jump the shark
a term to describe a moment when something that was once great has reached a point where it will now decline in quality and popularity.
Origin of this phrase comes from a Happy Days episode where the Fonz jumped a shark on waterskis. Thus was labeled the lowest point of the show.

I’m so over 2010… It was a life changing year, no doubt.  Being unemployed for the first seven months of it was not as much fun as I may have lead you to believe.  I had a lot of real meaningful moments. During early 2010 I witnessed Nashville recognizing itself and declaring We Are Nashville. The tour of five cities for the Tennessee Arts Commission to help 70 nonprofits think about how to use online media strategy to tell their stories was nothing short of  wonderful motivation. I  did indeed work with some amazing people, but the unemployed part of 2010 was pretty much horrible.

Now the last 5 months  of 2010 have been  breath takingly busy.  I started the company back up in August so that I could continue the relationships I started as a volunteer and have developed back into viable service proprietorship through contracts with  Cool People Care and Proof Branding Solutions.  I am also now starting new small business and nonprofit relationships through my new 30 minute free consultation package.

2010 – we’ve jumped the shark and I’m done with you, you are a lovely part of history but your time is up.

2011  – I will be both campaigning for Nashville Metro Council and growing  a small business. I am now booking workshops for Online Communication Strategy and preparing a keynote on Living An Artful Life.

Welcome a fresh new 2011, full of possibility.

photo by Catsy, all rights reserved, creative commons

I have come to the end of my unemployment status. I’ve written some about my journey off and on. Here are nine posts about it.  It has been a fascinating 46 weeks. I was in a pretty bewildering state of mind at the end of the first 26 weeks and I was very happy when Congress  made that first extension so that I could take a breath and sort over some hard choices.  Those weeks are now over and even if I do somehow qualify for the additional extension, I’m not taking it. This should make my Republican friends happy. (yes I do have Republican friends – a lot of them, actually).

After nearly a year, I still pretty much have the same amount of wealth, or lack thereof, as I when my job was eliminated out from under me. We have had a lot of help from family and friends. A heck of a lot. Gift cards and mysterious packages in the mail and encouraging words from the strangest places.  We also got some help on the winter electric bill and the summer electric bill from the Metro Action Commission.  I’ve never had to ask for help like that.  I will forever respect those that give it and those that need it on a new level. We were helping stuff emergency food boxes at Second Harvest Food Bank last November hoping we wouldn’t need to ask for one the following week.

Here’s how we thrived in our relationship as a couple and how we thrived in our relationship with our community:

Faith, Hope and Love.

When we called our top five and asked for advice, they  offered hope. When we had to draw on our faith, we learned how to humble ourselves and give away as much as we could.  Love of community, love of friendship, the love in our relationship , all grew faster and with deeper roots.  We had time to flourish.

After nearly 100 job applications and  a handful of interviews I was either over qualified or under qualified way too many times. To stay optimistic I  met with Cool People Care nonprofit premium partners to see what they had going on and helped dream up ways to be helpful. In the last 5 months I’ve met with 77 nonprofits about their communications strategies , about 80% of the meetings involved coffee.  It got to the point that Cool People Care gave me a title even though it wasn’t actually a job. As the Sr. Director of Social Media Strategy and Development, I talked to folks about how we might together, tell their stories better.

When the time came to help with the Tennessee Arts Commission workshops, I not only said I’d conduct them, I designed the curriculum and maintained  the nonprofit resource blog.  I loved it. In the past ten months, I spoke in person on behalf of Cool People Care over a dozen times and have conducted four webinars.

I was self employed in marketing and management for 17 years before I left that work for a corporate gig with BMI.  After nearly 9 years there, I joined the nonprofit sector in 2007.  I was an Executive Director that took their arts-nonprofit from a  267k budget to a 330k budget all in the black during a recession in only a 30 month time frame. How? Because I treated the nonprofit like it were a for-profit brand. All in all, I’ve always been an entrepreneur. I tried really hard to find another full time job, I tried really hard to find a part time job.  What I found was meaningfully work that my made a difference in my community.

As of August 9 2010 Carpe Diem Management is back in business.  I will have three clients; Cool People Care, Inc. ,  a new start up that you will hear more about in September called Proof, and The Transit Alliance of Middle Tennessee.

My continued affiliation with the team members at Cool People Care and the folks at Proof will allow me to not only serve nonprofits with branding, communication strategy support and earned income merchandising opportunities. It will also allow me to help for profit small business clients with similar services.

When I was interviewed last November I said:

“At this point I have to analyze what’s best for my family and make sure that what I do everyday is something I’m truly passionate about.”

“It’s like that old adage,” VanReece said. “You teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for life. You teach a woman to fish and she’ll feed a village.”

It’s time for the fish fry my friends, I’ve been fishing long enough.

What does your catch look like?

I had lunch with Jacob from Playing By Air this week and Dr. Weiss reminded me of a story that he returns to for clarity.  I first heard him tell me the story  just a couple of weeks after my layoff  in early October of 2009 and I took it to heart then and was happily reminded of it!

Picture four large glass containers.  In one of them are large stones. In one are small stones. The third has sand. The fourth is empty.  The project is fill the forth with all the others, this container represents a full and productive life.

You must first put the important large stones in the container. The big important things like your family and the things that all the other things enrich. The small stones are next, they are your work, your hobbies, your things of the hand that make you a creatively fit person. Finally, the sand is poured in filling all the cracks and all nooks.  To me, this represents the things of the soul, the inner sacred being. These are the things that make you complete and full only when the other things first have their room.

I’m not sure if the stones and sand mean the same things to Jacob, or to you, but it is something that has helped me remember that it’s not just the fulfillment of of one of the containers that I should be working on, rather, it is the journey of getting them to all fit together that is the task of  living an artful life.

How are your sand and rocks measuring up?

Over the course of four seasons, yes we have all four of them here in Tennessee, a gardener goes through a series of  planning, changing plans and then, more often than not, throwing out the plans all together.

It takes a seasoned gardener to realize that that the plants themselves have their own plan and the role of the gardener is to tend to their needs, not our own.

Over the last 26 weeks I have been  tending to and rebuilding  my network.   I’ve talked to just about everyone I know and asked them to introduce me to someone I don’t yet know.  I’ve gained real friendships during the last six months, I’ve rekindled ones that shouldn’t have been left unattended, and I’ve learned the lesson of the garden:  It’s not about me.

Offering help is the best way to find the help you need.  You may experience all four seasons in one single day.

How does your garden grow?  Leave a comment about the way you build your network.  Or a good spring gardening tip!

I learned a lesson this past month. It takes a while to find where you fit in, sometimes.  I say sometimes, because there are those perfect moments when you instantly know that you are where you are supposed to be.

Here is the lesson, the epiphany moment; round pegs, don’t fit into square holes, you can cram one in but there will still be a void all around it.  Fitting in is easy, standing out, is hard.

My unemployment journey has been interesting to say the least.  There have been 74 really cool companies and organizations that have had the opportunity to scoop me up and yet I haven’t, somehow, “fit” what they were looking for.

There are horrible charts that can freak a person out: (open only when sitting down):

I choose not to fit in. I choose to stand out.  I choose to look for ways to be helpful to my community to achieve its potential, whether they employ me to do so, or not. And you know, what, they just might.  That is, if they are looking for someone who creates things and encourages others to do the same.

– Are you working for a non-profit or on the board of a non-profit organization? Contact me at:  nancy@coolpeoplecare.org - Lets talk about how a Cool People Care Partnership can change the world. –