On adapting in life

What stuck with me most from the “Nada que Ganar” podcast this week – recorded live in the Espacio Telefónica in Madrid – was talking about adaptation, changing one’s mind and one’s path and understanding that you don’t control everything.

“My life has been a succession of everything that you say isn’t going to happen to you or that you don’t want to happen. … You have two ways of changing opinion, one is progressively, due to many blows, another is all of a sudden as a result of one big blow. If you’re a light-filled human, you’ll change your mind without needing the blows or shocks, but not me. … My life has been, basically, adapting to changes. You can control the plans that you execute, not the results.”*

I think for me, my life has also been a series of adapting to change, but also I would say, pursuing change and sticking with the pursuit of the things that I really truly want, which has often required much change. Without delving into every single one, some of the major threads and changes:

I grew up in Davenport, Iowa; the oldest daughter of a dad raised on a farm in northwest Iowa and a mom raised in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. I was always drawn to the big city, and even other countries, inspired by the flags outside the Embassies we would pass on Massachusetts Avenue in D.C. I declared to my parents and sister at ~age 7 that when I grew up, I wanted to live in a big city with warm weather by the ocean.

As I applied to colleges, I thought I wanted to either be a Foreign Service Officer or a political/foreign correspondent. I chose Notre Dame partly because it would leave both paths open, unlike the Georgetown School of Foreign Service or Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, my next choices; and partly because Notre Dame gave me better financial aid than the other schools. While at Notre Dame, I spent a semester abroad in Toledo, Spain, living with a family, and fell in love with Spain. The rest of my life has been shaped by that fact, as I added living in Spain to the ultimate goal (big city with warm weather by the sea). Also while at Notre Dame, I worked on the student newspaper, The Observer, a daily paper. And while I had never planned to work in sports, despite liking them immensely, covering sports was more fun and much more widely read than covering news. So I focused on sports, expecting to later switch back to news, which I never did.

Now for some of the adaptations, chosen and not:

• The summer I graduated from Notre Dame, I got an internship through the Association of Women in Sports Media. I could pick between the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Both were excellent papers, and I wanted to talk to the sports editors of each before making a decision. I wasn’t able to do that with Fort Worth, but ended up choosing them anyway, deciding it would be more of an adventure going to Texas (Minnesota is next to Iowa), and the paper had won the coveted sports Triple Crown. Who knows what would have happened if I’d gone to Minneapolis. I chose Fort Worth, despite limited information, ended up being hired full-time there – the only newspaper in the entire United States with a female managing editor over sports (Ellen Alfano) and a female sports editor (Celeste Williams), staying there 5+ years and ending up rising to cover Major League Baseball.

• Another adaptation – two years in, still with my idea of moving to Spain, which wasn’t feasible as a sports reporter, I decided to pursue a Fulbright Scholarship in Spain. One day, I reached out to two mentors to ask if they would write me recommendation letters (I needed three). The next day, I was promoted from covering high school sports to be the second baseball writer, and I decided to put the Fulbright on hold. What if the timing had been different? Would I have wound up in Spain and out of journalism?

• From the Star-Telegram, I moved to NYC to cover the Yankees for Newsday. An aspirational beat. One of the top beats around, one I had earned with my work and reputation covering baseball, and then quickly became the youngest, the only new-to-NYC and the only woman on the beat. Covering the Yankees is super-competitive and challenging, as well as exciting. But newspapers were at a pivotal downturn, and I was mostly surrounded by middle-aged men trying to hang on until retirement, as newspaper sports reporting had been their whole career. That seemed an unwise strategy for me, being in my 20s. But what did I want to do? I considered law school, but wasn’t sold on it.Then, on a flight to Barcelona (there’s Spain again …) for vacation after the 2007 season, I saw an ad for an info session about an MBA at IESE. I decided to learn more about what an MBA was (I had virtually no clue what you did with an MBA, as a sportswriter and having never taken any classes in Notre Dame’s Mendoza School of Business). Then I took a sample GMAT, did well enough that I figured if I studied for it, I could do really well and get into a top program. I took advantage of traveling around the country as a baseball reporter to visit top MBA campuses, and my top choice was Wharton/Lauder due to the dual degree with a Masters in International Studies through the Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania. I fortunately did indeed do well on the GMAT and was accepted at Wharton/Lauder and decided to go. My admissions essays for different schools were based on both my own interest in and experience in sports and the advice that you should put something realistic – as a nontraditional student, saying I wanted to work in private equity would have been a long shot. Saying I wanted to pivot to the business side of sports was not a long shot. I listed as ideal future jobs, working for the international division of the NBA or Nike or ESPN, or in Spain with LaLiga or Barça or Real Madrid.

• Despite my essays, I wasn’t sure if that would be my plan, to stay in sports. Yet I liked sports, and my background was appealing to Nike, the NBA, et al. When an internship at Real Madrid came through, I leaped at it. Sports in Spain, amazing! Maybe my dream of living in Spain on a longer-term basis will finally come true, I thought!

To here, the adaptations I have described have mainly been me choosing among opportunities, perhaps without all the information, but up to me to a large extent; and/or me choosing to pivot ahead of a likely/potential shock to the system. But from here, it starts being more as Cris described, adapting to hostias.

• So while it might have been feasible to get a job in sports in Spain with my resume post-Wharton, having also done projects for the NFL and Philadelphia Eagles Youth Foundation and launched the Wharton Sports Innovation Conference during grad school, it was not feasible to get a job in sports in Spain on which I could repay the ~$230,000 of student loans I had … I did get pretty close to my dream job, though, for that stage, joining ESPN Deportes (serving Spanish-speakers in the U.S.) in operations and getting to work on partnerships that included clubs from LaLiga, the development of an ESPN app in Spanish and much more. Yet what happened weeks before I began work was the biggest “hostia” or “major shock” to deal with. On a flight back to Philadelphia, less than two weeks before I was set to begin work at ESPN, I suddenly felt dizzy and lightheaded and nauseous. I went to the bathroom due to the nausea, and was found unconscious, having hit my head and cut my face. I suffered a concussion that would lead to a 24/7 migraine (I’d never had a migraine before) and ultimately cause a stroke ~18 months later, leading to even more debt but at 11% interest. The financial burden pushed me out of the sports sector, as I simply had to earn more money to meet my student and medical debt obligations. What would have happened if I never took that flight? Would I be in a senior role at a sports team or league now? Would I be working on prep for the LA Olympics or US/Mexico/Canada World Cup?

• Skipping over some other adaptions, but after a few years of not pursuing moving to Spain (I did have a couple near-offers fall through in 2014), I returned to the idea of it in late 2017/early 2018. I was then working at Samsung Pay on marketing partnerships. I had paid off my medical debt and some 40% of student debt. I was newly single and ready to make my long-term life in Spain, if I could. I decided at the end of February 2018 that I would take 1 ½-2 weeks vacation later in the year, set up meetings and interviews and explore whether it was feasible to get a job in Spain that would pay enough to live and cover my student loans.Days later, I was laid off. I was shocked for about two hours, then realized this was the perfect opportunity: I had good severance pay, so it was time to jump on the dream to pursue moving to Spain. I spent months between Madrid and Barcelona, getting to know people and exploring the ecosystems in both cities. After many almost and not quites, I ended up joining the early-stage startup Polaroo in Barcelona as Chief Marketing & Partnerships Officer. I moved, was thrilled to be in my favorite city of Barcelona, and 6 weeks later, my visa was denied. I was crushed. Time to adapt to another hostia. I interviewed with many large tech companies, startups and entities in the financial space back in NYC, and ultimately joined Mastercard.

• All along, I was resolute that I would ultimately wind up in Spain. I don’t give up that easily! And I did, ultimately moving to Valencia a little over a year ago as Chief Partnerships Office of ClimateTrade. I always had my eye on the prize of living in Spain, and was determined to do it my way. More adaptations coming soon, stay tuned …

Life is about adapting to a changing world, personally and globally. Many of my choices and decisions over the last 12 years have been heavily restricted by either financial limitations due to student and medical loans or by health issues or by the fact that a visa is required to move to Spain. I am 16 months away from finishing paying off my student loans, so the financial restrictions are already a small fragment of what they were, and more opportunities open up with that. Health issues can never be predicted fully, but those are not a factor now. Visa restrictions still limit my options to live and work in Spain, but having met with numerous immigration and labor lawyers, I am well aware of the avenues I can pursue and that I can not, or that would be more challenging. I’ve pivoted umpteen times, some easier than others, but I have really built the muscles of resiliency and determination, and so many pivots have also opened up many doors for me.

Where have you pivoted? Where would you like to? Where have you been forced to?

*This is the first one of these where I wondered if I should just write in Spanish, as my primary reflections today come via one podcast en español and most reads/listens shared this week are in Spanish. But while my audience (on Twitter, aquí sois cuatro gatos) is mostly a mix of people in the U.S. and Spain, the vast majority of those in Spain speak English and the reverse isn’t true of those in the U.S. (comentario en español de Cris Carrascosa: Mi vida ha sido una sucesión de todo lo que digas lo que no te va a pasar o que no quieres te va a pasar. Tienes dos maneras de cambiar de opinion, una es de manera progresiva, a base de muchas hostias, otra es de golpe a base de una hostia. Si eres un ser de luz, cambiarás de opinion sin que te haga falta la hostia, pero yo no. … Mi vida ha sido, básicamente, adaptarme a los cambios. Tú puedes controlar los planes que ejecutas, no los resultados.”

Articles of the week

Superagers

He wanted to pet dogs on his 100th birthday. Hundreds showed up.

Men are not okay 

LGBTQ ally goes to Saudi Arabia

Podcasts of the week

Securities from Lux Capital with Leslie Schrock on fertility and how to positively impact it.

Nada que Ganar, the inspiration for this piece.

Decir Las Cosas, y la crisis de los 40. He dicho las cosas.

Seedrocket cómo los jóvenes pueden acceder a la vivienda

Journalist Esther Paniagua en el podcast de KFund hablando de la inteligencia artificial.

Books

La Guerra Civil Española. By Paul Preston. A superb analysis of the Spanish Civil War and extra relevant with elections happening next week. Also available in English, though I read it in Spanish.