Used To Be: Life After The Glass Ceiling

By Nora Brentwood

Is there life after working your way up the corporate ladder as a female executive? Come along on a humorous and thought provoking ride with Nora. Experience the ups and downs of navigating a career filled with the turbulence of a fast growing company, the idiosyncrasies of the men who control it and the rituals of the small pool of women trying to join the club. Then hit the brakes with Nora as she decides to chuck it all and figure out what life really looks like for her after the Company. The stumbles and successes of becoming a "civilian" and discovering what happiness and true self worth really look like. With a tongue in cheek style; this story, full of hilarious anecdotes and thought provoking questions, will have you bouncing between laughing out loud and contemplating your own future. A great bedside, pool or beach read which will resonate with a generation of women.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nora Brentwood
• Release date: Aug 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311558060

Book preview

Used To Be

(Life After The Glass Ceiling)

Nora Brentwood

Copyright 2014 Nora Brentwood

Smashwords Edition

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To all the women who keep sweating their way to the top,

While a squeaky nagging voice keeps asking Why?

This book is dedicated to you. I hope it makes you smile.

Table of Contents

Foreword: WWBD? (What Would Bourdain Do?)

1. Golden Girl: Golden Years

2. It Gets Tough

3. When the Going Gets Tough, the Women Get Weird

4. The Company: After The Fall

5. Life By A List (aka the beginning of Act Two)

6. Me Time

7. Hi, I’m Nora, You Don’t Know Me

8. Meditative States

9. Becoming

Foreword: WWBD? (What Would Bourdain Do?)

Inspiration. For me, it’s synonymous with Anthony Bourdain. Flaky? OK, maybe a little, but stay with me. If you haven’t read Kitchen Confidential, you’ve missed out on an experience. (You’ve probably also been living in a cave on a remote island, but your choices are your own).

Here’s a guy who was an ordinary Joe in his field. Some success achieved, but no one was going to write about his accomplishments or refer to the Bourdain Effect on the culinary world. In early middle age, after slugging it out in the food industry trenches for years, he sat down and wrote a little book about what it was like. Sure, it helps the reading process if you’re a foodie. If you’re not, there are some sections you’ll skim over with a quick so what? Despite that, this is a book that resonated with enormous numbers of readers. Why? Because they can relate. Maybe they are in the industry and get the subtle innuendos and hidden hints to real identities. Maybe they’ve been in his shoes. Or maybe, just maybe, like me, they understand what he’s talking about. The highs and lows, the crap he deals with, the strange characters he meets, the weird habits and mores of a particular industry and how it changes you. It also doesn’t hurt that he’s a superb storyteller and flavors his work with heavy doses of irreverence and sarcastic humor, dripping them like delicious globs of clarified butter into your willing reader’s mind.

The somewhat–of-a-sequel, Medium Raw, is a good read as well, although you feel the tempering of success between the lines. For me it was proof that these kinds of inspired reflections are really a one shot deal. But what a one shot. Folks are hungry to empathize; to be part of a common experience, to say oh, no shit; me too. It might even be the best kind of self-help. At least that’s my completely unscientific opinion.

So, with Bourdain’s face snarling at me from the book jacket sitting on my desk, I asked myself, WWBD? Would he write about my crazy experience with the Company and the life I’m evolving into now that I’ve left it behind? Would he think others would want to share my hardscrabble climb up the female executive ladder only to see the disappointing reality that it really IS like playing Monopoly at the top? I think he would. In fact, I think he’d smirk and say, Hell YES! Go for it! So, I undertook Used To Be. This is my Little Red Riding Hood works her way through the forest for many years, survives the huffing and puffing (and other odd behaviors) of more than one wolf, finds the end of the rainbow (yes, I know that’s a different story but it works) and finally, finally….says 'and, um, the point was what?’ Story.

Many of my adventures at the Company are in the first few chapters of this book. Some of them you will recognize, in some incarnation. Some will make you laugh; a few will make you shake your head with futility and a few will get a "God, I heard it was like that there, but really? reaction. Mind you, I never name the Company, but like some of the characters in Kitchen Confidential", it will be apparent to a number of folks, assuming they actually read this book.

But what has been more interesting to me as I’ve lived it over the last few years, is what comes after the forest and the multitude of colorful and sordid characters and adventures. The magical second half of this memoir I call "the new fairy tale" - one so new women don’t even believe it yet. It’s still urban legend rather than the cherished folklore of generations. So maybe this book is a baby Louboutin step at changing that. Maybe not. You tell me.

Bourdain’s life changed dramatically after Kitchen Confidential. If you don’t know how, there are hundreds of websites that can explain it. I applaud him; I think he deserves everything he’s received. I enjoy his travel shows and I liked seeing him guest judge on Top Chef, although the last few times he was on I was slightly mortified at how nice he was. That was actually a while ago. Bigger and better things have called to Tony apparently.

I am a realist and I know without any doubt that my life won’t change after this book. Specifically, three things won’t happen:

1. I will not be a New York Times Bestselling author

2. A second career full of travel, fame and fortune won’t come my way

3. I won’t ever meet Anthony Bourdain.

I’m OK with the first two. This was my own personal form of therapy, and if a few folks in my town where The Company is headquartered happen to read this and wonder if that’s actually them…well, so much the better. We all need a snide chuckle or a reality check on our personal eccentricities every now and then. Completing this little work and getting it out to the world in some small Internet way is really a joy for me. I have no intentions of becoming a real writer or chasing the publishing machine dream. As for the second outcome I won’t see? I have a happy and full life (spoiler alert on the last chapter!) and would prefer to travel where I choose to go, not where a network sends me, and definitely not under the pressure of someone holding a paycheck over my head (feels too much like one of the wolves in the old fairytale all over again). Actually, I read a while ago that