One year ago I gave myself a challenge to post one blog post each week on Medium. Why? I wanted to see if this writing hobby of mine had any merit. Nothing better than a self imposed rule with the hashtag #humpdayheidi. With friend and family encouragement, I...
‘Embrace Ambiguity’ is one of my design firm’s seven core values. It’s the one value I used to secretly wish we could hogtie and gag. Yes, I wanted to torture ambiguity like it tortured me — you know, draw and quarter it into four understandable chunks. Why? Because I...
“I love her, but I’m too afraid to tell her in case she laughs.” “My real dream is to be a chef, but I’m afraid of starting over at 39.” “I have this idea…..but I’m so afraid it just won’t work.” All these were quotes I pulled from Scaredy Cats Anonymous, a dimly lit...
I’ve let my readers down this week. My usual Wednesday post, ‘humpdayheidi’ is on a 7 day hiatus and it’s killing me. Writers aren’t supposed to take breaks, are they? They are the entrepreneurs of words, working 26 hour days and taking out second mortgages so that...
“Books change people’s destinies.” - Carlos Maria Dominguez, The House of Paper Good books have a way of getting into your bloodstream. They become a homeopathic treatment, imprinting new thoughts into your molecules, changing the core of who you are and what you...
I must regretfully inform the public that it is the last year of my 30’s. I just turned THIRTY NINE, which is almost 40. I used to think this was the time I would go over the hill, roll down and die. Although Instagram’s filters smooth my wrinkles into youthful...
There’s a trend with accomplished high achievers. Mistakes haunt us like banshees and we never feel like we are good enough. Hating ourselves can be motivating (fail fast, move forward faster?) but can also debilitate us. Sometimes I wallow in a well of self disgust...
“I feel like I’m drowning,” a friend told me. “The more I try to accomplish the more buckets of stuff get dumped on my head. How the hell is everyone else coping with life?” It’s hard to shake the feeling that everyone is managing to stay afloat while the rest of us...
“Are you ready to get torn to shreds?” I was asked. “Um…I think so,” I said. “Good. Then maybe you have a shot of being something.” A marketing expert was offering his editorial ‘guidance,’ aka critique. I’ve been dealing with critique my entire life. From writing...
Kafka was wrong. He once said that writing is “utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.” If this were true, no one would write because they’d be too busy committing suicide to connect with their keyboard. At some point, you do have to chain yourself...
“Don’t listen to your heart. It will lead you down painful paths,” an old gypsy once told me, reading the fractured love lines in my palm. “Don’t listen to your mind. Its calculations will turn you cold,” commented an investment banker, showcasing his ringless...
“Should I quit my job to travel?” asked a reader. “Definitely travel,” I replied. Like most people, I only dole out advice that justifies my own life choices. “I just don’t know what I’ll regret more,” she said. “Not preparing for a promotion or not taking time off...
“It’s time we have the talk,” I said. “What talk?” Michael asked, knowing exactly what talk I was referring to. “You know, the Define the Relationship Talk.” He groaned. This talk, better knows as the DTR, carries more trepidation than going to your annual check-up...
“The thing you don’t realize is that there is Good Naked and there is Bad Naked. Naked hair brushing-good. Naked crouching-bad.” In this Seinfeld episode, Jerry dates a nudist and quickly realizes that naked can have a dark side. For example: crouching over the...
“Don’t cry at work. If you are upset, go home and cry in the shower.” This was the advice I once gave a female colleague when she was going through a hard time, leaking tears all over our Excel spreadsheets. It was 2006 and we were climbing the management consulting...
Our inboxes are constantly bombarded with LinkedIn status updates, asking us to congratulate our peers. However panic, not pride, is often the first reaction. “I should have been promoted to VP like the rest of my MBA class,” a man in an outdated suit lamented. “Had I...
**This post originally appeared on Medium on 1.28.16** Is success defined by finding the elusive Unicorn? Or love? Or just being happy with a mere burrito? “I don’t become friends with people that are not successful,” he said. I chewed my burrito slowly,...
In the book “Letters to a Young Poet” Rainer Maria Rilke writes, “Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart. Confess to yourself whether you would die if you were forbidden...
It was August in San Francisco. The morning fog was so thick I wanted to spread it on my toast. I also wanted its gray shroud to smother the fact that my birthday was approaching and another year would be added to my social media profiles. “Heidi,” a friend told me...
Ten years ago I moved to San Francisco with everything I owned packed up in a Honda Civic. The value of my student loan debt far outweighed the value of my material possessions and if I didn’t find a job quickly, I’d have to pawn my shoe collection. I liked my shoes,...
We’ve all heard the phrase “Less is more” but how often to we really employ this? We are always seeking “more.” Say more, do more, be more. As another birthday descends upon me, I feel a case of the ‘more neuroses’ coming on. Have I done enough? Or is my life one...