Happy New Year?

I feel like I just wrote this post...or maybe it is that a year in my life has not yielded much change. 2016 was not easy and I don't know why.  Everything felt hard, like I was moving through jello. Somehow no decision I made was easy...each one coming with what felt like consequences and then we spent the last 6 weeks of the year sick.  All four of us...off and on..sick.  Never all healthy at the same time.  But there was good too...ballet recitals and first days of school, holidays and birthdays and Saturday night movies nights and pizza at Romeos.  That is what I want to hold on to.  Not the feeling that nothing I do is enough...

So on to 2017. Tomorrow we kick off a new year.  One that starts somewhat arbitrarily...and one that carries with it all the weight of the lost hopes and goals of the year before.  My Facebook feed is already full of friends involved with MLMs telling all of us now is the time! 2017 can be your year!  And in my house, the kids and husband, dog and cats are asleep, a Law and Order SVU  marathon is on the TV and I have a paper to write.  It does not feel like a "special" night.  It did not occur to me to get a babysitter or let the kids stay up late to celebrate...

2017 is going to the be the year of contraction.  Pulling inward to have more time to spend on what matters and less time behind the computer screen.  I am going to commit to less and finish what I commit to.  And heck...while we are being unrealistic I am also going to lose that last 20 pounds, eat better and run 5 days a week,

Happy New Year.  May 2017 bring you most of what you want, and all of what you need.

Meleena

The milestones we don't reach

We celebrate anniversaries and birthdays. First steps and last days of school.  Facebook even helps us to celebrate the longevity of friendships by prompting us to create a video montage of the pictures we have shared of each other.  But there are few ways in the society to recognize the milestones we do not reach. The promotion we did not get. The children we didn't have. The marriage or relationship that did not go the distance.

I hopped on to Facebook this morning to find out who had made a healthier breakfast for their kids then I had and who had already been to the gym and who had already gotten a bonus at work...because I prefer to feel bad about myself in the morning before my coffee has kicked in...and there halfway through my feed was a picture of my ex-husband.  Facebook is recommending that we be friends.  Today. On August 18th. A date that given my lack of caffeine I had not yet realized.  But somewhere around 1pm I checked the big wall calendar in my office and realized the date.  Did Facebook know that today would have been our 15th wedding anniversary?  Is that how his picture and profile found its way into my news feed?

Once I realized what today was I found myself needing to process it so I weighed my options.  I could talk to my current husband about it  (seems like a bad idea), I could email my ex (maybe the worst idea)I could call a friend (I may still do that), I could post something about on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram (I compromised on the blog).  Because what can you say about the milestones you don't reach?  It has been 7 years since my marriage ended.  Since I separated myself from the man I had been with for 11 years and went off to build a life apart from us.  Then to build a life with another man...one full of children and animals and laughter and arguments about the mortgage.  And I don't think about the old life much anymore.  But then I am reminded suddenly and completely of that life, that version of myself, that relationship.  And I have this feeling in my gut that I have to rid myself of.

15 years ago today I woke up to a sunny day with a slight breeze in Bethel, ME.  My maid of honor was asleep next to me, my husband to be in the condo next door.  We did not see each other before the ceremony, and I remember standing at the end of the aisle looking toward him and thinking that this was it.  That I was looking at the rest of my life.  And so I promised before my family and friends, and God I suppose if you believe he is present at these things, until death do us part.  We ate steak and drank champagne and danced to a Radio Head cover of "Nobody Does it Better".  And we made it 7 years. 5 of them good.  So this was my pause in my day.  My moment to give voice to the milestone that will not be achieved.  To allow myself to feel sadness just for a moment. And then to move on and celebrate all the good that is here now.  Happy failure to reach our 15th anniversary Matt. May your life be everything you wanted it to be.  I know you wish the same for me.

Nostalgia

In one of the famous Mad Men episodes Don Draper  tells us that in Greek nostalgia means pain from an old wound.  It is  a place "we ache to go again".   Nostalgia has become a frequent theme not just in marketing campaigns but in entertainment, products and music.  We are presented with remakes of movies, resurgence of toys and yes repeating ad campaigns...all of which are just copies of the original...lacking authenticity as well as originality.  To be nostalgic for something we must first feel it's absence...long for it wistfully.

So when Coke re-launched #shareacoke campaign this past summer, they were hoping to capture again what they had last summer....people searching through shelves to find the right name. That in opening a Coke you were not getting a beverage but a moment in time. A "place were you are loved".  A reminder of a friend or lover or lost parent.   It worked last year...so why not run it again? Add more names and hope that people are still holding on to that feeling of nostalgia.  Except we are so inundated with it, so overwhelmed with it in advertising that it's hard to feel it anymore.  We are all so busy tweeting out the picture of the can with our dog or ex spouses name on it that we don't feel the nostalgia.

Time for a new strategy...one that is forward looking, not backwards. One that speaks to where we are going, not where we have been.  One that tells us it's OK to drink that coke...not guilt us into buying it. How can we be nostalgic if everything just repeats. ..a remake of Point Break, Full House, more Ninja Turtles and My Little Ponies, another aging icon espousing the virtues of Detroit.  I'm not nostalgic for the old days and I don't want to think about my bro or best friend from high school when I drink a Coke.  I want to be won over, convinced of the virtues of a product.

The thing that made Don Draper's character so amazing to watch was that he was able to not just see what was, but what was coming.  As we fall head long into 2016 I find myself aching for the unknown.  For what is coming around the turn ahead.  And I am hopeful, as a marketer, an author and a teacher that this year it will be something new.  Something worth aching to return to once it has past.