The art of knowing when to hide and when to reach out

Ryan calls me from the office. I say, “Don’t talk to me now. I’m sulking.”

He says, “Okay. What are we doing about the five-year sales projections?”

I say, “I told you. I need ten minutes.”

“Nothing is going to change in ten minutes,”

“In ten minutes I'll be more pleasant on the phone.”

“Okay.” He hangs up.

I eat two waffles and then I write on the calendar how many calories I can eat for the rest of the week to make up for the waffles. Then I take out two more waffles and while they’re cooking, I change all the numbers on the calendar.

Then I look at my email, and there is another missive from Guy Kawasaki telling me that I am underutilizing Twitter. He even took a picture of two tweets he thinks I should respond to. He sent the picture to me.

He thinks I should give 140-character career advice.

Here’s some advice I think of immediately:

Don’t start a company in a recession.

Don’t have kids if you want to live on the edge of financial sanity.

Don’t get a divorce when you have a startup.

So probably I shouldn’t be writing career advice on Twitter right now, in the middle of sulking. But Guy is super nice to me. Always steering me well. So I need to take some of his advice.

Hummingbird604 tweets that his job search is frustrating.

Here’s some advice: Drink. Alcohol will make job listings look much more interesting.

Ryan calls again. It’s been ten minutes.

He says I can’t use the credit card until we close a bridge, which we have almost closed a million times but it didn’t close.

I want to tell him shut up about the credit card because I am so hugely the majority owner in this company, but it’s actually his credit card. This is a glitch. Or an unfortunate oversight. Or a moment of incompetence. Or all of them. But anyway, I use Ryan’s credit card. Sometimes I want to say, “Look, at least you’re building up a good credit rating.”

But Ryan is not the type of guy who cares. I mean he cares. But he just wants to be a millionaire by the time he’s thirty.

Sidenote: When I was his age, I stayed away from guys like him. And anyway, do girls ever have that goal? I don’t want to be bad for women here, but the only by-thirty goal I’ve ever heard from a woman is kids.

So Ryan tells me not to use the credit card and I remind him that I am still in sulking mode.

He says, “Why are you sulking? The email from Erik wasn’t even that bad this morning. “

Erik is our board member who I am not really sure if he thinks its okay that I’m using his name. But maybe he can just tell people it’s a different Erik.

So I misread Erik’s email and am sulking about it, but Ryan points out that it was actually a very reasonable email.

This is why I like Erik. And Ryan. They are both reasonable, measured, calm guys. This is the kind of person I need to be around.

Because here’s what I did next. I told myself that I had to put on makeup to go to work. You have to do that if you’re a girl and want to be taken seriously. I know you think I don’t care about being taken seriously because I’m writing stuff about sulking over board members, but you know what? Writing these posts is fine for my seriousness level. Trust me on this. Because my blog gets a lot of traffic, so shut up.

But what is not okay for being taken seriously is having a sulking day and not putting on makeup. Wait. Here. I am linking to research. Because I am right.

So I put on makeup. and it looks good because even though I hate it, I had lots of lessons on how to do it from my LA-stylist friends. If I stand in the perfect light, I look perfect. If I miss my sulking moments, I step back a little to see who I really am.

Okay. I’m going to the office.

At the office, Ryan says “Are you ready to do the sales numbers?”

And Dan says “Did you see the crowds for Obama on CNN?”

I say, “We have to go to see the speech. Where are we going to see the speech?”

Ryan leans back in his chair. He is the adult in this equation, watching the kids get out of doing the dishes or something.

We think we’ll go to a bar. But we can’t get parking. The we think we’ll go to Ryan's apartment.

“No,” I say, “we have to be part of the community. This is about community.”

We walk six blocks to the bar. No small feat in Wisconsin weather.

The bar is packed.

Ryan Healy, Ryan Paugh, and Dan and I watch the speech. Together. Ryan Paugh and Dan do shots with the guy next to us.

Obama talks about leading the world and bringing peace.

We watch the speech. We clap. I am grateful to have friends to watch with. Wisconsin is lonely a lot. But not now. I am not sulking.

And the guy next to us says his son was killed in Iraq. He pulls out photos. Hands us each one. And says that his son wanted so badly to come home and tell people how terrible the war was for the people of Iraq. But he never came home.

The man told us that this moment would mean so much to his son.

Ryan Paugh says the perfect thing: He says he won't forget this story.

Dan says the perfect thing. He says thank you for telling us.

I do not say anything. I cannot think of a perfect thing. Except that I am happy. Happy to hear the speech. Happy to work with people I adore. And happy that I was there to listen when someone needed to talk.