Yesterday, I went kayaking on Green Lake. It is Wisconsin’s deepest lake at 237 feet deep, and it is wide and windy. Paddle anywhere near an open bay, and you need the upper body strength of the Hulk to keep going. So I clung pretty close to sheltered shoreline. But, what I was thinking about was mostly this lesson I have decided is the most important thing I need to bring home from vacation.

In paddling, and in life, it is not actually necessary to paddle furiously the entire time, as is my tendency and I suspect most of yours.

It is actually OK to stop paddling, float for a while, and just look around you, savoring exactly where you are at this moment, rather than the next point at which you are trying to arrive.

If the swells are up and the wind is high, you might start getting pushed too close to a place you don’t want to be. So, you’ll need to redirect yourself from time to time.

And then, when you’re ready, you can start paddling furiously again, with renewed strength and focus.

This morning, I sat on the bench in this photo with my latte and gazed directly across the lake, at the point where my lovely childhood memories live (see previous post, “Does the web make it harder to appreciate simple pleasures?”). And while I may or may not have shed a couple of tears thinking about how my past compares to my overall present non-vacation state of being, it’s a healthy thing to have one eye on the past, if it helps you redirect your future.

I had to overcome a lot of pressure to come back from vacation yesterday, to attend a meeting today that was planned long after this vacation was planned. And as important as my work is to me, it will never, ever be more important than this time to break away with my family to just enjoy the beauty of the moment and reflect on how we want our future to be.

What do you think? Are you capable of stopping the frantic paddling, to just float on the waves for a while? The last time you did so, what was the result?

When I was a little girl, my family came to Green Lake, Wisconsin, for a week each summer. We rented a cottage, next to my Aunt Ginny and Uncle’s Chuck’s cottage. Along with our four cousins, my two older brothers and I swam like little maniacs, went boating and fishing, beat the crap out of each other and ran around well past dark. I remember playing “Jaws” with my Dad in the water, and getting the bejeezus scared out of me with a Ouija board at bedtime. I don’t recall there being a TV, and obviously there wasn’t wireless internet access, an iPad and YouTube. At least from my vantage point now, a good couple of decades later, it seems like we were more or less always contented with what we had, as long as there was the lake and some Merkt’s cheese and Jim’s summer sausage around. (Ya der, hey.) Of course, we were country kids to begin with, growing up with everything we needed, a few of the things we wanted, and not a whole lot more.

This summer, after not being here for many, many years, I decided to bring my son to Green Lake to get away for a few days. My son — a child of a fairly urban suburb and a web-obsessed Mom — has, at the ripe old age of five, announced that he would like to start vlogging product reviews of his Lego sets.

The first morning we were here, we took him on two-mile hike around the property on which we are staying, the Heidel House (great location, nice views, marginal beds and average food). For all of the complaining, you would have thought we were taking him on the Bataan Death March. He has no interest in swimming in the lake, as it’s too cold, or even the outdoor pool; he requires the indoor pool heated to about the temperature of bath water, and reminiscent of the health club where he takes swimming lessons. Out on the insanely expensive rental boat, he clung to his Lego catalog like a tattered paper life preserver.

He has the attention span of a gnat, and the desire for outdoor physical activity of a sponge. (SpongeBob Squarepants, be damned.) This from a child who uttered the word “outside” as one of his first five words. Now, most of the time, he would honestly rather be watching Lego videos on YouTube than doing most anything. Just now, we forced the end of post-bike-ride-and-swimming “quiet time” — aka video watching — to get him out on the little beach with a bucket and some shovels. There wasn’t much argument about that, but much of the time, when you try to take the iPad away the reaction is like you’re trying to steal a kidney.

My fundamental assertion: kids today have gotten soft.

I do know I can’t blame this all on the web, of course; this is really more of a rhetorical question. It’s not just the web – it’s the onslaught of media in general. And it’s 100% my fault, and my husband’s, that our son gets too much computer time, and watches too much television. When I am on the computer or the iPad during my downtime, what’s he going to want to do in his? Duh. Yet, my husband and I are both active people and generally set a decent example in this regard, and that doesn’t seem to rub off on the little man to the extent that the computer addiction does. I’m sad for him, that he’s not a country kid living in “simpler times”, with simpler parents. We’re trying to set limits, and balance it out with more outside time. And I refuse to, on top of the computer addiction, go out and buy the NintendoDS he already hears his friends talking about. And yes, we do read to him from actual old-fashioned paper books; actually, he taught himself to read when he was three…on pbskids.com.

In spite of all of this, and the questioning that comes along with it, this time has been a gift. There’s just nothing like the smell of your kid’s beachy head on your shoulder on a boat. Yet I knew, of course, that Green Lake wouldn’t be the same. Yesterday, we cruised the entire perimeter of the lake, looking for anything that might remotely resemble my childhood memories. Most of the little cottages are gone, replaced by mega-homes. We found one “ghetto” section of the lake, where there were a couple of cottages that “could have” been the ones. But sadly I found out today from one of my cousins that he was forced to sell the cottage when recessionary times fell on his home-building business last year; the wealthy neighbor to whom he sold it leveled the cottage of my childhood, seeking a little bit of “green space”.

On the upside, the cottage in which my family stayed is being remodeled and will hopefully be available for me to share with my family next summer.

We won’t be bringing the iPad.

Milwaukee is an amazing community, and so is Twitter. Folks have started raising their hand and offering help. Will you help us raise some money to rebuild 12-week-old baby Clara’s room and the rest of the house? The unsinkable @bootyp said it best: Tim and Jess bring smiles to so many faces, it’s our turn to bring smiles for them to wear.

The date and place of the event will be announced very soon. If you want to help, and/or if you have a specific idea for what you might be able to offer, let us know. We’re close on a place, but still open to suggestions; needs to be able to provide room for a silent auction and a band and some other stuff. We’re close on a band, but in case the date doesn’t work for them, are open to suggestions. We need more silent auction items for sure; if you know celebrities who will autograph stuff for auction, that’s cool. We’re working on getting a flooring company and a window company involved to provide discounted floors and windows for the rebuild; if you have connections there, by all means, let us know.

If you want to help right now, please buy a Teecycle t-shirt and stay tuned for more information about the event.

You can make a difference. After all, as they say, it takes a village. Raise your hand, here or on Twitter.

It was the most brutal decision I have ever had to make, and I am still not sure it was the right one, though I shudder to think what *might* have happened if hadn’t done it. Oddly, it led to one of my first meaningful encounters with social media, in the form of a Rottweiler forum that helped me greatly through my grief. Gomer, my heartbreakingly beautiful 85-pound lab-Rottweiler mix, was my best friend before I met my husband.

He was a street dog through and through. He was brought to the Wisconsin Humane Society as a stray, and he ate rocks and sticks and anything he could find, including woodwork and windowsills. A week after I brought him home at four and a half months old, he ran circles around the dining room table barking and growling. I could have saved myself a lot of pain had I taken him back right then; but I would have missed out on a lot of love, too. He was worth it. Besides, who on Earth could take this face back to the pound?

But, cute little puppy aggressive Rottweilers grow up to be big, powerful aggressive Rottweillers. We went through extensive training. Amy Ammen, the seen-it-all owner of Amiable Dog Training, took a look at us and said: “That is a LOT of dog. I am a bit worried about you.” It was a prescient observation. Gomer earned his AKC Canine Good Citizen award, which would prove to be highly ironic. He was a great friend, but not a good citizen.

Gomer, we speculate, was abused as a puppy. He had aggressive tendencies, especially around little girls of a certain age, and kids on scooters, and always around food. He “nipped” me on the arm once in training. He “nipped” a neighbor who tried to give him a treat. (Why any idiot would stick their hand through a fence to feed a Rottweiler without asking is beyond me, and any bastard that would abuse a helpless animal is the lowest form of life.) He hated the mail carrier, and once broke out a window trying to get to him.

When I was single, Gomer was the perfect companion. I slept at night knowing that he would kick the ass of anyone that tried to mess with me. We road tripped to Colorado together, to visit my brother, and in a highly seedy motel in a bad part of town somewhere in Nebraska, Gomer was your man. He stayed up all night, watching the door and woofing throatily every so often, just to let people know who he was.

Gomer screened my dates; if he didn’t like them, or if they didn’t like him, they didn’t stand a chance. On my first date with my husband Karl, Gomer sat in between us on the couch and looked Karl right in the eye. Karl passed the test.

He had a great life. He had his own play room (yes, really), and as serious as he could be, he was also very goofy. He slept on my Calvin Klein sheets, went for walks morning and night, had frequent romps and training stints in the field, and befriended the cat. He got some of the foam from my morning latte, and partnered with our other dog to steal an entire meal of Italian carryout as well as part of our leftover wedding cake. He went for long swims and hikes, his two favorite things, whenever we could possibly get him there.

When I was in excruciating at-home labor with my son, who had his head turned sideways (another story, speaking of pain), Gomer sat outside the door crying. Little did he know how seriously his life was about to change.

After that, sometimes when I took Griffin for walks in the stroller, Gomer would sit by the window and howl. He wanted his best friend back. Little did I know that I was about to lose him.

We took extreme measures to keep dog and baby separate, for the most part. And, in a too-common tale, Gomer didn’t get what he needed with the baby in the house. His training lapsed. His exercise waned. In 20/20 hindsight, I wish with all my heart that I had become even more sleep-deprived to give him more. Yet, all the hindsight in the world won’t tell me what worse outcomes might have occurred were it not for the incident at Alterra on the Lake.

It was a beautiful summer weekend morning. What better way to spend it than walking the baby and the dog to the coffee shop by the lakefront? I went inside to get coffee, and left my husband with his hands too full. A little girl came running up unexpectedly and got in Gomer’s face. And he bit her. Thank God, only on the hand. It was a horrible, but needed, wake up call.

I was in therapy for postpartum depression at the time and talked to my therapist about it. Her opinion was that keeping Gomer was like living with a loaded gun on the coffee table. And that is exactly how it felt.

I took Gomer to an animal behaviorist. She suggested we give him all-raw food, two hours of intense exercise a day, and a newly constructed habitat in the sprawling-backyard-that-we-did-not-have. And when I asked her what she thought the odds were, with all of those totally unrealistic parameters in place, that my son would be safe? “50/50.” Not very strong odds.

I took Gomer back to the Wisconsin Humane Society. They can’t take dogs back that have bitten people. I tried to find him a new home, or an animal rescue, and couldn’t find anyone. Even if we had been able to, it is both irresponsible and a legal liability to give someone a dog you know may be dangerous.

So, I spent one more night with my Gomer in my bed. And then we euthanized him.

We walked a gorgeous, perfectly healthy, five-year-old best friend into the vet’s office, and had him killed.

I believe that was preferable to keeping him isolated in the backyard. He was too much of a free spirit for that, and too bonded to me. He would have been miserable, and so would I.

I cried for days and still cry frequently now, four years later. I just want hold his big silly head and touch his silky ears and coat one more time. I want his eyes to roll back in his head when I scratch his armpits. I want to watch the athletic beauty of him running and swimming.

I will never be able to do any of those things, obviously. Though like a knife to my heart, my son Griffin sometimes asks if we can get “Gomey” back now that he (Griffin) is a big boy. And I will never, ever know if I made the right decision. Though everyone in the online Rottweiler forum I spent a couple of days in after Gomer’s death seemed to think it was the right thing to do. Thank God they were there for me. Whoever you were answering my post, God bless you.

Please do not let this post ever discourage you from adopting a pet; on the contrary, we have gotten another, wonderful dog from the Wisconsin Humane Society and will likely get all of our future dogs there. If you have a good home for a pet, please go here to see the animals now available for adoption. Gomer was one-in-a-million.

Thank you to Michael Caughill who said to me on Twitter this week: “Every story untold goes to the grave unsung.” And thanks to Dr. Seuss, who said something like, “Don’t cry because it is over. Smile because it happened.” Gomer happened, and I was lucky to be his human.

Time to go hold my son, and thank God that he is safe. Thanks for listening; your comments are welcome.

Last week I posted on how Great leadership is a rare gift. It was one of those posts on which the comments make it so much better. I love and value what everyone said, but a few really get to the heart of what I think is a core issue for many leaders.

I love what Bob Fichtner said: Great leaders know when to get out of the way…they give their team the freedom to achieve the goal in their own way.

I love what Cindi Thomas said: Leadership requires a lack of ego.

I love what Tony Meister said: Some (leaders) had too much ego to admit they were wrong. This created a subtle backlash behind the scenes as the negative chatter slowly depleted their reputation and heart following among the team.

Heart following? What a concept! If you are a leader, ask yourself, do you have anything remotely resembling heart following among your team? This comes back to empathy, which is what I believe breeds true loyalty. Do you show that you care about them as people? Or do you treat them like mere “employees”? Big difference.

This morning, I tweeted about how I am looking for another rock star to join my rock star team. I followed up with clarification that by “rock star team, ” I truly do mean that THEY are the rock stars, not I. Jim Raffel, who is a great blogger and a good friend replied asking (with sarcasm noted) if I am just a roadie. Check out Jim’s blog – lots of great advice from a small biz CEO who tells it like it is.

Jim’s question was fantastic; it really made me think in a different way about what role, as a leader, I do play on my team. And, as someone who spent the better part of her teenage years running around Alpine Valley, an outdoor music theater, amidst musical mayhem (and sometimes adding to it), it is a metaphor to which I can deeply relate.

Sometimes I am, in fact, a roadie. I’m not much for climbing up into the rafters, but I have been known to go get my team Alterra soy honey lattes when I think they need it. I’m not above that at all. Whatever it takes to keep the show going.

Sometimes I am a tour manager and an agent. In other words, a facilitator. I arrange meetings and get the team gigs where they can demonstrate their greatness.

Most of the time, though, I am on backup vocals. I am in the meeting to support the work that we have put together as a team. Not to be the loudest voice in the room.

Being a leader doesn’t mean that you have always vocalize the fact that I AM THE LEADER. More often than not, you are there guiding, coaching, supporting with a firm direction but a soft hand. One that lets the team feel a sense of pride and ownership. Shared leadership. At the end of the day, being a leader requires being one of the team.

At least that’s my way. What’s yours?

Yesterday, I watched IMAX Under the Sea on DVD with my son Griffin, who is turning five years old in two weeks, and it was a beautifully heartbreaking experience. The film documents the incredible beauty of undersea life surround Papua New Guinea and the islands of Micronesia. And then proceeds to show and discuss coral reefs bleaching and dying and marine life species like sea lions struggling to survive due to global warming and ocean acidification. Let me tell you, those sea lions have some big, sad, powerful eyes.

Griffin has a few things he’d like to say to us grownups, so I’m turning this blog over to him, Q&A style.

Q: Griffin, what did you learn about what’s happening in the ocean from Under the Sea?

A: Carbon dioxide is making the sea lions and the sea rays be dying.

Q: What things do we need to do at home to help the planet?

A: Don’t turn on lights. Don’t go so far downtown. Recycle.

Q: What one thing would you say to all the grownups who read this?

A: Make less carbon.

Do you worry about what kind of planet we are leaving our kids? I do. Sometimes, I even wonder if I should have brought my beautiful child into it. Frequently, I honestly wish that the car would never have been invented.

After seeing this movie, my husband was going to drive downtown to pick up some burgers and we told him not to. And today, I was going to drive downtown and pick up a book, and decided not to. We’ve all got to start getting serious about emissions reduction. I’ll be the first to point out that I’m being a bit of a hypocrite by even writing this: our family has three SUVs. I’d love to trade those in on three hybrids, but that’s just not practical. Hopefully at least one hybrid in the very near future.

We are keeping it top of mind. Talking about it. Taking small steps, like fewer unnecessary trips. And asking you to do the same. Please. For the sake of the kids. The coral. The sea lions. And everything else that lives Under the Sea, and above sea level.

The film ends on the assertion that we finally seem ready to take responsibility for our actions. Are we? Any response to the five-year-old boy asking you to act on it? Or can you share things you are doing?

I have been thinking about leadership quite a bit lately. After 20+ years in marketing, observing the collective experiences of me, my colleagues and friends, I am struck by how truly great leaders seem to be few and far between. I could easily count the ones I have known on one hand. If I had three fingers.

I have been accused from time to time of being a decent leader. Yet, believe me, I know I have a lot of room for improvement. Truly outstanding, inspiring leadership is DAMN HARD.

The hardest part, in my opinion, is finding it in yourself to rise above all of the myriad obstacles to optimism and inspiration, and somehow pass inspiration to those around you — even when you may not be overflowing with it yourself at a particular moment in time. Now THAT, if you can do it, is a skill worth talking about. If you can do that, you have my utmost respect. Period. Tell me who you are and how you do it. I would like to take you to lunch. Seriously.

But if, like me, you are working on this skill very hard, here, are just a few thoughts on truly great, inspiring leadership.

First and foremost, people will do as you do, no matter what you say. I am a huge believer in leading by example. If you work 9-5 like clockwork, don’t expect your team to burn the midnight oil in search of greatness, no matter how many times you tell them to. Like it or not, culture rolls downhill. And it rolls from the very top, not from the middle.

Listen to what your team tells you is going on. Not halfway — ALL IN. Really listen. They are closer to most situations than you are. Not listening and responding to their concerns is the fastest way to communicate to them that you a) don’t get it b) don’t care or c) do not appreciate what they are trying to accomplish or how hard they are working. Empathy is critical. And I don’t care if you are Mars or Venus; if you plan to lead a team, you need to genuinely give a damn about what your people are saying. If your team has no empathy with you, you have no team.

Do you understand and practice the simple power of “thank you”? For highly self-motivated people, a little bit of sincere appreciation for what they do for you day in and day out means a great deal and provides more fuel for their fire than any amount of making demands ever will. When was the last time you told your team “thank you”, like you REALLY mean it? I have had a couple of leaders who did this really well, and it was a gift. You know who you are – THANK YOU.

Great leadership, like social media, is mostly stuff we learned in kindergarten, but forget to do. Behave well. Listen. Show you care. So why is it so often overlooked? There is more to it, obviously: Vision. Strategy. Being tough when you need to be tough. But I believe that the basics of quality human interaction are just as important.

When @deziner and I were road tripping to Madison last week to speak on social media strategy, we talked about more than our impending visit to the Lazy Oaf Lounge (and the attached Urgent Care). We talked about what makes great leadership. And she has a fantastic metaphor in her video post: Leadership in times of trouble or tornadoes.

What would you add? How can leaders can go from good (or not so good) to great?

Photo credit: Dunechaser; Flickr Creative Commons

Instead, your smile, your laugh
The mischievous glint in your blue eyes like a little boy
The joy you showed me how to feel with your childlike lust for life
Will never die
G will grow up knowing what joy looks like because of you.

I dread the day when you won’t be with us anymore
But when you go – hopefully years from now – please go knowing this one thing:
In my eyes, you will always be the perfect father.
Loving. Generous. Selfless. Joyful.
My hero.

I love you, Dad. -Susan

So I walked home, cleaned up some dog poop, washed off the blood, went for coffee, went to TranslatorXD lab hours, ate some bacon brownies, soaked up some creative inspiration, and went to pick G up at school. A mere two hours later, the bloody gash episode had turned to this:

Glowing-happy, popsicle-eating, summer-vacation-is-here gooey, loving little person. This is how quickly life as a parent changes.

I wrote down this quote from Bruce Springsteen, the all-knowing poet and philosopher (whose ass I have touched, in case you didn’t hear yet), and it really sums up so much, so well for me that I wanted to share it with you:

“We live in a tragic world. (Oil spill.) But there’s grace all around you, so try to attend to the grace. Grace is just the events of the day. The living breath of our lives. Woody Allen once said he found himself happiest when he was standing in the kitchen in the morning, buttering his toast. So you’re chauffeuring your kids somewhere and you think it’s a burden. And then something happens, and it (grace) is there.”

I really wanted to have a daughter named Grace. Very unlikely to happen at this point. So I I’ll try to show as much Grace to my Griffin as I can.

What are the simple graces that make you happy, bloody gashes and all?

It was 1995. Fifteen years ago now, and it feels like 15 minutes. Six months earlier, Mom was diagnosed with a rare form of gynecological cancer that also afflicted her sister and her mother. They survived. She did not.

I was there in Las Vegas, where she lived, when she had major surgery in January. The surgery was so extreme that afterward she commented that she felt like a gutted animal. A few months later, I went for a visit, and then was called to London on business. A photo shoot for a brand campaign for a product that never even launched. While I was in London, I got the call: Mom is in the hospital. It doesn’t look good. I caught the first flight back to the states the next morning, stayed overnight at my home in Minneapolis, and caught the first flight to Las Vegas.

I arrived at the hospital on Mother’s Day, carrying a bouquet of her favorite yellow roses. But she had fallen into a coma. Not from the cancer, from a staph infection. I sat by her side and cried. I held her beautiful hand, and told her how much I loved her, thanked her for being a great Mom, and said I was sorry for so many things. I told her it was OK for her to let go, that we would all be OK.

She came out of the coma. Just for a moment. She said “I love you, too.” and then she slipped back away. A week later, she was gone.

That is the strength of a Mother’s love.

And I am so lucky to feel that same love for my son now.

Thanks, Mom.