This post is going to start with some geeking out.

I was going back and forth on Twitter with another Maine girl about attending a weekly Tweet-Up at a local pub in Portland.  I noted to her that I was a little worried cause it was supposed to snow (as of Saturday it was the blizzard of the century) and I live about 10 miles away.  I may have a pretty hardcore 4×4 Jeep but that doesn’t mean I go crashing into snowbanks for funsies.

Her response to me was “Oh bah.  8″ is nothing”

Knowing the conversation was about snow, it totally made sense to us.  However another person from Florida read the exchange and was like “Um…8″ is something indeed.”

Sure, you can take your mind totally to the gutter.  Or you can come to the same conclusion that Kate & I did.  “Oh, to someone from Florida 8″ of snow is probably horrific!”

But I thought more about it as I drove home this evening in the second snowstorm in 48 hours here in Maine.  We’re well beyond 8″, we’re probably up around 10″-12″ cumulatively.

Talking to my friends in San Francisco & Los Angeles, they are terrified of the idea of even an inch of snow, let alone an entire ruler of it.  Here in Maine, though, our towns actually have sand and salt lines in their budgets to take care of the roads.

And Mainers are a snow-tough breed of people.  We buy 4×4 vehicles with electronic stability control to avoid our vehicles going a different direction from the way we are steering it.  We start work at the same time we start when there isn’t snow.  And we leave at the same time we normally leave after cleaning 6 inches of snow off our vehicle without coats (maybe that’s just me.)  We shovel our driveways (unless it’s dirt or goes through the woods…that’s just dangerous!)  Heck, we shovel our roofs!

We make due in the winter because it’s the environment we’re in.  The circumstances we’re under.  The challenges we face.  The winter we experience year in and and year out.  Wherein we plan and prepare for and mitigate the possibility for incident other states nearly shut down when there’s more than a dusting.

And well they should.

Sometimes stuff comes up on our regular routine and environment that throws us for a complete loop.  It’s stuff that someone else has handled time and again does brilliantly.  It doesn’t mean that we are doing something wrong.  It doesn’t mean that they are superior or better than us.

It just means that they are so accustomed to circumstance that we rarely deal with that they have become pros.  Not experts.  But skilled and knowledgeable resource centers.  To some people 8″ is nothing really.  To others, it’s something indeed.

I snowbroomed my Jeep tonight in a skirt and knee high boots with a sweater  before I left work at 5 PM.  No jacket.  I know.  I’m a Maine girl.  Born and bred.  Wouldn’t trade it for anything!

What are the parts of your circumstances and environment that you thrive in?  What are the parts that challenge you?

Photo Credit: Getty Images: Jetta Productions

I am SO honored to have Akhila Kolisetty ask me to write a guest post for the “Be The Change” series on her site, Justice for All.  Though “only” a student at Northwestern University and another “young” woman like myself (ok, she’s a bit younger than me!) her site is a MUST read for anyone who is interested in addressing and changing the injustices that happen throughout the world.  It was a little scary writing for such a “grown up” site, but the topic is one that I am passionate about so that made it a little easier.

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Being a child of the enigmatic XYCusp or MTV Generation, I grew up with a fondness for all things 80’s sitcom. Though I am a pale pasty white Irish girl from Maine, one of my favorites was A Different World. Seriously, to this day if Dwayne Wayne asked me to run off with him and his flip-up sunglasses I would in a heartbeat.

That, however, is not the point of this post, just an important footnote. Teen rap sensation Kris Kross (yep, the “Jump” kids) guest starred in an episode (Original Teacher) about inner city gang problems and the perpetuation of generations living in these circumstances. Kris and Chris played rivals locked up in a juvenile detention facility with one chance at probation. To work together on a project with…you guessed it…Dwayne Wayne.

Dwayne tells a story (also recapped by motivational guru Zig Ziglar as a podcast) of fleas kept in a jar with a lid on it. Fleas will jump up again and again smashing their head on the lid. Eventually they stop jumping as high because they discover that hitting your head on a jar lid hurts! The weird (and kinda scary) thing is that you can actually remove the lid from the jar and the fleas will have conditioned themselves to not look up or notice the freedom above them. They refuse to jump to the potential they once had, because really…who likes hitting their head on a lid?!

This story had a strong impact on my life (it aired in 1992…over 15 years ago) and I was reminded of it sitting in a few meetings recently for various “womens” groups. By far I am frequently the youngest in the room. By virtue of my 9-5 I end up grouped with women much older/more tenured than myself. In general I’m fine with that – I feel that I have lots to learn from older feminists and that I have a lot to offer them.

One thing that stuck out the most was a woman who superiorly made the statement “I just don’t know about young people today. I asked a group to identify women from the suffragette movement and they could only name one. Susan B Anthony. I’m pretty sure that’s only because she’s on a coin.” My mouth must have dropped through the floor and everyone was too polite to comment on the huge hole because of the look on my face like I had just been bitch slapped. I must be a horrible feminist…I know I couldn’t name anyone else. Would Hillary Swank count, cause I know she played one in Iron Jawed Angels?

People ask me frequently how I’ve managed success in a corporate arena being a woman. I don’t think these older women will want to hear the response. I’ve succeeded because I keep bashing my head against “the glass ceiling” even after it hurts. It’s one of the most pervasive sentiments I’ve noticed in most successful women in this new feminist generation. We don’t want to pay attention to “the glass ceiling” we’ve been taught we’ll have to fight against “our whole lives.”

Call it stubborn, call it entitlement, call it plain outward stupidity. We realize that we no longer need to wear men’s clothes to play in their arenas. We no longer need to burn our bras to shed the constraints placed upon us. We had a woman (almost) run for President of the United States for goodness sakes! In fact the thing that keeps me down the most is people looking down on my age.

I often repeat the quote “You have to know where you have been to know where you are going.” As a historical and scholarly learner I think you need to understand both the triumphs and challenges of the past to make sure you move forward without making the same mistakes. And I understand that it would be foolish to believe that women are on a totally equal field as their male counterparts. Beyond Corporate America one need only look at some of the more underdeveloped areas of countries to see that there is still a disturbing and real chasm between the genders.

I appreciate SO much about what women have done before me to allow me to be the spoiled little feminist brat they see me as today. But I want to stand on top of a building and shout at the top of my lungs “Stop holding me back because of what you had to go through. Is this truly the legacy that you want to leave to your children?”

Are we as feminists limiting ourselves by constantly referencing/acknowledging/fearing “the glass ceiling?” And what might the feminist movement as a whole be capable of if we started reaching for our potential, rather than fixating on our limitations. Would “the glass ceiling” still exist if we didn’t know it was there, and are we raising future generations to be a jarful of fleas?

As Dwayne Wayne told Kris Kross, desperate to see them jump to the potential he knew they had deep inside: “You can be anything you want, but you gotta know one thing: There’s no lid over you.”

No one enjoys feeling sick.  I am especially unruly in the “irritating sick person” category.  I have seriously contemplated buying a fainting couch just so I can dramatically lay my forearm against my forehead and gracefully (ha, like I do anything gracefully…) faint backwards onto it.  With a huge sick person sigh.  So everyone around me knows that I’m miserable and ill.  And they will baby me til I’m better.  At least that’s the plan.

This past summer  I started making some pretty big changes and setting some pretty lofty goals for what I’m anticipating will be a pretty sweet life starting next summer.  That’s right, my goal is set for 12 months away.  I’m not a jumper and I’m not a leaper.  I’m not someone to be admired for the bold and brash and brazen life changes they’ll make.  I’m not the shiny new toys that you get every birthday, I’m the Velveteen Rabbit in the corner.

With all these goals and all these changes and all this stuff going on I made the (brilliant) decision to start working with a life coach (in another post, in another time, I will tell you why you are foolish to do big things without having an adequate sounding board…Lael is mine…)

During one of our discussions, Lael introduced me to a concept which I have grown to embrace/love/fear.  She calls it “vomit moments.”  Those moments in time when stuff becomes so real that you are just overwhelmed with every gambit of emotion the human body is capable of producing in about ten seconds of time and you frantically search for the nearest bathroom cause you are quite positive you are about to puke.

Lael is working to build her company and brand as well, and she’s shared a couple with me.  They make me giggle, in a “That’s cute and I feel for you”  not a “Haha, I’m laughing at you fool” kind of way.

I’ve started to have a few of my own.  I either text/email/Tweet/Facebook to tell her about them.  I’m giddy like a 5-year old showing off her mad macaroni frame skills.  I seem to be obsessed with noting that the nausea sometimes causes me to throw up in my mouth a little bit.  She calls me a “mouth booter.”  I adore her.

As someone who loathes all things sick related, I am learning to LOVE these moments.  To seek them out.   “Vomit moments” are the new addiction, like adrenaline and base jumping.  “Vomit moments” are the things that push us and motivate us and help us to get to our goals.  Cause if you aren’t SO EXCITED about the life you are pursuing that you occasionally feel the waves sweep over your body then you are MOST DEFINITELY not doing it right living your dreams.

My name is Elisa, I’ve become a puke junkie, and I’m constantly seeking out my next fix.

So I ask of you…have you ever had a “vomit moment” in the changes you are making in your own life?  If you haven’t (yet) – don’t you kind of wish you had?

Photo Credit: Stockbyte, Getty Images