I’m visiting my big kids and my in-laws right now — they live in the same town, which makes schlepping cross-country, if not easier, at least a good bit better — and while it’s not really a vacation, it’s as close to one as we get as a family, and so I usually just call it that.

So, I’m on vacation, kind of. And while there’s very little down time during these trips, one thing has become abundantly clear: I’ve forgotten how to relax. Read the rest of this entry »

I was filling my car up with gas last week (and having a minor heart attack because, my God, $55 to fill up the beater Saab I was driving that day? It’s like adding insult to injury) when the woman approached.

She looked to be in her late 40s. Windblown hair, flower-print blouse, minimal makeup. Looked like a harried mom who maybe needed help finding an obscure street in my tiny New England town. Looked like she was sure I’d say “No” if she asked me anything. So I made up my mind to say “Yes.”

“Excuse me, but can I ask you a question?”

“Yes!” I said brightly, one hand on the nozzle. My brothers like to joke that I can’t find my way out of a wet, upside-down, brown-paper bag, but if she needed directions, I would do my best.

“Have you ever thought about earning a little extra income from home?”

My first thought: Who hasn’t?

My second thought: Crrraaaaaap. She’s doing a sales pitch. And with the gas pump ticking away and my car keys in my pocket, I was a captive audience. It’s like a taking a call from a telemarketer times infinity, because you can’t really hang up on one when she’s standing in front of you. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a really interesting conversation starting in one of our discussion groups, where a member asked if anyone feels pressure at work because they’re black. The question struck a chord with me and really made me think.

As you can see from my picture at the top of this page, I’m a woman of color. What you can’t see is that I’m a woman of many colors — my mom is from India, but she’s of Persian decent and looks Greek; my dad is from Haiti, but his family’s roots go back to France, Germany, Africa, and the Arawak Indians who were the natives of Haiti before everyone else got there. I’ve never been able to choose one facet of my ethnicity over another — when it comes to race, I’ve always checked “other”, and if “other” isn’t an option, I either check several different things or nothing at all. So when it comes to race in the workplace, I really have to think about where I stand and how, or if, it has affected me. Read the rest of this entry »

The hardest thing about working during my second pregnancy — aside from the fact that I had four kids at home for a good chunk of it — was my morning commute. I was constantly tired from either getting up in the middle of the night with my toddler (or, in the third trimester, from getting up to go to the bathroom every 37 minutes).

The second hardest thing about my second pregnancy was the way I felt that the size of my expanding body was indirectly proportional to my value as an employee. That is to say, I worried that people would see my enormous belly, notice that I was no longer walking so much as lumbering, and assume that I wouldn’t be able to do my job properly because I was pregnant. Read the rest of this entry »

Your site doesn’t show that you have a good sense of what women want — where is all the celebrity content and diet tips?

When I read that on Nataly’s great post about the upside of being a working mom, I cringed. Sure, some women want celebrity content and diet tips, but that doesn’t mean that every woman does. And how could anyone say that a woman entrepreneur crafting a site for working women doesn’t have a good sense of what working women want? Read the rest of this entry »

I love being up early, but I’ve never been good at getting up early. I’m grouchy and groggy in the morning, even though I’m instantly awake multiple times in the middle of the night if any of the children so much as wimper. (Hmmm… connection, maybe? Nah.)

Right now, in order to get everyone and everything ready for 8 a.m. camp and school, I need to be up by 6. No matter how much I get done the night before, it seems that I still need that much time to get the ball rolling (or juggling, as the case may be) in the morning. This morning was so hectic, in fact, that I’m considering getting up even earlier, even though the idea of the alarm going off at 5:30 makes me cringe.

Once 9 a.m. rolls around, though, I’m raring to go. The problem is that by then I’m usually stuck in traffic on the way to work, crawling along the highway or hugging the speed limit on a winding back road. Read the rest of this entry »

I was re-doing our budget for the umpteenth time the other night when I noticed that we spend more on gas right now than we do on food.

Once I stopped hyperventilating, I did the math again. And again. With gas hovering around $4 a gallon, my 80-mile round-trip commute costs me about $15 a day. My husband makes the same trip (at different times), which means that we pay about $150 a week just for gas for both of us to get to work. Our food budget, for our family of seven, is about $100 a week.

Insert expletive here.

I clip coupons, I buy in bulk, I cook from scratch, I only grocery shop for perishables and to replenish the pantry, I combine errands to save on gas. There has got to be another way to save gas and/or money (and/or my sanity).

Flextime. Telecommuting. Teleworking. The holy grails of the working mom, the mighty tools of work-life balance — now they’re fiscally and environmentally responsible, too! Read the rest of this entry »

I didn’t change my name when I got married.

There are many reasons: I was in my 30s by the time I walked down the aisle, I already had a career in my own name, with a reputation and bylines and even a book. I owned my home and car and other things outright, and changing my name on all of those legal documents was a hassle.

But, most of all, I kept my name because it was my name — I was used to it, and replacing it with my husband’s made me feel like I was faking it, somehow. Read the rest of this entry »

When I’ve got several articles to write and even more to edit and traffic was ridiculous and the baby is screaming and the big kids are arguing and dinner’s not ready yet and there’s a bill from the orthodontist waiting at home with more than two zeros before the decimal point, I look at the chaos and think, “Man, this might make for a good story.”

The thing about being a journalist is that you tend to be on the look out for story ideas all the time, everywhere. And when you do get around to writing them all up, not everything in your notebook ends up in your story. And then, once your editor has gotten a hold of it, you’ll find that not everything you put in your story ends up in the published version (I’m a newspaper editor in real life, so I can vouch for this — I do a lot of trimming). What are you supposed to do with all of those ideas that you don’t have time to work on yet? Read the rest of this entry »

Even if you’re completely happy in your current job, it makes sense to keep your resume up to date. You never know when you might stumble upon your dream job — or, in this economy, have to deal with a nightmarish downsizing. Here are a few tips for readying your resume:

1.) Update your focus. When was the last time you looked at your own resume? Chances are, it’s tailored for the job you already have. Do you want to stay in the field you’re in right now, or do you have other skills you should highlight? Either way, make sure that your most-recent experience is at the top of the page.

2.) Make it email-friendly. Nowadays, companies don’t necessarily want to wait for the postal service. Paper is proper, of course, but make sure you have your resume ready in an easy-to-email format as well. It’s not hard to do: Eliminate the graphic elements that look so good in print and stick with plain text, in a clear font, and use 12-point type. (Also, some people shy away from opening attachments, so copy and paste the text into the body of your email.)

3.) Make it active. Instead of listing your responsibilities, list your achievements. Mention specific projects and goals that you met. As the Penelope Trunk points out on BrazenCareerist.com, “Anyone can do a job. Achievements show you did the job well.”

4.) Keep it short. Remember that you’re pitching an idea to a busy person, and that idea is “Hire me!” and that person is really, really busy. If a prospective employer has to turn the page to read the rest of your resume, chances are that he or she isn’t going to bother reading the rest of your resume. Keep it to a single page.

5.) Rethink your references. You don’t have to put your contacts on your resume — and you don’t even have to include “references on request” because, really, everyone assumes they are — but you should take the time to get in touch with your references and make sure they’re still willing to vouch for you. Do they prefer phone calls or emails? Do you have their correct titles and contact information? Is their input still relevant to the jobs you’re seeking?