No interest in Pinterest

As a Mar/Com professional, I spend a significant amount of time engaged in conversations on social media platforms.  Some I love (Twitter serves up a rich source of information in a clear, concise way), some I hate (I've quit Foursquare twice, but they keep reeling me in. I. Don't. Know. Why.), some I'm still on the fence about (Google+ ... plus plus plus. Is there an echo in here?), however most I continue to review and refine and employ best practices as I learn or uncover them.  I manage two company blogs and one personal one; one company Twitter account and one personal one; two Facebook pages and one personal one; two LinkedIn company pages and one personal one; one YouTube channel; and two Google+ pages and one personal one.  There are more, but those are the ones I contribute to multiple times per week.

As each new platform emerges, I either dabble or dive in to determine if it offers me a viable medium for telling my company's story, engaging my company's market in conversation and/or creates value for my team.

Pinterest has me shaking my head.  Seriously people, what do you see in this?  It's like all the stuff that annoys me about Facebook all lumped together.  I asked our HR Manager (her office is next to mine) and she loves it.  I asked a part-time member of our customer service team (her cubicle is outside my office door) and she loves it, too.  Apparently, they learned how to make a sock bun from Pinterest.

I'm not crafty or a scrapbooker, so maybe that's the problem.  Or maybe I don't like shopping enough.  Or, maybe my appreciation for cupcakes isn't high enough to elevate them to the balloon animal of the pastry world.

I've decided to cast a questioning net wider than than talking distance of my office.  I thought Twitter sounded ridiculous the first time I heard about it.  Andy Van Oostrum had just taken the role of AMA Programs Chair and Russ and I met up with him at Powell's coffee shop to discuss our plans for the coming year of PD workshops.  Andy checked his phone, then told us why.  I was skeptical, but followed the activity to watch for opportunities that complimented my marketing plans.  Soon after, Russ and I organized a PD workshop featuring the people from Pollinate and the convinced me to give it a whirl.  I've been a fan since.

If you "get it" and think I need to too, please enlighten me.  Otherwise, I see no viable B2B application and will move on to tackle what's next.

And I shall never know what a sock bun is.

Everything's different and nothing's changed

The exclusion of women from the recent Congressional hearings on requiring religious institutions to provide their employees with health insurance that offers some benefit for birth control reminded me of my Communications/Journalism thesis.  Everything's different since 1960 and nothing's changed.

For my senior thesis, I completed an extensive analysis of the framing of the "Pill" debate by two prominent news magazines in the years leading up to its legalization in the US in 1960 by combing through all the articles they published on the subject.  One magazine tended toward a conservative slant and the other a liberal slant.

After my research, I concluded both magazines supported approval of the Pill, but for very different reasons.  The Newsweek articles emphasized the value that reliable birth control would have on the quality of a married woman's overall health by preventing a high number of pregnancies in quick succession.  The U.S. News and World Report articles took a more Malthusianian approach and supported the idea of poor married women using the Pill to prevent overpopulation by the lower classes.  Both endorsed the idea of doctors only prescribing the drug to married women.

The voice of women was conspicuously absent in the conversation.  The doctors interviewed were men.  The government agents and members of Congress quoted were men.  The religious leaders featured were men.  Even when asking the opinion of lay people how they felt about legalization of the Pill, only one woman was mentioned.  The lone speaker for all women was a "pretty young brunette wife" (I'm picturing Mary Tyler Moore circa The Dick Van Dyke Show) waiting in her doctor's office.  Not only were men better equipped to discuss women's health, they also knew best when it came to ethics, science, metaphysics and faith.

In addition to the Newsweek and USN&WR articles, I read other periodicals.  From the New York Times to Playboy, Show to the medical journals the messengers remained male.

I remember as I read all the articles written in the late 50s thinking how much the US had changed ... how different it is for women now.

And it is different.  It really is.  And yet, in an odd, unexpected (to me) way, nothing's changed and that realization has left me gobsmacked.

Productive is as productive does

I admit it, I was wrong.

For months now, I've whined about how much my productivity level has dropped since having a baby.  Yesterday, I made a mental note that it was 5:45 a.m. and I had already fed and changed the baby, pumped (sorry for the TMI), done my crunches routine, read and responded to work emails from overnight, baked a batch of cookies, read and posted to a few blogs, looked for and forwarded job opportunities for B, read several industry articles, sketched a new strategy to help smooth out an internal communications issue at the office, showered and dressed, eaten breakfast and set out breakfast for M and B, and was headed out the door to work.

Whew.

I'm not less productive.  I'm actually more productive and completing more projects, more work, but in a less obvious way.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm still struggling to reconcile pre-mom me with post-mom me.  I loved being a "go to" person to get things done with a high level of proficiency, punctuality and creativity.  I loved the pressure of new projects, the stress of juggling professional goals, volunteer commitments and personal projects.  I miss not being able to say "yes" when asked to take on a really exciting AMA rebranding project or lead the charge in raising money to fund supporting cancer survivors.  I hate realizing my clothes don't match after I've already been at the office for three hours and constantly having frizzy hair and haggard-looking skin.

It's hard for me to not look for the hard ROI on my investment of time, energy and creativity.  I want to attach numbers/dollars/event participants to completed projects.

Of course, M is happy and healthy and I feel blessed to be his mommy.  I celebrate that.

At this point, I'm kinda wondering what I was doing with all my time two years ago.

Oh, right ... getting eight hours of sleep a night.