Get a job

Someone said this to me recently. I was joking about how I'd like an intern to help me with my housework so I could have more time to play with my kids and write. I laughed it off at the time, but I shouldn't have.

The correct response: I already have one. Or two. Or three. Just as it's not cool to let a racist comment slide unnoticed, we shouldn't just accept sexism.

I've seen both sides of the mother story. I was a working mom when I had just one child and chose to stay home as our family grew. And at the time I chose to work, I had people make the comment, "Be a mother." This is exactly the opposite of the comment made to me recently, and it illustrates a glaring fact:

Women, we're damned if we do, damned if we don't. And society thinks it's OK to judge us in a way they'd never consider judging fathers. (They unfairly judge fathers in other ways, like "he shouldn't stay at home with the kids or be a Brownies leader.")

So, just to make me feel better, here's my snarky response to my former male co-worker who thinks I need a job to justify having help around the house:

The minute you can nurse my infant, feed and dress my children, start a load of laundry, interview sources, write an article, take the kids to the doctor, visit Santa, drop off my husband's dry cleaning, cook dinner, play trains, attend a play date, and get everyone bathed and to bed in a timely fashion, feel free to come over and judge my schedule. Until then, I'll be doing the best I can.

And I still think I could use an intern. So there.

Job search

Can I just say searching for a job is NOT fun? The worst part is that my degree is in marketing. Yeah, I get how to promote something (in this case me), but I do not enjoy it. I think in a lot of ways, selling oneself is the hardest part of the equation.

Reality is stalking my checkbook, so I better get my act together and do some more selling.

Life 3.0

There's an oft misquoted and unconfirmed statistic that claims most people will have five or more careers in their lifetimes. I've always found that interesting for a number of reasons: First, because for most of my professional life I worked for the same company (and I still do freelance work for them). Also, because I've always had a dream to parlay my freelance writing and editing career into a novel-writing career.

With the current state of the economy, I wonder if the real number of jobs a person has in his or her lifetime will climb. Several of my friends have shifted their career goals, leaving the magazine industry for other (hopefully more stable) careers.

Just as manufacturing jobs have moved overseas and certain careers have disappeared (what do you think former typesetters are doing now?), I wonder if the world of print is bracing for a similar exodus. Some of us will go on to related fields, writing for Web sites, iPhone applications, and the like. Others will go back to school and seek their next career life in a more stable profession, like law or accounting.

Think I'm wrong? Could be. But I know in the last year I made 75 percent of my freelance income off of projects that will never appear in print.