An Inspiration Edition

Arianna Huffington, Star Jones and Susan Lucci

And, we're back.

Another unwanted (on my part, at least) extended absence. But today provides a much-needed break that allows for some time to blog. And while I don't have any deep thoughts to share, other people do.

I had the good fortune to attend the National Association of Professional Women's annual conference today, and a bevy of inspirational ladies were in attendance, among them Arianna Huffington (I got to shake her hand), Star Jones (she re-tweeted me!) and Susan Lucci (who I awkwardly asked for an autograph when I happened upon her in the ladies' room. She was very gracious).

The inspiration was flowing like good wine, and I came home feeling a little hungover, but in a good way, like when you were young and stayed out too late drinking way too much but the next day you couldn't feel too bad about it because you know you had an awesome time.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes, and I use the term "quotes" loosely because I was taking notes by hand and not on my best journalistic game.

Lesley Jane Seymour, EIC of More, on the changing media landscape: 
It's a different world. When I started as an EIC, I came in, did the magazine and left. Now I have to do TV, social...you can't just lock yourself in a room anymore and say "I'm going to do this."

Arianna Huffington on the same: 
It's no longer about talking, it's about listening. We used to consume news on the couch and now we consume it galloping on a horse.

Huffington on staying healthy: 
When I wake up after a good night's sleep, I'm ready to take on the world. Isn't that a great way to live life?

Huffington on Lean In: 
We also need to learn to lean back to reinvigorate. Because that's when you get your best ideas.

Huffington paraphrasing Rumi: 
Life is rigged in your favor. Turn stumbling blocks into stepping stones.

Huffington on how women judge themselves: 
If we can reduce the self-judgement we'd have so much energy freed up.

Monique L. Nelson, CEO of UniWorld Group, on what she would tell her 21-year-old self:
I'd forgive myself. Life happens. Either you can make it happen or it happens to you. I'd take things a little slower and not try to do so much so early. Eventually the environment took its course to slow me down.

Desiree Rogers, CEO of Johnson Publishing and the former White House social secretary, on the same: 
Don't allow people to tell you who you are.

Star Jones on the same: 
Place your health as a priority. I'm worth eating correctly, I'm worth exercising, I'm worth getting sleep.

Rogers on "having it all": 
It's a creation of my all. If I'm happy, everyone around me is happy.

Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx, on the best advice she ever received:
Failure is life's way of telling you you're not on the right course.

Martha Stewart on taking a break: 
You should never retire. You should never even use that word.

Stewart's random tip on my favorite snack: 
Cook kale chips on parchment paper to make them crispy.

Stewart on hitting rock bottom: 
I've never hit a bottom. It's just a bump in the road.

The exchange Star Jones re-tweeted me on! 
Star Jones: Where does the toughness come from? Martha Stewart: Um, just dealing with crap.

Stewart on her one regret: 
That I didn't have enough children. It's just a totally different way of looking at things.

Photo: me

I wonder: What's the most thought provoking thing you've heard lately? 

Life, You Win.

Don't worry I'm not suicidal. That statement sounds more dramatic than it is. But in truth, it's quite freeing to have recently realized that I have no control over Life*, so I should stop trying to control it.

Those who know me, even marginally, know that I am a control freak. I like order, and I like to have plans. I always need to know what my next step is going to be, whether it's in Life or simply for the next morning's breakfast.

But lately, I don't care to see past the next 24 hours. In fact, I'm annoyed that my gym now requires you sign up for a class at least 36 hours in advance in order to guarantee a spot. I don't want to think ahead that far, because if I've learned anything this past year, it's that Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans.

No one would argue that Life has dealt me a few blows when it comes to my Life plans. So now I'm waving the white flag. Admitting defeat. Giving up. But you know what? I'm okay with it. It actually feels good to not think about the future. I feel like this is something Life has been telling me to do for some time now, and I've been too headstrong to pay attention.

Well, Life, you have my full attention now. Right here, now, in this very moment. I no longer feel the need to have the next five years -- let alone five days -- of my Life planned out. But who knows? Tomorrow I could feel differently.

Still, I'm not going to think about that now.

*I feel compelled to explain why I'm treating Life as a proper noun here. It's because I often think of Life as it's own person, someone who is occasionally there to comfort me, and sometimes out to get me. Basically, I see Life as a frenemy.

Photo: Hannah's Hope

I wonder: Do you plan for the future?

It's Real Simple

Real Simple's Kristin van Ogtrop

Finally, someone puts into words this nagging feeling I've had about Sheryl Sandberg's book, Lean In.

The book is something no one can seem to stop talking about, whether they love it or hate it. I personally haven't read it, and don't plan to, as I think I've gotten the gist from those who have: young women need to be ambitious.

Sound advice for sure, but something bugged me about it. Enter Kristin van Ogtrop, the editor of Real Simple, who I had the pleasure of interviewing once. (She was very sweet and kind, and tolerated my fan girl gushing over her magazine with the best quip, which I've forgotten exactly, about how she loves nothing more than to hear how much people love the magazine).

But back to Sandberg. I'm reading van Ogrop's editor's letter in the magazine's May issue (something I always do and who a marketing friend once told me research shows no one ever does). About Lean In, she writes:

Here's the thing: I don't want to be striving bigger/better/higher/more every minute of every day. I don't always want to have a larger goal. That just sounds exhausting and worst of all, completely joyless. I want to enjoy my days: past, present, and future. 

And I thought: that's it. It's all this striving women are told to do that's bugging me. I certainly don't judge people who are ambitious; I've been there and to a certain extent still am. But it's this notion that we can't -- or shouldn't --  be happy where we are right now that I think is ineffective for everyone, female or male.

I spent a good portion of my young adult life striving and wanting something more. I've often thought to myself, "Things will be perfect when..." or "I can't wait until..." When I was in high school, I couldn't wait to get to college. When I was in college, I couldn't wait to get out on my own and work in the Big City. When I got out on my own and made it to the Big City, I still wanted more -- a better job at a well-known magazine with an apartment all to myself. I got all those things and more, and I value each and every one of them and the experiences that got me there. But the thing is, I never appreciated what I had when I had it, because I was always after this "something else." Looking back now, I often feel like I missed out on truly appreciating the awesomeness of where I was at that moment because I was so focused on the future.

And so I'm trying hard not to do that now. After reading van Ogtrop's editor's letter, it dawned on me that the reason I have no interest in Sandberg's book is because she's giving advice I don't necessarily want to follow. I also found it poetic how the editor of Real Simple managed to make a complicated feeling I had so, well, simple.

In her conclusion, van Ogrop nails it better than I ever could. Speaking of her own Lean In epiphany, she says, "When I stopped myself in the office kitchen, I suppose I was telling myself to lean back for a moment. I don't really want to lean back for long. But I don't want to lean in, either. I know I'm most comfortable standing straight up."

Me too.

Photo: Real Simple

I wonder: Have you read Lean In? What did you think about it?

In Defense of Gwyneth Paltrow and Her New Cookbook

Whenever Gwyneth Paltrow does something, there’s always a lot of hate thrown her way (see: here and here), and with the launch of her new cookbook, It’s All Good: Delicious, Easy Recipes That Will Make You Look and Feel Great, the headlines are no different.

"The book reads like the manifesto to some sort of creepy healthy-girl sorority with members who use beet juice rather than permanent marker to circle the 'problem areas' on each other’s bodies," writes one critic. “"It's All Good seems to take laughable Hollywood neuroticism about eating to the next level," writes another.

Why all the hate? Because in this 304-page cookbook, released this week, Paltrow advocates an elimination diet, in which one avoids coffee, alcohol, dairy, eggs, sugar, shellfish, deepwater fish, potatoes, tomatoes, bell peppers, eggplant, corn, wheat, meat and soy—not just for a period of time, but for the rest of one’s life.

Recommended by her doctor Dr. Alejandro Junger (of Clean diet fame) even Paltrow admits the idea was a bit overwhelming at first, and a blow for the self-professed foodie. Still, she says, the end result was life changing, and spawned the idea for this cookbook, which she co-wrote with Julia Turshen, a food writer and private chef based in New York.

Now, as an admitted fan of hers, I don’t quite get all the hate for someone simply encouraging living a healthy lifestyle, but even more so, I feel the need to remind people not to knock something until they’ve tried it. Over the course of my 30-some-odd years, I’ve eliminated whole food groups from my diet at different times and for various reasons—some were health-related, others just out of curiosity—and it always amazed me how differently, and often better, my body operated in the absence of certain foods. Some I’ve added back in and never looked back (like meat) and others (like cheese) I consider a treat food because of the effects, good and bad, their absence has had on my body. What worked for me didn’t work for all my friends, or even always align with Paltrow’s advice in this book. The point is, every body is different, and every body will have different needs, but you can’t blast someone for a certain way of life until you’ve given it a go yourself.

The lifestyle Paltrow advocates in this book isn’t always easy, and she readily admits that. “The rest of my life? Without Parmesan cheese and fried zucchini and pasta and baguettes and Pinor Noir?” she writes. “That was not going to happen, let’s face it. However, could it become my baseline?...Could I lean toward it more? I decided I could.” Without saying so, it sounds like Paltrow is following the old 80/20 rule when it comes to food: eating healthy 80 percent of the time so you can indulge the other 20 percent.

That certainly doesn’t sound like a “neurotic” and “creepy healthy-girl” way of living to me, but a balanced, healthy and realistic approach to eating for the rest of one’s life.

And let’s face it: If any diet can help us all look as good as Paltrow does at age 40, why not try it? 

Photo: Amazon

I wonder: Have you ever tried an elimination diet? How did it go? 

I've Missed You. (No, Really, I Have)

He has risen and so have I. (Happy Easter, everyone!)

I can't believe it's been two weeks since I last blogged. (Remember when I said I would blog every day? Ha!) My absence is certainly not on purpose, and it's not like I haven't thought about you, my dear readers, these last few weeks. Things have just been busy work-wise, which isn't really something I can complain about, given that I'm trying to re-establish my freelance career. (I'll have proof of my absence soon when some of the articles I've been laboring over are published.)

One thing I've realized is that the busier you are the less time you have for some personal reflection -- which could really be made into an argument for all of us taking a chill pill from time to time, but I digress. With so much obligation, work-wise or otherwise, it's a bit of brain drain to the point that when you have a few free minutes, all you want to do is zone out, not necessarily contemplate life, which is what this blog is all about. 

Hence why there's not really a point to this post either. Still, I'm just happy to be back, and hope you're glad to see me, too.

More soon.

Nagging Questions

I'm not a big believer in signs, but two big questions have been coming up a lot for me lately and so therefore are hard to ignore. 

Part of the genesis of these questions has to do with a series of articles I'm working on, and part of it has to do with the advice I've been seeking on my own as part of my current career-centric soul-searching. (And for the record, the people asking these questions are not new-age hippies.)

The first: Am I successful? 

Having recently been laid off and see my income drop dramatically, the obvious answer would be no. But it turns out, the best measure of my success is one that I never considered.
.
The second question, which I now realize is inarguably tied to the first, is just as easily answerable:

How happy are you? 

Truth be told, I'm pretty darn happy right now.

How does this net out, you might be wonder?

No doubt about it, certain things are a bit unstable, and I don't have everything I want at the moment, but overall I'm feeling fulfilled in the work that I'm doing, which is something I haven't felt in a long time. I'm really enjoying just simply writing and editing again, and I like the flexibility that freelance is affording me.

And when I consider the network I've built through my career, and how invaluable they've all been to me this past month, I feel incredibly lucky. This network helps me stay afloat -- and I'm talking about my confidence as well as my finances here.
 
Freelancing isn't a path I've purposefully chosen to follow, but I certainly can't complain that I am on it at the moment. I'm realizing a lot about what I value both personally and professionally, and more important, I have a better understanding of what I want to make of my life, both personally and professionally. And the interesting thing is, these conclusions are ones I never would have expected to come to.

So maybe it's time to condense these two questions: Am I successful at being happy?

The answer is, absolutely.

Photo: Deposit Photos

I wonder: Are you successful at being happy?

Being a Stay-at-Home Mom Is Hard

Not that I am one. But I'm getting a taste of life as one -- minus the kids, of course.

Since getting up at 6:30 this morning I have:

• Dropped off dry cleaning
• Gone to the gym (Hey, I may not be wearing makeup every day, so I should still try to look somewhat good for my man in other ways, right?)
• Made breakfast; ate said breakfast
• Taken a shower
• Figured out tonight's dinner
• Started laundry
• Paid bills
• Followed up on lingering health insurance issues
• Made lunch; ate said lunch
• Finished laundry 
• Folded laundry 
• Did the dishes from breakfast and lunch

And I still have to go grocery shopping, make dinner, and do some freelance work, ideally all before the husband gets home by 6 p.m. It's exhausting, and very early Mad Men, and I don't even have a little one around who needs my constant attention. How women with children pull this off on a daily basis is beyond me. (And yes, I realize that me being able to do things like go to the gym, take a shower, and even blog, are considered a luxury in mom world.)

As a corporate drone, I often fantasized about that time when we did have kids, and I would be at home with them, and it would be soooo easy -- especially nap time, because that is when I would sit on the couch, eat some bonbons and watch soaps. The keyword here is "fantasized," because I know being a SAHM isn't easy, and it's likely that I will not be a SAHM mom at all, but a working mom, admittedly out of necessity more so than desire.

I've been wanting to write about this subject for a while now, because it's a topic I think about a lot, especially now, with my career in limbo. And thanks to all the press around Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's new book and Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer's recent decree, the whole topic of work-life balance is at the top of everyone's mind again.

But the truth is, Sandberg and Mayer don't have it all figured out. And if they say they do, they're lying because if they did, we'd all be doing what they do. I've talked to a lot of working moms (granted not exactly of Sandberg's or Mayer's wealth or status) and they readily admit that they don't know how to achieve this elusive work-life balance -- and these women have kids as old as 16. So if none of these women can figure it out, why the hell should I expect to? As far as I can tell from these conversations, the trick is to make it look like you've got it all under control.

With that said, whether or not your married, whether or not you have children, life can get bananas. And so...

I wonder: How do you balance it all?

Daylight Savings Sucks

There is nothing I hate more than being thrown off schedule and that is exactly what daylight savings does. I know I'm not the only one to detest daylight savings -- it turns out cows don't like it much either. Writes Bora Zivkovic in the Scientific American:

Come Sunday morning, when the milking machines get attached to their udders a whole hour too early, the otherwise placid bovines on dairy farms around the United States will snort in surprise and dismay. They may give less milk than usual. They could take days or weeks to get used to the new milking schedules.

Zikovic argues that humans are no different, and that having to "spring forward" and "fall back" every few months not only messes with our sleep and social schedules, but with our life, too:

Chronobiologists who study circadian rhythms know that for several days after the spring-forward clock resetting – and especially that first Monday – traffic accidents increase, workplace injuries go up and, perhaps most telling, incidences of heart attacks rise sharply. Cases of depression also go up.

While I had no idea chronobiologists exist, I can attest that, personally, that first Monday after springing-forward is mired in grumpiness and clumsiness as my body adjusts to beginning its work an hour earlier than usual.

So why do we do it? Zikovic sees no good reason, calling b.s. on the argument that it helps conserve energy. But perhaps even more telling, Zikovic points out that we still do daylight savings because no one seems to know who has authority over abolishing this ancient rule.

So looks like we'll be doing DST until the cows come home.

I Have a Confession to Make

I'm going to admit something here that I've only told to a handful of people. I've only confided in these select few because it's a bit embarrassing for me, but after confessing, the majority of them react with something along the lines of, "Ohmygod meeee tooooo!" and we are forever bonded. So I feel confident coming clean now, because I know I'm not alone, and there's nothing to be ashamed of.

You ready? Okay, here goes:

I like watching CBS Sunday Morning. And truthfully, largely because I really enjoy the 60-second nature segments at the end of the program. (Yeah, I said it -- program.)

In case you're unfamiliar, CBS Sunday Morning is a show geared toward old people. I envision the people other than me who watch it do so shuffling around in a bathrobe, possibly even with a walker, possibly even in a nursing home. The host is Charles Osgood, an 80-year-old with a fondness for bow ties, and who also can be found on that other old-person favorite, the radio.  Segments largely focus on the arts, and the likes of Ben Stein and Mo Rocca contribute, though I often wonder if your average viewer even knows who these two are outside of the show.

Shocked? Yeah, I always am too when someone else admits an admiration for the show that's only a year older than I am. (It first aired Jan. 28, 1979.) Perhaps even more shocking is how we all quietly confess that we actually make an effort to be in front of the TV at that designated hour each Sunday morning. And while I won't out anyone here publicly, let's just say my kindred run the gamut from the 20-something you'd never expect was even up at 10 a.m. on a Sunday to the guy who could knock the lights out of 90 percent of the population in a single punch -- and would enjoy doing it. 

But just as I'm not alone in being a person under the age of 75 who regularly watches the show, nor am I alone in being able to explain why we find the show enjoyable. They don't ask hard questions of their interview subjects, and I often find the segments to be a bit behind the times -- literally. I often find myself thinking as I watch, "Oh, how cute. The Times wrote about that three weeks ago."

So while I can't say for sure, I happen to think the enjoyment in watching the show goes back to that comfort thing, like we're spending Sunday morning with our grandparents over breakfast.

Not that I ever did that. But it sure sounds nice. Particularly if fancy bow ties are involved.

Photo: 1337x.org

I wonder: What "old person" show do you enjoy watching?

March, I'm So Glad You're Here

Yes sir, that's the life

That's actually the lead lyric for one of my favorite songs by The Reputation:

"March I'm so glad you're here/where have you been all my life/it's funny how everyone acts like this has never happened before"

For the last few years, February has been a mixed bag of personal highs and lows, with particularly significant events occurring on Leap Day. I'm not sure why February is filled with kickers for me, but that seems to be the trend as of late. So after a particularly trying month, I was lucky enough to have a husband who realized I -- we -- needed a break, and so we jetted off to San Juan, Puerto Rico, for a few days, hence the radio silence on the blog, loyal readers.

The vacation, however short, was everything I needed: the only thing on the agenda was that there was no agenda, and for the first time in a long time, I could simply do nothing.

Because despite being laid off, "nothing" certainly isn't something I've been doing much of in these last few weeks since the news broke -- and it's paid off. It seems the career crisis the lay off caused has righted itself for the time being: Beginning this week, I start a part-time editing gig filling in for someone on maternity leave. Barring any more unexpected bombs, I have a bit of security for the next four months, which has put me a little at ease (and allotted me more time to figure things out).

So while I was loathe to end a vacation that warmed me in more ways than one, I knew that once it was over, March would be here, and for that, I am glad.

As for February? You can eff off for the next 11 months.

Photo: Me

I wonder: Is there a particular month you find trying?