Knowing Your Worth and Asking for It

I drove down to CB South not too long ago to see a friend who’s training to be a life coach. I left the windows down, even on the highway. The sky was a robin’s egg blue, and the aspen on the ridge behind her house showed just the faintest hint of green. Yet all I could think about was money–what I could do to make more.

I wondered if I needed to spend less time climbing and more time pitching. But the thought of paging through magazines to come up with new ideas and clever titles made my throat feel tight. Most of my assignments come through serendipity and chance connections, and I like that. And if I spend more time writing, I want to write stories and essays not assignments.

D zeroed in on this sticking point right away. Any idea that I was simply there to help her fulfill training hours vanished when she repeated my words back to me: “I’m tired of the notion that being a writer means being poor.”

“Tell me more about that,” she said. I proceeded to tell her that I’d never been so poor in my life. It’s nice to make a living doing what I want to do, but I am tired of waking up in the middle of the night worried that my teeth are going to fall out because I don’t have money for the dentist.

“Is that true? You’ve never been this poor?” she asked. Not exactly, I had to admit. There were a few months during my divorce when I was poorer.

Rather than try to change my understanding of poor or tell me I should be happy with my income level, D worked off the notion that I’m not making ends meet the way I’d like. And somehow–in short order and through a sequence of events I can’t really remember–she uncovered the real root of the problem: my trouble is not figuring out how to get paid to write, it’s asking for the right amount of money in return.

That’s right. I’m in my 30s and I still have an f-ing hard time negotiating. I thought I’d learned my lesson during my marketing career, when a colleague and I joked about winning the latest power ball. “That’d be 70 times my salary,” he said. I did some quick calculations–it would have been many more times my salary. My ego does not want to admit this to you, but I was making $30,000 less than my colleagues. (So much for a values-based, women-owned company–be forewarned if you too go from nonprofit to for profit).

I got my raise in the end, but the whole thing left me feeling even more vulnerable about asking for money. Like it was a personal failure. Mix that with one of my biggest passions, and it’s a recipe for doubt. Have I published enough to charge that? Do I write well enough? Will they be satisfied with what they get in return? Can I charge that in a mountain town?

Logically, I know the answer is yes to all of those question. I’m educated, experienced and looking for fair trade. But this isn’t about logic–it’s about self worth.

“Has anyone ever said no?” D asked. No.

“Have they asked for any of those credentials?” No.

“What if they just said no? Would that be bad?” No.

Perhaps, she said, making more money isn’t about working harder. It could be as simple as asking for what I’m worth. And maybe it didn’t need to be complicated:

I know what it feels like to throw out a number that’s too low–before anyone can respond, my throat is tight and I feel tense. So can I  learn to check that sensation before I share my rates? I can feel for the opposite–lightness, a sense of freedom–as a cue that I’m asking for a fair value.

As a girl who moved to the mountains because the very idea of it made me smile, that was an approach I could relate to. I immediately relaxed and felt a sense of optimism that hasn’t waned. I wondered how long I’d have to wait before trying it out.

My opportunity came this week. I won’t pretend I felt easy going and free. But I did ask for more than I would have two weeks ago and it felt right based on how the project had grown.  There was an audible pause–even surprise. I backpedaled in the discomfort of it all, but in the end the check was written at the amount I’d asked for without begrudging.

It was an awkward moment, but it passed. There’s still room for improvement in the communication, but I left with a new feeling: it was fair compensation for the work I had done, and had I asked for less, I would have felt bad. Again.

It was  a small step, but it felt like a step in the right direction.

A new definition of wilderness

The other day, my mom (who lives in Minnesota) declared that my dog could never move back to Minneapolis–or any city for that matter. I had recently mailed her some pictures of me and Mica from various hikes around Crested Butte and climbing  near Cañon City.

“She just looks so happy surrounded by all that wilderness,” she said.

At Shelf Rd, which I associate with good climbing and a great Thai place in Cañon City.

In many ways, my mom is right. In Crested Butte, most of Mica’s walks are off the leash (thanks in large part to Mr. Disciplinarian, P). On weekends she hangs out at the crag with us, and during the week she goes to the newspaper office with me or the job site with P. This week, the latter meant playing in a river all day and occasionally seeking out P. She bounced in place then, he told me,  as if to say, “Come look what I found!”

(He obliged, more than once–he’s also Mr. Softie.)

But my mom’s use of the word wilderness caught me off guard. Sure, there were mountains and cliffs in those pictures, but I never thought of them as wilderness. In one picture, there were even houses in the background (granted, she hasn’t had cataract surgery yet; even to the clear sighted, they probably look like bushes).

Hiking the mountain (those are houses below).

Perhaps, I thought, I don’t use the word wilderness because I know what lies out of the frame. Like the road that P. and I took to get from the crag to that great Thai Place in Cañon City, or the entire town of Crested Butte at the foot of Crested Butte Mountain.

But then I remembered what it was like to visit Crested Butte for the first time. I poured over maps before hikes, fretting over how much water and food to bring and utterly convinced I was in the middle of no where. I carefully monitored my water intake so the elevation of 9,000 feet didn’t give me a migraine. I looked at the landscape, wowed by the peaks–mountains, everywhere, dominating the view.

I have tried many times since then to explain to Minnesotans that the relationship between people and the land is different in the West. In Minnesota, natural places are relegated to areas like state parks and wilderness zones. They’re places you must travel to–typically by car–and there are no buildings; they’ve been cordoned off, preserved.

A cattle drive on Hwy 135, the main route into CB.

In the West, there are wilderness areas and state parks, but there are also BLM lands, Forest Service lands and plenty of places you can pull off on the side of the road and start hiking simply because you feel like it. Wilderness is a landscape, not a human construct or a place set apart. It’s a stage where people like ranchers still make their lives, and access to that stage is seen as an inalienable right.

Even if you’re a teacher or a doctor or a writer, your life plays out on that stage. Those trails that felt so remote when I visited Crested Butte? I now bike them in an afternoon or an hour after work. I helped build a new one last spring. When I look at the mountains in wonder, I do it on my way to or from work or out my office window, where I do what everyone in a city does, too: meet deadlines and earn a paycheck.

This spring in particular, I look at the way the purple rock of the peaks is already visible–early snowmelt that also leaves our streams running low. I wonder what that will mean for ranchers or summer recreation.

I look upon a wild place, I know, where natural cycles still dominate. But my mom made  me realize that I no longer look out my window and see wilderness as a place apart. I simply see my home.

Mica-dog on Scarp's Ridge

Two tiny, insignificant and yet show-stopping words

Last weekend, I attempted a climb called “Left Hand Crack.” It’s overhanging–the wall leans out, so you’re more than vertical as you climb–and the rock is slippery. I watched P. attempt the crux three times and then fall on the fourth (my first real experience catching a fall–I’m relieved to report that I didn’t drop him!)

Even after all the trouble P. had, I thought I’d give the old Left Hand a go and that I might just make it to the top.

Mica's perch.

A few feet up the climb, I jammed my right hand into the crack above me. I grabbed a small pillar with my left hand and leaned back, walking my feet up the wall. To my amazement, I moved higher. But my right shoulder–the arm that was jammed into the crack–felt funny, like every ligament and muscle was about to tear. Because I was on top-rope I let go, bouncing into my harness.

I swore and swung my arm as if to hit the empty air in front of me, which sent me twisting in the wind. Not exactly the effect I was going for…

“Whatever you do, just don’t hit the rock,” P. said.

It was a bluebird day, the sun shining high in the sky and the sound of our friend’s voices bouncing off the cliff around the corner. All I wanted to do was bounce right off that route and call it quits.

I gave it another go. I pulled myself up and my shoulder did not tear; I reached the next ledge. The ledge where the rock starts to overhang and the crack is wider than my hand. I stuck my hand in the crack and cupped it, trying to make it thick enough to fill the empty space. But the rock was oily–I could feel my hand slipping, and my mind filled in the rest: hand slides out of crack, I peel away from the rock and fail… er, fall.

That was all it took to send my mind into a panic. I made P. lower me to the ground, my arms crossed over my chest and looking for a fight–which I got. (Just picture me standing by the rock wall and not talking, and P. standing by a boulder ten or fifteen feet away and also not talking).

I wish I could say this was the first time I flipped out during a stressful climb. But it happened just the day before, and it’s happened before that. Things get tough, and two little words surface in my mind: I can’t.

It’s amazing how persistent those words can be. They’ve left me crying on an uphill bike ride or getting off my bike and walking it over a rock I know I’ve ridden over before. They seem to elicit an even bigger reaction when I’m climbing; everything is magnified by fear.

But whatever I’m doing, “I can’t” turns into “I should”–as in, I should be able to do this by now. What could have been a great climb or an awesome ride becomes an emotional battle with none other than myself. I don’t find out if I can get over that ledge without falling because I don’t even try.

It’s tempting to point back to my childhood and say that I was never an athlete, so I never learned to power through the tough moments. Or to say that I ran during my 20s, training myself to set a careful pace and take it easy. But I suspect that “why” doesn’t matter.

What matters is a little nugget I learned from L., who’s a track coach. She recently told one of her runners there’s no room for “should be…by now.” You are where you are. Look where you want to go, and figure what you’re going to do to try and get there.

I’m going to practice that idea this weekend. P. and I  are going to Shelf Rd to climb with friends, a climbing area known for leaving you stiff and sore the next day. The wetter looks iffy, but if I get on that wall I’m going to set a simple goal: go for it and see what happens. I give myself permission to fall.

What I Learned from the Man Who Quit Money

Daniel Suelo looked more like a hipster than a man who lives in a cave: fitted plaid shirt, thick black glasses and the kind of shaggy hair that looks like it comes at the hands of a stylist.

He looked no different, really, than my writing mentor, Mark Sundeen, when the men walked into Maria’s Bookshop in Durango. Only Mark’s hair isn’t as shaggy and Daniel likely found his clothes in a dumpster.

Daniel gave up money in 2000. When Penguin books asked him to write a book about his story, he told them sure. But it would have to be written for free and given away for free, too. So the publishers called Mark, who once lived in Moab where Daniel resides in his cave.

I read a couple of early drafts of chapters while I was in grad school. On one day in particular, after I had sent Mark three or four essays in a row–on a mission to get my thesis done–he emailed a chapter back to me. Your turn, he said.

I was curious to see where the book had ended up, and there was good climbing outside of Durango. P. and I made the trip, visiting a friend of his in Silverton (they grew up together–hence, the kind of friend P. can talk, and talk, and talk to. His friend was still sitting on a chair talking at 1:00 a.m. The lights were out, and P. and I were both under the covers of the futon. Still, he talked.). We climbed, dealt with the dog after she rolled in human poo (some things don’t change?), and had beers with some of my friends from Minnesota. Then we headed to the reading.

I was nervous. I hadn’t seen Mark for a couple of years. What would he think about my new boyfriend after he’d watched me wrestle with life in my manuscript? Would he ask me why book wasn’t published yet? And most of all, what if we went out for beer afterward and Daniel was there?

I had no idea how to hang out with someone who doesn’t spend money. Offer to buy him a beer? Let him sit there, not eating or drinking while I imbibed?

Of course, the night wasn’t about me. Mark and I didn’t talk much about what I’ve been doing–when he introduced me to his friends, he just took credit for my decision to drop my “high power minneapolis job” and move to the mountains.

The night itself belonged to Mark and Daniel, who answered questions for two hours–and that’s where I got my biggest surprise. Daniel isn’t out to save the world or live outside of society. He simply believes that money is a poor way to value and judge our lives. He’s more interested in giving freely to others, and accepting freely, too. He hosts dinners in his cave, volunteers at the women’s shelter in Moab and house sits if he’s asked to. He loves music and really likes going to shows when he can get in for free. And he’s learned that when we give up struggling–stop pushing and pulling and trying too hard–the universe provides.

Daniel was thoughtful, articulate–everything I didn’t expect him to be. And he did go out for dinner with us, and because everyone was excited to meet him and spend time with him, he had plenty to eat and drink. I understand now that it was my mistake in the first place to think of him as a man who lives in a cave instead of someone who did a lot of soul searching and then made a lot of really big changes. I’m not ready to give up money (though I feel much more relaxed about it since hearing him talk), but I can relate to that. In that, there is a lesson for all of us.

Check it out. It’s worth a read.

What that second cup of coffee really means

I just enjoyed a second cup of very strong coffee. Not so exciting, perhaps, but three months ago I gave up coffee in an attempt to rid myself of an extreme addiction. I felt great. No ups and downs in my energy, and I vowed that coffee would never again become something I had to have. It would remain something I drank occasionally, as a treat.

 

Of course, I went from no coffee, to coffee a few times a week and right back to coffee every day. For the most part, though, I limit it to once a day. A second cup has become an extreme indulgence.

But P. and I are staying at a friend’s house, watching their cat while he insulates the crawl space at the new apartment (those beautiful bamboo floors he put in two weeks ago feel like ice cubes on the feet). There’s a stove top espresso maker here, and this morning, I sat on the couch with a steaming cup of joe in one hand and wrote my morning pages with the other. P. sat at the kitchen counter reading about climbing and ethics, and I put my pen down occasionally to talk with him about some guy who left an air compressor on the side of a mountain and the climbers who eventually cleaned up after him.

After a week of moving and painting and getting in P’s way while he installed flooring (that will be a post in itself), followed by a week of travel (more climbing to use up some vacation time–we’re getting good at the “dirtbag” travel on the cheap thing), it just felt good to sit.

I wanted that feeling to last, so even though P. went to Gunnison to get supplies, and even though the sun is high and the light is brighter in the apartment, I made that second cup of coffee. It was purely an emotional decision, aimed at holding onto something that couldn’t last.

It didn’t work, of course. That second cup of coffee never tastes the same.

Home is an… 11×14 cabin?

I fell for a wanderer. A builder who looked at the crashing housing market and figured it meant the building market would be on the fritz, too. He sold most of his belongings and moved what he kept into a small storage shed in his backyard. His house, he rented out.

“Liquidation,” he called it, and hit the road.

And then, on one of his return trips to CB, he met me. I have always wanted to be a wanderer. I used to look around my Minneapolis bungalow, and even though I loved the way the light hit the wood floor or the abundant vegetable garden out back, I wondered how I could trade it in for wanderlust.

So when my wandering man suggested we live together, I didn’t think anything about it. Three month lease? Okay. Well, it only took four or five bouts with the same argument–where we should move next, how much money to spend, whether I should hit the road with him–to realize that my idea of wanderlust is a little different than his. I like to have a home that I can wander from… and then come back to.

I want to know where I am going to sit after I pour my morning cup of coffee (yes, I am back on that bandwagon, eagerly awaiting the arrival of a stove top espresso maker). I want to know what window I am going to stare out of while I write. I want a good view, and my own space, and I want to be able to ride my townie bike to work or the post office. I want to leave my car untouched until it’s time to head out of town, and while you’re at it, cheap rent and no long-term lease would be nice, too.

That’s right. I want it all. To travel and see new things, and to have the predictability and security of a home. P? His driving force is financial freedom, and travel.

In my most pessimistic moments, I decided we would never find the right place. The perfect compromise. Only now? It’s possible that we have.

Turns out it’s a place I never would have imagined finding or wanting. It’s a one room accessory dwelling with a sleeping loft. I am not exaggerating when I say that our living space, minus our sleeping quarters and the bathroom, is 11 feet x 14. There is no kitchen.

But there is a tiny deck out front and there are tibetan prayer flags hanging over the door. When it snows, I can sit on the couch and watch flakes fall into the yard. I can look out on trees and the neighbor’s dog trying to get Mica to play. P’s friends live in the main house, and have invited us to use their kitchen to bake. P will put in a kitchenette after he replaces the carpet with bamboo floors.

I know that I will have to carve out a space to write, and that I will knock on friends’  doors when I need more space. I know that it’s temporary (four months or so). But the rent is dirt cheap and there is no lease. P. can work off some of his rent by helping his friends out with projects, and on weekends we can take off to climb without always thinking about the price of gas.

It’s no magic answer, but it’s a start that I love. (Pictures soon)

Making New Year’s resolutions that stick

The other day, I spent five minutes writing down every reason why I believe I cannot double my income  or achieve my goals as a writer. My fingers flew over that keyboard, as beliefs I didn’t know I had practically tripped over each other to get onto the page.

Writers are just poor.
I don’t have good ideas for freelance articles.
I don’t know how to pitch ideas to editors.
I’m not dedicated enough.
On and on and on.

It’s a wonder I accomplished anything at all in 2011, and I bet if you did a similar exercise, no matter what your goal is you’d find a lot of ingrained and false beliefs, too.

And yet, I have specific things I want to accomplish in 2012. I want to publish an article or two in a national magazine or publication. I want to write the first draft of a novel-length work. But simply stating those goals, much like stating a New Year’s resolution, doesn’t exactly set myself up for success.

Because as soon as I vow to send out so many pitches a week, I get overwhelmed. It becomes a rule I have to follow, or a routine I need to escape. (Kind of like running 5 times a week… ha!) It’s why I don’t set New Year’s resolutions, even though I crave the opportunity to hit the reset button and renew my goals at the start of the new year.

So what if we think about it differently? Instead of making our resolutions the goals, what if we make resolutions to combat those ugly little beliefs that hold us back? What if we turn our obstacles into opportunity, and find outside resources to help us do it?

Here’s what that looks like for me: I signed up for an 8-week course on generating ideas and pitching them, where I’ll get direct feedback from an experienced freelancer. If I think I suck at those things, I’m getting training in them.

If I get offered a writing gig that doesn’t pay, I’ll politely say no. I found a worksheet that helped me calculate my hourly rate–a rate I need in order to live comfortably, and unless it’s a gig that will increase my exposure significantly, I’m sticking to it.

Because the truth is that I know how to write. I know how to get up every day and write at least a little something. But I want more than that. I want to take that writing and give it every possible chance to reach readers… and be my livelihood. So why let myself get in my own way? Why let yourself get in your own way?

So, what beliefs hold you back from your dreams? And what can you do to change that?

 

One Year Later

One year ago, maybe to the day (should I be able to remember? I can’t), I filled my car with the things that mattered most to me: clothes and gear for outdoor adventures; cookbooks and pots and pans for cooking; books, notebooks and my lap top for writing. And Mica-dog, of course, though she was quite suspicious of my plans.

We drove to Colorado, where we arrived on October 1, after a trip through the Badlands and the Black Hills of South Dakota.

 

My high school friend rode with me. I wondered if I would regret giving up the space for her suitcase when I had to send a couple of my own boxes up to my parents’ attic. But I no longer remember what was in them, and I knew as soon as we got into the car that I-90 would have seemed long and lonely without her; the corn palace a garrish tourist trap instead of a place to take pictures. I would have driven past the Badlands and barely seen the Black Hills, anxious about the life that waited in Colorado.

That new life was lonely at first. One Thursday night, the wind blew the front door open, and Mica snuck out the front door at midnight. I stood in the cold, rainy dark wondering where she was, alone and lonely. But all things change with time, and after a year, I am learning to call myself by new names: mountain biker, climber, writer (why does that one take so long?), loving girlfriend (the ex would be surprised by that one), skier, risk taker.

 

I call myself these names because of the many things that have happened since arriving in Crested Butte: teaching at the college, working as a reporter, writing new essays without the deadlines of grad school, getting a ski pass, going to yoga class (why, hello, P.)… in general, I said ‘yes’ when opportunities came before me.

It is tempting to make a list of all the lessons I have learned in the year since leaving Minnesota, but there’s only one that seems to matter: the importance of honoring all the things that didn’t come to pass. The essays that got rejected, the full-time job at the college that disappeared with the department (hello, budget cuts), pitches that got ignored, crushes that fizzled, trips that never happened.

Cast a wide net. Sew many seeds. Pick your own cliche, but remember that it is only by putting many ideas into the world that anything good comes back.

Saying yes to the Monarch Crest

I could think of several reasons to say no: I had a cold; I had never ridden that far before; I was nervous about all the uphill.

“Let’s leave my car at the beginning,” I said. “In case I get two miles in and have to bail.”

My limbs felt disconnected from my body when I started pedaling, like the blood flowing through my veins didn’t have enough oxygen. My right ear stayed plugged all 30-plus miles of the ride. By the end, my hands hurt from curling around the handlebars on all the downhills and I was out of energy.

But I learned that I could take pretty much everything that trail threw at me. I made it up the hills. I negotiated loose skree on the downhills and didn’t hesitate on a steep downward pitch, rutted out from all the riders before me.

I saw aspen leaves scattered across the trail. Rocks so white they looked like patches of snow. A ridge the color of charcoal grey and streaked like marble.

I ate peanut butter and jelly on a mountain ridge. Listened to electric thunder rumble across the sky above me; it felt close, more like a ceiling than sky. Afterward, rain beat the roof of my car and the windows fogged while I changed into dry clothes. I was tired and stiff and happy and proud all at the same time, and it seemed so simple: just say yes more often.

Happiness Challenge: Whoa. Is that… happiness?

Yesterday morning I woke up on a makeshift mattress made of memory foam and a couple of therm-a-rests. Laundry baskets of clothes and half-packed bags lined the wall. Moving week. I thought immediately of all the things I needed to do: work at the paper, finish an (overdue) article for Crested Butte Magazine, clean the apartment, drop off some forms with my insurance agent, pay some bills… not to mention give the dog a proper walk.

I jumped out of bed, barely saying good morning to P. and left the house with the dog.

Our walk was nothing special. A stroll down Elk Avenue because Mica-dog is still limping from a porcupine encounter. But when I got home I chatted with P. while I boiled water for the French press instead of staring silently at the stove. I danced in the kitchen. I smiled to myself like I had a secret, and I did it all day.

Because P. and I had woken in the middle of the night to thunder, and I felt the strongest sense of home while we talked and the rain fell. Because his friend tuned up my Townie bike and fastened the basket down so it wouldn’t fly up all the time–something I’d been meaning to do all summer. Because I didn’t have to go to Gunnison the next day like I thought, giving me more time to research and write my articles.

All the while, I steadily checked things off my to-do list until it was 5:00 p.m. and I had enough time to walk up the rec path with L. The sun lit up the browning grasses and spilled across the valley–it looked like fall, and even the thought of winter made me smile. Finally, Crested Butte seasons I have seen before–another new sense of familiarity and home.

I don’t know if it’s because I’ve written down 50 things a day I’m thankful for, or not. Or because I actually did yoga this week. I don’t know how long it will last or if the strength of that feeling will hold. But it does feel nice, to feel so good.