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As I put together my graduate school application last month, I rediscovered that I’m not the world’s greatest self-marketer. The experience set off a storm in my brain that has been raging ever since.

It started when a friend read a draft of one of the writing pieces I was to submit as part of the application. Overall, she said, it sounded as if I need them, instead of them needing me. After some revision I sent it to another friend, who said the same thing and suggested a few changes to be bolder.

It sounded like I was begging for admission because that’s exactly what was going through my head as I was writing the first draft. The program sounds perfect for me, and I was really hoping they would see it the same way.

If I hadn’t procrastinated on writing the piece, perhaps realizing it was essentially a marketing document would have been made when I still had plenty of time to reformulate the entire piece. It ended up decent in the end, but arguably not my best work.

In the aftermath my inner perfectionist has started demanding answers: how does one become a strong self-marketer? How do you discuss your own strengths confidently without coming across as a snake oil salesman? Normally I would say that practicing is the best way to build a skill, but how can you practice self-marketing on a regular basis? I definitely need easier access to my inner P.T. Barnum.

Do you have any ideas on how to become a better self-marketer? Please share them with the rest of the class!

Avid readers of this blog (greetings spambots!) may remember the overnight bike camping trip I did in July to Stub Stewart State Park. On that post, my friend Lily commented that I should also try the wintertime cabin camping trip to the same park. Her suggestion was intriguing, and rolled around in my head for the next six months, until last week when I deliberated heavily over whether or not to actually do it.

In the end, I did.

Day 1: Rain

The weather screamed “It’s January, and you’re in Oregon!” The sky was completely overcast, the unmistakable light gray of the Pacific northwest rain forest. The temperature was 45 degrees. It rained. ALL. DAY. LONG. The world was muddy and soggy.

After experiencing some TriMet fail, I arrived at our start location at 12:25pm, to find a palpable lack of bicyclists. Hoping that the ride hadn’t left without me, I suddenly remembered to check at the Starbucks a block away, where most everybody was chatting while waiting for our delayed ride leader. Turns out he biked all the way from North Portland to Hillsboro–because he was bringing a 24″ computer monitor for everyone to watch movies on–and had gotten a flat en route. Once he showed, we set out.

Meandering along the same rural roads as in July, my heart sank when I remembered how particular farms looked at the height of summer compared to rainy January. Waving fields of wheat were now giant mud pits. A friendly blue sky with a view of Mt. Hood in July had turned into a drizzly gray backdrop. After the obligatory food stop at the Thriftway in Banks, we started heading for the woods.

Fortunately, the time spent on the Banks-Vernonia Trail was much more pleasant, as evergreen forests become more charming with the rain. The color of the trees was enhanced by the drizzle, and the decaying plant matter on the ground was more hopeful than depressing. Lichen-covered branches on the trail kept navigation interesting, and the deep green moss thrived on rotting stumps on the forest floor. Over about 1/4 mile, I spied several newts crossing the trail–undoubtedly the high point of the day.

There was some confusion amongst the group once we got to the park, resulting in me getting to the cabins after dark after having waited outside the visitor center for about 30 minutes. Once at the cabins, I stood outside a while–otherwise I probably would have started biting people’s heads off. Because I was the second to last one in, everyone had already claimed beds. This meant I was to sleep in a futon bed in the “front room” of one of the cabins…a small area that ended up holding our entire group of 15 people that evening. Not an ideal arrangement.

While our raingear, gloves, and shoes were draped on doorways, curtain rods, and windowsills to dry the group started gathering to chat. There was much alcohol, and the option for a cosmopolitan even had me partaking a little. This was probably for the best, as it mellowed me out for the evening.

Day 2: Holding Pattern

My scalp feeling like a petri dish, I took a delightful, though lukewarm, shower Saturday morning. By 1pm a group of people took a side trip into Vernonia for Chinese food, two of my favorite people on the trip decided to go back to Portland (SOB!), and almost everybody else was in the “movie cabin” watching movies with the large monitor. Time to myself! I swept the cabin floor (already very dirty), worked on a New York Times Crossword, then took an hourlong nap as the heater finished drying my shoes and the sun shone brightly through the cabin windows. After that, a short hike with Matt where we counted the clearcuts you could see from one of the park’s designated viewpoints (below) and discovered a recent burn area. During the evening, I ended up in the “movie cabin,” where we watched a hilarious 1986 movie with Kevin Bacon as a NYC bike messenger–Quicksilver.

Day 3: Home

It was a great morning. A hot shower, along with thoughts of going home and thoughts of my birthday energized me. Ominous rainclouds in the park changed to less threatening clouds once we were out of the mountains, and taking my rain pants off in mid-ride made the ride even more enjoyable. The transit ride from Hillsboro to home went off smoothly. Once home, my parents took me out for a birthday dinner, after which I chatted with my friend Heather on the phone for a while, stirring up questions in my brain around how I interface with the bike community. It made me sad, as it seems most people view my need to slowly warm up to people as a personal failure, whereas I view it as the community’s inability to adapt to people who aren’t outgoing and gregarious–which has left many of us who participate in many events feeling like outsiders despite our involvement.

After a little unpacking, I retired for the evening. Nestled in my own bed, I slept gloriously.

The 1981 movie musical Annie was the pinnacle of entertainment for this four, five, and six year old. An image from my old Annie lunchbox has been returning to my mind a lot lately.

This image, taken from a scene in the movie, is where Annie is literally being pulled apart by two opposing sides.

This image keeps appearing in my head not because I feel like I’m in the company of Carol Burnett and Ann Reinking (but wouldn’t that be delightful? SIGH), but rather I often feel like I’m caught between two worlds, neither of which understand or fully appreciate each other.

Background I live about 12 miles from the center of Portland, just past the border into Clackamas County. My neighbors are my parents, and the house I live in was passed along to me by my grandmother, who died just over ten years ago. The house has major structural issues, and it is my parents’ wish that I build a new house and live next to them forever, just like my mother did with my grandmother. (Never mind the impracticality of a building a new house on the salary of a single twenty-and-now-thirtysomething employee of a non-profit.)

My fellow high-achieving peers from high school and college evacuated the state years ago for Harvard or CalTech. The peers that remain are usually preoccupied with buying homes and tending to their budding families. Even those I wish to see, I rarely do.

Meanwhile, as I have had a social conscious for many years, I have come to align myself with various noble causes, which has led to fairly strong ties to Portland’s world-famous bicycling community. Many of these people live within a 20 minute bike ride of downtown Portland, while mine takes about an hour each way.

It is common for many of them to pooh-pooh anyone who isn’t car free, in person during social events and online. (Live too far away to bike to everything? Well you should just move closer in, they reason. Never mind that when people do that, it causes rent to skyrocket, which is what has led to most of them moving to North Portland over the past couple of years. I’ll also wager that none of them have ever gotten a free house.)

How Does This Play Out? Say I’m invited to a party thrown by bikey people. It is generally expected that I will bike there, even if it’s several miles away, below freezing, will run late, and it’s the third night in a row I’m being expected to do it. Those who still find TriMet an acceptable method of transportation also don’t realize that transit doesn’t run very frequently in my area, stopping altogether at 11pm.

On the other hand, say I’m invited to an event that is a couple of miles from my house, and I decide to bike. My mother regularly needles me, “I don’t know why you don’t just drive.” Frustrating, yes, but I’ve always been close with my family and unlike my bikey peers, my family regularly demonstrates that they care for me in a way almost nobody else does.

In other words, I can’t win here. And believe me, I spent the better part of the last few years trying.

In the Middle Other similar scenarios drive home the point that I am feeling caught between the life of a suburbanite and a Portland hipster. Here’s a newsflash though: I am neither of those things. After all, if you only see me as my mode of transportation, it’s obvious you’re not seeing me at all. As I’ve been pulling inward to regroup over the last few months, the challenge has been in starting to asserting myself in a gentle, yet clear way to all those who want to dictate how to live my life.

Ever notice how neither Mrs. Hannigan nor Miss Farrell asked little Annie what she wanted in that arm-pulling scene?

As you may be aware, PETA has had a long history of controversial ads and protest methods. There was the “Got Beer?” campaign that focused on college students. The unending targeting of icy Anna Wintour. All the protest events that feature, we’re led to believe, everyday men and women (who just happen to have awesome bods) who are naked, save for strategically-placed protest signage.

I’ve always thought the organization to be very media savvy, and their protest methods a very effective way of grabbing attention for the cause. Similar to how damali ayo’s National Day of Panhandling for Reparations or her book How to Rent a Negro are provocative and humorous in a way that garners the attention of people who wouldn’t normally seek out the issues contained therein.

Since I “became a fan” of PETA on Facebook, the daily posts I see seem to indicate the organization is starting to rely more and more on ads featuring nude starlets. Attractive, young, female, and increasingly, people I’ve never heard of.

When the ads feature notable animal rights figures such as Pamela Anderson, Alicia Silverstone or Christina Applegate, at least I’m able to enjoy the ad, as it features a beautiful person I know and respect. (Even if there is a palpable dearth of male versions of these ads.)

Without that notability though, other thoughts start running through my head, like “Who is Joanna Krupa?” “Uh, aren’t you preaching to the vegetarian choir here?” and “Why don’t you use your Facebook presence in a proactive way, and tell your supporters what we can do, instead of showing me a cavalcade of ads that mean nothing to me?”

Each day I see a new ad, I think more and more about the book The Sexual Politics of Meat, a feminist reading on meat eating and vegetarianism in popular culture, as of 1990. (I’ll admit, I’ve only read 45 pages into the book, and that was a few years ago, but I am excited for whenever the literary skies clear and I’m able to start digging into it again.)

My first instinct is to view PETA as part of the machine that never stops sexualizing women, whether the theme is religious, NYC-riffic, or country western (roll in the hay, anyone?). Bitch Magazine agrees with that view.

However, there’s an important line from Invisible Man that may provide another perspective. The narrator’s grandfather tells us to “live with your head in the lion’s mouth…Overcome ’em with yesses, undermine ’em with grins, agree ’em to death and destruction, let ’em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open.” In other words, sometimes you’ve got to play the game and beat someone by their own rules to be successful.

PETA seems to be aware of the important tie between the plight of violence against animals and women (more examples). President and Cofounder of the organization, Ingrid Newkirk, after all, is a woman. According to her Wikipedia biography she was quoted in The New Yorker as having said “We are complete press sluts. It is our obligation.”

Unfortunately for PETA though, if they continue to merely be “press sluts,” it seems that the organization will become less effective as they lose credibility with their supporters, many of which are liberal women like me.

After all, I shouldn’t have to choose between protecting animals and protecting myself.

One time, I needed to buy several textbooks. After taking over an hour to figure out whether I should buy them from my lovely neighborhood Powell’s or Amazon, I settled on a method that maximized use of my Powell’s card but still allowed me to get the books that Powell’s did not have, like Editing Canadian English. All five books would be shipping from different locations, as close as Oregon and as far away as “International Warehouse,” which a cherubic Powell’s employee informed me is in the United Kingdom.

There was the time I failed to take shipping time into account, because I’m used to picking everything up at Powell’s. This gave me even less time than I already had given myself to absorb a lot of dense material.

Then there was the time where I had lost almost all faith in my academic ability and every time I thought about cracking a scholarly book I worried about whether I had lost my academic focus, drive, and tenacity in the nearly ten years since I was last a full-time student. After all, it was so much easier to read People of WalMart than Essentials of Accounting. The anxiety was making me procrastinate. And procrastinators go to PSU.

But then maybe I wanted to go to PSU. It would certainly be the safe option. But part of this was about expanding one’s horizons in the larger sense, which is one thing safety does not do.

Finally, there was the time that despite feeling like I was finally starting to be happy with myself and connect with other people in a good way…suddenly I felt like I was utterly alone again in a personal quest to climb the ivory tower.

Oh wait. That all happened yesterday.

“Come on Heather, aren’t you going to the Get Drunk and Eat Doughnuts Ride tonight?”

“Don’t forget, January 1st is a holiday. See you at the First Day of the Year Ride!”

“Happy hour tonight at the Fifth Quadrant! You’re coming, right? Why not?”

As soon as I started working at the BTA, my “free” time started being eaten away by bike-related events I was not being paid to attend, but was at least in some regard expected to be at nonetheless. Even on weeknights, many of these events lasted until 9pm or later–after which I had a minimum one hour bike commute home. I enjoyed many of my coworkers, and didn’t want to be seen as the Negative Nancy in the office, so I often went, dragging my heels. On the occasions I did refuse, I was often needled about it by someone.

Between on-the-job stress and these extracurricular expectations, by the end of my time at the organization I was starting to come apart at the seams. Sleepless nights. Stomachaches. Excusing myself during staff meetings to go sob in the bathroom because I was just so tired and so unhappy. After reaching out, professing my burnout to my new boss in a teary meeting, I was laid off just a couple of weeks later. Interesting.

It was around this time I first read the book The Introvert Advantage and was reminded of what seemed like a radical concept: constructing your life around your needs instead of trying to fit into everyone else’s expectations. Mindfully preparing for success by drawing lines around yourself. And oh yeah, in the expectation to keep up with the bikey Joneses I had totally forgotten that I’ve always been a textbook introvert.

What’s the difference between an introvert and extrovert? Extroverts gain energy by being out in the world, soaking up a variety of stimuli, like a solar panel. If left in a room by themselves for too long, they feel drained. They need to be out constantly experiencing new things to gain energy. Introverts, on the other hand, are more like a laptop battery. Going out into the world drains us of energy, and to be functional we often need quiet alone time, plugging in to recharge before going out again. If an introvert isn’t getting their proper alone time it shows, as described in this awesome Atlantic Monthly article. And much like our different belly buttons, neither being an innie or outie is really better than the other. They’re just one of our many human variations.

While the introvert/extrovert thing is on a spectrum (meaning most people aren’t 100% innie or outie but somewhere in between), western society values extroverted character traits more. Extroverts are likely to not understand introverts (see here!). And because extroverts are the majority, it’s pretty easy to feel roughed up as an introvert in an extrovert world. Finding like-minded introvert friends is difficult because by definition we spend a lot of time at home quilting, or writing, or studying mayfly variations, or building bike frames.

My introvertedness was likely a product of both breeding and environment. My mother, who people say I am a lot like, spends as much of her free time as possible by herself, and gets cranky when family members won’t leave her alone. Growing up as an only child, I often had only myself and my dog Meggie after school, which translated into memorizing dialogue or the songs from Labyrinth every afternoon. (An eight year old entertaining themselves this easily, and for so long, is unusual.) My brain is so detail-oriented to this day that I can listen to one music album, or mull over one thing in my head all day, and never get bored. Staring out a window while drinking tea and contemplating comes more naturally to me than physical busywork. (This is probably why my yard looks so awful.)

In the time since I was laid off from my job, I have been doing some serious resting up. When I see people, I do it on my terms–one on one. None of this noisy happy hour business, or forcing myself to go to every single party and try to feel comfortable when the noise makes my head spin. (In December I was so drained I fell asleep in the living room at a New Year’s Eve party, without having had any alcohol, within minutes of arriving. I left at 11:55. True story.) If it weren’t for the internets, I’m pretty sure all but a few of my bikey friends would think I had recently died or moved to Sri Lanka.

I’m starting to venture out a bit more these days, and interestingly enough, I’m seeing signs in some friends that they aren’t honoring their 7% or 50% introvert, and how that’s impacting them. This post is partially a quiet encouragement to all to rebel against group-think and do what you need to do for yourself to be happy and functional.

Are you an innie or an outie? How do you successfully balance your needs for alone and/or together time?