Age is a funny thing. I don’t mean funny ha ha, like how it’s funny to laugh at old people when they can’t find their reading glasses and ask you to read the menu or how it’s funny to stand outside of movie theaters and taunt teenagers turned away from the latest R-rated sexy gore laden cinematic masterpiece. Both activities are favorite past times of mine, but I’ve taken the day off of laughing at others (except for Jana of course, I’m always in the mood to laugh at Jana). Today I am in a rare philosophical mood, if you need to step out for some fresh air while I pontificate, feel free—it won’t take long and I’ll still be here in the internets waiting for you when you get back . . .
Age is a funny thing because it is one of the few things that we all have in common, no matter how different our backgrounds our lives all follow the same basic trajectories and milestones. The number of candles on your last birthday cake defines you in the eyes of others while serving as a jumping off point for how you judge the people you meet everyday.

As you may have already guessed today we are celebrating yet another milestone birthday at Sixthman. Our favorite office manager a.k.a. the keeper of the candy bowl, Kelly, turned thirty today. Because she takes such good care of the rest of us on our birthdays, we thought we’d be nice and return the favor—thirty-fold.

When I say we, I really mean the rest of my co-workers as I took the day off of making fun of others. The rest of Sixthman took no such day off. This morning as I surveyed Kelly’s desk in anticipation for her arrival, counting the thirty rolls of toilet paper, thirty tubes of chapstick, thirty cookie cutters, thirty bars of Irish Spring, thirty plastic army men, thirty mini traffic cones, thirty pictures of Angelina Jolie, and God knows what else the benevolent birthday fairies left thirty of, I reflected on where I want to be in my life when I turn thirty in less than three years.

If you had asked me what my life’s goals prior to turning thirty were five years ago I’m sure they would have had something to do with publishing my first novel, traveling the world and maybe starting to think about marriage. Now with only 3 years before I join Kelly on the other side of 30 (when she’ll still be older than me) I’ve come up with some really good ideas for several novels and cruising in the Caribbean as a part of my job is awesome but not exactly the world travel I imagined. Oh yeah, and about that maybe starting to think about marriage thing—when I turn thirty I’ll also be celebrating my five year wedding anniversary.

So, Kelly, is thirty what you thought it would be?

What about everyone else, did your parents do the down and dirty resulting in the beautiful you less than thirty years ago? More than thirty years ago? Double thirty years ago? Not telling?

What was your life like when you were thirty? If you’re thirty now, is it how you imagined it when you were twenty? What are your life’s goals before you turn thirty?

-Joy

I recently bought my first home…well I’m almost there.  We close tomorrow morning.  The process has been intense for sure (who ever said buying your first home was fun must either have had someone else doing all the leg work or been able to buy anything they wanted), and at this point we are just crossing our fingers and hoping we did the right thing.  But I digress…

 Buying a home is not the thing that lets me know I am now a grown up.  You know what is?  Boxes. 

The sheer volume of boxes it is taking to pack up our apartment is absolutely overwhelming.  How much can two people cram into a little 2 br / 1 bath?  We realized last night while we were packing, that before - even when we lived together in NYC - we never settled anywhere for longer than a year at a time.  Which means we never bought enough, collected enough or for that matter lived anywhere big enough to have to pack more than 10 boxes and a few suitcases to move.

Well we’ve been in Atlanta now for SIX YEARS!  That is literally the longest my husband has ever lived anywhere and the longest I have lived in one place since I was growing up in the middle of nowhere.  We have gone from 10 box people to……drum roll please….almost 40 boxes, with I bet at least 10 more to go.  And that is after purging several boxes worth of items to Goodwill.  It’s a little bit astounding to us and a little bit upsetting.  The couple everyone said would never settle down anywhere, seems to have put down roots.  Well, for now at least :-) 

Anybody else had that moment where they looked around and realized they had unexpectedly hit a milestone in their life?

Roller derby is what keeps me going. When the stress of life, work, family, whatever, gets to me, I know that in a few days, I’m going to be able to go to practice and beat the crap out of someone, and they will thank me for it when I’m done. We have a saying in derby- You hit the ones you love harder. It’s true! Whenever my close friends hit me, they don’t just hit me. They try to take me out so I catch air on the way down. I would lose respect for them if they tried to take it easy. However, all that “love” adds up.

About a week ago, I was playing an intense game of derby, and I did what we call an accidental sexy fall. It involved doing a split, and my foot went one direction and my knee went the other. I got up, walked it off (or skated it off, as the case may be) and got back in the game. I couldn’t walk the next day.

So, I went to the doctor. As far as doctors go, I love mine. His office only smells a little bit like death and antiseptic, and he never yells at me for doing stupid stuff. He is sending me for an MRI tomorrow, and it makes me very nervous. He is worried that I might have a torn meniscus. All these things are running through my mind- What if I have to have surgery? What if it doesn’t heal right? What if I can’t skate for six months? Or longer?

Sounds bad, right? It gets worse: I found out I gained sixteen pounds since February. SIXTEEN POUNDS! And I’m supposed to lose sixteen pounds with a torn meniscus? I won’t be able to exercise until it gets better, so I guess I’ll just sit here and… eat?

Anyone have any cardio exercises I can do without straightening my leg or really using my knee at all?

-Babs

So an esteemed business associate sent me a book last week called Work Sucks and I read the entire book in 24 hours. The premise of the book is that work is something you do instead of a place where you go, and lays out a theory called R.O.W.E (Results Oriented Work Environment). Best Buy has put this practice into action over the last 3 years and it appears to be working. I reached out to a colleague at Best Buy for comment and, according to him, it is very effective and leads to more productive and happy associates.

The way it works is this: In a R.O.W.E there are no set office hours, vacation days or required meetings to attend. Each team member is given clear direction on how they can impact the company and the freedom to complete tasks within a certain window of time. If you don’t complete the work, you are released.

After reading the book, I realized why we haven’t seen something like this before. For it to work, pressure and accountability are placed upon on the leaders to establish and cast a vision to the team in a clear way. In a R.O.W.E. environment, associates are encouraged to challenge their managers when invited to attend meetings in order to make sure the goals of the meeting have an impact on their tasks, and to push back when asked to put out a fire that should have been anticipated by the manager. If you think about it, most managers limit their team’s success because they don’t effectively lead the team.

I bought some copies to share with the Sixthman team last week and we are going to have some conversations about how we can learn from this concept. It will certainly mean that the leaders here will be spending some time looking in the mirror and reflecting as to how we can rise to the challenge of casting a clear vision.

-Andy

Blogging is weird. Recently I read an article about blogging in Newsweek or Time or something like that, that raised an interesting observation about blogging. There are different forms of blogging. Some provide personal commentary on certain subjects or raise awareness to new ideas. This appears to be the form that Sixthman members prefer. Others, however, serve more as on-line diaries, chronicling people’s lives in real time. According to the article I read, this is the more prevalent blog type. With the advent of the internet and social networking sites as open forums, the freedom to spill any and every personal revelation is not only easy, but so common that most people don’t even stop to think twice about how strange this phenomenon really is. From mood-indicative smiley faces on a MySpace page to personal websites entirely devoted to tracking one’s daily experience, the invitation to share the intimacies of your life is open to the public.

So why do people so willingly and so enthusiastically take advantage of the opportunity to spill their guts to the world, and what are the consequences? We all know that posting the sordid details of your Friday night drinking binge can get you into trouble at your next job interview, but what is intriguing is the finding (referenced in the article I read) that posting your private thoughts for the world to see is actually a healthy exercise. For instance, daily blogging has helped dieters in their quests to lose weight by giving them the sense that there may be others out there holding them accountable. And for the junior bloggers out there who are getting younger and younger by the day it seems, places such as MySpace offer kids a chance to develop a sense of personal identity at an age earlier that ever before.

Taking all of this into account, I actually considered doing a personal diary of sorts for my blog today. Would I get some sort of satisfaction from sharing my day as I experienced it with all of you, whoever you are? Would anyone care that I had an egg and cheese bagel for breakfast, almost ran out of gas on the expressway, and think that my hair looks abnormally good today? Well, I have already used up enough space for today so I guess you will just have to wait till next time to find out what happens next. Until then, my private life is staying private.

-Nora

Every Wednesday I meet with a team of 15 peers for a game of wits, game of strategy, a game of kickball! That is right kickball the game you loved so much as a child you can play and enjoy as an adult with adult beverages.

I play on the Go Kickball League here in Atlanta, https://www.gokickball.com/atlanta/ . The league is centered on having a good time, meeting new people, leaving your worries behind and playing recreational games of kickball. There is also beer drinking involved on the field although it isn’t suppose to be visible. There is even a league bar for each of the four different parks that we play at. Teams are encouraged to hang out before and after their games at their league bar/restaurant to meet other teams and enjoy the complete social experience. We even got a league flip cup tournament taking place after our games at our league bar. For those of you who don’t know about the fantastic game called flip cup you can learn more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_cup

This is my first season playing on the Go Kickball League. I am on a team called The Revolution. We even got Daisy Yellow team shirts. Last night was our third game and put our current record at 2 -1. Each team will play a game each week for 8 weeks and have the opportunity to qualify for the season-ending tournament. The teams that qualify for the season-ending tournament advanced to play the 9th week in a round-robin, single-elimation tournament to win bragging rights and the coveted GOkickball “Friedman Cup”.

Does anyone else have a random sport league that they are part of and enjoy?

- Jana

Book of the Week: Dragon Tears by Dean Koontz

Every year Sixthman has several “firsts”. Last year was the first time we had done more than just the Rock Boat when we added Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Simple Man Cruise (then called Gimme 3 Days) and Barenaked Ladies Ships & Dip. This year was the first time we did five back to back cruises by repeating those three and adding John Mayer’s Mayercraft Carrier and Cayamo.

Next year will be a big first for us, the first time we’ve done one of our cruises off the West Coast. The Mayercraft Carrier 2 will leave from the port of San Pedro, just south of Long Beach. Now, as you may suspect, we know the port of Miami like the back of our collective hand. We know which terminals are better for what we do, and which aren’t (although we can’t always control which one we get). We’re also pretty familiar with ports in Ft Lauderdale and Galveston. San Pedro however, is a complete mystery. So today, being the team player that I am, I get the task of checking out our new port. I fly out this afternoon, and spend the rest of the week in LA, Long Beach & San Pedro. I know, I know, it’s a hard life. But Andy expects us all to make sacrifices…and this is mine. (Thanks Andy!)

Attached, find the photo of Jill Mac from when she and I had to go scout out locations in Grand Cayman. Again…another of my great sacrifices.

-Laura

Andy posted a while back about us taking the Kolbe Index personality test. Since then, we have continued to dive even deeper into finding out how we tick, to make a better working environment here at Sixthman. I, personally, find it fascinating! We have help with all this soul-searching business from a brilliant consultant, Jim Doggett,  with Avalaunch Consulting. After our last retreat, Jim gave us all copies of the book, “Now, Discover Your Strengths.” I wanted to know how I could use the things I am already good at (if there were any) to be better at my job, so when it came time to pick a book for our team to read, I choose this one.

We just finished reading “Now, Discover Your Strengths,” and according to Marcus Buckingham (who co-wrote the book), people that focus on cultivating their strengths rather than improving their weaknesses stand to dramatically increase efficiency while allowing for maximum personal growth and success. He calls this the “strengths revolution.” I’m sold!

Part of the book invloves taking the StrengthsFinder exam, which identifies themes that help people quantify their personal strengths in the workplace and at home. Great! There are thirty four talent themes (view them all here);  the StrengthsFinder exam (which is quite in-depth!) reveals your top five themes. Who is good at math? How many potential combinations are there? I’m seriously wondering. I think about a bazillion. But I could be off. At any rate, here are my top 5 strengths!

positivity
adaptability
empathy
ideation
strategic

None of these were particularly surprising to me, which was comforting. Perhaps I have gotten to know myself over all these years! I was so pleased that this was my personal, unique, oh-so-special combo, and was ready to embrace my strengths and begin becoming a better me! Until I called out to Steve, to ask what his top strengths were. He yells back, “positivity, adaptability, empathy, ideation, strategic!” What the?!? Now I am busy wondering how the heck I ended up with a doppelganger. However, we are having fun with it, completing each others’ sentences, tag-teaming dating duties a la Jerry and George, and pretty much just getting a giggle about our similarities.

I just hope he is the one who gets shot, not me. (Sorry, Steve!)(see video.) And, once I am over this, I can get back to strengthening my strengths and becoming a better person.
Check out this video: Saturday Night Live - Doppleganger

This past weekend, we attended the naming of Carnival’s newest ship, The Splendor. Carnival invited us to attend this event in London and, since we are chartering The Splendor for The Mayercraft Carrier 2 next March, we thought it would be a good opportunity to get a sneak peek of the new ship. We sailed on its inaugural sailing on Thursday afternoon from Dover, stopped in Amsterdam on Friday, spent a day at sea on Saturday, and arrived back in Dover on Sunday morning.

On Friday morning, we all set out to explore Amsterdam in different groups with a plan to meet up in the afternoon for a beer. My wife and I stopped at a café on a canal after lunch to rest for a while. We ordered a couple of Amstel Lights (it was like the Saturday Night Live skit “No Coke, Pepsi” ) and called Red, Jill, Pam and April to let them know where to find us. When we sat down, I noticed a man sitting across the canal that had a strong resemblance to someone I knew but I dismissed it because, well, I was in Amsterdam. After finishing our beers, we decided to walk around for a while since we had some time before we were to meet up with the rest of the group. When we walked across the canal, the man I had seen earlier was still resting with a friend. This time I could not ignore it and asked my wife if she also thought he looked like Marc Broussard. I had to at least say something so I called out to him and he looked up at me in disbelief. He and Cort were just hanging out waiting for the other guys in the band to meet them, as they were to play at the North Sea Jazz Festival the following day. We all exchanged hugs and walked back to the same cafe my wife and I had just been. Within an hour, there were ten of us sitting at a café under a blue sky telling stories and catching up. Afterwards, we all roamed through the “Red Light” district looking for Roxanne, and ended up in the town square people watching. One of the highlights was when April and my wife did a tandem cartwheel in front of some street performers.

We all agreed it would have been a “Good Day in Heaven”.
–

Several years ago, a friend showed me the website PostSecret.com.  It’s a site where people are encouraged to anonymously mail a guy a postcard-sized piece of paper with their most hidden secret written on it as part of an ongoing art project.  Every week the secrets on the site are changed so you can visit often and always read new things.

The first time I saw the site, I was completely enthralled.  Some of the secrets were very dark.   Some were funny.  Some were inspiring.  I don’t know any of the people who sent the secrets in, but each week I found myself laughing or crying or rooting for the person on the other end.   They were very powerful, those secrets.

As time passed, I had a big revelation – these were my secrets.  In a relatively short amount of time, I noticed that almost all of my most hidden secrets had been revealed in some way through this site.  It occurred to me that as different as people seem on the outside, at the very core we’re all very similar.  We’re all struggling through the same things.  We’re all just trying to get through life the best we can.

And then something bigger happened.  I found new secrets about myself through PostSecret.  Things I never thought about and things I never even wanted to admit to myself.  On Valentine’s Day two years ago, one of the postcards said “I am in love with my best friend.”  It took my breath away.  I saved it to my computer until I felt I could own up to it.  In a moment of intense courage and vulnerability a couple months later, I sent it to her.  This past May, we celebrated our two-year anniversary.

If you’re feeling brave, I encourage you to leave a comment anonymously with your secret.

Lauren