on some LoFi beats, and we just chatted and clipped and pasted. We used stick-on jewels and puffy stickers like children, and for a brief time we were all able to just create alongside each other. I didn’t think once about whether this would make me lose credibility or authority. In that moment, I was just happy to have initiated creating a low-stress space where people could enjoy the process and connect with each other. And I guess that’s the role of a boss anyway, isn’t it? To gather the resources for their people, to make clear decisions, to equip your team with the right tools, and to ask for help in making it happen (I could not have really made my vision a reality without assistance, because I can be sort of clueless when it comes to buying craft supplies. If my dearest teammate didn’t reign me in, I would have ended up with 400 pounds of glitter). Being a leader means getting your hands covered in glue right there alongside the team, showing vulnerability, admitting you totally forgot about buying scissors, and being joyful about the things that bring you joy without embarrassment or justification. I like vision boards, and I also hate injustice. I love a beige Stanley cup, and I also love reading rules and regulations. The best part about being human is our unending capacity for harmonious paradoxes. If you add a 4 to a 7, you get 11. And that’s just lucky.
Embracing what makes us feel safe and good helps us lead better. Meryl ruled by fear and hierarchy, and that’s surely one way to do it. But it was her insight and intelligence that made people take her seriously. The nagging thorn in my side – ”will they take me seriously” – can’t be plucked out just by smashing down an iron first. Often, those who rule by fear are actually driven by a deep insecurity. So, it follows that if I’m secure in myself (the beige and the pale pink and the black leather and the sticky, glittery dance floors) then I can rule by love. Love doesn’t mean a lack of accountability. The opposite, in fact – love is high standards. Sure, I may be dismissed in some circles because of their expectations of what a “strong” female leader is supposed to be. But I’d rather be dismissed for a them problem than a me problem.
