Oui, je regrette beaucoup

Getting married — at any age I expect, but especially for the first time after fifty — causes massive rushes of retrospection. I’ve come to believe that anyone who says they have no regrets about anything in their life fell off a different turnip truck than I did. As I sift through the karmically connected collection of life-altering choices I’ve made in my half century, I find a few that stand out as monumentally bad… the ones for which I would mortgage my soul for a Mulligan, even knowing a do-over would change the trajectory of the rest of my life.

Here are the Top 6 things I would do differently:

12 steps to health, harmony & prosperity

If you don’t want to be happy, warning: This essay is not for you.

A year ago, I was dead broke. I’d lost everything but my clothes and furniture to real estate investments and a brokerage that went belly-up after a 100-year hurricane washed it all away. No home, no car, no 401K, no money. I was a real estate agent, but with nothing in escrow, I was effectively unemployed. I had no resources, no apparent possibilities, and no way to pay the rent that was due two weeks later. I was about to turn 53 and I’d been fighting this losing battle for two and a half years. I was plum tuckered out.

How to get a job in 8 (kinda) easy steps

I uprooted my whole life in March because I could no longer make a living in real estate in Galveston, Texas. I spent my first three months in Atlanta unpacking and getting settled, being homesick and depressed and wondering what I was going to do next.

But self-pity isn’t a strategy. What I needed was a plan. So I sat myself down and gave myself a good talking to, ran some ideas past myself, and plotted my next steps. Once I started working my plan, I got a good job offer in three weeks… and four more in the month that followed!

I can’t promise my plan will work for you in the same timeframe — I don’t know your industry or market — but I am sure it will help you focus and move you toward your goal. Stay positive, and good luck!

Don’t quit your day job

I took a sabbatical from the real world in 2006. I called it a “real estate career.”

The last time I was in the real world.

I was bored with my corporate job, burned out and tired of the travel. Surely there was a more exciting way to live life and make a living, too?

I planned my exit well. Having been in the same industry and with the same employer for the better part of fifteen years, I saved my money, maxed out my 401(k) employer match, invested in a couple of idiot-proof pieces of property, got my real estate license, moved to the beach, took a voluntary layoff package from my employer, became a “top producer,” acquired a failing real estate franchise, became a broker, board member, trainer, and real estate consultant to the media and local community leadership.

I am not my FICO score

When I started buying real estate in 2003, I developed an unusual compulsion. I was a FICOmaniac. I joined one of those services that keeps track of your credit scores from the three major bureaus, and checked it nearly daily. I charted the ups and downs like a stock broker, kept spreadsheets, and analyzed every tick. Yes, not unlike today’s fascination with Facebook, I was addicted to FICOisGod.com and happily paid $6.95 a month for the privilege.

Job Search 2.0.11

If you haven’t looked for a job in a while, I’ve got news for you: The process has changed.

Gone are the days of calling your dad’s best friend, the CEO, and asking for a job, any job, and having one the next morning.

Gone are the days of mailing in your resume, then following up with a phone call and actually reaching someone of consequence.

Gone are the days of sitting with a potential employer and walking through your job history, explaining the gaps and emphasizing the good stuff, asking what they want and saying, “I can do THAT!”

Gone are the days of simple job titles and clearly defined roles and responsibilities. Gone, just gone.

Coming of age, embracing change

A couple of years ago, I had dinner with a group of friends that included a 77-year old and her 25-year old grandson. The conversation turned to the relative merits of Facebook versus MySpace, and listening to the two generations talk in terms of acronyms and modern hieroglyphics (like smiley face icons), I found myself time-traveling back thirty years to a series of unforeseeable events — those that would notably shape the first half of my adult life.

Straight out of high school, I went to the University of Georgia and declared a journalism major. After my first semester, I sat down with my academic advisor, who said, “Alice, your work is good, your professors like you, everything’s fine. I just want you to know that there are no jobs for women in journalism.”

But enough about me. What do you think of my…?

I put out a call for subject matter last night. I was looking for one good worm to go fishing with this morning. Within minutes, I caught some really big rocks: follow your bliss, friendship, and the meaning of life.

Well, I did ask.

But before I had time to clip on my caribiner and start chiseling at one of them, I got a message from a (younger than me) friend saying she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer, and suddenly that begged all three questions in one. I remembered what Rose Nyland said when she found herself telling two St. Olaf stories at once, “I’d like to see if I can handle it!” So cover me, kids. I’m going in…

Katherine Alice Thoman, NYC 1980

On Sunday I closed in a play that was my first full production in thirty-one years. I had performed and studied and auditioned and teched and all that fun stuff for about ten years, well into my twenties, but no full production start to finish with ticket sales and a run lasting more than one performance since 1979. By the mid-‘80s, I had met someone, gotten a job, and let my theatrical wheels go off in a ditch. I rationalized it as “growing up.” This is the follow your bliss part of the story because today I feel like I’ve turned back the clock on my dreams. I’ve been granted, and have accepted, a second chance at my first love. If anyone ever tells you it’s too late to do something you can’t stop thinking about, show them the door out of your life. Doing the business of your dreams is as life-affirming a pursuit as there is in this world. If you haven’t started yet, right now would be the very best time. You can finish reading this essay later. (Clue: It’s not about the money.)

Everything in its own time

My headshot c. 1980

“You are a character actor trapped in the body of an ingénue. You won’t be ready to work in this business for thirty years.”

With those words, my acting teacher, Elizabeth Dillon, whom I adored, dropped the curtain on my dream. It was an ordinary Tuesday night in the windowless basement room that we called rehearsal space in HB Studios on Bank Street in Manhattan’s West Village. It was March 1980, I’d been acting for seven years, and I had just turned twenty-two.

Then she turned to the whole class and said, “If there is anything else in the world that you are interested in, please do it. To be an actor, you must be obsessed. You mustn’t be able to think of anything else. It is too hard to do if you aren’t completely focused. Totally, completely focused.”