I do not tell Ryan to shut up because he has taught me a ton about myself since the day I started working with him. And in fact, he makes me feel qualified to tell you how you can fire up your career by paying close attention to the people with the least work experience.

1. Recognize interns are gatekeepers to the good stuff.

When it was time to promote my second book, I went to Keith Ferrazzi, author of one of my favorite career advice books. I needed a quotation from Keith that said something like, “I am The Great Keith Ferazzi and I can tell you for sure that your career will be crap and you will die drowning in the blood of a rabid coyote if you do not buy Penelope Trunk’s book.”

Just so you don’t get confused, I’m going to start calling my first book my first book and my second book my second book. At this point, I have written enough about oral sex and family atrocities that you will not be shocked to hear that my first book is really a memoir that my publisher – out of the University of Colorado — decided was too disturbing to be sold as a memoir, so it was published as a novel.

Anyway, another thing Keith is great at is hiring interns. Keith’s intern, and gatekeeper, at the time of the publication of my second book, was Ian Ybarra. Ian said sure, he could come up with a quote. (It did not have animal references, but still, it was a nice endorsement.) Ian could see that I was a book-promotion novice, so he started giving me tips: Trade email lists, give speeches, pitch bloggers. Note: this was five years ago, when no one pitched bloggers.

Wait, please. Do not send me your book because I get too many. I’m sick of getting copies of business books. (Note to all publishers: I am getting really good at self-promotion and my blog is about to really take off, so could you please start sending me books with literary merit? Here’s my address: 15010 Oak Grove Lane, Darlington, WI 53030.) (And, a note to people who are going to say aren’t I worried that if I publish my address that stalkers will come get me in my sleep. Check me out on Google maps. The farm is so remote that even a stalker would be scared to go there in the dark.) (Finally, a note about using parentheses: Can we talk about style? Can there be more talk about style in blogging? Are links inherently parenthetical? What if each thought in a post is parenthetical, but they all add up to something that is central to our lives? Is that innovative or is it too e e cummings?) It’s so difficult to be original.

2. Don't rush on the phone; interns chat about things that really matter.

Then, one day, Ian wrote to me that he was moving with his girlfriend to Beloit. And then to Saudi Arabia. Or something like that. I can’t remember where he moved, but he grew up in a really really small town in a state that gets joked about just like Wisconsin. And he told me about how MIT courted him because he had high SAT scores in a weird zip code. When I worry about my kids going to a rural school with no orchestra, I hang my hat on hopes painted with broad brush strokes of the tidbits of Ian’s life that I may or may not remember correctly.

The next intern was Ryan Geist. I love him because I met him when he was at a big job at a big firm where I would never have been able to go to when I was his age because I was too busy not doing what the world expected me to do. What I love about Ryan is he gave those expectations a chance, and he was brave enough to say he didn’t like them, and he landed on Keith’s doorstep.

At the same time Ryan was there, so was Sara Grace. She called to get a quote from me. And I started talking to her about what she does. What her aspirations are. And she started telling me all these ways that Keith repurposes content. I was blown away. He is great at turning everything he writes or says into a post. The thing that really struck me was that he records interviews and has them transcribed in India and then edited into a post. That’s a great idea.

3. Let an intern show you your weak spot: you'll love her for it.

That’s a great idea because reporters ask interesting questions. And then I end up talking about topics I hadn’t thought about talking about before. The reporter uses 10% of what I say and the rest is gone. Poof. I do about five interviews a week, so recording them seemed like a good idea. But I realized that I actually like the process of writing. I don’t like the process of reading what I already said. (I wonder, does anyone actually like that process? It seems solipsistic. And shut up to all you people who think everything I do is solipsistic, self-promotion. Here is a list of people who are a thousand times better at self-promotion I am at it and I wish I could be any of them for a day:

Guy Kawasaki

Jason Calcanis

Ramit Sethi

And probably all you people who say that I’m in love with myself and never shut up about myself are also people who rant about me into a recorder and then hit replay so you can listen to yourself rant.)

4. Lay groundwork to get a job from the intern one day. (Ya never know…)

So goal number one is to be better at promoting myself.

And goal number two is to be better at using all the content I generate to create more posts. I am also not good at this because once I generate the content, it bores me. I want to move on. So I’m not sure how I will meet this goal either.

But here’s a start:

Esquire magazine contacted me this week about how to quit. And I decided it might make a good blog post. I see that it’s taken me too many words to get to it. So it’s hard to say that it’s the real subject of this blog post. But maybe you will like it:

(Don't do an exit interview. If they wanted to hear your ideas about how to make things better, you wouldn't be quitting, would you? So this is really just a way for you to burn bridges and annoy people. Don't fall into the trap. If they insist on an exit interview, say nothing negative. At all.

Send a thank you note. Anyone you worked closely with should get a hand-written thank you note. Bring up specific times when they surprised you with kindness, made your work better, invigorated you with their own contagious brilliance or creativity. And, if you are thinking that you work with people who merely make you want to hit your head on a brick wall, remember this: Intelligent people should can learn from anyone.

Take a vacation. You probably think about work all the time, not because you're a slave but because you like solving problems and learning new things and meeting interesting people. Which is what work really is. This means that the only time you can really take a vacation is in between jobs. So do that. Don't start the new job right away.

Have humility. You are probably not quitting to take a job that sucks, right? So, since you are quitting for a better job, you don't need to shove it in peoples' faces that you are moving up in the world and they are not. The world is not a race to a McMansion, the world is a contest for who can be the most kind hearted and tolerant. That's what makes a good life–you'll get kindness in return. So be gracious and grateful.)

Think of quitting as a networking event. These people are no longer your co-workers, they are they network that will help you get the job after the one you just got. And don't forget the entry-level people who look like they couldn't help anyone. The interns will get big jobs one day, and they will remember each person who saw them for who they are and who they could be.

(For readers who did not see the article, I like it. Here's a link. And, sidenote, the author, Louette Harding, was so good at interviewing – so patient and so insightful and I wish I could talk with her every day. But maybe that's just because we talked about me and this is just evidence that I am really hard to be friends with.)

If you are here for the first time, here are some shortcuts to posts I've written about having Asperger's syndrome:

Why I need a sick day to register my car

Five ways to be less annoying

5 Ways to make telecommuting better

Why I'm difficult at meetings

How I deal with sensory integration dysfunction

Really, though, almost all of this blog is about having Asperger's syndrome because most of my writing is me trying to figure out the rules for succeeding in the workplace. I know that people say I have an odd take on the rules, but I think I'm usually right, I'm just more literal and more blunt than most people.

Here are some examples:

Don't report sexual harassment

Hold CEOs accountable for their bad parenting

Living up to your potential is B.S.

Thanks for visiting my blog.

In fact, I've been getting so ornery about questions sucking that I did a webinar about how to write a good blog post and I got pissed off in the middle because the questions were so bad that I walked off camera and half the video is Ryan Paugh telling me not to be a brat.

So, in the spirit of not being a brat, I am answering questions that I think are interesting.

Question 1: Your recent post about Lebron James really resonated with me. [Note: Making a reference to that post I wrote is good. It makes me like you because I like people who read my blog.] I too have been in the quagmire of "interesting" versus "happy.” I've decided to go the happiness route and head home to Kansas and settle down. But I’m not sure on how to approach the job situation. I can use a relative's address on my resume, but I am working in New York so I am technically a non-local candidate to Kansas companies. And we all know how well that goes over with recruiters. [Note: I have written about this topic before. I know that she knows a long-distance job hunt is really hard, so I can’t send her to that link, so I had to write a new response. I like when people have already done some research—it usually helps them have a good question.] I can't go without a job so it's a difficult situation. Are there any strategies that are effective in handling this?

My answer: Say you are moving there in two months and in the mean time you are in Kansas every other week, getting things in order.

Something like that. So they don't feel like they are relocating you. (This, of course, does not have to be true.)

And, good luck with the move back home.

Question 2: How do I become an evangelist? Is the most important thing to getting a good network? Do I need to first become an expert? What is the key to this career path?

My answer: I think a better question is why would you want this job? The highly paid evangelists have big travel schedules. And it's a hard life. Most evangelists you can think of are people who are trying very hard to get away from that life of high travel. Seth Godin, for instance, focuses on writing and at this point takes (pretty much) only speaking engagements that are a one-day-round-trip flight. Guy Kawasaki is focusing on writing books and speaks only in California unless it is for tons of money. I got paid $15K a speech and traveled every week and would never go back to that life again. So the whole evangelist thing I think might be a myth, not a career anyone wants to sustain when they have it.

Sometimes I think I do not give practical answers. I am trying to be a more practical person. So here is actionable advice: Forget about being an evangelist. Work hard at knowing yourself and being kind to people. The right career path comes from that.

Question 3: [I’m paraphrasing a five paragraph email that was not as crass as my wording.] I’m 22 years old and I have a dream job, the kind everyone hopes for right after college. I love the job. I love my boss. But I also love this guy who is in the US Virgin Islands. I am in Baltimore. He makes a lot of money and I never get to date guys who will make more money than I will. Should I relocate?

My answer: Move for the guy. You can always get back on your feet. I've moved three times for a guy, giving up a great network and great job each time. It didn't always work out with the guy, but I always get back on track with a great career. And I never regret moving. You're young. You have so little to lose. And being in love is so fun.

[Then I wrote a second answer to her.]

I hate to sound like your mom but just listen: The Virgin Islands is known for really shady business deals. Be sure he's an honest guy. Not that any of us is totally honest, but maybe hope that he's in the top 30%. Don't get kidnapped. Maybe do a background check. Not kidding. I did a background check on the farmer before I went to his farm for the third date. It’s not paranoid, just practical.

Footnote to that last answer: For those of you who are naysayers about relocation for a guy, here is a photo that my ex-husband (who I relocated to NYC for) took on the farm (where I relocated for the current husband). It's my son's birthday, and we all had a great time, so following men, even if it's not good for my career I think has been good for my life:

When I first started forwarding my mail to the farmer’s address, he had to buy a larger mailbox. “Why do people send you so many books?” he asked. “Don’t they read your blog? You never review books you like.” [This is largely true.]

During the tumult of our move to the farm I stopped opening the packages. But the farmer got curious, and he started reading the books. It turns out that he doesn’t like them any more than I do. Here are my summaries of his summaries:

168 Hours: You Have More Time than You Think, by Laura Vanderkam

“Do you know you received three copies of this book?”

“Yeah. She’s a friend. I wanted to make sure I got the book and I thought it may have gone to the wrong address.”

“What do you mean she’s a friend? I’ve never heard you talk about her.”

“Well, I met her once for coffee. And she was nice. And our first books came out at the same time.”

“Oh. Wow. She does sound like a really good friend.”

“What did you think of the book?”

“I think it’s really easy to have one kid.”

“What?”

“You know how when one of the kids is with their dad, and it’s just you and me and one kid, and it is so much easier to have one kid than two kids that it feels like we have no kids?”

“Yeah. Isn’t that weird?”

“Yeah. But it’s weird that she wrote a book about how to be productive when she had one kid and was pregnant with the second. The book should be titled ‘You Can Do Anything if You Have One Kid.’”

I smile. I love the farmer—how he understands how hard it is to have kids. He understands that having two kids is two hundred times harder than having one kid.

This is a good time to link to the Time magazine article about having one kid. It’s a trend. And it’s good for your career – way easier to manage one kid and a career than two kids and a career.

Liespotting: Proven Techniques to Detect Deception, by Pamela Meyer

I would not have read this book because the bible on the topic is The Definitive Book of Body Language, by Barbara and Allan Pease. And I love that book. Also, Pamela Meyer's author photo in the back of the book is a glamour shot, and I know what it’s like to build a career on being good-looking. It’s exhausting,  and I’m sick of it, and I am obsessed with the idea of plastic surgery which is maybe messed up (I’m still trying to decide.)

I would never have written that, though. Because that would be a totally vacuous book review and you would all say that my blog is going downhill and you used to come here for career advice blah blah.

The farmer, however, has a more astute review of the book. He says, “I know this book is terrible just from the introduction. Look. Read this part of the introduction:”

My first job out of school was in the international department of a feature film company… I was shocked to discover that the industry was riddled with dodgy yet extremely common accounting practices… Fradulent behavior was so comon that most people seemed almost inured to it… I decided to accept a job at National Geographic Television and I had the good fortune to work in an extrmely honest environment. My collegues' behavior was unimpeachable, and I had nothing but trust and respect for the people with whom I worked.

“See? She’s a liar. And she thinks we are so stupid that we don’t know. So if the book assumes I’m this bad at seeing peoples’ lies, then I don’t need to read the book.”

The Myth of Stress: Where Stress Really Comes from and How to Live a Happier and Healthier Life, by Andrew Bernstein

This book arrived in the mail during the time that the farmer was having to adjust very fast from his bachelor life to toys underfoot, arguments over food at dinner, and a bedtime that always takes too long.

The farmer says the book says that these moments do not need to cause stress because he can tell himself that this is what should be happening. There should be toys, because there are kids. There should be arguments at dinner because normal kids prefer processed disgustingness over wholesome vegetables.

“So we don’t need to be stressed because this is what should happen,” he says.

I think it’s a crock. I think stress is what intelligent people do when they cannot control the world.

The Myth of Stress leads to the farmer reading zen stuff about peacefulness. He is the rock and we are the water. This is what he says. And I think of the story of Passover, when God turned water into blood; I want the farmer to be as stressed about stuff we cannot control as I am. This is what a team is.

So I don’t like the book. But I have to admit that the farmer has adjusted very well to our being in his house.

This is not to say life has been perfect. Do you see this table?

The first month of the remodel, all our stuff was in the garage. And then we sort of got used to it being there and we sort of started living out of the garage. And then the remodel got expensive and the garage got claustrophobic and during a fight the farmer threw the table higher than a pop-fly in kick ball and it shattered all over the yard.

No one is perfect. And the farmer hasn't thrown anything after that. Which makes me like the book.

Epilogue: I also tried to throw something. I said, “What do I have to do to make you listen to me? Do I need to throw chairs?” And I meant to be as dramatic as he is, but I couldn’t really get the chairs off the ground. And I hurt my thumb. So we are both focusing on things that will help remedy our problems: He is reading about stress management and I am lifting weights.

James is extremely talented and has been called the next Michael Jordan. He is a free agent this year which is the genesis of the hoop-la surrounding his decision, and he has been madly courted by multiple teams.

Many sportswriters have said that the widespread obsession with James' decision is totally over the top. The New York Times called the ESPN segment an ego-a-thon, which it may well be. But there's more to our fascination with the decision than just our natural tendency to be drawn to celebrities. James encapsulates the issues each of us faces when we decide if we should relocate.

It's friends and family vs. opportunity. James grew up in Akron, OH without a father. His basketball coaches played father figure roles to him. The Cavaliers picked him up when he was only 18, and he's been there for the last seven years. This is his home, his support system, and his roots.

The problem with Cleveland is that the team is not strong enough to win a championship. James has won every individual award but no NBA championships. And he could go to the Knicks, the Nets or the Miami Heat and just adding him would make that team the odds-on favorite for the next championship.

So James is choosing between safety and loyalty vs. ambition and accolades. For most of us, this is what relocation entails.

We know, in our hearts, that happiness does not come from fame, (and this hunch is confirmed in a study from the Univerrsity of Rochester). Happiness comes from close relationships with family and friends. But it's a hard pill to swallow. USA Today reports that most of Gen Y says they'd like to be famous. That explains a lot of the relocating away from families in small towns.

Also, most of us are not as rich as James, and we relocate with money in mind. Research from Nattavudh Powdthavee of the University of London shows that to make up for the decrease in happiness that you experience when you leave family and friends, you would need to make $133,000 more than you were earning before the relocation. (So, in fact, money can buy some degree of happiness.)

For James, though, it's not the money. Certainly he has enough. Which means he is looking for a life that is more interesting. The game is more interesting with top-tier players to pass to. James is a great passer. He’s a great team player, and he doesn't have anyone on his team that plays as well as he does. The thrill of playing is bigger with better teammates. So James is doing something many of us do—he is choosing a more interesting life instead of a happier life. (Note to non-NBA employers who bitch about loyalty: James is also is making a choice to go somewhere where he can grow his skills. Something that employers need to address if they want to keep any top-tier talent.)

I have written a lot about this dichotomy between happiness and ambition. I think our toughest decisions are actually between contentment and interestingness. James is not content. It is not his nature. He wants the game to be as interesting as possible, and he's hit a wall in Cleveland. I think for many of us, the relocation bug hits not because it's going to make us happier, but precisely because we are not searching for happiness. We are searching for something else. It's scary. It's scary to chase the interesting life because it means you are not likely to be content—maybe not ever.

And take a lesson from LeBron James: You can't make everyone happy, and it's risky to try. So when it comes to tough decisions, make sure you're doing what's right for you.

On the Internet everyone is a celebrity. I think Rebecca Blood was the first person to introduce this concept to me when she said  Generation Y manages itself like celebrities online, so privacy is not necessary for them. I think the proof of this is that gen Y prefers communicating via social media rather than email; news travels faster, via larger groups of people.

Marketers and publicists have made a science out of getting benefits from being a celebrity—sponsors, a fun network, great opportunities that lead to even greater opportunities. In the age of transparency Gen Y can see how to do this and they don’t need permission from MGM or Capitol Records to act like a celebrity.

I am constantly telling people to get a strong career by managing their professional profile online .  The way to a solid career is to be known for what you’re good at. All good workers are celebrities—a far cry from Horatio Alger and the Protestant work ethic, but a much more relevant trope for the new millennium.

Pace University reports that 99 percent of Gen Y is on Facebook, MySpace, or LinkedIn, and Redbook reports that one out of five moms is blogging. In this era, if you’re at all relevant in this day and age, you can google your name, and you will find photos, quotes, and some sort of history of your life, in a few lines or a few million lines.  If you already have everything that being a celebrity can get you, then you can be private.

I am struck by the way Prince William and Kate Middleton handle the media in England.

The paparazzi are all over Kate, who has been dating William for nine years and is pretty much a lock-in to be the next queen of England. (A testament to how in love the media is with William and Kate: The throne will skip William’s father, Charles, because he is so unpopular with the public, and go straight to William.)

William is still livid with the paparazzi because he blames the death of his mom, Princess Diana, on the car chase for photos of her with her date. So after Princess Caroline won a court battle against the paparazzi, William vowed to sue any photographer who violates Kate’s right to privacy. To this end, William is well versed in the laws, and Kate is well-versed in conducting herself in a way that exercises her rights on a regular basis.

This is a great video, for example: Kate is with her sister, both are non-royals at an unofficial event, so it is, by law, considered her private life. On video, Kate asserts (in a relatively kind way) that she is not taking her hand from her face because “this is my private life.”

Once she says that, the photographers leave, because it is true that it’s private, and they have, officially, violated the law. (Still, William pressured Kate to sue, in an effort to keep the paparazzi in line. She won and gave the money to charity.)

William and Kate can do this because they do not need any benefits as celebrities. They will definitely become king and queen, they definitely know enough people for the rest of their lives and do not need to widen their circle of contacts, and they definitely do not need more money. Celebrity is not valuable to them any longer. Privacy is more valuable.

Royal family member Peter Phillips, on the other hand, is eleventh from the throne and almost a commoner. He needs cash, so he sold the rights to his wedding to Hello! Magazine for roughly $1 million.

The problem is that what he really did was sell privacy. Not just his but William’s and Kate’s. There were thirteen photos of Kate in Hello!, which did not violate the law because the publication paid for access.

Now, circle back to the commoners of the Internet. Most people making money from the Internet do, in some way, sell their privacy. I remember, for example, hanging out at SXSW with Guy Kawasaki.

We drove around in a limo to a bunch of parties, and everywhere people swarmed to take photos with Guy. I said, “How can you cope with all this?”

He said, “I don’t mind it, and anyway, it’s my job. And I always remind myself there are way worse jobs than this. At least I’m not a garbage collector.”

He has a point. But still, I ended up sitting in the limo while he went into parties. I needed quiet.

I need quiet, but I am not in a position to guard my privacy like Kate Middleton. I want too much more that mere celebrity status can get me. I want to trade interesting ideas with interesting people. I want to create a constant flow of fun opportunities. I want to write for an audience rather than just for myself. So I have to show myself.

The farmer and I have this conversation all the time: He wants to be with a woman who is intellectual and worldly and who will live on the farm in the boondocks. Very few women would choose this life without being able to make this life better by supporting the family financially. And the way I support myself is writing about myself, and the way I stay engaged in the world is to write about it. Which means I give up my privacy in exchange for being able to live where I want and write about what I want. It seems like a good trade to me.

Did you know that on a farm, dinner is lunch and supper is dinner? The only people who lunch, I guess, are city people. I mix this up all the time and my kids correct me, which is how I imagine it is for immigrants who cannot learn the new language as fast as their children.

Anyway, here is a photo of the farmer and me having dinner on the farm. And it’s telling that I share a private moment, of my own volition, because I’m not next in line for the throne.

It is useless to try to explain to him why Home Depot tile is not innovative design. He doesn’t care. He just wants to be clean. I used to think diversity was my best friend marrying a black guy. But the guy graduated from rich-kid private schools and has tenure at UCLA and, at this point, I think diversity is not skin color but rather social upbringing.

I noticed there’s a lot of information on how to create diversity, but there’s not a lot of information about how to cope with it once you have it. So here are my tips:

1. Accept that some people don’t care about what you care about.
It’s true that we have not been very clean during the remodeling. All the plumbing is on hold. We take showers under the spigot for the well, and I keep thinking a towel is dirty, and put it in the dirty laundry, and then a week later it looks relatively clean, so I use it.

The farmer is concerned that people will think we don’t wash. He says people in the country judge you by whether you’re clean. This is the hardest part of remodeling for him.

The hardest part for me was painting because everyone besides my designer, Maria Killam, told me that it's a sin to paint woodwork. I painted anyway.

The painters were so offended by the idea of painting woodwork that after they did the whole upstairs they asked if I changed my mind because they could still leave the woodwork downstairs unpainted.

Also: The painters wouldn’t paint the pink bedroom until the farmer expressly approved, in person, the color of paint.  (His commentary: “Don’t call me in from the field to look at paint again, okay?”)

2. Know when you have to get your way.
What we ended up with are colors that make me happy and creative.

In fact, these are the same colors I chose for my childhood bedroom. My parents were so sure that I’d hate the colors when I went through puberty that they bought everything really cheap. But I never stopped loving my bright blue carpet. (Even now I remember the crayon I used to pick the carpet color: Cornflower blue.)

3. Don’t try to change others. See the world differently yourself.
I was going to go for farmhouse chic decor. But only non-farmers like farmhouse chic: you don't need an old bench in your house when you have four in your barn. So I decided that steampunk is a better look for me, and maybe I should sell our old barn boards – which I constantly rescue from the farmer’s bonfires – to the farm-fetish people of New York City.

4. Seek out opposing views, just to practice processing them.
Oh. Wait. Speaking of New York City, when I tell a New Yorker that I live on a farm, do you know what they ask? “How many bedrooms is the house?” Like all houses are weekend houses on the Hudson.  And do you know what Wisconsin natives ask when I tell them I live on a farm? “Do you burn couches?” It’s so common for farmers to burn furniture in their yard that people in Wisconsin know which furniture makes the best fire. (Yes, we did, in fact, burn furniture. But I didn’t realize it until my nanny asked if she could have the dresser we’re not using, and the farmer said, “It was cheap wood, anyway.”)

5. Use innocuous obsessions to distract from genuine conflict.
While I’ve been waiting to unpack, I have been gardening — adding plants the Amish farmer down the highway has on sale because it's too late in the summer to plant them.

Also while I've been waiting to unpack, I have been sort of unpacking. Going through books. I always try to throw some books out when I move because I have too many. In my 20s, my walls were covered in books. But once I realized that living a life buried in books is a sign of dysfunction, I’ve been trying to cut back. I still am not able to read a book from the library. I have to own it. But I am able to throw out a book if I no longer remember anything about it.

6. There's relief: A new, jarring way of thinking becomes tame over time.
I read Fear of Flying the first year out of college, and then I realized I was missing a whole part of the literary canon, so I spent a year reading the history of women writing about sex. It was an eye-opening year, but twenty years later, the books are not as challenging. I throw out almost all the books, but I save:

Fear of Flying, by Erica Jong

The Pillow Book, by Sei Shonagon

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, by Jeanette Winterson

My Secret Garden, by Nancy Friday

The Story of O, by Pauline Reage

Then I got worried that the town is so small that everyone watches what everyone throws out, and people will not appreciate the literary aspects of books like House of Incest.

I told the farmer that he should be careful bringing the box to the dump because some people would think it’s porn.

“Oh, really?” was all he said. And he moved those books a little bit away from the trash pile.

Then I noticed the books were making their way slowly, one by one, to our pink bedroom.

7. Real diversity requires real patience.
The tile is not the only thing holding us up. Also the faucets. Which the farmer assumed was the contractor’s fault and not mine because what sane woman would wash dishes in an outside well for eight weeks on her own volition?

“Actually,” I say, “I need brass polished finish for the s-trap, and I have had a hard time finding it.”

The farmer tries very hard to understand why a nickel finish on the pipes would not be steampunky-y enough for my farmhouse kitchen. “I hate to end up with a kitchen that is actually ironic commentary on our farm life instead of insightful commentary.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“It’s why I need brass pipes instead of nickel. Steampunk is insightful commentary on vintage decorating.”

The farmer hugs me. He knows I’m onto something, and maybe he can wait another week. Or three.

We go up to the bedroom. We knock over the stack of maybe-porn and we bump into the chandelier so hard that it sounds like wind chimes. We pull off the duvet that I had to travel to New York City to find, and just as the farmer is about to go down on me he says, “What’s this?”

“What?”

“There’s dirt.”

“Really?”

“How do you get dirt in your underwear? Were you gardening nude or something? How does this happen?”

I think about the dirty towel getting me dirty instead of dry. I think the farmer is not going to want to hear that we have no shower and no washing machine and no end in sight. So I say, “Yeah. I think it’s gardening.” And somehow, he’s relieved.

I am an ace at traveling without any money, but I’m sick of it. I thought it would never happen again. After all, I have a company credit card.

But I think Ryan Healy canceled my card. Or put a hold on it. I think this is maybe because I charged a ton of garden supplies on the card last weekend. I couldn’t find my own card, so I thought I’d just charge a few things and then write the company a check. But then I charged a bunch of roses. Twenty. I mean, the farmer can just dump a bunch of dirt in a pile and dump a bunch of stones around the pile, and voila – I have a huge garden plot. So now I have a sun garden that needs a little more spunk.

I discovered the credit card problem while innocently buying a Bluetooth headset in NYC so I could do the gazillion conference calls we do at Brazen Careerist with a CEO in DC and me on a farm and Ryan and Ryan in Madison. I mean, every meeting is a conference call and I’m getting a neck ache.

Also, I’m getting fat. The conference calls are hard for me. They bore me. I like big ideas, I like hypothesizing and predicting and synthesizing. The job of actually getting stuff done is not that interesting to me. But we are in execution mode at the company, and I need to stay focused. So I eat when I'm on the conference calls. On a good day, I eat ten apples. Cut into halves, then quarters, then cookie cutter shapes like stars. On a bad day it's one apple and ten apple pies.

So I am needlepointing, to stay focused on execution instead of food.

I remembered about needlepointing from when I was a kid, bored out of my mind in Miami with my grandma, when I spent summers at the Doral, where every evening was black tie, and kids ate dinner alone, in pajamas. I learned to needlepoint there. In between getting sunburned and getting spanked. And the needlepoint was the highlight of my trips. Well that, and my diary, featuring entries like, “Granma hayts me. I hayt Auntie. I want to dye.”

So I thought, maybe I should needlepoint to calm myself down now, so I don’t have outbursts on the phone. I am trying to be a more amicable co-worker. I am not sure if it’s possible, but I know that to achieve my goal of amicability, I have to stop getting angry on the phone, which comes not out of passion but rather out of boredom.

So now I needlepoint. And then it was so effective that I started needlepointing everywhere. I did it while I had dinner with my mom. She told me I was crazy. I did not say pot calling the kettle black.

I stopped following the color pattern exactly by the time I was so addicted that I was needlepointing while getting a Brazilian. And by the time I was doing needlepoint in the board meeting, I was disregarding the whole pattern in favor of a completely free-form approach, (which, by the way, strikes me as the future of all needlepoint — less rigidity).

Now I’m convinced I need beads for my needlepoint, and I’m actually super happy thinking of spending my days threading beads. The problem is that I don’t have any beads. There is a bead store near the farm, but they are not interesting beads, and I knew I was going to New York City, which must be home to many amazing beads. I was thinking that even though I don’t know where my bank card is, I have the company card. And now that I’ve charged garden stuff, the beads won’t get anyone any more annoyed.

But now I’m cut off from the credit card. I’m going to have to ask Ryan Healy, or even Ed, our CEO, why. They will say, “Have you been using it for anything weird?” They will ask innocently maybe, although they constantly worry about me and weird. They worry that weird will overshadow all the good about me.

But just because I am not able to charge beads while I’m in NYC with no money does not mean that I am out of good ideas. Don’t underestimate my workplace trends genius.

Like, I’m thinking that the future of all writing is short, twitter-like stuff, based on traits we see in Generation Z. This group only uses phones, and very few use phones for email. For Generation Z, email is for diatribes and texting is for communication. There are few laptops in our future. Laptops will be for dorks, and keyboards will be too small for big typing sessions, so only dorks will write long form.

Here’s another idea: The future of human resources is death. Good managers will do their own recruiting by having their own great network. (Great article from ERE about how Brazen Careerist will be a part of this revolution.) And RPO companies will take over the legal part of HR. So there won’t be a reason for HR. Which is good because it’s a cost center, which means there are no line manager positions in HR, so  it’s a dangerous career move for everyone.

One more trend. This one is for all the investors that my CEO will be worrying about when they read this post. Bloggers will rule the world. They will own advertising, because it’s so effective to target audiences through blogs. And blogs have the best content, because if someone writes great content, why would they do it for someone else? They should build their own brand.

Okay. So, look. My career as a workplace genius is not over. And anyway, my career was never built on me being conventional. I think my company is going to have a fit over the gardening charges. I wish I were scared about what will happen. But I am feeling fearless, thinking that if I am simply honest about what’s happening, I’ll be fine. Or, at least I’ll have a blog post.

Meanwhile, Ben Casnocha sent this link to me about sexual harassment at work. I write a lot about harassment (like you should not report it) because the rules of harassment fascinate me. What is harassment? And what is “I love you?” For someone with Asperger Syndrome, it is not obvious. Also, like all women, I have had to deal with my fair share of harassment.

It turns out that men and women in their 20's report the same levels of harassment. Some cases are considered harassment when a female manager calls a male subordinate "sweetie." And because showing any porn at work sets the tone for disrespect among co-workers, (a big problem at the SEC,) this post might pass for harassment if I called a male subordinate in to my office to look at it.

But now I'm thinking about distractions. Sexual harassment is really only a problem to you if it distracts you from what you’d rather be doing in your life. The same way you judge if alcohol is a problem is, maybe, the way you judge everything. I am so easily drawn into an email like Ben's. I click his link, then links within his link, and then, six hours have passed and I'm an intelligent conversationalist on a topic I had never heard about before that morning.

To the farmer, the farm is like the Internet–a tunnel of treats to fall into instead of getting back to work. There are the blackberries and deer and barn swallows and the frogs. But the farmer has self-discipline. He carries a camera, snaps a picture of the frogs, and then gets right back on the tractor.

My transitions are much more leisurely and, to be honest, I never know if I will make it to my intended next task. So I have started chanting a mantra to myself, (which I found on Lifehacker), that I think is going to help. The chant is all the productivity books in the world, distilled down to eleven words:

One thing at a time. Most important thing first. Start now.

The first one is a billboard I saw as soon as I got off the plane: A good question is the new answer.

That rings true to me. I have been writing about asking questions for a long time. It’s the best way to have a meaningful conversation and it’s the best way to rope in a mentor or look like a star performer. People spend more time thinking about answers than questions, but it’s the questions that make you look smart.

1. Good questions require creative thinking.
This has always been true, I think. Good questions are fundamentally creative. But today, when all facts are available to all people, it’s the questions that have become most important. To get to the answer, you have to ask the right question in a search bar. But also, to differentiate yourself in the workplace, you need to focus on questions, since answers are a commodity.

2. When you're lost, look for questions, not answers.
As my career shifts, I find that the key to keeping the shift moving in a productive way is to ask good questions. It’s ironic, because one of the most frequent questions I get from people is “what’s the best way to make a career change?”

And the answer is to ask much more insightful questions than that one. For example, I know I want to write about the farm, but I’m not sure how to do it. So I’ve been asking questions about how photos fit into blogs and what is the intersection of farming, family, and business?

3. Think of your career path as a question path.
I am also spending time redecorating the farm house. Actually, to call it redecorating is a stretch, since the farmer moved in twenty years ago when the couple living there died, and did not do one, single thing to redecorate. So the house is a time capsule from the 1940’s when it was designed.

Anyway, I wouldn’t say redecorating is a career change, but maybe just a vocation vacation. Do you know that term? You try out a career for a few weeks? That’s what I’ve been doing.

And I realized that I’d only want to be an interior designer for my own house. But I like learning about interior design. And I am realizing that any career shift is about learning and exploring until you land in the right spot.

Questions I am asking lately:

What is Steampunk Style? (Turns out I adore it.) Here’s an example from the movie The Golden Compass:

How to create a space that has texture? I took three conference calls while I was wandering through ABC Home. I thought that if I spend time there, I will somehow learn from being surrounded by examples, like this one:

Some of you will ask what these questions have to do with career change. But a career is not a history of how you make money. A career is a learning path. It’s what direction you take in your personal learning.

4. Asking good questions takes work – that you have to do yourself.
This struck me during my New York trip as well, because one of my best friends is Lisa Nielsen, who leads New York City Public School technology initiatives and writes a blog about education reform. She is a big advocate of me homeschooling my kids. She says that kids don’t need to learn subjects. Kids need to learn how to ask questions about things that are passionate about. And that’s no small task: First, you have to learn how to find your passions. Then you have to learn how to ask questions. Most adults can’t do either thing well, which is a good argument for taking kids out of school, I have to admit.

5. Field other peoples' questions to get better at asking questions.
Finally, the last thing I did in New York is visit Seth Godin’s office, to interview him. You can watch the video here. But before you look, let me tell you that the biggest criticism of the interview is that my commentary about peoples’ questions was obnoxious.

This is true. I am becoming increasingly impatient with questions that reflect poor self-knowledge. And with questions that reflect a penchant for finding roadblocks instead of finding ways to soar. Neither of these bad question types seem genuine, or useful. (Here are some examples of questions like that.)

No one complained about Seth during the webinar though, because he had a better approach to the questions. He tells people what they are really asking. So the webinar is really a webinar on, among other things, how to ask a good question.

The webinar also served as a good lesson for me. Instead of complaining about the questions I get, I should answer the question by sharpening the question. People almost always know the answer to the real question but the real answer is often scary.  So we conjure up an ancillary question to distract us from reality.

I also need to be more kind about peoples’ questions, by helping them figure out what their real question is. And the process helps me do it with my life, too. For example, I’m not sure my real question is “What is Steampunk Style?” My real question is how does style fit into my career right now?