How I outsourced the Aughts

The decade begin simply enough, sure I was a little concerned about the Y2K virus but who wasn’t? I spent my days before the 9/11 terrorist attacks with my sleeves rolled up and my suitcase packed, traveling (effortlessly it feels now) from market to market building my business, discovering my path and making my way. By the time the decade (the Century!) began, I was the mother of a young child. The first winter of the decade was marked by icy, bone-chilling cold – but I was insulated with some baby fat and bliss – so happy, happy to be a new mama.

The winter of 2000 feels like a long time ago. An eleven year old has replaced the baby (there are four kids in fact). A second remarkable partner has replaced the first husband. And a strong, confident woman in her forties now stares back at me in the mirror. Yes, a lot has changed.

But what of our collective transformation?  How ever did we manage to get from there to here? As I see it we outsourced it.  

As our top corporations and even or government began to find more cost effective ways to operate so did we. Outsourcing operations seemed  the best way to maximize profits. So off our jobs went and somehow, this big concept tricked very quickly into our national psyche. Outsourcing was not just for call centers – no no, it was for all of us.

We could outsource our sustenance (gourmet food, prepared meals were easy and high quality answers to the pesky question of “what’s for dinner”) our fitness (we trained for nothing but we worked with sergeants or yogis) our beauty (by the end of the decade I no longer blew out my own hair, did my own nails or tweezed my own arches ) our intellect (led book groups became all the rage) and even our entertainment (I had a person to pair wine and dessert for parties and another to teach tie-dye at kid’s birthdays) – why? Well, simply put – because there was someone better qualified to the job for a reasonable cost.

So the cost benefit analysis kept tipping the needle over to outsource. I had a person who did most of what I needed. And yes to some degree this included parenting. In 2005 my dear friend, Hilary Stout wrote a piece for her Family Matters column in the Wall Street Journal about outsourcing parenting. I worked intimately with Hilary on this piece – unearthing experts on potty training, sleep consultancy and even bicycle riding.  The article hit mid-decade to a mix of disgust and intrigue. The experts cited in her article were inundated with new business queries.

In the Aughts, the details of the most intimate aspects of our lives were up for bid. And we eagerly would share the “best” of the options for outsourcing with our friends and co-workers. Being someone in the know, meant knowing where to find the outsourcing resources necessary – and thus a new language, a new stance and a new dialog began. We lost the dirt under our nails (well sure, we were getting manis). We lost control of our national code of ethics (we had Dick Cheney), our economy, our media and our educational system. Basically, our spreadsheet analysis of what could and could not be done more efficiently via outsourcing left us getting the job done on paper – but in a cold, soul-less way that brought us here.

And now I will go short, sweet and simple. It is over, it was fun and let’s please move on. We are kind of out of resources anyway – money is tight and we crave a new consciousness. So why not?

For 2010 – let me be the first ( I am sure I am not the first but on this blog maybe I am) to suggest we bring it back home. OK, not the hair or the nails (I really don’t do that so well…) But how about we all just commit to taking a good deep breath and taking on the whole of it – making the doing part of the experience the real objective.  With confidence and pride – let’s be in the moment and DYI in a way that does not break the balance bank. Seriously, let’s do! You saw it coming – welcome back cooking and baking and small birthday parties and home-brewed coffee and game night and dinner parties and any of the myriad of ways we can live our own moment, our own values and our own lives. If promise some home-baked cookies, will you join me?