The hardest year of my life

I turn 31 today and this past year has been, by far, the most difficult one I have ever had. I am a workaholic, so most of my joys and disappointments are generally related to my work. This past year has been a landmark for me professionally and as a human being.

A while back I said yes to a position I thought was the ultimate challenge in my career. I had never done management before and when I took it on - running a small agency I mean - I thought that it would be a piece of cake, especially since I seemed to be surrounded by a lot of people trying to help, and had a well of enthusiasm boiling inside of me, mainly generated by the novelty of the situation.

All this was happening in 2008, October, just as the financial crash came tumbling over Eastern Europe and made everything different. I was 30, I had never been in charge of anything other than my strategy presentations and my power point slides and my own flat and car. All of which I seemed to manage satisfactorily.

Being a manager has changed everything I though I knew and everything I though I knew about myself. I used to think that I was able to muster up endless resources of energy to finish up everything. I used to think that if something was not being done I could do it myself. I used to think that I could be very good at almost anything. Having to manage a team of people, revenue, salaries, clients, strategies sometimes gets pretty overwhelming and it took me a while to realize that some of the things I knew didn't really apply. The one constant realization is that dealing with failure is the most important skill one can develop in order to progress. Strangely enough though, I don't feel like writing I have learned a lot about teamwork and people skills and client management. I think all I knew about that before I became this new person largely still applies.

But I turn 31 today and if there is anything I have learned is that nothing works unless you keep it simple and have fun with it; and that the hardest thing to do is always, but always, remember that it will not work unless you stick by the two things said before.

So what I wish for myself this day is to always remember to not complicate things and have fun with whatever I am doing. Because only then, it all seems to work out fine.

Start over

There comes a time in every blog's life where you have to write a post about a new beginning. it generally happens once every two years when you've gone through all the stages of enthusiasm, commitment, lackluster routine, blah boredom and lack of objective and finally complete and utter disinterest to the writing.
Being a woman, I tend to be more prone to these cycles and since I am currently on a 5 day sabbatical I have had some time to think about this AGAIN.
Two years ago I became a manager and stopped being anything else. I never thought the process of managing a company could be so intense and so time consuming. I have all but lost myself in the attempt to make everyone happy and make the agency a success. Things are going well right now and I am more than ever aware that apart from being the person in charge there I am nothing else anymore.
So, as it befits a blog, I am again making a commitment to come back to writing about what used to be me: strategy, planning, communications, digital.
Romania is not a pretty picture right now: everyone who had anything remotely interesting to say is too busy staying alive and so we seldom hear about anything other than survival techniques. So I should stop reading Romanian blogs simply because survival is not living.
I have grown friendlier with my bed. Now it's time to reconnect with the blog.
Hi :D

I want a relationship

I have completely forsaken this blog.
Because I need to develop a serious relationship. A relationship which involves a lot of quality time spent together, lots of cuddling, lots of R&R. I want to be able to spend enough time in this relationship that I know every crease and every nook and every crinkle. I need to get to know and enjoy every minute spent. I cannot keep having this casual, good night, good morning and bye thingie where I come in, fall asleep immediately, wake up in the morning and jump out and rush to the shower.
I need a relationship with my bed.
I want to spend time with my mattress and get to feel its every corners. I want to turn the duvet every angle and sleep diagonally, straight, sideways and in every corner of my bed. use all three pillows to their outmost, stack them, spread them, hug them.
I want a relationship with my bed.
I am sick and tired of running into it and out of it. I want to linger and let my shoulders develop a shape into the mattress.
I plan a relationship with my bed.
...
so, I am keeping it casual with my blog.

Facebook sucks

No it does not, but I am reading this book and someone got famous for writing Dell sucks and I thought it may work for me too :D (the book is WWGD? and the person is Jeff Jarvis)

Truth is, Facebook does not suck YET and but it is dangerously close to that, what with the sense of intimacy and closeness between complete strangers getting to the point of the horrific. To me the online world is for collaboration (some great thoughts on that here) and I do not mind some occasional bonding with long lost friends. But it gets to the point where baby pictures show up and as they get wilder and wilder and more intimate in angle and comments, you begin to wonder "what the hell am I really getting out of this?". I am having a serious issue with the obviousness of progress of relationships among Facebookers. Okay, I got over the stage where hearing about every broken relationship from the status was a pain, I got over the zoophiliac tendencies of some application's users, I even understand why some people like to "like" their own statuses and also like every single status you post, but now seriously, why do we have to handle seeing pictures of your baby's freshly wiped buttocks or, worse yet, your wife's nipples being chewed on by the same baby. Come OOOOOOON people! I get the liberating power of networks but again, going back to my ill-fated presentation a while back, think about what this is doing to all but a small bunch of single women who sob at the sight of something they secretly wish for. I get parental pride, I do. But please if you've added me (and may I remind everyone that I have NOT asked for anyone to add me but simply courteously agreed to being added) and I am not your intimate friend, think of my motives as well for being on FB. They are NOT to see explicit pics of your family, but rather to stay in touch, get updates on people I think interesting, see what they think about.

I feel a sequel to that presentation coming on!
....

The intimacy of new technologies

When I was in my junior year at university I got a scholarship to go to the US for a year and study comparative politics. For a year, I lived and studied on what at the time seemed like the most beautiful place on earth, the campus at RMWC in Lynchburg Virginia. Since the stipend did not cover any traveling I could not fly back for xmas so for a whole year my only contact with my family was the weekly [always on Snday at 10am] phone call from my parents and some emails I exchanged with my more computer literate friends. And one spring afternoon I also got an 11 page hand written letter from my mom. I remember sitting at one of the many lounge tables spread out across the campus and reading my mom's letter and crying my eyes out, not because she had news of any kind but because it was the closest I had ever felt to her and my people back at home. I still have that letter and every time my friends and I get into an argument about technology and how it estranges people, I think back to that letter and refuse to engage :D.

and yet... for about two months now my mom has a gmail account and has learned the ropes enough to be able to log in every now and then and drop me an email. She writes erratically, sometimes asking me questions to which I reply instantly and which she completely ignores, sometimes telling me stories she has already told me on the phone. And yet the thrill of seeing my mother's name in the Inbox is always the same. Because I know she writes those emails when she is quietly thinking about me. It's not like phone calls when she tells me about hers and dad's day but mostly about a more serene and more mature type of communication. I treasure these emails. I keep them in a folder alongside one special message I got while in the States from a very special person there. I call the folder "post" - like in Post Office, because they feel like real letters, close and intimate.

So, as far as the argument goes, technology may seem remote and intimidating but it's really how you what you use it for. I love getting an early SMS that says "morning :)" and I love my mom's emails. Because, irrespective of the medium, the sentiment behind the message is the real thing.

End 2009 - personal

because they asked me to...

Vienna 2009

View more presentations from Bogdana.

... (3)

Third year in a row with the resolutions already and, this year, for better planning, I am writing them ahead of time.

But first, a look back at what was planned for this year and what went down:
"So, for 2009 I am being more specific...a lot more. Here goes:
1. Get a second tattoo, my beagle and spotless bathroom tiling
2. Spend at least one week every quarter in another country (a new one)
3. Make a meaningful commitment to a person: friend, lover, pen pal, hobby partner, whatever.
4. Create a time-plan for my mom and dad (moving, new house, retirement)
5. Keep the business afloat.
6. Re-cultivate my planning roots.
7. Work out a solution for my blog/s – how many, in what language, what for.
8. Learn or teach myself something new ( and be good at it)"

So, how did I do against my 8 resolutions? Well, I have a new tattoo (and just so that I don't embarrass myself every time I get asked, it is a line from ee cummings' poem here) and my bathroom is spotless in new white and lilac tiling. I have spent more than a week per quarter in a country which is not Romania but not really different all the time (Barcelona and Madrid count as the same, so do Rome and Ventimiglia, Nice and Avignon and have successfully returned to my beloved London). I think I have kept the business more than afloat, with 2009 numbers doing better than expected (we rocked a 15% PM in crisis year, yeah baby!) and have decided to only keep this blog, make it in English and not give a crap about the people who dislike it. Things I have only partly done is spend more time with my mom and dad but I have managed to give my dad his most desired gift, a new car he can love and also, if you do not count business-plan-making a new thing, maybe number 8 is not totally completed as well. Unfortunately I have failed bitterly at getting a beagle and have completely given up that plan altogether. All in all, not a bad count.

And now for 2010, under the same brief, specific and measurable:
1. Stay committed to my blog and make it smart and interesting.
2. Write a book and refurbish my kitchen.
3. Grow the business by at least 20%.
4. Teach myself another foreign language and take up a sport and keep at it.
5. Visit at least one different city every two months.
6. Make that retirement plan for mom and dad already!
8. Do something silly and unplanned for every month
9. Start something which will enable me to work for me.
10. .... and something less specific about falling in love, happiness and silly smiles while thinking of that special person :D

Okay, so that should do it... Thanks all who've stuck with this blog throughout its latest rounds of uninspiredness and uncertainty and also to those who've stuck with me throughout my recent months of being tired, irrationally pissed off most times and less of the person I should have been. I am learning things and while doing so I sometimes am not my most gracious self.

Happy 2010 to all!

One should not look for excuses for one's country

I don't usually write about social and political stuff because I try to keep this as much a reflection of what I am doing professionally as possible. However, these days I cannot help noticing how deranged this country of ours is. It may be that I have developed a form of oversensitivity to real circumstances what with spending most of my waking hours surfing the Net to read about cool stuff, but somehow thing are amiss with Romania and I don' understand why.

If I was a comedian I would take solace in realizing that stupidity has an in-built comic element if you are not personally touched. Witness these...

1. Sector 1 City Hall is trying to be inclusive and allowing flat dwellers to vote for the color of the paint that is to be used on their building. Large billboards show pics of what the building will look like with the two coats of paint and you are invited to vote. The problem is the paint is the same color. Brown. Light brown or dark brown. Virtually undifferentiated. And furthermore, eventually the building gets painted in....green.
I am hoping this is a result of democracy and of people choosing neither light nor dark brown. And I am looking at the comic part of it.

2. The city reeks because of the uncollected garbage. And this morning I found what they came up with to fix this. No, it's not collecting the garbage: it's spraying the sidewalks with fragrance water. So now everything smells like dishwater..... and uncollected garbage.

3. Street cleaners: their job description includes the necessity of keeping things CLEAN. But they are picked from among the most unclean people possible (of course because no clean person would do the job) and they are not trained so if you watch them sweep, it's painful to see how much dirt they actually leave behind.

4. We are in deep deep financial crisis. So deep, jobbing websites only search for top management because all other positions are being made redundant. And yet the only thing the government worries about is elections and how to rig them. They do so publicly. They do so with such disregard to what we care about that it makes me sick.

I am tired of the stupidity and lack of decency in this country of ours. I am tired and disappointed and I would leave tomorrow given the chance, with one purpose only: to drag my parents out of here too.

Part of the global buzz

Thought I'd play my part. Happy Bday MJ and my all time MJ Top 3 :)

3. Because it's the best MJ had ever looked


2. Because I secretly do the dance when I hear it :-)


1. Because I was 12 or 13 and felt I should have been in love when listening to it

Leftover from holiday

I found these in the internal memory of my camera. Portofino this summer. One place I would definitely like to live in.

Two weeks off - cond

And then we had some drinks and drove to Portofino where the camera broke down....

two weeks off contd

before it was nice, san remo. then we moved on to aix en provence, avignon and the provence hills

Two weeks off

but there is wifi on the lovely terrace of Villa Elisa in Bordighera so ...

Weekend at the seaside

driving to


driving about



driving back

This morning 3/2

Tonight 2

Tonight

yesterday

i turned 30 and got an office full of confetti, a miffy bath set, 29 roses and a marvel comics book and spent the evening with 12 wonderful people. i thought 30 would be the dumps but i feel happy about my friends, our stories and the laughter we have together.
30 rocks

Great things to do on a weekend

As things has quieted down a bit on the job front, this weekend I had the luxury of rediscovering some things I love and had forgotten.

1) afternoon naps in a big bed: the wonderful feeling of having had lunch and not really having any emergencies so you can just slide back into bed, watch a soap and then slowly doze off
2) DC comic movies in an almost empty cinema house: I love the cinema going experience, the darkness just before the opening credits, the feeling that you are in a different world, the close up of actors faces and the cheesy scores. Yes, this means I saw Watchmen ...wohooo
3) newspapers and Italian chocolate served with loads of whipped cream: before the age of wifi I used to go to a cafe (I still do go to the same one) and buy a stack of newspapers and eat croissants and omlette and leaf through every one of them. This Saturday I tried it again and let me tell you, it never gets old, the feeling of holding a newspaper, the smell of ink, the inability to jump links and the eventual sense that you have accumulated some knowledge

This weekend was good. Some things are still the same. Good.

Why I don't go out

because I spend every minute of my workdays interacting with people, from 8 am to 10 pm. and then I need time to think

Andrei Plesu explains it here

"Singurătatea e materia primă a reflexivităţii şi a construcţiei de sine. „Dumnezeu – s-a spus – e ceea ce fiecare ştie să facă cu propria sa singurătate”. Nu se poate trăi prin aglutinare, nu se poate supravieţui interior în condiţia unei sociabilităţi perpetue. Sfârşeşti, inevitabil, prin a-ţi pierde chipul, prin a deveni un ins statistic. Orice om are nevoie (chiar când nu-şi mai dă seama) de episodul nutritiv al unei confruntări solitare cu adâncul şi cu înaltul său, cu terorile sale, cu portretul său, cu unicitatea destinului său."
[solitude is the raw material of reflection and self building. God, it was sai, is what each one of us knows to do with his/her solitude. one cannot live through bonding, one cannot maintain one's inner self under in constant sociability. one eventually ends up losing one's true nature, becoming a static individual. any person needs (even when we don;t realize it anymore) a nourishing episode of confrontation with one's depths, heights, faces, unique destiny.

via Tolontan