Ze Frank wrote this song for a fan who was swamped with anxiety and needed a song to help her calm down. It’s the perfect thing to listen to if you’re feeling overwhelmed. I found it through Monkey Mind Chronicles, but you can read the full story behind the song on Ze Frank’s site.
Any other calm-me-down song recommendations?
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Speaking of overwhelm, did you take the poll yet?
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A story in the New York Times caught my eye recently. The author questions whether we really live in “the age of anxiety” as it is often said.
Earlier eras might have been even more jittery than ours. Fourteenth-century Europe, for example, experienced devastating famines, waves of pillaging mercenaries, peasant revolts, religious turmoil and a plague that wiped out as much as half the population in four years.
OK. Fair enough. But then he points to modern day statistics like these:
He also linked to these statistics by the National Institute of Mental Health, which I found really really interesting.
Here’s one of the graphics:
Notice that women are 60% more likely to suffer an anxiety disorder than men, and the age group who are most likely to suffer anxiety are those between 30-44 years old. You know, the years when we are raising young kids and still slogging through our work-a-day lives.
Hello! Can you say Working Mom Syndrome?
Yes, I know. There are many ways to interpret this data, but it made me wonder: Would these statistics be higher for women with young kids, particularly the ones who work full time?
So here’s a poll. Please take it, and share it with everyone you know. Then leave a comment below about your answer.
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I can’t believe how crazy this time of year is, every year.
Intense work deadlines right before the holidays, during which I caught some new strain of Monster Cold that hung in there for over a month. It was so bad that at one point I lost my voice completely—I could not get any sound to emit from my vocal cords for about three days. I ended up running a 3-hour meeting with a client by WHISPERING. (Career tip: Losing your voice can work to your benefit. I think it actually gave me a more commanding presence. Very “Godfather.” Every time I whispered, everyone would fall silent and lean in.)
The day my project ended was my kids’ last day of school/preschool. I was home with them for 2+ weeks which was fun but intense in an entirely different way—play dates, art projects, park trips. You know the drill. My husband, who has been freelancing for 10+ years, recently took a full time JOB-job, so he had to work for much of that time… (Marriage tip: Take turns having “real” jobs or you will be in crisis during every school holiday and fight about who has to take the time off.)
Somehow we got it together for Christmas—presents, nice dinner, happy kids—and then suddenly it was Ruby’s birthday, which comes the week after Christmas, and always seems to catch us by surprise. By then Brian was back at work, so I tried a new Risky Mom Move: I asked Ruby to babysit her baby brother in the store while I bought her birthday presents. (Parenting tip: You CAN pull this off if your oldest child is 9, and the youngest has had his nap. Unfortunately, Jake missed the nap, so by the end of our shopping trip, I ran out of Candy Bribes, and he flung himself face down on the floor of Old Navy, sobbing.)
Now the kids are back in school, and I’m looking at all the things I have to catch up on—paying estimated taxes, bunch of things going on with my son’s preschool, lining up my next freelance project, planning Ruby’s big birthday party, a gazillion broken things around the house to be fixed. And as I look out at the calendar, I can see all these random days-off piling up—professional development days, MLK Day, etc. Also, Jake started coughing last night, which means the next round of winter colds is descending.
So I thought I’d revive the following story, which I originally posted around this time last year. Details are different, but otherwise, I could have written it this year.
How’s your year going so far?
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Originally posted March 14, 2011:
If you’re a working parent and you feel like you’ve been running in place this year, it’s probably not your imagination.
Last week my daughter broke her ankle. It’s kind of a long story, but the central event involved a giant flying leap over a pile of backpacks on the school playground. Girls will be girls…
I’m trying to look on the bright side. For instance:
Number 3 is a big deal.
I took this opportunity to add up the number of days either my husband or I have been home during a work day with kids.
In the first ten weeks of this year, we’ve missed 11 days of work due to school holidays or a sick kid. We’re not even through the first quarter yet. If the rest of the year is like this quarter, we’ll miss more than 40 days of work by the end of the year. How can that be?
When Brian and I both worked full time, every cough, every fever, every bout of stomach flu was a major crisis. Who’s going to stay home from work? What if the other kids get it? What if we get it? I had 6 paid sick days a year—generous considering half of American workers don’t have any. But it wasn’t close to covering all the days one of our kids was sick. Of course, I could always use my vacation time, but I needed that to cover the random holidays the kids had off from school.
My kids’ pediatrician explained to me once that children get 8-10 colds and fevers a year. What does that mean in sick days?
Let’s say on average your kid has to be home from school one day per illness (although some illnesses don’t require any missed days of school, while others can knock your kid out for a week, easy). That’s 9 days per year, per kid.
Let’s say you have two kids, and their 9 sick days a year overlap by a half. That means you need to take a good 13 or 14 days off a year to be home with a sick kid. That’s not including all the random “professional development days” and holidays that only school children and postal workers get (Cesar Chavez Day, anyone?). Nor does that number include the days when you, the parent, are sick. And no matter how many green smoothies you drink for breakfast, if you’re up all night with a sick kid, you’re bound to get whatever is keeping him awake.
At my last job, I almost never took a sick day when I was sick. This garnered sympathy from some of my coworkers, and the stink eye from others.
“Why are you exposing me to your germs?” they wanted to say.
And I wanted to reply, “I can’t afford to take a f***ing sick day for myself. I have three kids!”
My husband was one of those Americans who didn’t have any sick days. He was a freelancer, so any day he took off meant a day he didn’t get paid.
The pay wasn’t really our problem, though. Our main problem was that we had too much work to do, and couldn’t afford to get behind. So usually, when one of the kids was sick, we worked from home.
It was generous of my employer to let me do this, but let’s face it. It sucks to be fielding conference calls on mute while your kid is moaning from fever on the couch. It just does. You feel like you’re neglecting your kid when she needs you most, and you feel like you’re letting your coworkers down, too.
I used to do just about anything to avoid losing a sick day. I canceled play dates if the other kids had even the slightest cold. I cajoled my kids into drinking various herbal remedies at the first sniffle. And I’m not proud to admit it, but on more than one occasion I gave my kids Tylenol for their flushed cheeks and sent them to school anyway. I also had an alarming capacity for denial. That little fleck of something I saw in my kid’s hair wasn’t really a lice nit—probably just dandruff. Here’s your lunchbox, Sweetie!
I’m curious to hear how other people handle sick days. What do you do?
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Just for kicks, I went through the calendar to see how many days the kids have been out of school sick or for random holidays. It averages about 1 day/week for the first 10 weeks of this year:
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For those of you who run your own small business (or want to start one..?), check out this holiday giveaway by my friend Laura Scholes.
Laura is a many wonderful things, including a “solopreneur” who runs her own small business called StoryHouse Creative, a talented copywriter, a speed walker, and a working mom based in the San Francisco Bay Area. If you’re lucky enough to win, you can choose one of two services.
Here’s her description:
A Twinkling Tagline
You’ve got an amazing service or product, but its name alone isn’t enough to take the world by storm. You need an unforgettable tagline to give it oomph and sticking power.
What I’ll do
An in-depth call with you where we get to the core of who you really are, what makes you and your service unique, and how you’re going to change people’s lives.What you’ll get
•Five soaring tagline options
•Help in picking the perfect one
•An MP3 of our callIf you were hiring me price: $350
-OR-
A Bright & Shiny Bio
If you’re the heart and soul of your business (president, bookkeeper, receptionist and everything in between), it is absolutely crucial to have an irresistible About page. People buy from people they like. I can make them like you by creating a real, compelling and totally you bio. (Read more on my take on what makes a good bio here.)
What I’ll do
An in-depth interview with you about your career, your beliefs, your accolades, your inspirations, and anything else that will make your bio sing.
What you’ll get
•A first-person bio that’s so good you’ll want to read over and over again to remind yourself how awesome you are
•An MP3 of our call
If you were hiring me price: $500
To “enter” just leave a comment on Laura’s site.
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I know, I know. I haven’t been posting much lately. I hope to pick up speed a bit when the holidays are over. If you want to stay in touch with the blog but don’t know when to check it, I invite you to connect in these ways…
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Cross-posted from The Huffington Post
I have never been a great sleeper — it takes me a long time to fall asleep, and I wake easily. Before kids, I managed the random bout of insomnia by sleeping in the next day, or taking a nap on the weekend. But when I had kids, it was like someone with a bad sense of direction becoming a taxi driver. My minor flaw became the dominant theme of my life.
A story in the New York Times this Friday about working moms and their sleep problems got me thinking about my own. Because, as the author points out, women’s sleep problems may start when they have their first child, but they don’t end there.
One of the cruel jokes of motherhood is that the sleeplessness of pregnancy, followed by the sleeplessness generated by an infant (a period in which a staggering — truly — 84 percent of women experience insomnia), is not followed by a makeup period of rest. It is merely the setup for what can become a permanent modus operandi.
I expected to slog through the early months with an infant, bleary-eyed from the nighttime nursing and diaper changes. But eventually, my kids learned to use the potty and sleep in their own beds, often without waking me.
And yet, I still wake up when I heard one of them cough from the next room, or murmur in their sleep. And sometimes, for no apparent reason at all, my eyes just pop open at 3 a.m. Then my mind starts racing with all the things I have to do the next day. As I become more awake, I panic about the fact that I’m still awake. I have to get some sleep. If I don’t sleep I’ll be a wreck tomorrow. Which only makes the situation worse, of course.
According to the story, I’m not alone in this. About 3 out of 10 women use some form of sleep aid a few times a week or more, and we’re twice as likely as men to use prescription aids. The author says our problem is not that our children keep us awake, but that we do. So why won’t we sleep? Are we neurotic? Are we perfectionists? Are we doing something wrong?
Dr. Meir Kryger, director of sleep medicine research and education at Gaylord Hospital in Wallingford, Conn., said women “are really paying the price in sleep for their current role in society.” Given their often-dueling roles as both a breadwinner and primary caregiver, “they have way more problems with insomnia.”
Bingo. There is so much pressure to be on at work, and on again at home. There are so many absurd details in our heads and so little time to process through them. (Examples from my own racing 2 a.m. thoughts: Did I send the letter to the parents about that preschool thing? Did I send that important email to my client? I hope he took it the right way; it’s so easy to offend people on email…Why hasn’t the city come to pick up the dead raccoon on the other side of our back fence? It’s disgusting…Oh, jeez, I forgot to make the orthodontist appointment for Ruby again…)
As you may have guessed, I’m one of those women who has “prescription sleep aids,” but I’m careful not to take them every night. Since my daughter was born, eight years ago, I’ve slowly cobbled together a group of coping mechanisms to get me through the night.
What about you? What gets you through the night?
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Yoo hoo! I’m still here. Are you?
Somehow I talked myself into taking on a full time project, and it’s seriously eating into my writing time.
There are so many things I’ve been wanting to blog about…
But I don’t have time to write about any of that now. Maybe you’d like to see the last two stories I wrote for the Huffington Post?
1. Do You Have a Hospital Fantasy?
Many of you saw the poll I did about this a while ago, about parents who fantasize about getting hospitalized as a way to get a break. The Huff Post comments were kind of interesting.
2. Stop Passing the Buck, Ladies
This essay is a response to some comments I’ve heard from several women executives. I was kind of angry when I wrote it. Basically, I think women in leadership roles have an obligation to help other women, and just generally make the workplace more humane.
I miss the conversation around here. What’s on your mind? Leave a comment!
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I’m trying to post a couple times a month. If you want to stay in touch with the blog but don’t know when to check it, stay in touch by…
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When my daughter, Ruby, was an infant, a friend bought me a T-shirt that said “Ruby’s Cafe,” which I proudly wore when I nursed her.
My breastfeeding days are over, but I recently stumbled across these “boobie beanies” on Etsy. I have to say, I vastly prefer this in-your-face approach to breastfeeding fashion to the cover-yourself-up-in-a-tent approach. But I guess I’m not very modest. What do you think?
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I know I’m not posting very often to the site right now, but I have not forsaken you, dear reader! Please subscribe by email or RSS. Connect on Facebook, or Twitter, so you know when there’s a post.
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I’m bursting with my good news: I’m officially a blogger for the Huffington Post!
Over the last few days, I’ve been gushing to friends about this. They always seem a bit baffled by my excitement. The conversation usually goes something like this:
Q: Weren’t you already a blogger for The Huffington Post?
A: Well, I did publish a few stories in the past, through the MomsRising/Peaceful Revolution column, but I didn’t have my own blogger account. I had to pitch my ideas to the MomsRising editor, and stick to topics that fit their advocacy framework. But now, I have my own account, which means I can post up to two stories a week! In any section! On any topic!
Q: Wow. So the editors discovered your blog and invited you to write for them?
A: Not exactly. I kind of stalked a couple of unsuspecting editors at the BlogHer conference, and badgered the poor women in the hallway until they agreed to let me write a trial story.
Q: Uh…that’s cool. It’s probably good exposure, right?
A: Damn straight! The site is ranked #22 in the most highly traffic web sites for a U.S. audience. More than 30 million people visit the site each month. Dude, that’s more online readers than the New York Times!
Q: That’s great! Are they paying you?
A: Er…no. Of course not. Everyone knows they don’t pay bloggers.
Q: Oh. Well, congrats anyway. So what are you going to write about?
A: I don’t really know.
Here’s the thing: I’m still trying to figure out what I’m allowed to write about. Of course, I plan to continue writing about the mismatch between the workplace and our personal lives, but there are a lot of ways to write about that. I’d also like to do some interviews and book reviews if I can. I think I can also get a HuffPo (ahem, that’s what we insiders call it…) media badge to cover events if I get an editor’s approval.
Any suggestions on specific topics I should write about? People I should try to interview? Books or events I should try to cover? I’m taking requests.
Do you have a story to share? They tend to run a lot of personal stories and opinion pieces. If you have a great story—about a great/terrible work situation, about why you work or why you don’t, about being a parent or choosing not to be one—tell me about it. Maybe I should interview you.
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