Everyday Happy
In the shower, where I do much of my philosophizing I was thinking about happiness… I consider myself to be, on the whole, a happy person, and yet I hesitate when someone asks me if I am. There is something inherently fleeting about happiness, something that makes me want to qualify my answer, hedge my […]
Read MoreBig and Messy
know I am going to ruffle feathers when I say that I could not disagree with it more. I try not to ruffle feathers on Facebook – for me, it’s not the place for that – but if I did, I’d have written an oppositional status that goes like this: “As a mother, I will […]
Read MoreHow Do I Love Thee?
A woman I know once announced that she loved her husband unconditionally. I don’t remember what led up to the announcement, or how I responded, exactly. I might have laughed; I sometimes do that at inopportune moments. I do remember saying, at some point, that my love for my husband was definitely not unconditional. She […]
Read MoreHer short skirt…
On Monday night, I watched a screening of V-Day: Until The Violence Stops, a documentary about how Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues became V-Day, a global, grassroots movement to end violence against women. It is a moving, harrowing, beautiful film. I can’t imagine anyone watching it and not being affected. As you might expect, the film […]
Read MoreThe Last Help j Monday
It’s the last Monday in January, which makes it the last day I’m going to ask you for advice. Ever. Promise. So I’m cheating. I’m asking for your go-to item… in five categories. Five pieces of advice for the price of one. (But don’t feel like you have to do all five. Jump in wherever […]
Read MoreI’m not sorry
I’m noticing how much women apologize. Generally speaking. Anecdotally, I’ve noticed this. (It’s j-science.) At the beginning of 2021, standing at a personal crossroads, I wrote this down on a piece of paper and put it on the bulletin board above my desk. “I want to lead a less apologetic and explanatory life.” I wrote […]
Read MorePutting it out there
Earlier this month when I went to hear Chris Edgar talk about his book, Inner Productivity, he said something that struck home for me… uncomfortably. He was talking about procrastination, and he said it is often on our most important projects – the ones with the most pressing deadlines, and sometimes even the ones about […]
Read MoreI’ve always been terrible at that.
I am fascinated by koans. For this post, I looked up the actual definition. From Dictionary.com: A koan is a puzzling, often paradoxical statement or story, used in Zen Buddhism as an aid to meditation and a means of gaining spiritual awakening. Recently, not for the first time, this koan caught my attention: What did […]
Read MoreHelping… what’s her name.
Time for me to ask you for advice. But first, let me just say that you were all amazing last week when I asked for movie suggestions. I have 49 new movies in the queue! You guys rocked my Blockbuster world! Let’s see if you can do it again. Now that I’ve decided not to […]
Read MoreAffectionately Yours
So, lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about closing salutations. Wait, don’t go! This post will be intelligent, sexy, enlightening and maybe even profound (because the coffee I’m drinking is exceptional). It used to be easy. A few years ago, in email (where our correspondence covers the spectrum from professional acquaintance to lover), there were […]
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