Teleconference: 7 Steps for Landing Butter Side Up!
Next Teleconference
THIS SATURDAY!!
Just a reminder, my next teleconference is:
November 22nd
3:00 – 4:00 PM EST
If you’re interested in participating, please fill out the form on the contact page. Once I get your email I’ll send you the phone number and access code you’ll need to join in the conversation. After you have done this once, you’ll automatically be informed of all future calls.
There is no charge for the teleconference, except what your long distance carrier charges for a call.
The Call
The conference call is set up in an informal format. I will introduce the topic and then the rest of the call is open to question and answers.
During Saturday’s conversation we’ll be addressing
(We will not likely get through all the steps but here they are just to get you curious)
The 7 steps for Land Butter Side Up
Step 1: Don’t Prevent the Fall
Step 2: What To Do on the Way Down
Step 3: What To Do upon Landing
Step 4: What to Do When You Don’t Land Right side Up ( Some Flip and Flick Techniques)
Step 5: The Five Second Rule
Step 6: How To Get Up
Step 7: Don’t Prevent the Fall
About the Author: 
Susan Kuhn Frost | Nov 20, 2008 | Reply
Why not prevent the fall? If I can stop from falling, why shouldn’t I?
Then again, I once heard the Abbot of Holy Cross Monastery in New York describe the life of a monk: you fall down, you get up; you fall down, you get up. (A far cry from the serenity we might fantasize would be the life of a Spiritual Professional.)
So, there might be something to this falling and getting up. But what is it?
Rachel | Nov 20, 2008 | Reply
Good question.
I will actually be addressing three points regarding “prevention”
1. When we should have, but we didn’t, prevent something…and how we can STILL land butter side up.
2. Precautions and prevention are not the things. Both “can” be beneficially and both problematic.
3. Some falling is necessary.
I will say something about the third point in response to your question.
A child gets strong enough to walk by righting themselves when they tumble. Sometimes we need adversity to grow. The trees in the Biosphere toppled over because they didn’t have wind to help their roots grow strong enough to support them.
We need some scuffed knees, it seems, to have something to help us locate and develop our strengths. Seems a bit brutal doesn’t it? But I think you are likely to agree.
Rachel
Susan Kuhn Frost | Nov 21, 2008 | Reply
Rachel, yes, I do agree with you, especially #3 that we learn by falling and getting up. Otherwise we stay in a very small sphere of life, constantly perfecting it. So maybe that is what the Abbot was saying, to truly live is not to keep perfecting a narrow slice of existence, but to be being true to our nature, which is vast.
I like the tender attitude you take toward falling.
Rachel | Nov 21, 2008 | Reply
Yesterday I wrote a post on Barbara Sher’s Bulletin Board (http://www.barbarasher.com/boards) asking for Butter Side Up stories. Donna J Carty replied with this remarkable story, and has agreed to allow me to republish it here. Donna used my seven steps (in parenthesis) to tell her story. I’ll break her comment into two parts given it’s long.
——–
I have an absolute beauty of a story to tell you.
In 1993, I had been with the same guy for 7 years. He was in the process of finishing a Ph.D. in German studies at NYU in German Studies, concentrating on the German philosophers. Since he didn’t have to be any particular place while writing his dissertation, he decided that this would be an excellent time to travel and do some Euro-based research. I approved. Off he went. I was a Research Assistant Professor at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine Pharmacology Department with my own grant and my own lab.
He called me from Krakow, Poland. “They say I can teach here at Jagiellonian University. I love this city! Come and look the place over and let’s decided whether it’s practical or not.” i arranged a week of vacation and went over, and I liked the city too. It was inspirational how much the Poles were accomplishing with pure elbow grease and very little money. I found out that at the university there, he would be teaching exactly the area he specialized in. In the US, his prospects would probably have been to teach “German, for students who have a language requirement to fulfill and don’t really want to be taking it in the first place” at a small college. It definitely made sense for him, even though he would only be paid the equivalent of $89 per month. I’d wanted to live in Europe for a long time. I wanted to get out of research science anyhow. I agreed.
We came back and spent the next year preparing to move. He took a trip over and arranged a place to live. I arranged to alternate two months in the US with two in Poland with their Academy of Science. I especially wanted to keep my lab going in the US because my lab tech was pregnant and would have difficulty getting another job since she couldn’t work with radioactivity which is a key tool in biochemistry. We arranged that my first two months in the US would be two months after we left because that is when the baby would be due. However, three separate Polish immigrant women went out of their way to tell me to watch out, that a highly educated young American man would be seen by young Polish women as a ticket to a green card, and that they would not respect any previous ties. By then, we’d had 8 year. I thought we’d be fine. My fellow even had a translation job that would provide enough additional income, eventually, to provide his own support.
We left. I discovered that the apartment he had chosen, though only 2 miles from my work, required a bus into town, a tram back out, and then a 20-minute walk for me to get to the Academy of Science. Totally impractical. And the conditions for work were miserable as well. I won’t go into them, but it was amazing they got any work done at all. I decided I’d spend my time in Poland on the writing end of my research. A colleague offered an apartment in the middle of the city, a big beautiful loft apartment a block from the main square. Excellent. We moved to there. Time came for me to return to the US.
To be continued…
Rachel | Nov 21, 2008 | Reply
Part 2:
I went back to the US two days before my lab tech’s baby arrived and stayed for 2 months. I stayed in good contact with my guy. A week before I was scheduled to return, I got an e-mail from him breaking the news that he had fallen in love with one of his students.
(1. Don’t prevent the fall)
I had to trust that my relationship would stand up to those Polish girls. I had to come back to the US to manage the lab while my lab tech took her pregnancy leave. I couldn’t prevent it.
I went back to Poland and spent the next two months basically shouting “You utter fool! How could you do this after 8 years?! Come to your senses, NOW!” every way I knew how. It didn’t work. I had to go back to the US for another two months. When I did, I told the guy I was coming back, and when I did in two months, I expected him to be gone from the beautiful loft or any contact with the girl to be cut off. No, I wasn’t providing any support aside from that roof and a minimal food budget for those two months. After that point, he could come to the loft to work on the translation, because the computer was mine and he owed me half what he would get for it.
(2. What to do on the way down? Protect your interests as best you can)
Mine were the beautiful loft and my half of the translation fees, and I gave him those 2 months to come to his senses with me gone. Another major interest for me was that international experience which I was NOT going to give up.
I returned to the US for my next two months. First thing, my department decided to have a meeting and decide whether I had accomplished enough over the last six months. I told them that the first two had been spent getting settled and figuring out how to accomplish any science in Poland considering the conditions, but what my lab had done while I was there. I told them what I’d accomplished in the lab during my lab tech’s maternity leave. I told them what I had to contend with when I went back and how settling that had had to be my primary concern knowing I would be returning to the US in two months, and what my lab tech had accomplished in the last two months. They said it wasn’t enough. That if the relationship had ended, I had no business being in Poland anyhow and must come back. I told them NO, and that I had decided that the one thing positive I could pull from this was my international experience and I was not going to give it up. They gave me until the end of the year to change my mind. That was the real bottom.
(3: What To Do upon Landing
Clear evaluation of the damage)
I went back to Poland. He had moved out, but I still had to deal with him on almost a daily basis as he was doing the translation. In addition, he was saying his mind still wasn’t made up, sometimes wanting to spend time with me, sometimes verbally abusive to me for putting him in the situation he was in (!!!), all over the place. This made it hard to really evaluate the damage. But I stuck to my guns.
(Step 4: What to Do When You Don’t Land Right side Up - Some Flip and Flick Techniques -
Putting the damage into some kind of perspective)
I think I’ve already described how I did some of that. A big part of what made it so hard was that I didn’t know enough Polish to talk to anybody about it. I spent a lot of time in the consulate moaning to anyone who would listen, a lot of time on e-mail (the net really didn’t exist yet) writing about it to everyone I knew. A doctor friend in the US had sent me back with a supply of anti-depressants and I used them. I did my textile arts. The Academy of Science wanted me to throw myself into my work, but I instinctively knew that would not work for me. Throwing myself into my craft work did. I produced a series of beaded pendants based on the idea that those who suffered deep wounds in the war between the sexes should get “Purple Hearts” (for their bruised hearts). Since I was planning to give up my grant to stay in Poland, I had a plan to make my living with my jewelry making skills. Silver and amber were relatively cheap in Poland, and I would sell my work by doing craft fairs in the US and the UK on the way to and from my alternate two-month commitments in the US for the rest of that year while trying to develop an English teaching practice in Poland.
(Step 5: The Five Second Rule - Brush As Much As You Can Off Right Quick -
1 second Get Up
2 seconds Cry
3 seconds Tell someone all about it
4 seconds Change the story
5 seconds Tell the new story)
Check check check. I did all of that.
My second year there, I lived as best I could on the jewelry and the English teaching. Near the end, I was teaching at the local international school and between the two I was very close to breaking even. Then I got the news that my little house I owe/own in the US needed some major repairs that I was not going to be able to pay for on the money that kept me going in Poland. My Visa was running out anyway. I had to return in October, 1996.
(Step 6: How To Get Up
You do it your way but you do it)
I think I described that, too, to a large extent, but there’s a bit more to the story. I came back to Florida, where my family lives because I needed somewhere to crash until (literally) my ship came in with my stuff. Besides, Orlando was nearby and I assumed I’d be able to find a decent job and accumulate a nestegg for returning to NYC. With a Ph.D. in biochemistry, and my history of research on the biochemistry of addiction, you’d think I’d be able to get a job analyzing blood and urine samples for drugs, at least. Nope. I had a year of doing the lowliest temp jobs in existence, right on down to stuffing envelopes. Two temp agencies eventually stopped placing me because they said the employers complained because I made it clear that I was capable and willing to do much more demanding things. Eventually, a NY friend offered me her spare room until I got back on my feet there. I had a job in a book store within a week of arriving and moved on to publishing within three months. I did NOT go back to science. From publishing, I went on to getting a degree in Surface Design/Textile Design and then work in the field and I’m now back in Europe again with the sweetest man in the world. We’ve been together 10 years and are great.
I actually cherish the time I spent in Krakow. I learned a whole lot, and really developed my tolerance for plugging away to get to better times.
(Step 7: Don’t Prevent the Fall
You can’t prevent it, but you will know you’ll be able to deal with it)
With the way the laws are changing in the EU regarding immigrants, we think it’s very likely we’ll have to go back to the US (and we feel a lot better about the prospects of that now that Obama has been elected). I expect a fall as we manage that, but I’m pretty darned sure we can deal with it.
_________
Thanks again to Donna J. Carty for this story. If you would like to contact Donna please let me know and I will provide you with her email.