Pivot People - are you a pivot person?

piv·ot \ˈpi-vət\ - a noun, adjective or verb
Definitions

•  a shaft or pin on which something turns
• a person, thing, or factor having a major or central role, function, or effect b : a key player or position; specifically : an offensive position of a basketball player standing usually with back to the basket to relay passes, shoot, or provide a screen for teammates
• the action of pivoting
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In one of many moments of reflection over the past week, I once again realized how my life is filled with "pivotal" experiences that have shaped who I have become. These experiences were all influenced by special people - some of which I only interacted with for a few minutes, but made a lasting impression on my life.
 
We all have these experiences, but do we remember them? do we realize the impact? do we realize how we impact others pivotal moments? Are we ready for them when they occur?
 
Looking back, I've realized that in every case, I was searching for answers, figuring out some things and trying to live right. Perhaps it is a case of "when the student is ready, the teacher will come." Or, when you are ready to make a change, the pivot person will appear?
 
In any case, I'm extremely grateful to be reflecting upon these moments and realizing a few golden nuggets of truth along the way:

Am I living in a way to realize when pivot people are placed in my life?

Am I living and behaving in such a way that I can be the pivot person for someone else in their moment of need?

We are all pivot people, like it or not - just need to make sure that we don't have the negative impact on another in their process of growth.
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**The rest of this is a long set of personal examples - sorry, but I just had to write it all down and get it out of me. Doing so makes me realize how important each interaction with other human beings is important.**
 
Here are a few I came up with and I'm sure there are many, many more:

Resident Assistant - toward the end of my first year of college, some of the girls started asking if I was going to apply to an RA job the next year. I had no idea where that came from, but as soon as they asked me about it, I knew that I was to become an RA. I applied, amongst over 20 other applicants, and ended up being one of the four selected. Others knew it before I knew it.

BYU indoor track - in my third year of college, I had no idea "what I was going to do with my life." I was about to turn 21 years old and didn't feel like I'd be at BYU-Utah that next year. So, I tried to become a sports counselor, started the paperwork for the BYU study abroad program in Israel, looked into BYU-Hawaii, and thought I could somehow pull off being an EFY or Girls Academy Counselor over the summer. One night I walked around the indoor track after a hearty game of intramural basketball. A man in his 50s was walking around the same pace as me and started to carry on a conversation. He asked me about my relationships with men and dating. I told him of my "zero" effectiveness factor in that area. I was "the friend" to all the guys, but not the "girlfriend." He said that he thought a mission would help me with that area and wondered if I would go. I don't know what happened, but walking home that night, I walked on air. I knew at that moment, I wasn't going to do any of those things I had planned on and that I wouldn't be at BYU that next year. I got home and my parents called and asked if I had thought about a mission. The next day a friend on campus saw me and said "Rebecker, you are glowing. Did you decide to go on a mission?" All of this from people that hadn't had any conversations with me before these moments. I was on my missions within three months of these experiences.

Moving to DC - ever since my first family vacations (and youth temple trips) to DC, I knew that I wanted to live there. But, over time I forgot the dream. After graduating from college, I took a trip with some friends back east and was re-reminded of my desire to move to the capital. Within one month of the trip, I had packed everything up and moved to Indiana to live with my parents, substitute teach and figure out how to get to DC. I was in Indiana for about eight months and became actively involved in the singles program there. Before spring break, my father handed me a round trip ticket to DC and said he wanted me to do what I initially came to do - go to live and work in DC. I went and through a series of communications I ended up at the church employment office at 4:50 p.m. on a Friday night which ended up being the perfect timing for a pre-screen interview, then an interview and then a job at Ernst & Young LLP. The job made all my future jobs easier to get because EY has a great reputation. I moved to DC within three weeks of this experience.

Graduate School - after September 11th, I moved home to work virtually for a while. It helped me save some money and figure out the next step of my life. I decided to go to graduate school and enrolled in an MBA program through the University of Maryland. I was two classes into the program when a friend from undergraduate MTC training days (Tonya Barnett) emailed me out of the blue and said that she thought I should immediately apply to a graduate program in instructional design and technology at GMU. I read a one paragraph description and applied. I was accepted and immediately moved back to Virginia to start taking classes. After my first class, I realized that I didn't even know what other classes were involved. I had not once questioned whether I should do this or not. It was right and I took action. I look back now and am amazed at how that all happened and what amazing jobs have come from it.

My condo - after graduate school, I made more money. So, I started to realize it might be time to buy a place of my own. I drove around different areas of town and wrote down areas that I liked. I just did this a couple of times and then went out with a realtor one Saturday night. She kept steering me toward a part of town I wasn't interested in and I came home really discouraged and decided to bag the entire thing. Plus, everything in my price range looked junky to me. My roommate Harrison emailed me at work that next Monday. She never emails me at work. She forwarded a condo that had been posted for sale on the singles listserv. She then called me because she felt like this was my condo. I called up the owners and set up a time to come see it that night. This was in 2004, around the "height" of the bidding wars around here. We both went and I knew before walking in that "this was the place." I literally wrote my offer on a piece of notebook paper and signed it. They didn't let anyone come in and bid over. I'm still in this condo now and am grateful that my friend Harrison had the impression and sent it my way.

Do you have any of these pivot people working in your life?

Blogging and Journals - impact

I admit that it took me a while to start blogging. I initially started way back in 2005, but stopped after only about a month of postings. In January 2008 I started back up again and this time I think I'm hooked. It's good for the day to day downloading of thoughts, but I still reserve my most important and deep feelings for my personal journal.

It is going to be really interesting to see how blogging impacts our society over the next few years. In some ways, there is just too much information out there and some blogs are just plain junk. I can't cite any in particular, but that's because I make that judgement call in the first few seconds and move on to other sites that hold more promise.

In the pre-blog era there were quite a few journal writers, but it didn't seem like the norm. I'd often hear family members or friends say that they were "behind in writing" in their journals and really needed to get back to it. It sounded like a chore. I received my first journal around 9 years old. I was, and still am, a committed writer. Looking back, I realize that it was daily therapy that I needed to let go of the happenings of each day.

My ancestors were big journal writers. Many of their journals have been published as books and my parents give them to all of us as gifts at Christmas or birthdays. These are some of my most cherished possessions because they are irreplaceable. I even found one of my relatives journals online at http://www.ezratclark.org/familyfile_pjcrc_1.asp#1876 which is a family foundation on the Clark side. I started to cry the first time I read from it, and some of the other journals on the site, because somehow the simple entries made me feel close to people I had never met.

Here are a few entries:

June 15, 1884 - Theological class in schoolhouse.
June 18, 1884 - Took 291 cattle to Star Valley, 13 here, 58 at dairy, 6 at Bennington.
June 23, 1884 - W & Jno went to Valley.
June 20, 1884 - Went to Montpelier. Jos. Phelps rec'd letter about death of W. Cooper.
June 21, 1884 - W & Jno. Went to' Pelier. W. paid $65 on land deal.
June 27-28 - I and Emma at Soda Springs.

Simple. Direct. To the point. But, it does tell us a little about these people and their lives in the areas of rural Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and Utah.

I have been spending about two hours a week typing some of my old journals into the computer so I have everything in digital format. I had worried, until I read these entries, that transferring them into the online format would take something away from there meaning. However, reading the journals of my ancestors online have convinced me that scanning a few pages of handwriting from each journal will do. The words have plenty of power in themselves.

Which brings me to blogs. They are so easy to create, update and read. I have a feeling that more people will have a record of their lives as a result of blogs than they would have if this technology had not been invented.

I've learned so much from others blogs as well. A few examples off the top of my head:

• A woman, Erica, in my ward and my cousin's wife are both pregnant and announced this on their blogs complete with a sonogram picture. I found out about the woman in my ward through Elise, my visiting teacher, who had linked to the woman's (Erika) blog. Before blogs, I would have to either get a letter or email from a family member informing me of the news and I'd have to wait until socially acceptable to ask Erica at church if she was pregnant. Even after all that, I would never been at their homes to see the sonogram picture which would surely be posted on their refrigerator. P.S. I think everyone just keeps re-using the same sonogram picture.
• I worked for a year or so with a guy named Howie at a drug treatment center and I never knew that he was an avid photographer and great with using Adobe Photoshop. But, he has a blog and a shop at Deviantart.com. Not only did I order a few of the pictures just to see how they turned out, but I blogged about his talent myself a while ago - http://rebeckeronline.blogspot.com/2008/03/photography-by-ryan.html . Now, as a result of a blog, I have some great photography on my walls.
• Sheila shared about her experiences going through fertility treatments and looking at her blog this past week I found out that she is going to have a baby. Congrats Sheila! However, without her blog entries I would have no idea how difficult this process has been psychologically, physically, mentally and spiritually. Perhaps sometime I will be able to share with someone else her experiences to help them through pain.
• My sister Renaye wrote about her "conference chaos" getting through general conference each year and how the expectations and the reality never quite match up. How many people have gone through this experience? Did they think they were alone? Perhaps, but now they can read her blog and know that this is a normal phenomenon for growing families that are trying to be faithful Mormons while managing kids with short attention spans. P.S. The great thing is that her very next entry was about skin care. Completely unrelated.
• Jared, my artist/innovator cousin, is traveling the world creating art. He has many blogs, but one is devoted to different art that he creates or sees on his travels. I only know where he is and what he is doing by casually visiting his site once in a while. It appears that he is now a "Brooklynite." Oh, but wait. He put that on his Facebook message and not on his blog. By his blog, you would think he is still down in Mexico.
• Somehow I ran into a blog of an old friend in Michigan the other day. Now I know where Dina lives, that she likes scrapbooking and that she has a family. I haven't contacted her yet, but I will. And, I'll contact her sister, Carlyn, that now goes by Carly apparently and owns a scrapbooking company called ScrapGals.

I could go on about how Aaron likes donuts or how I learn a lot about web 2.0 from Mark Oehlert and Ben Bonnet's blogs, or how I keep up with little Alma Cooper by reading Jessica's little witty entries or rare updates from Chris about procrastination, or how Ann is getting married, or Patti's updates on raising her son, or Pam's fun adventures in California, or Meghan's interesting weekend, or that Lori has four kids now, or where Natalie and John will live next...

But, you've heard entirely too much information.

A point, and there is one or maybe two or three, is that the daily activities of our lives are now being documented by individuals and accessible for all. People that normally didn't keep records, now upload photos, track when their children start to walk, share photos or artwork they create, and expound upon random thoughts. It's opened up a world that always existed, but was shared in very small circles. It sounds like it could become one huge gossip network, but the reality is that many people will be inspired, informed, and aware of so much more through this process of archiving and documenting those little things that happen everyday. Speak nothing of the anthropologists, sociologists and psychologists that are having a heyday with all this information...or should be.

Perhaps this column should have been labeled "technology" instead of "blogging and journals," but either way, I get to put a large slew of labels on my posts so they are easier to search later. Hmmm. One of my next entries will have to be about the labels. After all, I'm starting to do more with taxonomies, information architecture and knowledge management.

One last entry from the old online journal:

1912. Jan 29Walter Sizemore hauled 12 loads of manure for 1 ton of hay hauling all himself using my dump boards and dumping the manure in rows on timothy S.W. of first stack ;yard this side of Swampy Meadow. Hay from Spring Hollow--- Gross 3850Tare (sled) 1430Net 2420
1912. Feb 23Bp Hayes gave me $4.80 pay for Deacons outlines.
1912. Feb. 27All were vaccinated.
1912. Mar 14Scab came off
1912. Apr 1. Marie and Julia and Evan Hoff got April Fool on me.
1912. Apr 2This morning Marie and I measured snow in drift on the lawn - 2-1/2 ft deep,.
http://www.ezratclark.org/familyfile_pjcrc_6.asp#1912