ALUMRISE

I’ve been reading and hearing a lot about a coming year of global gloom and doom.

Certainly, the business environment is sobering. Whether it’s unexpected loss of wealth due to greedy Madoff-style swindling, or a growing mistrust of the large and amorphous corporate bureaucracy with its many heads — or just the general steep decline in net worth, there’s cause for concern.

But in this post, I’m offering a personal point of view, with no certainty that this resonates for others, but a hope that it does. For me, 2009 is a year of opportunity. It’s the beginning of the rest of my life.

Probably because I’m somewhat familiar with adversity (who doesn’t fight at some point or another to achieve a goal), I believe that in times of struggle, it’s actually easier to define your own goals and desires and be more succinct, and more creative in how you realize them.

I’ve been thinking about what the word “opportunity” itself means. Does opportunity mean wealth, a new car, a private school? Or does it mean the right to do what one loves, on one’s own terms, at a fair trade-off price? Does opportunity mean a 9-to-9 job with a large corporation and a pension check? Or does it mean exciting, challenging assignments or positions that fit a changing personal lifestyle?

Does opportunity mean doing something completely irrational but wholly satisfying that ordinarily would be considered difficult and impractical, like starting a new venture? Or offering one’s services to unpaid goals like charitable or social projects just because of the deeper and more important satisfaction of the soul?

This year, I am excited by achieving goals that are personal and specific, not broad and social. And I wish the same for every ALUMRISER.

My advice when an opportunity knocks? Be specific in stating what you want. Be open to opportunities that fit your needs, even if they don’t seem like poster-board examples of success. And every day, do believe there’s new opportunity around the corner.

While all this is easier said than done if the worry is a paycheck or a mortgage payment, I believe 2009 offers the opportunity for all of us to be a year not of gloom and doom, but instead a year to grow personally and professionally in some new and exciting, unknown direction.

I hope this for all past, present and future ALUMRISERS. It’s 2009: Opportunity knocks.

This weekend, I got teased a bunch for being social. It made me realize, I’ve spent most of the year locked up in my office, along with our dedicated team, bringing ALUMRISE to life.

I missed lots of parties in 2008, because I was on the road. Didn’t get a chance to talk to my daughter about her precocious 4 year old views on life:

“Mama, You don’t have a good remembory,” she tsk-ed tsk-ed to me, the other day. “You forgot again to go to the bank. And then you forgot to go to the post office.”

How does a 4 year old have a better grasp on my task list than me?

For most of 2008, I woke up every night every time I heard a ping on my blackberry. The blackberry has been put on winter holidays early this year. 

The end of year is a great time to let loose and remind ourselves who we want to be associated with; and which affiliations, either professional or personal – matter to us the most. It’s also a great time to think about who we will choose to be most closely aligned with in 2009. In good times or bad, our affiliations speak for us – whether in business or in life. 

As an ALUMRISE team, we’re spending a whole lot of our holiday time this year talking about the power of connectors and groups. You will be excited to hear what is to come in 2009 that speaks to the true power of group-makers, and the power of real-time, dynamic groupings of talented individuals.

But just right now, I’m reminding myself to go be social. The holidays are coming early this year, and thank goodness they are, because 2009 is going to be a rollercoaster. Enjoy the time, and keep your valued friends and associates close. That’s what I’m doing.

Most days, when I wake up, I don’t have time to take a pulse. Life’s too busy.

But this Thanksgiving week is deliberately slow.

When the year gets quieter, I turn to literature both to help me move forward and to allow me to reflect on the past and ideas that have been fermenting throughout the year. For most of this morning, a certain quote has been stuck in my head:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.” Charles Dickens. A Tale of Two Cities.

Dickens spent most of his life serializing the plight of the new industrial age. What children, what bourgeoisie, what farm workers were affected by the shift to factories and assembly lines?

This holiday season, we will have every opportunity to reflect on new shifts, seismic shifts, global shifts, in how we work and live.

Let’s make this quiet time, this holiday time, the best of times, by illuminating new solutions, not despairing the demise of the old.

How can we make 2009 the best of times?