Ambition and the Tale of One Generation Y Woman
June 29, 2007
Well, thanks to the personal encouragement from one Penelope Trunk and one Ryan Healy, I’d like to introduce myself. My name’s Tiffany Monhollon. (Read more about me in the About section of this blog). Nice to meet you. Now that that’s taken care of, I’ll tell you a little more about myself and why I’m here. It’s all about writing my own success story. I’ll start at the beginning.
Growing up, I was a do-it-all, curious, ambitious, entrepreneurial kid. I started my first jewelry business at seven, and the ideas haven’t stopped since. When asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I’d spout a string of occupations similar to this one: Lawyer, actress, doctor, singer, mommy, teacher and the first woman president. When grown-ups would smile and show their support of my passion by commenting that I really could be any one of those things if I wanted to, even president, I disagreed. That wasn’t the point.
I wouldn’t be one of those things, I would be all of them. Here’s why: Like most children growing up in Generation Y, I was told I could do anything. To me, this didn’t mean I could cherry-pick one job and do well in it or one career path and take it far. It literally meant to me I could be everything I ever hoped to be or wanted to be or even briefly thought might be cool. All at once. Personal and professional. Without blinking. No problem. To me, work, life, career, dreams – I didn’t draw the lines. I didn’t want to. And I understood the difference.
This do-it-all attitude was instilled in me in a very real way by my parents. I was home schooled until high school, so my family was my classroom, so to speak. And in my case, through the examples of my parents, education, work and life were all one thing. Not “going to school” in the traditional sense, I also learned the world through experiencing it, with the lines between the classroom and the kitchen or backyard or playtime blurred to the point where everything was learning. It wasn’t curriculum and tests and schedules that mattered, even though we had those, it was things like learning fractions with measuring cups while making blueberry pancakes with my dad on a Saturday morning that really taught me. This approach to life, learning, even work, is something that’s stuck with me to this very day.
From my mom I got the, the work-is-life-but-not-in-a-bad-way mentality My mom chose to stay at home with us after she taught elementary school my first two years. When she couldn’t really bring me to work with her anymore and had my sister, her traditional “work life” was over for nearly 20 years. I started reading at three, so she started schooling me then, and her work and her life were one in the same. She brought her profession into her life in a very real way, teaching three of her own children, and though she may not have made a salary, she worked hard and dedicated herself to this career, and I think she’d agree with me that it paid off. My siblings and I broke many barriers and stomped many stereotypes in a small town, made great grades, got into great colleges, and became fully functioning members of society - not that we were ever worried about any of that - she’s a fantastic teacher! But there were more than a few naysayers.
From my dad I got the I’ll-do-it-all-at-once-and-no -one’s-stopping-me mentality. My dad’s studied marine biology, ended up in PA school, and has been practicing medicine ever since. He went to work, but his work came home with him. He talked to us about science, used his medical expertise to help people in South America, helped start a free clinic in our small town, and was the go-to-guy for everyone for computer help, medical advice, volunteer projects, church involvement, and the like. I remember vividly many times as a child when my mother told my dad “You need to learn to say ‘no.’” He didn’t, to this day, so I credit him with my take-on-the-world ambition.
Now, I’m at the start of a career, looking at what I’ve done so far. Graduating with two majors in four years, with honors and a Summa status. Leaving college and getting an internship with a Fortune 500 company and parlaying that into a full-time gig at a Franchise 500 company, all while attending grad school full time and commuting insane distances every day for several years. Sure, these things are great, and I’m proud of my accomplishments, but I can’t help knowing that even now, I want more.
I still want to do it all. As I look toward the next five years in my life and think about what I want to be, my list is a little different now than it was when I was younger, but it’s just as long, if not a little more daunting. I want to be a published author, an APR, a wife and perhaps mother, a PhD, a well-known blogger, a business-owner, an entrepreneur, an industry expert. It’s hard to stop myself there, but you get the point.
And I don’t think my story is singular, by any means. The ambition, drive, and passion of my Generation Y peers excites, motivates and encourages me, because I truly believe that in a very real way, I can do all those things, and probably more. That’s why I’m here. Thanks for reading my story. I hope you’ll leave a few comments, check back often, and join me by sharing your story. Thanks!
Recently, Seth Godin invited the world to blog. He asks everyone to join the conversation - at least once - and points out that while there are tons of blogs out there on a zillion topics (to me, it seems most focus, ironically, on blogging itself), most people in the world don’t blog, and perhaps they should, even if ever-so-smally. I agree with him. We should all blog. I’ve been blogging for about four years, much more time than tons of prominent bloggers out there. But chances are, you’ve never heard of me. Here’s why:
My passion for blogging has taken me to the extent that my own ambitions are too divided, and I have a few too many blogs. I agree with Seth too much. I’d love to be on this list of the world’s top 150 marketing blogs - or at the top of it like Mr. Godin. But I’m not. Here’s what my adventures in blogging have gotten me so far:
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My first, personal blog to make new internet pals and learn the blogging ropes.
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MySpage page blog to keep up with old friends.
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Littleredsuit (at WordPress) to further conversations on my thesis topic and build contacts in the professional world.
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Pop culture blog (at WordPress) to talk about pop culture and other interests.
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USA Today profile blog – for the heck of it.
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Virb blog – because I think Virb is a great site and more people should use it.
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A total of two or three regular readers in all.
The problem with this is that the desire to diversity my blogging points of contact is not, in fact, helping my efforts. It’s hurting them. Instead of being able to invest a good 30 minutes an evening in writing an excellent blog post, I’m stuck having to troll around all these various sites, write a post every other week to each of them, and try to maintain relationships with various readers on various platforms.
Another thing is, I have a different personality, screen name or user name at each of these sites. I, unlike Seth, don’t have the sort of web credibility where I can presume to call myself “Tiffany” and generate much out of that than a few spam comments at my not-so-prominent-yet blog. I know I’m not alone in this plight.
The typical answer to this type of newb-typical complaint would be to simply use my full name on all my blogs and to link them to one another and promote the heck out of them. This would be the right answer. And, and would honestly love to do just that. But as a female blogger, stories of other prominent women in the blogging world being personally attacked and stalked in the regular-osphere make me balk a bit at the idea. Add that to the fact that when you Google my full name, you get 100% me, and you can see why I might have a bit of pause at making a full emergence into the blogging world. Companies would kill for the name SEO I have for my own personal brand, so it’s a good thing and a bad thing if you ask me (until I get married and there’s the whole hypenate or not issue, which is another post for another time). I think total transparency is great, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t really want a creepy stalker forcing me off the web and out of my home because they can find where I live. I’m not in it for that kind of – “fame.”
So . . . what’s a girl to do? Is it simply an irrational fear that’s holding me back, or is it actually a good thing to be a little-known-blogger in it for mainly the experience itself? Where should I go from here? Where do any of us go with this? I wonder what Seth would say to those questions.
The world is never ready.
June 6, 2007
“The world is never ready
for the birth of a child.”
(From A Tale Begun by Wislawa Szymborska)
I heard this on the way home from work today on NPR and immediately thought about this blog. I feel I’m approaching things this way, in what may seem like laziness or uncertainty, but what is really a great and looming, potentially life-changing event or opportunity. Like the birth of a child. The poem may be about how a woman is never quite ready for a child to be born, and in some ways, perhaps that’s true of me and this blog, so expectant with the joy of what it could be and at the same time terrified that I’ll make a misstep, steer it in the wrong direction, and be left with something that could be so much more – were it not for me.
The difference is, in some ways, that I can choose when it will be birthed, the rate at which it will develop, and exactly what its direction will be, unlike the processes of nature and nurture and fate in the motherhood/childrearing process. This is a bit daunting, so as to be easily debilitating. And thus the silence of not being sure exactly what to say. Exactly what theme or topic or direction to pick.
Should I gear towards marketing or advertising or critical perspective? Should I focus writing on pop culture or television that interests me or abandon this to begin writing poetry again? Should I leave the idea of writing outside work altogether, buy a camera or piano, and dust off a long-forgotten, once-treasured hobby and leave it at that?
So that’s where I am. In the birthing process, the pains of it all, the uncertainty and frustration and panic. The world may never be ready for the birth of a child, and it isn’t really begging for any more blogs, as they almost outnumber people anyway, but I think I may be. At least this is getting interesting.
