I don’t know if it’s a case of The Law of Attraction or what, but now that my eyes are open, the opportunities are everywhere.

Granted, they’re not all fabulous. In fact, some of them are awfully close to working for free. But each one reminds me that there’s more than one way to achieve a goal, more than one path to success, more than just the one shape I thought my career would or should take.

I get a lot of pitches from PR people. It was tempting to look at the emails and field the phone calls and think, “I’m too busy to deal with this right now.” When I stopped doing that, I started noticing that some of those interruptions were opportunities in disguise.

I talk a lot about the importance of networking, and I decided that I needed to make sure I was walking the walk, too. So I brushed up my LinkedIn profile and sent out some requests for recommendations and made sure I had different versions of my resume ready for targeting different clients. And you know what? It turns out that who you know really does matter as much as (or more than) what you know.

I stopped expecting instant gratification — at home and at work. It was making me feel unsatisfied and resentful, and I need to be inspired and motivated. I had been thinking, “That’ll take too long, it’s not worth starting at all.” But as one of my favorite bloggers, Mary Alice, points out, perserverence pays off. If you keep reaching, you’ll get where you want to go but if you don’t, then you definitely won’t.

Will Rogers was right: Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

*Knock Knock*

According to a recent survey by the American Psychological Association, 75 percent of adults reported experiencing “moderate to high levels of stress” in the past month, and 42 percent said that their stress levels have increased in the past year. And more and more people don’t feel like they have the energy to deal with it.

According to the study:

47 percent of respondents report that they have lain awake at night
45 percent report irritability or anger
43 percent report fatigue
40 percent report lack of interest, motivation or energy

Nearly a third of respondents report headaches, feelings of depression, and sadness; 27 percent blame stress for their upset stomachs and indisgtestion.

Though more of us are experiencing stress, fewer of us are willing to do much about it, the survey found. Some — as many as 44 percent — reported exercising or walking to relieve stress, but more people listen to music, read, watch TV or movies, or play video games to relax.

At The Wall Street Journal’s The Juggle, Helen L. Coons, a clinical psychologist and a fellow of the APA, suggests that one reason people don’t tackle the long-term job of managing their stress is that they feel they don’t have enough time to do so. “We need to “reframe ‘self care’ as something that is not selfish,” she said.

When you were a kid did you ever over-wind your watch or your wind-up toy, to the point where you jammed the gears and the darn thing didn’t work anymore? (I’m totally going to assume here that you are about my age, and your first watch was not digital.) Well, that’s what we’re doing to ourselves now: We’re so used to running full-tilt into walls, working and living and trying to juggle our careers and our families, that the idea of taking time to take care of ourselves seems selfish or unimportant.

It’s more than just “me” time. It’s “me” management.

I’d ask you if you’re stressed, but that just seems silly — of course you are, some days more so than others. Instead, I want to know how you manage your stress. Do you do something active, like exercise? Do you do something passive, like eat? How do you unwind after a long and stressful day?

Even though I’m a feminist by default, on some level I must also have known that it would be a struggle to be taken seriously, because I brought a male friend along with me. He did not know anything about cars, aside from the fact that you put gas in and they go. He had never bought a car before, and wasn’t interested in buying one. He agreed to come with me mostly because he had nothing else to do that day.

I’m sure you can guess what happened.

The dealer zeroed right in on my friend, and ignored me. Even when my friend tried to redirect the attention, the dealer pitched the car to the man who wasn’t buying it, and brushed off the young woman who was. I’d ask about gas mileage, and he pointed out the vanity mirror. I asked about testing, and he walked me over to a wall of paint chips. I asked a question about the engine, and he told me that I shouldn’t “worry your pretty head about things like that, Little Lady.”

Still, I wanted that car. So I sat down at the table with the guy and made my offer.

He countered with a number that even my friend, who hadn’t done any research, could tell was way too high.

I pulled out my printouts. I politely told him that I’d done my research, and knew what the car cost, and my offer had been very fair.

He put one large hand on top of my papers, leaned over the table until he was in my personal space, and said, “Little ladies who study too much miss the party.”

I told him that arrogant salespeople who condescend too much miss the sale, and walked out of the dealership.

Fast-forward 15 years.

While my “Little Lady” experiences are less frequent now — possibly because I a.) have more gray hair and b.) less patience — they still happen. The words themselves don’t actually get spoken, but the attitude is the same. A mortgage rep who insisted that he wouldn’t process my refi application because my husband doesn’t own our home (I bought on my own it before we were married). The husband of an extended family member who told me he had a tip for “the man who pays the bills” (I do, I’m the breadwinner). The cable guy who insisted on hooking up the DVD player for me, because I’m “a girl” (he did it wrong). The bartenders who push my neat scotch over to my brother and hand me his jack-and-ginger instead.

It’s infuriating. If you’re both aggressive and competent then you’re a bitch, but if you’re polite and considerate — and insistent — you’re a Little Lady who gets brushed off or taken for granted.

Working moms, how do you find balance? Do you still get the “Little Lady” attitude in this day and age?

Our daughters have entered the age of birthday parties. And, ye Gods, it is busy.

Since all of the kids in her class have birthdays right around the same time, my girl has had one or two parties nearly every weekend since mid-September, and my 3-year-old son has had his fair share, too. Which means that I’ve been socializing with the same group of grownups on a regular basis for the first time in years. And, in spite of the present buying and the ubiquitous pizza, I’ve been enjoying it.

While our kids play and stuff themselves with cake, we parents have gotten a chance to advance past the potty-training and milestone-marking stories, sharing instead the ups and downs of working motherhood. (Though a few of party-circuit regulars are dads, it’s mostly the moms who are ferrying the kids around on the weekends.) It’s difficult to take time for ourselves, so why not take advantage of the time we spend together by default?

It was my turn to host about a month ago. Back in April, I was wondering how to handle the birthday party dilemma; I ended up inviting my daughter’s entire class to her 5th birthday party. And I did it again just two weeks later, inviting my 3-year-old’s entire class to a pre-trick-or-treating birthday party on Halloween.

It was chaotic, and I was stressed about cleaning the house, but oddly enough, that was the only thing I was stressed about. My children had fun, their friends had fun, and I finally felt able to reciprocate for all of the parties and play dates my kids have gone to lately. But it was also an opportunity to host my new friends and introduce them to the rest of my family.

And it was great. I finally feel like I have a social network again, and I like it.

Sure, hard work always pays off, as the saying goes. It just seems like sometimes it pays a lot less than it used to. When the work piles up and I can’t get it done during the work day, instead of automatically bringing it home with me I find myself calculating the dwindling dollars and cents of my hourly wage and deciding that I’m more than willing to do it on company time, for pay, but not at home, for free.

To be honest, I was a little reluctant to write that last sentence there. It just smacks of having a bad attitude, doesn’t it? I don’t mean it that way — I’m not trying to “stick it to the man” or anything. No… my point is that I’ve noticed that the more I’m willing to do for less, the more I’m expected to do for less. It’s a vicious cycle.

It also plays into a topic that Mir tackled at The Cornered Office a couple of years ago (on the post that first brought me to Work It, Mom!, as a matter of fact): “You deserve a decent wage for your work, and settling for less makes it harder for every working writer out there to get it.”

So, is it ever OK to work for free? In spite of my griping, and in spite of Mir’s great point, I have to say… yes. Sometimes, it is.

I recently took on a project that turned out to be a major time suck. It was voluntary, and I wasn’t getting paid, and it got complicated, but you know what? It was worth it, because it allowed me to give back to a community that I’ve wished I could do more for over the years. So… working for free is OK when it’s your way of donating something to a community or company you value.

I also think it’s OK if you’re being compensated in other ways — like directing traffic to your website or creating clips for your brand-new, I’m-still-getting-experience portfolio. Then it’s more like bartering; you might not be getting paid in money, but you’re still being compensated for your work.

I’m a journalist, and I know that writing and editing are strange beasts in the working world. So I’m curious… in your profession, whatever it is, do you ever work for free? Why or why not?

But not if I’ve magically transformed them into something else first.

Here are five tricks for using up all of those Halloween treats:

1.) Hot fudge sauce. Measure out two cups of nut-free and krispie-free chocolates from the stash and put them in a microwave-safe glass container, preferably something with a handle and a pouring spout, like a large Pyrex measuring cup. Add about 1/2 cup of heavy cream. Microwave the cream and chocolate at 80-percent power in 20 second bursts, or until the chocolate melts. Remove it (carefully!), stir (carefully!) and then pour it (carefully!) over ice cream — or, ideally, into several sanitized glass jelly jars, so you can give them away to someone else.

2.) Candy Pizza. Press your favorite cookie dough into a pie tin, then cover with a thick pool of melted chocolate candies. Top with whatever chocolate goodies you have left — Raisinets, Reeces Pieces, M&Ms, shattered Heath Bars, crumbled Butterfingers — drizzle with melted Milk Duds, dot with mini marshallows, and bake. Cut into wedges to serve.

3.) Surprise brownies. Chocolate and peanut butter are a perfect match; so is chocolate and mint. Whip up a batch of your favorite brownies, pour half the batter in the pan, and then scatter on a layer of whole peanut-butter cups or Peppermint Patties. Top with the remaining batter and bake.

4.) Fruity Popcorn Balls. OK, I haven’t made these — one of my kids is a fiend for all things fruity, so the Skittles and Starburst disappeared almost immediately. But if you have leftover chewy, fruit-flavored, taffy-like candies lying around, you can try this recipe from Cooks.com: In a saucepan, combine 1/4 cup of light corn syrup, 2 tablespoons water, and 8 ounces of candy fruit chews. Melt over low heat, stirring until smooth, then bring to a boil for five minutes. Cool slightly, pour over 8 cups of already-popped popcorn, spray your hands with non-stick spray, and shape the gooey mixture into balls. My teeth hurt just typing this.

5.) Hard candy “stained glass” cookies. Make (or buy) your favorite sugar cookie dough (or follow this recipe). Roll it out to 1/4-inch thick, and cut out shapes with floured cookie cutters. Trace a smaller version of each shape from each cookie, leaving a 3/4-inch border; cut out the smaller shape. Fill the hole with crushed hard candies — using one color per cookie will result in a neater treat. The candy will melt as the cookie bakes (cool completely before handling)

If all else fails, you can always send the stuff elsewhere. Halloween Candy Buy Back will pay $1 a pound for your kids candy; they ship the sweets to soldiers overseas. Go to halloweencandybuyback.com and plug in your zip code to see if a dentist in your area is participating in the program. You can also ship it directly to OperationGratitude.com by mailing it, no later than Dec. 5, to Operation Gratitude/California Army National Guard, 17330 Victory Blvd., Van Nuys, CA 91406, Attn: Charlie Othold.

What are you doing with your leftover Halloween candy this year?

Case in point: I needed to re-read a book that I’m reviewing, because I loved it but I read it so long ago that can’t figure out how to describe it in 500 words without completely giving away the plot. So what I did I do instead? Wrote a month’s worth of product reviews, cleaned out my work bag — twice – and sorted coupons. (Yes, Kathy Spencer inspired me, too!)

Another example: this very blog post. I should have written it last night, but I’ve been soloparenting while my husband is away and after I got home from work I hung out with my kids and fed them dinner and put them to bed and stumbled downstairs and looked at my computer and thought, “Um. Anything I type is not going to be coherent. It might not even contain actual words. Don’t I have a book to reread for that review?” 

Which meant that today, I was running out of items with which to procrastinate. If you’ve been procrastinating for a while, eventually you come to the big thing on your to-do list, the one you were trying to avoid to begin with. And there’s nothing left to do but tackle that item head-on.

This post is not that item. The thing I’m really trying to avoid is cleaning my house in advance of my youngest child’s 3rd birthday party, which is taking place this weekend. Which means that I’ve suddenly discovered a few other things I can get done before I can’t procrastinate about the cleaning any longer.

I have to admit, I don’t really see the point in the snark about this. For all I disagree with her politics, the former governor is super savvy when it comes to social networking. And smart women know the importance of social networking.

I’ve been trying to use Facebook solely for socializing, and LinkedIn solely for business, but I have to admit that it’s become really difficult to keep things separate. For one thing, the line between work and the rest of your life gets blurry when you’re friendly with your former colleagues. How can you refuse to ask your boss to be friends with you on Facebook when you’re Facebook friends with your former supervisor — who used to be his boss?

(I don’t use MySpace at all. If LinkedIn is to Facebook as your business card is to a scrap of paper with your name and phone number scrawled on it, then MySpace is akin to writing your nickname on someone’s arm with a magic marker. I don’t really know yet where Twitter falls on the networking spectrum, but I use it and I like it — for marketing, for meeting new contacts, for finding out what’s going on.)

Regardless of which site you choose to use for networking, here are a few things to keep in mind:

1.) Don’t post anything you wouldn’t want to be asked about — or held against you — in an interview.

2.) Toot your own horn. It’s not like a paper resume, where you’re encouraged to keep the information to a single page. Take the opportunity to detail as much as you can, and go as far back into the past as is relevant — you’re not limited to your most-current experiences. Keep the language professional, but feel free to add your awards, accolades, and additional skills — this is your chance to shine.

3.) Gather recommendations. On LinkedIn, recommendations are like those references you’re supposed to provide upon request — except that they’ve visible for all to see, all the time. On Facebook, create a fan page for your work, and ask your friends to join. You’d be surprised at how many people know — and like — what you do.

4.) If you have a professional blog, link to it. Think of it as a chance to show off your online portfolio. If you don’t have a professional blog, link to examples of your work instead. Linking to your current company’s website is fine, especially if it showcases some of your accomplishments. Linking to your family’s online photo album is not.

5.) Direct people to your LinkedIn profile or Facebook page. Don’t just use the default URL that came with your profile — change it to something easily recognizable, like your name, and use it along with your signature at the bottom of emails.

What social networking sites to you use and why?

The study by the UCL Institute of Child Heath (ICH) focused on the families of 12,500 5-year-olds; the same children took part in an earlier study which found that those with working mothers were more likely to be obese or overweight by the age of 3.

So, let me get this straight: The new study “discovered” that the same kids who were likely to be obese or overweight by the age of 3 were also less likely to lead healthy lives at age 5? And that it’s all mom’s fault for working outside the home?

Sorry, BBC and ICH. I’m calling foul on this one.

Among the findings:

• 5-year-olds whose mothers worked part-time or full-time were more likely to primarily consume sweetened drinks between meals.
• 5-year-olds with working mothers used their computers or watched television for at least two hours a day.
• Kids with working moms were more likely to be driven to school compared to the children of “stay at home” mothers who tended to walk or cycle.

Among the loopholes:

• Working outside of the home doesn’t automatically make you buy cookies and soda when you’re stocking the pantry; sounds like more of an education issue than an employment one to me. Also: These studies took place Great Britain, where the schools are notorious for serving nutritionally bankrupt food to students (check out chef Jamie Oliver’s efforts to change this). How is that the fault of working mothers?
• A Harvard Medical School study earlier this year found that while TV time isn’t beneficial for kids, it’s not necessarily harmful either. While spending tons of time in front of the tube isn’t good for anyone, what your kids are watching has much more of an impact than the fact that the TV is on. (As for the computer, there are plenty of great educational sites for kids out there.)
• For goodness sake, are moms really the only ones responsible for taking kids to school in the morning?

Professor Catherine Law, who led the new study, theorized that working moms may not have enough time to provide healthy foods or opportunities for physical activity, but insisted that the results of the study “do not imply that mothers should not work.” (No… the British Institute for Economic and Social Research took care of that with their 2003 study, which concluded that ”going back to work after the birth of a child can have a negative impact on a child’s development - unless you have lots of money.”) Instead, Law says, her study shows that there need to be more policies and programs to help support parents (which, presumably, mothers would be too busy to participate in because of all that detrimental working they insist on doing instead of being at home where they belong).

The ICH study did not look at fathers and their employment levels, because their numbers have remained stable while the number of moms in the workforce has “increased dramatically.” Here is a brief list of other things that have also ”increased dramatically” but are not taken into account in the study, in my opinion:

• Household expenses, making working outside of the home less of a choice and more of a necessity for many people.
• The availability and marketing of processed foods, making it more expensive — and, for some people, more difficult — to buy the wholesome foods that are actually good for you.
• Nostalgia and the belief that old gender stereotypes are the only way to go, making “working mom guilt” more widespread than ever.

The embers of the Mommy Wars must have gone dim for a second. Lucky thing this study came along to fan the flames.

Their sons, Henry Gunther Ademola Dashtu Samuel, 3, and Johan Riley Fyodor Taiwo Samuel, 2, already have Seal’s last name, as does their baby daughter, Lou Sulola Samuel. (No word on whether their oldest child, 5-year-old Helene “Leni” Klum — who is the biological daughter of Klum’s ex, Flavio Briatore, but was legally adopted at birth by Seal – will change her name as well.)

Like many working women, I kept my name when I got married. Which means that I have a different last name than my children. But, unlike Heidi, I’m not changing my name to match theirs.

I have thought about it, though. I married my stepkids the same day I married my husband and, when they were small, I’d tack my husband’s last name on to the end of my signature when signing permission slips or homework assignments, as if having the same last name would somehow increase my parental authority with people I didn’t know. At soccer games in their town, I introduced myself using “my” married name, even though I’d never legally taken it, because how else would other parents know to which pint-size soccer player I belonged?

At work, though, the idea of changing my name to match my husband’s never crossed my mind. I had nothing to prove, no new role to take on, no authority to establish with strangers who knew his last name but not mine. When you’re a journalist, your clips are your currency; changing bylines is like starting over, to an extent. I’d built a career and a reputation using my name — why change it now?

A few years later, when we decided to have another child — two, actually — the issue of last names came up again. Should these children have my last name? Hyphenate? Use just my husband’s? How would I feel about being “Ms. Alphonse” when everyone else in my family, by marriage and by birth, shared a different last name?

We decided that they’d have two last names — no hyphen — which worked fine until the first time I took my baby daughter to the pediatrician, and they couldn’t find her file because it wasn’t with her older siblings’. So she and our youngest son use just their dad’s last name, like their big brother and sisters do. I am the only Alphonse in my household. And I guess a decade has made a difference, because I’m fine with that.

Did you keep your name when you got married? Did your feelings about having done so change after you had children?