By Mala Nagarajan
Note from Mala: this builds on a previous post, “What is Radical Human Resources?”
Note from Vega: this is a long one! But stick with it; it’s so worth it! Her section on “A New Vision for … Read More
By Vega Subramaniam
Tweet!
Welp, I officially deleted my Twitter (SORRY, my bad: “X”) account. Something I had been holding onto for too long.
Given that I more or less never used it, you might wonder why it took me so long. Well, please indulge me while I tell you a story about how I got onto Twitter in the first place.
Once upon a time, in early 2007, things were rather challenging in the Nagarajan-Subramaniam household. I was managing at my job, which I loved. Mala was working on her Creative Collaborations project, which she loved, but which she was finding harder and harder to cope with and manage. In truth, she was finding it harder and harder to cope with everything, including being alive. The way she described it, she had the “anti-Midas-touch.” In her mind, everything she touched died. She couldn’t bear it. So she took steps to stop being alive.
Luckily for me (and the world, as far as I’m concerned), Mala did not succeed.
While Mala survived, we couldn’t leave her alone in the days and weeks that followed, in case she tried again. And yet, I still had to go to work. So we turned to this cool newfangled thing called “Twitter,” don’t know if you’ve heard of it. It was an application where you could add “Followers” and send short messages called “Tweets” to whole groups of people, imagine that.
The beauty of Twitter at that time was that it worked for our little community. Mala couldn’t manage the energy for a call or a visit. But she could manage to get on “Twitter” and send “Tweets” to give us small updates on how she was doing or to respond to one of us checking in.
It was a game-changer for our little community. It brought us closer and gave us hope and kept us in communication.
Fast-forward some years, and I found myself on Twitter less and less, almost never, and finally never. But I kept my account. Every few months, I would notice the app on my phone, doom-scroll for 10 minutes, realize what I was doing, get super irritated with myself, consider deleting the app, and then put away my phone, app remaining ensconced.
I could not find the will to delete my account. Would that not be a betrayal of that sacred time in our lives and relationships? Would I not be turning my back on, dishonoring that moment? Erasing that history felt unconscionable.
I mean, even as I write that, I think, “poppycock!” (Yes, I really do use words like that in my head. Sometimes out loud, too.) No app in the world owns my history or relationships or meaningful moments (god forbid). OBviously. I know this. But yet again, I encountered this seemingly impassable abyss between Logical Acuity and Sentimental Sensibility. [Tangent, but here’s an article I found helpful about…well, putatively about procrastination, but also, in my head anyway, about melding Logical Acuity and Sentimental Sensibility. See also this very cool word that’s new to me, akrasia.]
By Vega Subramaniam
The topic of rejection and its attendant anxiety has come up with alarming frequency in the past few months, both with my clients as well as generally in various conversations I’ve had with various others (which, now … Read More
By Mala Nagarajan
A snowy egret in flight
I’m a member of the RoadMap consulting network’s human resources/racial justice (HR/RJ) working group. One of my most trusted and respected colleagues in that group recently posed the question, “What is traditional human resource management (HR), and what is radical human resources (radical HR)? I just don’t understand what radical HR means.” I could only assume that her question was meant for me. I mean, as far as I knew, I was the only one in our group who used that term. And others have definitely referred to my work that way.
I quickly—or, if I’m being honest, not so quickly, maybe more like … eventually—turned my gaze away from my own navel and toward the question she asked. What is radical HR? What differentiates it from traditional HR? Here we have someone with decades of HR experience asking a question about a term I throw around constantly. How would I want her to understand radical HR?
I started where I always do: with a web search. Here are the top ten search results I found (well, the top 11 results, because #10 does. Not. Count):
The list went on for a few pages, too!
I was quite surprised to see as many entries as I did, given how little I myself had heard the term used. It’s almost like radical HR has hit the mainstream?! Or has it? Read More
By Vega Subramaniam
The Great Blue Heron of Revelation
Mala had a revelation recently that drastically shifted how she thought about personal growth.
For most of her life, Mala’s been a rule-breaker. When she was young, one of her uncles attempted to impress upon her how important it was, when you were first learning, say, a musical instrument, to just practice techniques over and over again until you’ve mastered the fundamentals. Only then, he said, could you engage in improvisation and creativity with skill and artistry.
That poor man did not know what he was stepping into. By that time, Mala had read Deschooling Society and had concluded that any attempt to impose rote learning on students (think “wax on/wax off”) was the blighted path toward turning children into robots. Rather, Mala argued, we should be free to experiment, to try things out before or instead of learning the basics by rote, to just play around. She absolutely resisted the idea that rote learning had any value and was absolutely committed to the idea that the best way to learn was by playing around.
It’s been a blessing and, more to the point, a curse, to be so committed to doing it her way and forever bucking against rules and routines in the name of creativity and exploration. To be clear, Mala’s not happy with resisting rote learning always and on principle. She is clear that these “Rebel” traits don’t necessarily serve her mission, goals, and aspirations. Indeed, for much of her adult life, Mala saw her seemingly congenital inability to establish consistency, do something over and over again for its own sake, just follow the rules, as a personal flaw that demonstrated her moral failings as a fully-formed human being and grown-up professional.
And then she had the aforementioned revelation, which changed everything. Read More
By Mala Nagarajan
I’ve often heard, and have also adopted, the word “thriving” to describe the desired state of our communities. But I’ve never really seen anyone define what “thriving” means, especially when it comes to compensation. Someone surely … Read More
By Vega Subramaniam
I am someone with many, many interests. Too many to list. Every once in awhile, I’ll run into someone just a bit older than I am who, when I ask about retirement, will say they’re not ready … Read More
By Vega Subramaniam
The other day, I was talking with Mala about some work I was doing, and I said, “it’s going pretty well, actually!” My immediate, split-second response to my own statement was, “I mean, there’s stuff that could be better. It’s still a work in progress.”
Why did I do that? Do you do that, too—immediately diminish a positive statement you make about yourself? But why? I mean, “it’s going pretty well” was not an inaccurate statement. It was already qualified by the word “pretty.” Would I say that to someone else? “You did that really well! I mean, obviously it could be better.” You know what: no, I don’t see me doing that.
What animates my compulsion to qualify positive statements I make about myself? I think it’s a sense that I need to ward off accusations of bragging, or that I’ll jinx it/draw the wrath of the Evil Eye. There’s this inner voice that somehow I will be punished for this by The Universe. I want to calm that voice with my retraction.
But is it necessary? Does it work? Read More
By Vega Subramaniam
I’m (in a perhaps losing battle with my attempt toward) writing a thing. It started off as a 2021 NaNoWriMo lark. And then, over the course of 2022, it took steadily greater importance in my mind and life. What it is, is: it’s a mystery novel. I started writing a mystery novel. I know, right?! I was pretty proud of myself. It required me to stretch. To call it a departure from my regularly scheduled programming wouldn’t do justice to how much of a departure it was.
So anyway, yeah. A mystery novel. I spent a decent amount of time on this project through much of 2022, all the way into the middle of summer…until I didn’t. Some time in the middle of summer, I just stopped.I stopped opening the file, I stopped reading other mysteries, I stopped obsessing in the shower about how I was going to get Cassandra to confront Mateo, I stopped all of it. And I don’t have to tell you how that goes. How the longer you avoid something, the more huge and impassable it becomes.
There’s a lesson here, though, a lesson I keep forgetting. And that lesson is that when I’m avoiding something that seems like it should be doable, it’s almost always because there’s an underlying barrier that I haven’t yet examined.
By Vega and Mala
Hello, my friends! How are you? Are you OK? Probably not. Or at least, probably not totally, even if sort of. Just like Mala and me! Just like all of us. If you’re tired, welcome. There’s … Read More
