Memory Lane Monday - On Memory

I have a really good memory. I think it’s because I sleep so much. I can remember what I wore on the first day of school in 1992. I know exactly what the air felt like when my mother shocked the hell out of us by jumping into a swimming pool and doing laps, when we thought she didn’t know how to swim at all. I cannot be beat at 60s-70s-80s music trivia, and almost everything I’ve ever read is lodged firmly in my head and won’t go away (no matter how much I want it to). And most especially, I remember everything embarrassing that has ever happened, including the heat of my cheeks and the dizzying, nails-in-your-palms shame of doing something stupid.
List of Stupid Things I Have Done Regarding Numbers:
1. Celebrated the birthday of someone on my staff on the wrong date, six days prior to her actual birthday. She didn’t want me to feel bad, so she didn’t tell me. I can’t remember how I found out, but I was mortified. And I thought it was hilarious.
2. Printed the wrong zip code on the business cards for the hotel I opened in Arlington.
3. Ordered a cell phone with an area code from the wrong state. Emphatically, as though I absolutely had to have that area code.
4. Printed the wrong phone number on a brochure that was supposedly being distributed to 2,000 people. Interestingly, no one ever noticed it but my boss. I have a feeling that the purported sales calls for which the brochures were printed never took place.
5. Initiated a celebration for a close colleague of the wrong birthday, just a week or so before we opened a hotel. This included involving a group of about 50 people to get her a cake, sing her a song, and just generally make merry in honor of her special day. In my defense, her birthday was wrong on Facebook, and my heart was in the right place – I didn’t want her birthday to get lost in the shuffle of opening madness. Ha.
Designing My Own New Logo

Six weeks ago, when I started my business, I really wanted to design my own new logo. I love graphic design (despite knowing nothing about it, technically-speaking), and I thought creating my logo would be symbolic of what I wanted to do with my business and my life. I drew a sketch and picked out a font, then spent hours trying to figure out how to draw it. Despite downloading many free trials of many software programs, I struggled to iterate what I wanted. Finally, I used autoshapes in Microsoft Word, and I actually came up with something pretty awesome. Or, at least, it was exactly what I wanted. Once the logo was set, I designed business cards and an email signature. I even gave myself a trumped up new title (Queen Bee). So proud and pleased, I set about sending out prospecting emails and trying to drum up business.
I sent every email from May 1 to June 11 with the wrong phone number on my email signature. I sent out probably 40 emails a day, begging people to hire me. Using the phone number of a guy who works as a framer. Proving that, while I will never forget the embarrassment of having done something so incredibly stupid, my memory is clearly not what I think it is. I hope that the framer’s business is booming.

photo credit: gkjarvis via creative commons