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	<title>WIRL Project &#187; Tara Lynn Foster</title>
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	<description>What It&#039;s Really Like.</description>
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		<title>The Kindergarten Milestone &#8211; The First of Many Lasts</title>
		<link>http://www.wirlproject.com/the-kindergarten-milestone-the-first-of-many-lasts/</link>
		<comments>http://www.wirlproject.com/the-kindergarten-milestone-the-first-of-many-lasts/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 16 Sep 2015 07:30:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tara Lynn Foster]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Family]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[kindergarten]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Letter to my Kindergartner]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[School]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wirlproject.com/?p=8732</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[To my third child on her entry to kindergarten: I’m not sure why kindergarten is the milestone that it is. After all, you are a baby used to being in childcare. I am accustomed to dropping you off, handing you into someone else’s loving and capable hands for the hours I have spent working. After five years of childcare and two children before you, I should be used to this by now. But this is kindergarten – THIS is different! I wanted you to be hesitant and clingy, but you weren’t. With all the excitement and exuberance of someone going to her own party, you hugged me and turned to run for the steps of that bus. You were so eager to leave. You stepped on that bus, by yourself, and started down a road that only leads forward. Perhaps it’s not the handing off of you to someone else, but how confidently you left me. You are my last to send off and I expected that it would be the same kind of experience I had your brother and sister. I thought it would be a celebratory milestone – and it was – but I hadn’t realized the finality of it: there are no more of this milestone for me after you. You are my last to go. Maybe that’s why it’s such a big deal to send you off to elementary school. You will have the blessing and curse of having the last of many milestones, marking my time as the mother of three school-age children, turning adult. What’s become real is that one day, youngest, you will leave our home and either live a grand life on your own or find someone to share it with. That person, I hope, will be your best friend. That person will get all the goody at the end of your day like I get when you step off the bus. That person will hear your joy, your hope, your fears and disappointments, regularly. That person will be the first to comfort you and the first to celebrate with you. Right now, that’s me. In the future, it most likely will be someone else and, while I know you’ll give me some of that precious opportunity, losing my position holds little to no pleasure for me. When life hands you something really great or really hard, you (like me) will call your mom to celebrate or to make it all better. I hope you do. I want you to. But today, watching you walk toward the bus stop with a backpack almost as big as you are, I take a mental picture and put it in my precious scrapbook of memories. One day the barbies will not be strewn across the floor. I will not have to pick up endless remnant ponytail holders from all over the house. You will not ask me to quickly do your hair while you eat a bowl of cereal at our breakfast table. There will be other frustrations and moments of inspiration that come along after you are truly on your own, but nothing as sweet as those that come with you and your brother and sister. The moments that seem mundane today will live in my memory as jewels and will make watching you grow one of the best and most bittersweet things I will ever do. Welcome to kindergarten, sweet girl, and the first of many last milestones we will experience together.]]></description>
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		<title>Shut Up and Dance with Me &#8211; How to Lead and How to Follow</title>
		<link>http://www.wirlproject.com/shut-up-and-dance-with-me-how-to-lead-and-how-to-follow/</link>
		<comments>http://www.wirlproject.com/shut-up-and-dance-with-me-how-to-lead-and-how-to-follow/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 07 Jul 2015 08:00:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tara Lynn Foster]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Family]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Life/Leisure]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Love/Relationships]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Work/Money]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[control]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[failure]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Follow]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[give up control]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[how to follow]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[how to lead]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lead]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[perfect]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shut up]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wirlproject.com/?p=7523</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Ah, Summer. Season of weddings and first dances. For some, learning the perfect dance can be just as beneficial and effective as premarital counseling. For me, this one activity became an object lesson in how to lead and how to follow – on and off the dance floor. There we were in the middle of the dance floor, learning the box step and trying to remember the fancy add-ons we had learned the lesson before. And as the music played – the romantic and meaningful music that we would dance to as our first dance – I dropped his hands in frustration and stopped mid-box like a three year old with a broken toy. Being the (self-appointed) better dancer, I had pushed against my fiancé, forcing him into the positions I knew were the right next steps. He, of course, was trying to lead and pushing back. For the first time in our series of dance lessons I completely lost my cool and fell into a sobbing blob of frustrated tears. This is a big deal, see, because I hate to cry in front of people. It doesn’t matter if you are my mom, dad, best friend, fiancé, I just don’t want you to see me break. This is a big deal, see, because I hate to cry in front of people. It doesn’t matter if you are my mom, dad, best friend, fiancé, I just don’t want you to see me break. But at that moment, I was broken. My full-time marketing job, my full-time wedding planning job (because I couldn’t give control over to a planner, of course), and my inability to control this dance finally got the best of me. That’s when I knew I had just come face to face with one of my biggest enemies in life: the need to control – the need to lead. The need didn’t come purely from a desire to be in front, but to control the result. The need stemmed from a fear that saying goodbye to control meant saying hello to certain chaos. Were I to let him lead fully, there would continue to be an opportunity for failure. He could (gasp!) mess up. It never occurred to me that I could be the one who could cause a dance-floor snafu. And let’s be honest here: I’m a long way from dancing with the stars. But we can’t control everything, can we? When it comes right down to it, we can control our words, our thoughts, our reactions, our actions, and we can even map out the worst-case scenarios and what we might do to avoid them (this is what makes me a really great risk manager, by the way). Being able to do this kind of planning creates a sense of comfort and security. We think we’ve got it under control but&#8230; Our sense of comfort is false. The fact remains that there is not one itty bitty, teeny tiny amount of control we have over others words, thoughts, reactions or actions. This means that we can never really be in control – not over everything, not all the time and certainly not over other people. What we can do is create stress, anger, and frustration trying to make the uncontrollable fit into our box of known perspectives. It’s exhausting. The fact remains that there is not one itty bitty, teeny tiny amount of control we have over others words, thoughts, reactions or actions. Oh. So I must surrender. Once I gathered my composure, I stepped back on to the floor and into the arms of the man who, despite my best efforts to show him every reason why he shouldn’t, chose then and chooses now to love me. He graciously accepted me back and acknowledged that we might mess up, but we would likely be the only ones who ever knew. At that moment I trusted him, gave over control and let him lead. The surprising impact of this small step was a liberation that I hadn’t expected. If we succeeded flawlessly, the dance would be beautiful. If we messed up, it wouldn’t be my fault. Oh joy, oh rapture. I could enjoy the act of dancing instead of worrying about getting it perfect. By the time the wedding came around, I had some idea what the steps were but had forgotten most. I reveled in the knowledge that my partner had the responsibility for remembering the detail and making the beauty of the choreography happen. Ha HA! Victory! Maybe you’re a leader of a team of people but you don’t know how to let go because you’re afraid they might not get it right. Maybe you are trying the best you can to keep a project from failing and feel like dropping hands in frustration. Could it be that what makes leaders great is knowing when it’s time to stop fighting to maintain the lead and time to start imagining the possibilities that exist in following? Lead or follow, but make the best decision for the dance. Either stop dancing altogether or get back on the floor and try again. Lead or follow, but make the best decision for the dance. In ballroom dancing, there must be two in the pair. The tango isn’t the tango with just one person; it’s a weirdo on a dance floor waiting for his or her video to go viral. However, being the leader is much like being the Highlander: there can be only one. Remember your stance, listen to the music, and trust your partner. More than likely if you mis-step, no one will notice but you. Do you struggle with the need to lead too? How do you conquer your fear of giving up control and how does it feel when you can actually let go? Share your comments, they might encourage others to step out and do the same!]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://www.wirlproject.com/shut-up-and-dance-with-me-how-to-lead-and-how-to-follow/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Top Ten Things I Learned After I Resigned</title>
		<link>http://www.wirlproject.com/top-ten-things-i-learned-after-i-resigned/</link>
		<comments>http://www.wirlproject.com/top-ten-things-i-learned-after-i-resigned/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 24 Jun 2015 08:00:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tara Lynn Foster]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Family]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Life/Leisure]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Work/Money]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Business]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Entrepreneur]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Help]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Learn]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[learned]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lessons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mailchimp]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[QuickBooks]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[resign]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Top 10]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Website]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wirlproject.com/?p=6899</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A little more than a year ago, I left my &#8220;cushy&#8221; job in corporate to strike out on my own. I&#8217;ve learned a lot during that time and now I&#8217;m ready to share. Here it is…the long awaited, much anticipated TOP TEN LIST of things I learned after resigning from my J-O-B. If not comprehensive in coverage, it is at least true in every aspect. This journey to one year post-resignation has been one of the most interesting, surprising, and rewarding of my career. There have been technical AND personal lessons all along the way. Some have been edifying and others have been just downright frustrating and debilitating. Thankfully, I have a wonderful support system which has carried me through the lows and celebrated the highs. May it always be so and may it keep me mindful of how to do it for others as they strike out on their own. Enjoy! #10. DO, finally, go on a field trip with your kindergartener’s class. Do NOT ride the bus with said class. #9. Setting up a website and a blog will involve forming a really close relationship with Doug the support guy at GoDaddy, the email support at Weebly, and the WordPress consultant (Booyah!), and basically anyone who is willing to answer your dumb I’m-not-a-millennial-what-does-this-button-do questions. #8. Spending three hours trying to export and reformat your contacts from a Mac OS to excel is stupid. There’s an app for that. It took five minutes. SMH. #7. SMH means “shaking my head.” This and many other acronyms give you lots of street cred with the cool kids hanging out on social media. #6 So, Mailchimp is not a great ape that works for the post office? Got it. #5. Coordinating calendars is difficult when you are on the same network, but nearly impossible when you aren’t and you are reduced to trading availability through email. Thankfully, there’s an app (or 10) for this, too. #4. Writing your own website content is kind of fun, but it turns out the “About Me” page is actually the hardest part to write (cue René Descartes). Have you ever really tried to answer the question: “Who am I?” It’s HARD! #3. QuickBooks: It is neither quick nor a book. Discuss. (#ihateaccounting) #2. It only takes two years, the loss of all daily access to PCs, the installation of Microsoft Office for Mac, two OS upgrades, and a few Apple classes to turn a Mac from a glorified TV into an actually useful piece of technology. (Where’s that Staples button…) #imamac #thatwaseasy And the number one thing I have learned… #1. People want to help. They really do. Receiving support and encouragement, and accepting help from friends, colleagues, and surprisingly friendly strangers on twitter (@ericlmitchell) during this time of major change has been a bigger blessing than I could have ever imagined. Everyone should be as lucky as me. &#160; Got anything to add to my list? What have you learned that you carried forward after making a BIG decision? Let me know in your comment below!]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>18</slash:comments>
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