Oh Wow: The Meaning of Life

Of all the words that have been spoken or written (ours included) about Steve Jobs in the past few weeks, the wisest and most meaningful may have come from the eulogy delivered by his sister, novelist Mona Simpson, who recently shared it with the New York Times. By now, you have probably read Simpson’s opening: [...]

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Calling off the Chase

How many of our career decisions are dictated by the shiny objects?  You know the ones we’re talking about:  the title, the status, and most of all, the fat paycheck. Okay, they’re not really shiny and they’re not even objects, but you get the point.  We’re constantly on the chase, even when we know it [...]

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On Purpose, Take Two

Back when Harvard Business School’s class of 2010 started grad school, those best-and-brightest had no reason to expect that their high-flying dreams might crash along with a tanking economy.   Which may be why they asked HBS buisness administration professor Clay Christensen to deliver a commencement address that focused on his strategies for measuring a [...]

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One Flew Over The Chicken Coop: The Femivore’s Dilemma

What do you think Betty Freidan–or Betty Draper for that matter–might say to the idea that, come 2010, women everywhere would be finding their purpose right in their own backyards? Tending to the chicken coops in their own backyards, that is? Don’t think that would fly? Peggy Orenstein offers an interesting take on the Extreme-Homemaking-as-Feminism [...]

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Success, Redefined: Will Millennial Women Lead the Way?

Overheard last week on a college campus: Two twentysomething women — call them Hannah and Suzanna — engaging in some chat about life, family and all things in between. Hannah reveals that she has three older sibs, and she’s the only girl. Which ultimately leads to this: Suzanna: If you could give your brothers some [...]

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Want Happy? Try Sad!

Frankly, all this hype about happy is making me sad. It’s not enough we have folks like Marcus Buckingham telling us how to be happy — and making us feel guilty because we are not. Or the incessant volleys about the paradox of women’s declining happiness. But, frankly, despite the wealth of books, blogs, life [...]

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Good-bye, Goodman. Sigh.

Syndicated Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman, who brought 40 years of insight, wisdom and humor to her coverage of Women-with-a-capital-Dub, bid her vast audience farewell in a New Year’s Day column in which she wrote that she “was letting herself go.” Hate it when that happens. You can’t blame her from wanting to step back. [...]

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Feminista: Undecided Talks Feminism, Choices, and Having It All with Author Erica Kennedy

Readers, we’ve missed you, but we promise we’re back — and we’ve returned bearing gifts, in the form of a Q&A with the sharp, funny, honest, and slightly potty-mouthed author Erica Kennedy, whose first novel, Bling, is a New York Times Bestseller. But we bring her to you because Sydney, the main character in her [...]

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Feminism 2.0: Enough?

When everything is on the menu, it takes an awful lot of willpower to say, you know, I’m not really that hungry. Even if you’re really not that hungry. Even if, in fact, you’re stuffed. This being the season of the cocktail party, I’m unable to think in anything other than food metaphors, but, in [...]

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Purpose and Soulcraft: You know it when you feel it.

Organizing for America Sometimes it’s not what you do that matters, but why you do it. Case in point, the video above. (Don’t click on it quite yet.) Someone who has been there, done that sent it to me — this being an anniversary and all — making me wonder yet again whether finding that [...]

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