Strategic Serendipity

If you've been on social media the past 24 hours you've seen the infamous page from the April Issue of Self Magazine.  Check them out here .  You may have even seen the half-hearted, tongue-in-cheek apology from the magazine's Editor-in-Chief.  Opinions are flaring and some are siding with the magazine and some are siding with the women pictured in the article and their company Glam Runner.  For the record, I am very strongly on the side of the women pictured and very offended by the article, regardless of whether Ms. Allen was a cancer survivor.  Here's the point the magazine has missed entirely up to this point - sometimes just starting the race or just finishing the race is a major accomplishment.  If people want to put on "armor" to face a challenge like a tutu, face-paint, custom t-shirt, etc. who cares?  Not everything is about being the fastest or being first or being stylish.  Unless you are magazine for marathon winners, you probably want...

In a fight between the Congress and the Administration, score goes to...the WWII veterans.  Depending on which side of the aisle you prefer (or whether you are inside or outside the beltway), you may have different views over what the government shutdown is about and/or means to you.  Regardless of what your personal beliefs are, I hope you will take a moment to follow what I consider THE story of the day  (picture and link are from www.newschannel9.com ).     I have several friends who volunteer escorting the Honor Flights of WWII veterans to visit the memorial created to honor their service to our country and first learned about the potential issue through their facebook posts this morning.  (The Honor Flight website is currently down, hopefully crashed by people donating money in light of today's news stories, but it is www.honorflight.org .)  This organization flies veterans to see "their" memorial at no cost to the veteran.  Th...

When you are childless and go through a break up it is hard.  I remember chocolate ice cream, Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVDs, and whole weekends spent on my couch.  And then slowly you get back into things, maybe go out for a night on the town with friends or speed dating (preferably combined with a wine tasting).  The entire process is about you and, well, processing what you have gone through. When you go through that break up with a child, however, it is different (still hard).  The process now becomes about making sure your little (or not so little) one is comfortable with the new normal and you are forever tied with "the one that got away" through your child (or children).  What's more, you now are doing most of it on your own (possibly without financial support) and quite frankly, that is draining in a way I can't even begin to explain. No matter what the circumstances of the parting of ways, no matter how amicable or how much of a relief it is, your mi...

Goals should be things that are a stretch.  They should be things that aren't easy to achieve.  If you are truly setting goals (and not benchmarks) you will sometimes fail to hit the mark.  Take, for example, the 31-Day Blog Challenge I participated in this month.  Add in the most teaching and program days at work I have had in a while, designing a new program that has to be presented to and approved by my equivalent of the C-Suite, getting a cold from constantly going back and forth between 107 degree F heat index and 70 degree F air conditioning, and top it off with my first trip to the ER with my 21 month old son because of a fall (official diagnosis and treatment: a small bruise and a popsicle).  Needless to say, I have failed my 31-Day Blog Challenge.  And I failed it in front of all of you. So, we are making this a teaching moment on goal setting and resilience.  I will continue blogging through the end of the month AND I will redo the challeng...

How can one small word strike fear in the hearts of many.  I applied for a independent contractor position teaching yesterday and received an e-mailed rejection today.  At first that little gremlin that lives in my head said "See, I told you so!" But seriously, it is just an e-mail.  From someone who probably knows nothing about me because 10,000 other people probably applied for the same one job.  (Shhh, that is the story I am telling myself tonight.) Mia Hamm said "Failure happens all the time.  It happens every day in practice.  What makes you better is how you react to it." So once I got through the disappointment and the rationalization, I realized how quickly they both passed.  Why, because then I got to the point where I realized I had put myself out there for something I was interested in and now had a contact.  So I wrote another e-mail (one I hope will be answered) about what skills I could enhance to be competitive for future open...

You can take away my paycheck but you can't stop me from working!  (Legal Disclaimer #1: I am not working on anything related to any of my government duties.) Let me paint the picture of my morning for you...I slept in, showered leisurely, dropped my son off at daycare just as Miss Rosa brought his second breakfast in at 9:00 AM, wandered across the park to the Starbucks, ordered my Trenta Unsweetened Iced Green Tea and Raspberry Swirl pound cake, had an amazing call about a volunteer position I am so excited about (more later), talked to my mom on the phone, sent out an e-mail to start booking some additional work on my other furlough days that aren't the Friday before a long weekend, started a new fundraising campaign on my Scentsy Family sites ( Scentsy and Velata ), and am sitting here writing this post and it is not even noon yet!  My afternoon will be filled with working on that volunteer project and a Franklin Covey virtual certification.  The Starbuck's has wi-...