So, I was at a party about 8 months ago where there was a psychic.  She was one of those weird holistic ones.  As opposed to the normal “businessy” type you so often see.  Anyway, she had me pick from a tray of stones and then she asked me for family birthdays.  I was determined not to make any kind of give-away face or gesture and sat there staunch and stiff, talking robotic and trying to appear blank.  Which I’m sure just made it seem like I had to poop.

If I go to a party and get drunk with a bunch of girls, and the host in good fun hires a fortune teller to give her guests a 2 minute reading, I am going to make her work for it.  My stupid gaze is luckily unnoticed because she quickly goes into a weird semi-seizure like trance as she stares at the stars, hoping for one to blink her some kind of Morse code and reveal my true self to her.  She pauses and pauses, shimmies and shakes,  and flutters her eyeballs back into her skull.  Finally, ahhhh the epiphany, “I see… networking.”  “Really?  Networking?   You see networking?  No fame?  No travel?  No windfall? None of that, you see networking?”  “Well I’m sorry that’s what I see, and lots of it.”

Now of course I am racking my brain to think of the networking I do on a daily basis, okay a weekly basis, okay monthly?  I did recommend my cleaning lady to a neighbor recently, but I never called her back with the number.  Does that count?
I don’t even network with my friends.  I check my machine and there are messages from college that I haven’t gotten yet.  They say things like: “There’s gonna be a frat party after we go to the RATT, so come, okay, What-everrr.”

Seriously, anyone who has had the pleasure of awaiting my return call can attest to it.  My machine actually says leave your message and someone in the family will call you back…probably Buddy (the dog) and the truth is he used to call people back in a timely manner, before he went deaf.  Now he has a lot of trouble working the TTY system…cause he’s also arthritic.

Anyway, I continued to prod.
“Will I have a writing career?”
“I don’t know, but if you do it comes from networking.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, networking, and please send the next person, cause you’re taking all my time and thus inhibiting my ability to NETWORK! Oh and here’s my card.”

So, I waited like a vulture for each reading to end, making the person on the block highly uncomfortable.  I know you’re thinking, “I want to party with Jenny.”  I asked around, and people got stuff like, “You’re bored with your day to day routine.” and “I see you were close with your mother growing up.”  She even told one girl she was pregnant. But to me she said those 3 quizzical syllables, net-work-ing. I came home and woke Mark to tell him how dead on she was with her reading for him and the kids, and that she knew Ally was pregnant.  “What do you think networking means?”

He said, “It means you’re an idiot.  Ally is showing.  These “mind readers” take one look at you and than say the most generic things possible… everyone networks.  She probably told 10 people that.”  “Nope, you’re wrong.  I know because I made it my duty to stop enjoying the party, and hamper  others from doing the same by grilling them about their personal readings.”  “All I m saying is, I am so surprised a smart person like you falls for this.  You really think some random woman, from the big city of Pembroke Pines, Florida, who works the party circuit, has the gift of seeing into the future?”

About a month later I and I started my blog and started getting feedback from companies and groups.  I  have found that literally all I do, outside of my mothering and housewife gig, is network.  I’ve joined 107 groups on facebook, 3 women entrepreneur networks, and 237 bloglog communities. I write personal messages to editors, bloggers, mothers, and reviewers.  Then I annoy the crap out of all of them by mass emailing on a daily basis.

About a week ago I looked at Mark and said “Remember that fortune teller?  She said all she saw was networking and look at me.   She was right.  How crazy is that?”  “Jenny, you are not seriously thinking that because you now network she was right?  She could have said that to anyone… maybe it’s simply ironic.  Or maybe it’s a self fulfilling prophecy that you started networking?”  “Are you suggesting that because this woman said that I would network, that I dropped my enjoyable shopping and sleeping habits to spend all my free time getting fat in front of a computer?

Wow that shlub from Pembroke Pines Florida sure has some serious power of persuasion.  Lucky she didn’t say we would get a divorce.  I’d be looking for a good lawyer right about now.  Oh, the irony in Mark calling me naive for believing in such foolishness.  The psychic told me I would come across a disbeliever… see, she was clairvoyant.