Skydiving in Buffalo

13,000 feet in the air, my leg dangling out the door, it hit me that I was about to fling myself out of a plane. Before my mind had time to process any fear, my instructor had pushed us out of the opening.

Let me backtrack.

As a gift a few months back, my Dad gave me a GPS. I am not one for directions and GPS’s annoy me, especially that voice saying “turn left now” 5 times in a row. I asked him to return it and decided we would go on an adventure. First, we played with the idea of a Nascar Driving Experience. Unfortunately, there isn’t one located in Buffalo. Finally, we settled on Skydiving.

We found a great local place in Newfane, Frontier Skydivers. The atmosphere and people were … well, fantastic. What a life they lead! Many of them have rearranged their lives to revolve around the next jump. Work during the day, jump in the afternoon, relax with beer and friends at night. Relaxed and completely centered around catching that next adrenaline rush.

Suited up in my pink parachute outfit, I was ready to go. My instructor, Larry, was exactly what I needed. He explained the important stuff and didn’t get caught up in the detail. More of a “go with the flow” kinda guy, much like me. I didn’t want to ask questions or get bombarded with detail … I wanted to jump!

One at a time, the single jumpers fell out of the plane until finally, Larry & I were left. Left leg first, right leg underneath and suddenly I was sitting out the door of a plane. What a rush!

We did a few flips in the air then evened out … free falling at 120 mph for 60 seconds. It felt like we were floating. He gave me the signal to pull the ripcord and we were suddenly flung back into the air as the parachute opened.

The cool part was that there are handles attached to the parachute which enables you to direct where you go. Pull down on one side for a few seconds and you start spinning in circles.

It was an experience like no other. I will be chasing that high always!

I can’t wait to go back and am determined to take training classes to receive my license to jump solo. Even if you’re not the adventurous type … live outside the box! Do something a little different – and this is DEFINITELY something everyone should do.

Reading is one of my favorite hobbies. I began reading chapter books in first grade and soon earned the token bookworm nickname. (I really thought it was cool though, that I could read that well ... especially since it was "suggested" I attend pre-k). In 4th grade, our teacher gave us an in class reading assignment and I finished so quickly, she didn't believe I actually read it. She gave me a pop quiz and I aced it. In your face Ms. Dawson!

I read all different genres; fiction and non-fiction, action and adventure, girly feel good, memoirs ... you name it. Of late, I have been reading a lot of memoirs dealing with substance abuse. Families with members going through it, personal experiences, rehabs ... everything.

I find it odd that I am attracted to this subject. It's not something I or anyone in my family has ever suffered through. Some of these books are physically and emotionally painful to read. 75% of the time I am crying while reading them. If you have ever even thumbed through the book "A Million Little Pieces" you know what I mean.

So why the attraction?

There is something very raw and real about this subject matter. It cuts through the BS of life and takes you to the hardships, emotions and situations everyone encounters. It connects me with feelings I never knew I had.

Incidentally, I am also reading a book called "Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs" right now. This book discusses how America has become so obsessed with pop culture that people have begun identifying themselves and their personalities with those they see emulated in the media. My first eye opening experience to this was when I realized that relationships aren't supposed to be like the ones you see on sitcoms. Watching Everybody Loves Raymond, I thought it was natural for couples to be constantly fighting and bickering ... how would I have known anything different? That is the type of relationship TV is constantly portraying.

So maybe this is the attraction I have to this odd genre of non-fiction. It's not because I am sickly sadistic and enjoy reading about other people's pain. Maybe it's because we are so surrounded with molded personalities and feelings that it forces me to wash them away and reconnect to real life.

Growing Pains

It's been awhile since I've really written on this blog. Project Cubicle was a fun post that came easily to me after working with Ben to create our "commandments." However, a comment that was left in the post before that, "Appreciating My Insides" has been eating away at me ever since I saw it. Mark Stelzner left the comment and it read:

"Terrific post Kelly and I'm really glad to see you writing as I think you have some powerful things to say. You've tapped into an interesting topic and I think (unfortunately) that most don't take the time to get past the external to even consider the internal. Thank for reminding us all!"

This comment brought 2 different emotions to me the first time I read it. 1)- It made me happy 2)- It terrified me. Let me explain.

The blogs I love to read are all written by people who DO have something powerful to say. They have experiences, opinions and beliefs. I'm still working on that. Sometimes, I feel like Ariel when her voice is locked up in the seashell hanging around Ursula's neck. I'm relatively new to the HR world having just graduated in December and it's early for me to have opinions on certain things. I have thoughts, of course. But some topics and debates I'm still feeling out for myself. That's why I love the Social Media world .. it has opened my eyes to so much more than a textbook could. I'm a sponge, constantly trying to absorb the conversations going on around me and learn from them.

So what powerful things do I have to say? Well to be completely honest, I'm not sure yet. So from now on every week I will write about my days at work, testing out the HR world. What I've learned, what I like, what I don't like. Contribute to my learning if you can ... maybe I'll end up teaching you a thing or two as well. ;-)

How do you Focus?

Last Tuesday I was invited by our Training & Development Specialist to attend her training course, Franklin Covey Focus. The name Franklin Covey comes from a combination of Stephen Covey, the creator, and Benjamin Franklin.

She said I didn't need it, I just needed to become familiar with our courses ... Hmm

I was excited to go because it is a part of my department and being new to the company I want to become involved, know what's going on and find my niche within the organization.

I also REALLY wanted that nice leather Franklin Covey planner.

The class began by discussing the "Time runaround dilemma". Put simply our time dilemma stems from:

Because we don't know what is really important, everything seems important.
Because everything seems important, we try to do everything.
Others see us doing everything, so they expect us to do everything.
Doing everything keeps us busy, so we don't have time to think about what really is important.

Sound familiar to anyone?

The first step is to understand the difference between "Important" and "Urgent". At first thought, these words might seem the same. But they are in fact, very different. Defined, important means "of much or great significance or consequence". Urgent meaning "requiring immediate action or attention; pressing". To understand these differences, our tasks are split into 4 quadrents of the Time Matrix.

Q1: Necessity. Items in this quadrant are crises, pressing and deadline driven. They are important AND urgent.

Q2: Productivity and Balance: These items include preparation, planning, prevention and relationship building. They are important but NOT urgent. Many of these actions may prevent an item from reaching Q1 status.

Q3: Deception. Needless interruptions, unnecessary reports, unimportant email, meeting phone calls. These are urgent but NOT important.

Q4: Waste and Excess. Busywork, time wasters, TV, internet ... the list could go on and on. Not only are these items not urgent they are also not important.

Think about the feelings you have when you are experiencing each quadrant. The only quadrant associated with positive feelings is Q3. While it is impossible to eliminate items from other quadrants, spending time in Q3 will alievate stress from other quadrants while creating contentness and feelings of accomplishment. Spending time in Q3 also makes us more capable to say NO to Q3 and Q4 activites.

One should strive to Manage Q1, Focus on Q2, Minimize Q3 and Avoid Q4.

We were then asked to set a defining set of values for ourselves and following up with a clarifying statement. These are things you value personally and/or professionally. A few examples include: Teamwork, Faith, Integrity, Humor, Family. The clarifying statement is there to elaborate what that value means to you.

These values are what you feel you should live by. These are pulled into your Q2 items. But are you fulfilling them?

After defining our values, we were asked to set achievable goals and create timelines and action plans for our goals.

One important thing they touched on was "Sharpening the Saw". This is your YOU time. Schedule it out, plan for it. If you let your Q1, Q3 and Q4 items take from "Sharpening the Saw" you will spend less time in Q2 which is where you want to be.

There were numerous other activites throughout the course that explanined focus and time management and how to better organize ourselves. It was extremely helpful and I am proud to be apart of an organization that invests in developing these skills in associates. This is a course I would recommend others to participate in or offer to others.

Its been a week and I have been diligently using my planner and accomplishing my action items. I am setting weekly and daily goals and it is a good feeling to be accomplishing the things I am setting out to do.

This is one life lesson I'm happy to have learned.

The Game of Life

This might be long & personal. I need to write. I won't hold it against you if you don't read it.

I think life is playing with me.

Right now life is going good, too good. I haven't been making any bad decisions, hurting any people or wandering around like a little lost disaster. Unless you count Christmas when I made my sister cry. That's another story, but really I was just trying to help her. My Uncle also recently passed, and while it is sad, I know it is for the better. He was struggling for almost 10 years with cancer, in great pain and I know he is in a better place, looking out for us. My Dad always said he was his "Protecter". RIP Uncle Mike (and Happy Birthday today)

Life is good. My job is wonderful, the people I work with are great and there is a lot of opportunity for me to explore myself and my strengths with the company. I am closer than ever with my Family, even my Dad who I have been slowly trying to forgive and rebuild a relationship with. My friends are also good, although I don't see them as often as I should ... having trouble with this work/life balance thing. I am finally over the X, ready to move on with my life and I think I might have even made a new friend out of it. Well not really a "new" friend. We got along fine before, but then I made one of my mistakes and yada yada. Think Seinfeld ... the yada yada always has a story. But I think we are OK now.

So what's wrong? The fact that nothing is going wrong has been eating away at me. I keep having this reoccuring, terrifying dream that all my teeth are falling out. I am stressed because I'm not stressed. How is that normal?? I must be broken.

In the back of my mind I'm waiting for the house of cards to come falling in around me. I'm walking on egg shells waiting for it to happen. Happen already!! Get it over with and let me start picking up the pieces. That is what I spent the first 23 years of my life doing, picking up pieces. It's what I'm comfortable with.

So ... I decided to get away to Florida for a few days.

I got lost in the BWI airport on the way down, no one told me I had an extra layover so I was looking for a flight that didn't exist. I managed not to sunburn, but used 70SPF the entire time. Well, my elbow and hand are suburned so I look a little strange. Also, I am horrible at packing and realized too late I didn't bring anything that actually matched. The flight home, the woman next to me sat half in my seat and slept the whole time. She didn't snore though (good thing right!?) she snorted. Best 3 hours of my life.

I also got a tattoo.

Impulsively, the friend I went down to visit called me and said "Let's get tattoo's, start thinking!" So I did ... the answer came easy. FAITH

People who know my whole life story, and all of the silly, young and stupid things I did, always expect me to have regret. At 23 I have lived through much more then anyone would imagine (even if you know me, you don't know it all trust me) Maybe I should. Maybe it makes me a bad person, but I don't. I wouldn't be me without all of it. I would much rather have FAITH in myself, my life, who I am and the decisions I make, then have regret. You wouldn't want to live with regret tattooed on you would you!? It would look ridiculous.

So now, I have FAITH on my side, literally. <insert groan here>

I guess to overcome my anxiety about not having crisis in my life, I'll have to have faith that it will all work all like it's supposed to.

PS I really stink at Blog titles. Sorry.

Is it Luck?

I have never been a lucky person. Scratch off's are wasted on me, my silent auction ticket number always goes uncalled and I have been hit 4 times by other cars while driving. BUT, my road to HR was ... lucky.

When I started college, I was going to be a Pharmacist. I failed Biology my first semester. Scratched that off the list.

I moved on to Interdisciplinary Studies with a concentration in Social Sciences. I'm pretty sure that they made that up. Before I had a chance to even figure out what it meant ... I switched to English. Writing was always something I enjoyed and I had a way with words. I won my little brother 3 scholarships writing his college essays/applications for him. (In retrospect, I should have demanded some loyalties for that) Unfortunately, there isn't much you can do with an English degree and I wasn't looking to be a Lawyer or a Teacher. So what was I going to do?

On a whim, I spoke to the Mom of one of my sister's friends. She worked in Human Resources, traveled the world and truly enjoyed what she did. After talking to Barb, I was hooked. HR was the way to go. I enrolled in the School of Management at UB and was ready to go.

The next Spring, I emailed her asking if there were any internship opportunities available at her office. Without hesitation, or looking at my resume (which was non-existant at the time) she offered me a paid internship. Barb didn't want me to mess around with paper pushing either. Her attitude was that I needed to learn something of value. Before I knew it I was creating Merit Increase spreadsheets, learning paygrades; min/target/max, helping implement a new HRIS system and facilitating open enrollment. (A month earlier to that, I told a Professor I didn't think I would need Excel skills ... silly me.)

I worked 3 jobs that summer. Interning 30 hours a week, Day Camp for 2 days, waitressing 5 nights and going to summer class twice a week. I was exhausted and terrified. Was real life going to be this hard?

The true experiences and value I took from that internship led me to get involved with the college chapter of SHRM. I was the Chapter Liaison in 2007-2008 school year and President until this past December when I graduated. This opened up many doors to me. I developed a Mentorship Program for our members and local HR Professionals and became involved in BNHRA, the Buffalo chapter of SHRM.

I was lucky enough to be hired full time after graduating into one of the the companies I interned with. It is a wonderful company, looking to strengthen and develop me. I couldn't have asked for anything better.

If there is one thing I wish college students understood, it is that while college is fun, it is also the time to set up your future. Don't wait until after graduating to think "Hmm maybe I should do something now". Be proactive about your future! People want to help, want to share and watch you grow.

Maybe luck has a little to do with it, but so does hard work and taking a chance. Reach out to professionals in your field ... someone will grab hold.

Meet "The Challenge Child"

When I was young, my parents affectionately referred to me as "The Challenge Child". This is a title that I worked hard for, and you bet that I earned every letter of it.

Up to age 4, I was outgoing, enthusiastic and CUTE. I could get away with anything because of my smile and charm. Or, so I'm told. It was the years following that really presented the challenge. In 1st grade, I cut my deskmates bangs. I told her that to get rid of them, you don't grow them out, you cut them. I left a trail of hair from the bathroom to my desk. It wasn't hard for the teacher to find the culprit.

My kindergarten report card said "Kelly needs to understand that the world does not revolve around her."

At 6, I convinced my sister that our blanket was a magic carpet. I opened the 2nd story window, knocked out the screen and was ready to push her out. Dad caught on just in time.

My first detention was in 3rd grade. I took ticky tack and put it in my teacher's hair. It got tangled and stuck, and he had to have the school nurse get it out with peanut butter. They sent a note home, but I stuffed it under the bus seat.

Between the ages of 8-13 the majority of family dinners ended with me eating at the bottom of the basement stairs alone. My parents have pages and pages of "I will not talk back" written on them. There are permanent marker drawings on the walls of our house. I constantly instigated drama in school, whined and threw tantrums.

I ran away at least once a month. This started when I was 5. I grabbed all the hangers I could fit into my little 5 year old hands and told my Mom I was going to wait for a bus. Now, we lived in the country. It was rare for a car to drive by, let alone a bus. My neighbor convinced me to go home, but I would only return under 1 condition. I was no longer "Kelly" from then on I was known as "Jennifer". Everything was new, I met a new Dad, raved about how beautiful my new bedroom was and adored the big backyard. I kept this up for 2 weeks.

I changed my name to Ming in 2nd grade.

Looking back, I laugh. I think "Wow, I was one fun little kid!" There is always humor in the past, but not when it's the present. Recently, me and my sister were talking about how we were raised and how we came to be so different. She graduated valedictorian, never in trouble, is 21 and never had a drink. She informed me that as a child, she did the exact opposite of everything I did. So I guess, in a way I am responsible for her success?

High school years hit me hard. My Mom was diagnosed with cancer and I fell into the "bad" crowd. I was constantly sneaking out, stealing the family car without a license, and in suspension. I was arrested and almost put on PINS. I have a permanent cigarette burn to remind me of the true pain I felt during this time. All the while, my Mom struggling through chemo. We didn't find out until later, but my Dad was falling in love with another woman at the same time as well.

I am made of tough stuff. This comes from my Mother. I may have to learn everything from my own mistakes, but it has made me the person I am today and fueled me to become the best that I possibly can. My experiences have forced me to look at the world for what it really is, figure out what I need to do and get it done. I am finally graduated, with a great job and some great people behind me.

This past Friday, I lent a friend $500, because she couldn't make her rent. Today I found out she is going to CA on vacation in a few weeks. Uh Oh ... here comes another one of those "hard lessons" ... stay tuned.