Rewind and Reframe

Please note that as I type this I am in the middle of one of my most sleep deprived weeks in recent history (certainly in the last 6 months) and I am supposed to be preparing for an interview on Friday. Of course, instead, I am blogging.

I get a lot of ideas throughout the day for blogging, particularly when I am running recurring issues through my head; unfortunately, less than 25% of them end up being written up. This seems to happen especially when I shower, a time I have noticed my brain is most active because I am not multitasking or being distracted by the outside world, and instead do nothing but let the thoughts flow freeform through my head. Tonight, in the shower, I thought about all of the things I wanted to blog - the intense week I am experiencing through P&G's MBA Marketing Brand Camp, the incredible dynamic of putting 40 Type-A, brilliant, diverse MBA admits in a small space and giving them an open bar, my dilemma of career path and the infinite number of inescapable, tough choices that lay ahead, etc, etc...

I definitely feel a lot of these thoughts could be shared on my blog, and others could relate or find insight or give advice, but part of the reason I never post the majority of them here is because they are messy, complicated, and lengthy strands, all tangled together, not exactly compact sound bites that I can put up and have make sense. However, I do think I can do a better job than I have been, and to begin I need to several things: identify what the scope of this blog is, and then explain my background some more and thus give the necessary context to my thoughts.

This blog centers around 3 main issues, which are certainly interconnected, but do not always synchronize. The first is obviously business school, which for me and many others is a major life change which has already started to take place. It is happening, it is huge, and it will be my life for the next 2 years; example topics that this includes are class choices, technology involved, and activity levels. Obviously the reason for going business school is to progress in my career; career is the second main topic discussed and while there is great linkage and overlap with business school, it does occupy different real estate in your thoughts. This is the longer-term plan. Then the last issue, and what is the ULTIMATE plan, is lifestyle. Because long after you have graduated business school, long after you have retired, you will (hopefully, especially in this day & age of medical advances) still be alive. But you will also be alive in the meantime, and my blog, and others like mine, will ultimately present the intersection of these 3 lanes - b-school, career, and lifestyle.

Now what makes all of our blogs different, and is the biggest shaper of what gets published on here, is perception of self. To understand what I hypothesize, what I ask, what I promote, it is necessary to gain a little bit of understanding about ME - my passions, my dreams & aspirations, my preferences and my personality. Yes, I want to go to business school, have a great job, and be rich & powerful, but I also want to stop global warming, promote compassion across cultures, improve the lives of those around me, and more, things that have nothing to do with business school per se, but will nevertheless influence the choices I make while I am there. I call it perception of self, because what defines a person varies from person to person (the eternal question of the meaning of life) but others will call it passions, personal views, whatever works for you.

My point is, after determining the scope of what I am discussing, the next step is to know what kind of lens I am viewing said topics through (everybody's perception of truth is different, ne?); then there can be a greater understanding of what is said, which then leads to the thoughts and responses provoked from the sharing of ideas becoming deeper and more rewarding.

Hopefully that made sense. Unfortunately it's past midnight here, and I am already about 8 hours behind in sleep debt, so the actual topics I'd like to discuss will have to wait til next time, but as they say, the first step is always the hardest; I believe the best is still yet to come.