Accolades and Lofty Credentials by Pamela Francis

If you know anything about the planets then you may be familiar with a little phenomenon called mercury retrograde which we are currently in the throes of and which serves to have us all revisit unfinished business. The unfinished business I am revisiting started last summer when my sons and I were on day 12 of our 14-day stay at my sister’s house in Hayward, CA. Hayward is about thirty minutes outside San Francisco and though very modest it proved to be an oasis to our west coast-starved souls. We’d left California in late 2012 and essentially hadn’t been back until then (summer 2015). We were gearing up to head to Los Angeles after my sister’s house to continue our summer tour, derisively known as: “Escape from Antebellum Georgia”, and to service some of my clients I hadn’t seen in a while.

The snapshot on my boys is they’re thirteen and six, they’re physical, and they eat a lot. Because we tend to have somewhat limited funds (affirmation alert: dissipating resources always replenish on time), and all too often only a sketchy idea of where we’ll be staying from one week to the next when we’re traveling (affirmation alert: all of my needs are met), I, of course, try to maintain my worry-free equilibrium, sublimely referred to as All-is-Well-ness, by doing the things I regularly do to stay peaced out. I do affirmations, I meditate and I listen to Hay House radio. A lot.

So during the trip I was tuned in and someone on Hay House was speaking from an I Can Do It conference in Denver. I came in late but her name may have been “Nancy”. It was a rebroadcast of the talk she had recently given there and “Nancy…”, “Nancy” I find interesting for various reasons. She’s strikingly pretty in the promo picture she uses for her Hay House radio segment, and her story… her story puts a little wrinkle on my brow whenever I hear her tell it. Because, as non-judgmentally as I can put this, I find it to be eye-roll worthy.

She expresses it as a sufferer’s or victim’s experience but it just doesn’t move the dial on the pain-ometer enough for me. I know that sounds awful. Certainly pain is in the eye of the beholder and I don’t mean to invalidate “Nancy” or her experience. It just reads to me like the life of one of the heroines in a Danielle Steele novel. There’s the “Flowers in the Attic” family dynamic that shapes her, there’s international travel as she burgeons into a young career woman…, there’s betrayal by a dastardly husband…, there’s counter-betrayal…, the illustrious career experiences of a typical Type A Go Getter of the more ruling class than not persuasion… Listen, hers is no Lee Daniels plot. But the thing that stands out to me – or that STOOD out and actually acted like a wooden splinter for me when I was listening to her, was the notion of accolades and credentials.

If I had to guess at “Nancy”’s sign I’d peg her as a Virgo, and I don’t know if she actually is or not, but she photographs like one, her story trajectory has Virgo on it, and her verbal presentation, as it comes across on the radio feels Virgo. In any case, the perfectionist go-getter who navigates early childhood sadness and life betrayal is the Virgo archetype “Nancy” exemplifies for me, and I, being the mercury-ruled cousin of Virgo (Gemini) find that I share something with her. So maybe she’s a Virgo, maybe she’s not, but something about her feels kindred. I’ve always had a lot of Virgo friends. l respect and admire them tremendously and I grow in that part of our relationship that is a zodiacal square; that 90-degree aspect that challenges both of us in the presence of each other. So… accolades and credentials.

“Nancy”’s got ‘em. As she started rattling them off at the conference I felt my nose getting bent out of shape. Hers were loftier than mine. And wasn’t she supposed to be making THE AUDIENCE feel better about THEMselves. American Express pays her to do blah blah blah…? Saudi Arabia requests the honor of her tutelage for blah blah blah…? All American Express ever wanted from me was its $1200 back. And Saudi Arabia…? Well, I coulda been an on-air newscaster in the BVI if I’d had the nerve to quit my job in New York and stay in the islands past my Christmas vacation. Or so my friend’s parents seemed to believe as they tried to convince me of same.

I’ve done a lot in my multi-hued career and accompanying misadventures of self discovery. I’m a published author, a one-time celebrity tutor, one-time fitness model, one-time private school teacher, mom-trepreneur with five businesses launched between 2002 and 2012. I’ve been a paid Hollywood screenwriter, a New York music video producer, and the right-hand woman to several big-shots across a handful of industries. I’ve given birth twice without epidural and am currently raising two black males in “God is dead” but “Black Lives Matter”, America. You get it. I’m no slouch. And my upbringing and life imprints read more like “Precious” than “Nancy”’s does, so I feel doubly proud of the hurdles I’ve navigated along the way to personal achievement.

Having concurred with the YouTube generation that anyone with some creativity and a knack for operating a camcorder can become the star of their own media career, I’d all but forgotten about trying to rack up accolades and credentials doing what I’d earned a college degree to do — create and communicate via media. Oscars…, Emmys…, MTV Awards… blech. Who needs it? Right?

Well, after listening to “Nancy”, I realized and finally admitted… maybe I do. So I’m going back. No, not to school. I’ve got a bachelors, a masters and $90,000 in cumulative student loan debt. I’m going back to respecting accreditation, sparkling references, and credits that impress. I’m going back to caring — just a little more — about what my CV really says about where I’ve been and how I’ve shown up to my passion and gift. And THAT is the unfinished business mercury retrograde — in Capricorn, no less! — has me signed up for.

thanks “Nancy” ; )

Tags: #mercury retrograde