I'm learning good lessons. The best one of all: sleep's a bore when you're having fun.
FEBRUARY 4
Notes on the plane home
On the plane ride home from Davos, I talk to my seatmate about the conference. The talk trails off. I'm realizing I have to relearn the art of sustained conversation. This is the biggest disability I've picked up since leaving Doubleday. I used to talk so much--on the phone, in meetings--that I was a gold-medalist talker. Now I'm not so sharp.
Doubleday taught me how to sell. In my new life I need to learn how to give. I have a gift to give: what I know, whom I know, and what I stand for. In the consultancy I'll build, I'll relate to clients as peers.
NEW YORK CITY, FEBRUARY 5
A chicken-with-broccoli-and-cold-sesame-noodles emergency
Home, sweet home. Seven-digit dialing. Chinese home delivery. I'm not even jet-lagged. I'm too excited by these basic Davos lessons:
1. I have to start an active mailing list. Keep in touch with people, even people I didn't "mate" with for life. Acquaintances are just as important as newfound friends. It's like when you go to Lourdes and take home the water, or you're at a five-star hotel and take home the soap. Davos makes you want to take home the people. I want to think they're watching me, that they're the standard I have to aspire to.
2. Remember how important it is to expand your horizons, even more than your ambitions. I learned that in Davos from Hugo de Garis, a scientist who is building robots with artificial brains. He's not ambitious: he'll get his robots built somehow, but not by being strategic or by fund-raising or by sucking up to important people. He continually enlarges the scope of the work, expanding his vision and his belief in what he can accomplish and in the impact he intends to have on society. We normal people have to think of clients and paychecks. But it's breathtaking to pick your head up now and then and look beyond that focus.
As a reminder, I paste a postcard of the Alps over my desk.
FEBRUARY 6
Please be nice to me, I'm mad as hell
The BofA director who'd sent me a contract for the speech got cold feet. She canceled the contract. She wouldn't take my references' word about how good I am as a speaker. Damn BofA, and damn business. It is a stupid pursuit.
FEBRUARY 7
Not holding the cards
"How come you don't have business cards?" Avram asked. "I don't know what to call myself," I said. Avram suggested I do a card that said simply "HR Group." "No," I insisted, "that's how you know people are on their own: they try to convince others they're a group."
FEBRUARY 8
The ugliest baby blues in the world
Ugly encounter with one of the authors I took responsibility for editing in my Doubleday consulting contract. Why did I ever agree to this security blanket of a consultant relationship with Doubleday?
I should have quit long before now to go solo. Now, unless I cut Doubleday out of my life, I'll never get free of this slave mentality.
Should I have had the guts to walk away from Doubleday whole and clear last July? Maybe, but I was scared. I thought no one would talk to me unless I was Harriet Rubin Doubleday. Most of all, I'm not scared anymore. Doubleday is my scared self, and it looks ugly to me now.
Installed the fax yesterday. It's booster one on my rocket ship.
FEBRUARY 9
The eve of the big fat moon, a turning point on the 11th, the horoscopes say
Yesterday was a bitch. Lonely, lonely, lonely. I felt like the last living human on earth. I miss people!!! Hello, out there? Is anyone there? Knowledge is vital, but so is acknowledgment. That's what Davos provided and what my office loft does not. Should I get a real job? Shut up!!!
FEBRUARY 10
Corporate poodles
Just came from a meeting with a media biggie--a friendly call that I will build into a business relationship by following up the visit with notes and clips and by raising issues and questions that will intrigue her.
I had forgotten how much corporate setups scream power. It's been a while since I've ridden in elevators that plush. Corporate men and women are taken care of, like prizewinning poodles: big plush offices, secretaries, private bathrooms--and for the really privileged, massages, car services, catered dinners at home. I walked into the elevator feeling that I had gone through a period of convalescence, and now I was back in the world of the living.
No wonder corporate men and women feel strong. You get kicked and stepped on, sure, but there are so many perks to help you take the abuse.
FEBRUARY 13
Wicked Friday
On my calendar: a meeting with my financial adviser. I will have a big book-advance check coming from Harper, so I need to be a bit more aggressive about how I invest it. Also, I will have a whopping tax bill to pay this year on earnings from my first book, The Princessa. I believe in the philosophy "Do it for love, and the money will follow." But the greater truth is, I fear, "Do it for the money, and the love will follow."
When I started dreaming about leaving Doubleday, two years ago, my net worth was about $200,000, including a tiny, dark apartment owned mostly by the bank. Now my net worth is over a million, with a big new, light-drenched apartment owned mostly by the bank. The big change came in writing a book, a first effort at building something that I, not Doubleday, owned.
