Introspection

Mood Management

/ Susan Scrupski / Leave a comment

omoaMy daughter had been looking for a full-time job in New York City.  She recently said to me, “I have mild unemployment depression.”  I told her it was a Quote-of-the-Day. (Happily, she has since accepted a job offer.)

I’ve been going through a bit of negotiating my moods lately too. I’m still carrying guilt and frustration over the demise of Big Mountain Data, while simultaneously facing financial insecurity as I attempt to pivot once again professionally.  I can feel myself slipping into a similar mild depression too.

When I sense I’m starting to get overwhelmed, I take precautions to pro-actively “change my mood.”

Yesterday, I took the afternoon off from client work and job-searching and visited the Orlando Museum of Art.  I’d been wanting to do this since I moved here last year.  The museum was lovely.  Architecturally, it’s more impressive than I expected with a contrastcotton2013 of vaulted, well-lit ceilings  and soft, low-lights for interior exhibits.  There were two featured exhibitions that I particularly loved. The first is this sweet display of sugary goodness: “The Influx Series: Will Cotton.” It instantly elevated my mood by the honesty displayed in how much we all love frivolous confections.  This portrait in particular, “Icing,” was spectacular.

The second exhibit I took a long time with was “Women of Vision: National Geographic Photographers on Assignment.” In a word, wow. Many of these photos captured a palpable sense of the struggle these photojournalists wanted to reveal.  Most were depressing, yet had uplifting messages embedded within.  The series (11 photographers in all) presented a stark contrast to the silliness of my self-pity and sulking that brought me to the museum. There was something about the fact that these photos were taken by women that touched me.  It was deeply moving.  This exhibit is traveling around the U.S. If you happen to be in line to receive it at your local art museum, I highly recommend it.

After immersing myself in art for the afternoon, I stopped to eat in a funky downtown cafe.  I had my laptop with me, and the cafe was playing an 80s channel on Sirius.  I was inspired to write for a few hours, and spent the rest of the afternoon in a world of make-believe that I was creating in my mind.  Before I knew it, it was almost 6pm.  It was a great day, and I accomplished my goal.  I not only changed my mood, I put my troubles in perspective, and came away with a newfound confidence about my potential to make a contribution to the world.

 

Invisible

/ Susan Scrupski / 3 Comments

What’s great about this blog is… no one reads it.

Lately, I’ve been feeling invisible.  It reminds me of an old Alison Moyet song with that title. Let’s listen to it on the turntable:

Tomorrow is the 10-year anniversary of my divorce. That is crazy. In many ways, I’m still not over it.  I always thought I’d be ready to move on, but I’m not.  It’s as if the permanent scars of that betrayal left an impenetrable fortress around my heart.

I never imagined I’d end up alone.  But here I am.  Alone and invisible.

 

Plug-pulling is Agony

/ Susan Scrupski / Leave a comment

pull-the-plugIt’s the most difficult decision a startup entrepreneur can make. In fact, I’ve never done it before.

It took me a long time to write this post. Every other time I started a business, eventually a new opportunity would come along that made sense, and I’d sell my business, or go forward with an acquisition. Each exit was a win for me. I used to take great pride in the fact that I never failed with any business I started.

I can’t say that anymore.

Big Mountain Data was my most ambitious venture yet.  Its thesis was predicated on the fact that there is a preponderance of data collected every day on domestic violence offenders that could be mined and analyzed to make predictions on which offenders are most dangerous. The data could then be used to intervene in the cycle of violence.  Across the country, the data could be used to identify, track, and hold offenders accountable.   Of course, I still believe this is true, but I wasn’t able to sell a single client on giving us the opportunity to do this, or build applications based on existing data collection.

Looking in the rear-view mirror, it’s more obvious how I misjudged the opportunity. It mostly boils down to this: just because something can be done, there will be a “market” for it. This is a rookie mistake, and I should have known better. Resistance to what we wanted to do arose from every facet of the field. I learned a lot, and for that I’m grateful. I’m also very grateful for the many individuals and groups that supported our mission along the way. Some special people even donated to our startup fund. That really means a lot to me. I won’t be pushing this post to social media, so if you come across it in your reader, feel free to leave a comment.

I’m horribly disappointed in and ashamed of this outcome. Not only because of the personal failure, but because of the impact of what we could have achieved if we’d been successful. Of all the businesses I started, this was not the one to fail. My only hope is I planted the seeds of looking at domestic violence in a different way, and that someone of influence will pick up where we started. For that reason, I’ll leave the web site up and the various blog posts that tracked with our progress.

Who knows.  Maybe I’ll pick it up again some day.

In the meantime, I’ll be reverting this blog back to publishing various and sundry personal thoughts from time to time.  It’s hard to believe I’ve been posting to this blog for over nine years.  It does serve as an interesting roadmap to my exploits over this phase of my life. Thanks for reading and taking a personal interest.