Category: Weblogs

The Subject of My Blog – Retiring, moving, and downsizing

You should pick a subject for your blog, is something you usually find included in advice about how to start a blog. I’ve always resisted having a subject for this blog because I
want to talk here about all the varied things that I find interesting.  I think not having a specific subject tends to limit my readership to a smaller
group of people. I always say that I’m blogging because I like blogging, not to build a big readership but I have to admit I do look at readership statistics. 

For the next several months a big focus of this blog will be all the life changes that we are making. As you know Duke and I each retired last year. Our plan is to sell the house, move into temporary quarters (probably in the Reno area), and then spend the next several months traveling around looking for a place to settle down for the next phase of our life. I’m very excited about the adventure and will be sharing a lot about it here.

We won’t be selling the house until early summer but I’m starting to get ready now. The trim around many of the windows needs replacing and we’ve hired a guy to do that. I’ve been selling some of my books on Amazon.com and donating the ones that don’t sell. I’ve also been selling some odds and ends on Craigslist. The goal is to trim down our possessions and get organized.

Even though I will continue to talk about lots of different things on this blog, a reoccurring theme for the next several months will be downsizing, searching for a new place to live and finally moving and settling in. Of course I’ll be sure to keep you up to date on all the adventures along the way.

My Tag Line

I’m changing the tag line on my blog. Back in May of 2005 when I was starting this blog I posted an entry about choosing my first tag line. What I said then about my brand and my tag line being like the tag line for my own company Me Inc is still very true. More than ever I think of this blog as being a reflection of me.

My original tag line was "My name is Marion Vermazen. I am a community builder and a renaissance woman." I still like to think of myself as a renaissance woman but community building was what I saw as my mission in my job building the PortfolioMinder community and customer care team. Now that I have moved on to pursuing my various interests full time, working for myself rather than for someone else (this is what some refer to as being retired) I have decide to change my one line self description. I like "My name is Marion Vermazen.  I am a renaissance woman working full time to live, to love, to learn, to be useful, and to be interesting."

Nora Ephron on blogging

I  really enjoy The Charlie Rose Show. He is such a wonderful interviewer. There is a quote quote from Charlie Rose at the top of his web site that captures why I like the show so much. Rose says, "I believe that there is a place in the spectrum of television for really good conversation, if it is informed, spirited, soulful." I love good conversation.

His show last night was very interesting, especially the interview with Nora Ephron. I have seen Rose ask a couple people about blogging lately. Brian Williams the anchor of the NBC Nightly News said basically that he blogs because his bosses told him to. When Rose asked Ephron about her blog she said

"What I like about blogging is that blogs are different. Blogs are almost like soap bubble, they’re what you think at the very moment you are writing it…… Sit down and write, and write it fast and if you’ve been working on it for more than an hour and a half it’s not a blog. It’s something else and you’ve taken too long on it because it should really feel as if it’s true at that moment and then not much longer than that."

I’ve included the link for the whole show below. The quote above comes at about minute 51.

 

Segment 1: Author John Richardson and art dealer William Acquavella discuss the work of their friend, artist Lucian Freud.

Segment 2: Filmmaker and author Nora Ephron.  Her latest book is "I’m Not Happy About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being A Woman".
               

 

      http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-8958303134609212326&hl=en
   

A Downside of Blogging about Work

I started at Intuit just over a year ago. I came into my new job as the Customer Care manager for PortfolioMinder having been strongly influenced by my experience with blogging at Sun Microsystems. I really believed in the power of blogs and the Internet to break down the walls between big corporations and their customers and to allow a company like Intuit with a new product like PortfolioMinder to build a strong constructive relationship with customers. I love the image of the bazaar where the vendors know their customers and the business relationship is based on trust.

As a result my goal as the customer care manager of PortfolioMinder was to build strong 1 on1 relationships with our customers and to have a productive conversation with them. I strove to get to know our customers and I talked about PortfolioMinder and my role on the team in my blog. Unfortunately there is a down side of personally identifying yourself with your company and building relationships with your customers. Although I always try to speak for Intuit and act as though this was my company and my product it is not my company and I don’t control what happens to PortfolioMinder. PortfolioMinder belongs to Intuit and Intuit’s shareholders. So when a decision is made like was announced today then it hurts that I personally vouched for our commitment to the product. I now understand much better why people hesitate to blog about what they do at work. I understand why support people might choose to remain anonymous. I understand why employees are hesitant to truly engage with a company and care too much.

I have written a lot of blog entries in my head that have helped me deal with my anger and sorrow about the death of PortfolioMinder but I think that as an employee of Intuit I am better off following the principal that if you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything.

On a personal note, I am looking for a job and deciding what I am going to do next. The about link on the right has my resume. If the right opportunity presents itself I will stay with Intuit. If not I am confident that things will work out. I have enormously enjoyed building the PortfolioMinder customer care team. The PortfolioMinder sales and support agents are an amazing group of financial planning professionals with whom it has been an honor to work. Thank you Dave, Don, Faruk, Fred, Gail, Keith, Sandy, Stan and Todd.

A Very Enjoyable Blog

Ronni Bennett in her Time Goes By Blog had a great post today titled The Art of Blogging . It resonated with me. One part I especially liked was about why she enjoys blogging:-

"I write to figure out what I think about things and it is astonishing how many times I start a blog post and wind up in an entirely different place at the end than I thought I intended. Writing is a joy for me because it organizes my thoughts, forces me toward clarity and often leads to discovering what I didn’t know before."

I find that a lot of times when I speak I am frustratingly inarticulate but when I write or at least when I focus on what I am writing I can work out my thoughts and what I mean and then communicate it. I love the idea of doing research and then reporting it here.

I don’t know if I will ever have a focused blog like Time Goes By but I aspire to post daily and to have as interesting a blog as Ronni does.