Posted by Anne and Elizabeth

Happy Friday, readers.  If you follow this blog, you’re probably aware that life is about to change in momentous and special ways for our Elizabeth during the month of September.  We decided it only appropriate to take a blogging “maternity leave” of sorts for the next 4 weeks.  We’ll miss your comments, your insight, and your responses.  But rest assured, we’ll be back in October with new stories, new observations, and new Life in Pencil moments.   And if you’re curious, here’s what we’ll be up to…

Elizabeth:

“While I won’t be writing about life in pencil during the next four weeks, I will be intensely focused on living life in pencil. As the website slumbers I will be learning how to take on the challenges of motherhood, one day at a time. Not only will I be learning the logistics of my new life, from mastering midnight feedings to gaining competency in the art of diaper changing (it’s true: I’ve never changed a diaper), I will be learning the less tangible aspects of stepping into a new role.  Cultivating a new identity takes time and energy, and I want to give my full attention to the important work of mothering that lies ahead. I want to savor these early days as I get to know my daughter, to fully absorb the lessons that she has to teach me. When I return in October, I hope to share my insights – hopefully deepened – about what it means to live life in pencil. Until then, I wish all of our dear readers a month filled with their own growth and development, no matter how big or how small.”

Anne:

“It probably goes without saying, but my September will look quite a bit different than Elizabeth’s.  Nonetheless, it feels an important time for me to take a step back, and channel my energy into some new experiences, and exciting challenges.  September marks the start of the school year—a time I move at full throttle.  Students return.  I train my staff.  There are ‘welcome picnics’, and a welcome coolness in the air.  And this year—for the first time in a few years—I’ll add teaching back to my professional life.  This is an experience I’ve been wanting, and for which I’m now discovering some pent-up nerves.  I’ll attempt to wade through those nerves, and all the feelings of incompetence.  And I’ll ride the rush of excitement I find when standing in front of a classroom, hoping to connect with college minds.  Wish me luck.”

See you in October!

Posted by Elizabeth

“Deep within my body, the past is still alive.  Everything that has ever happened keeps happening.” Devotion by Dani Shapiro

In order to rewrite our lives, we have to possess a deep understanding of how they were written in the first place.  Inspired by this post at A Design So Vast, which was adapted from this writing exercise, I bring to you my version of “Where I’m From.”

I am from the seafoam house stuffed to the gills with stuff, from towering stacks of aging National Geographic magazines and a junk drawer whose crusty bottom never saw the light of day.

I am from the place with an impossibly steep staircase lined with fuzzy gold shag, and chipped linoleum in the kitchen perfect for an indoor roller rink.

I am from the fuchsia rhododendrons peeking over the front window, delicate trilliums on the backyard “nature trail” that dad carved out one year.

I am from Friday Night Party Night, crouched in front of a tiny black and white screen, gobbling Hershey’s Miniatures and watching Sha-Na-Na.

I am from a long line of women – strong, risk-taking, and independent – each a mirror image of the other, from our squinty eyes to the crinkly bridge of our nose to our laugh with reckless abandon.

I am from thrift and practicality:  always buy a white car!

From “be careful what you wish for” and “follow your bliss.”

I am from faith without churches, spirit without God, an eclectic smorgasbord of beliefs from all around the globe.

I’m from the deep, cool shade of evergreen forests, from warm tartans and a feathery headdress, from dessert after every meal and silver shrimp forks.

From watery camping trips on the shores of Puget Sound with floating tents, and aquatic creatures who spent even the chilliest of Pacific Northwest summers caked with sand and salt.

I am from a musty warehouse sheltering decaying boxes of fading photographs.  There is no family home, no communal gathering place.  But the memories I treasure most I carry with me, right where they belong, making my home wherever I go.

Where are you from?

Posted by Elizabeth

The sun has barely begun slicing through the day and I can’t sleep.  I lie wide awake, tangled in a cyclone of sticky sheets, clutching my half-moon belly.  I feel the tumbles, rolls, and kicks of my baby, finally resigning myself to the fact that there will be no more sleep in this short night.  I pour myself a bowl of cereal and prepare a cup of raspberry leaf tea, my first of three for the day, which I am assured will help nudge labor along.  After mindlessly surfing the Web and wandering aimlessly around the house, pausing for a long while at the entrance to the nursery, I force myself into the prickly morning heat.  I shuffle slowly down the sidewalk, a lone walker on this early Sunday morning, finding reprieve under the cool canopy of trees in the park two blocks from my house.  Here I will dutifully waddle four times around the well-worn path littered with gnarled tree roots:  another surefire labor-enhancer.

Although I’ve brought my iPod along to keep me company, I resist the urge to drown my world in music and instead decide to tune into the life teeming around me.  Joggers breeze by me, their tennis shoes scraping like sandpaper on the pavement.  The trees erupt in a riot of birdsong.  Hummingbirds whiz about, erratically dive-bombing the wintergreen grass.  I hear the satisfying thwap of a tennis ball hitting the racket’s sweet spot in the courts just beyond.  Nearly everyone I pass smiles at me, for no other reason than the fact that I’m about to become a mother.  I’ll miss that, I think to myself.  As I make my way around the park, I realize that it’s the first time this week that my attention hasn’t been focused on the past or future, on what I’m about to lose, on what I’m about to gain.

At the appointment with my midwife last Tuesday, she informed me that, three weeks until my due date, I was already one centimeter dilated.  “And I can touch the baby’s head,” she said, which seemed impossible to me, another reminder that the veil between here and there is rapidly vaporizing.  Although she was quick to remind me that labor could begin hours – or weeks – from now, that there is no way to predict a baby’s entrance into this world, I couldn’t help but smile smugly to myself when a woman at my prenatal yoga class that night boldly predicted that I wouldn’t there next week.  “If we don’t see you, good luck with your delivery!” she confidently called over her shoulder after class.  Buoyed, I madly dashed around town running last-minute errands, making contingency plans, squeezing in appointments.  I dreamt about floods and puddles on the kitchen floor.  I sat quietly on the couch, a human diving rod watching for the slightest tinge or tingle that might indicate that labor was on its way.  Then, nothing.

As I drift off to sleep each night I place my hands on my belly and recite a silent prayer to baby, whose final words are, We’re ready whenever you are. Somewhere during the course of the week I foolishly allowed myself to believe that labor – that life itself – would unfold according to my time line.  That when I was ready the wheels would be set into motion.  But the reality is that life plays out according to its own schedule, a schedule which none of us are privy to an advanced screening.  My daughter is already teaching me how to let go.  Instead of scoffing at admonitions to “sleep while you can” and “enjoy it while it lasts,” I will embrace the underlying message as this week yawns ahead of me:  savor the moment and be in the now.  I will look forward to meals with friends, where we will laugh about the past and wonder about the future.  I will get a haircut and a pedicure.  I will enjoy a final fabulous meal with Maikael as a family of two.  All, some, or none of these plans will happen.  Who knows what will happen?  But until I do I will drink my tea and take my walks, with no greater expectation than enjoying them for what they are, right now.

Do you struggle with forcing life to adhere to your time line?  I’m due August 31; anybody want to hazard a guess on the birth date?

Posted by Elizabeth

For whatever reason, I have had a hard time jumping on the Twitter bandwagon.  As an extrovert who loves to dish and rehash the details of my life, Twitters seems like it should be right up my alley.  Facebook certainly is.  So it was with interest that I read Peggy Orenstein’s article “I Tweet Therefore I Am” in The New York Times Magazine, in which she argues that the advent of social networking media has turned us from an internally-focused culture to an externally-focused one in which “your psychology becomes a performance.”  (As someone with both a theatre and psychology background, I find this fascinating.)  Not long after stumbling upon Orenstein’s piece I read Katrina Kenison’s blog post “The Swallows,” in which she mulls over many of the same questions and quandaries that Orenstein poses.  Namely, that in our efforts to record our attempts to live in the moment, do we cease to live in the moment?  She notes the irony by saying, “I earn my living by writing about being in the moment.  And I do so by sitting in front of my laptop, typing words onto a screen.”

When I think about what it means to live my life “in pencil,” one of the first things that springs to mind is living a life that is intentional and conscious, one in which I am both engaged in the day-to-day happenings of the world around me while taking time to reflect upon how those happenings are effecting me.  And the method in which I typically choose to reflect is through writing via online media.  “But,” in the words of Orenstein, “when every thought is externalized, what becomes of insight?”  I can’t help wonder what I’m missing in my everyday life via the process of writing about my everyday life.  I wonder if there are other ways that I could be reflecting upon my experiences without writing about them.

Oh, and the fact that I’m sending out this post via Twitter?  The irony isn’t lost on me.

What do you think:  does conveying your experience take you out of the moment or help deepen the experience?  What other ways can we reflect upon our lives without making them a “psychological performance?”  Are you a Twitter fan?

Posted by Elizabeth

I’ll never forget the day I finished graduate school.  There was a great deal of pomp and circumstance, my tiny family having flown in from all corners of the country to watch me march across a massive stage, my neck proudly ringed by a turquoise sash; it was a day filled with boundless hope and promise as the future unfurled before me.  During a post-graduation brunch at a professor’s house, we sat quietly discussing my thesis.  Out of the blue, my professor said, “You shouldn’t have studied career counseling.  You should have been a writer.”  He may have even said, “I think you missed your calling.”  Although memory has rendered the exact words blurry, I clearly remember two thoughts running through my mind, each on a parallel track:

This is not what I want to hear minutes after finishing two years of study.
I think he may be right.

After years of trying to “make it work” in the profession in which I worked so hard to gain entry, that second voice – which, at the time, was really more of a timid whisper – eventually won out, and here I am five years later, trying my best to be a writer.  I know I’m not alone in this type of journey.  How many of us start down one path, convinced that we’ve found our true “calling,” only to discover years later that maybe we weren’t right after all?  According to a recent article in The New York Times, “The True Calling That Wasn’t,” it’s a more common story than you might think.  We choose careers too early, we get on tracks that we think we can’t get off, or our jobs simply don’t match who we are and what we value.  We feel like imposters.  In the best case scenario, it becomes clear that there is perhaps not a “true calling” but a “better calling,” and we make steps to manifest that new path.

But more often than not, things aren’t so clear.  We know we’re not on the right path, but we don’t know what the right path is. We wonder if an interest we have could be our calling, or nothing more than a personal passion.  Once we’ve waded into these murky waters, how do we begin to discern the right path forward?  Unfortunately, there are no easy answers.  In my own experience the answers haven’t come until I’ve walked down the path a bit, and even then they aren’t wholly clear.  When we think of callings, we conjure up images of trumpets and horns, big, brassy voices cutting through the din.  But more often than not callings begin quietly, a gentle tinkling of a bell that can barely be heard through the din.  We have a hard time trusting our callings because they first present as background noise, but callings are persistent, and if you choose to tune into the static, eventually that little jingle will become a booming timpani.

I recently had a very vivid dream.  In it, I was asked to deliver a sermon at a church.  But rather than delivering it standing at the pulpit, I was seated at a large, round table amongst the congregation.  In my sermon – which was more of a personal essay than anything – I said, “We connect with our spirit through paying attention to the minute details of our life.”  I woke up with a vague, yet strong, impression that this dream was the beginning of a calling.  I couldn’t shake the feeling that it spoke to the type of writing that I’ll be doing in the future:  spiritual in nature; concerned with the experiences of everyday living; and, while reaching a small audience, collaborative and community-building.  I haven’t walked down the road far enough to know much more than that, but the fact that I’ve spent days turning this dream over and over in my mind, that it’s taken hold and won’t let go, means that the timpani is readying itself.

Do you believe in the concept of a calling — true, better, or otherwise?  Do you think you’ve found your calling, or are you still working to find it?  Have you ever had a dream that felt prophetic?

Posted by Elizabeth

“There is only once place.  The one you’re in.  You can never leave, but you can turn it inside out.” ~ Karen Maezen Miller, “Hand Wash Cold:  Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life”

We've come a long way, baby.

Today is the day I’ve been waiting for, the one in which I can finally say, “I’m done.”  After seven months of saving and spending, sweating and swearing, stressing and stewing, our bathroom remodel is complete.  This day has been the beacon on my horizon, the one against which all others were measured:

As soon as the bathroom is done things will be easier.

As soon as the bathroom is done things will be back to normal.

As soon as the bathroom is done I’ll have time for other things.

But this morning I sit staring at my ever-growing to-do list, a smattering of bullet points that stretches on and on, blind to the victory that was supposed to make everything better.  A new mantra is forming off the stormy shores of my mind, dark and brooding:

As soon as the car seat is installed we’ll be ready.

As soon as we’ve cleaned the garage we’ll be ready.

As soon as we’ve organized the cabinets we’ll be ready.

I spend a great deal of my life waiting.  Waiting for things to get better, to calm down, to be different.  Over the years I’ve managed to convince myself that once x is done then life will reach that delicately impossible state of homeostasis that I so crave.  But one goal is replaced by another, and soon our to-do lists are littered with a lifetime of “somedays.”

In Karen Maezen Miller’s Hand Wash Cold:  Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life, she reminds us that, “When we view real life as a roadblock, we’re held prisoner by time.”  Today I realize that for seven months I bade my time and nervously watched the calendar pages float to the floor, waiting for the magical day when I could start living my “real” life sans bathroom project, never realizing that my real life was the only one I have:  the one I was already living.  Miller says, “Your real life is the life you pine for, the life you’re planning or the life you’ve already lost…this is the life we are most devoted to:  the life we don’t have.”  This morning, clutching my to-do list, I can’t help but wonder how much time I’ve wasted waiting for a life that will never materialize.

So how do we get out of our own way and begin living the life that we have, warts and all, without expectation of something better, calmer, and different?  Miller suggests that “it gets easier as soon as you get out of your judging mind – the mind that picks and chooses your way as best and regards all other ways as less.”  In counselor-ese this is a classic “reframe,” choosing to see your circumstances in a new light.  Instead of teetering at the edge of the remodel, waiting for it to be done, I could have dived into the experience, or found a different way to occupy those long weekends, or simply shifted my attitude.  In short, I could have saved seven months of waiting by seeing this project – and by extension this phase of life – not as an obstacle but an opportunity to live life for what it is.  Sure, life is full of ups and downs, and some periods are less hectic than others.  But that long-awaited day when everything is in its proper place, when things finally calm down, when everything is better?  That day is now.

Do you struggle with waiting for some other life to arrive that will “save” you from the life you’re already living?  Are you always waiting for things to be better, calmer, and different?  How do you cope with living the life you have, especially when things get hectic?

Posted by Elizabeth

Growing up, Sundays were special.  It wasn’t because we went to church, because we didn’t, but my family observed the Sabbath in our own way.  Sunday was the only day of the week that my mother didn’t work, so, desperate for a rest, the activity of the seventh day usually orbited around home and hearth.  Although it didn’t happen like clockwork, more times than not my mother made a special dinner, whipping up a dish that required the kind of tending that only hours at home could provide.   Pot roast would cozy us next to rustic apple crisp, steaming up the kitchen windows on a cold winter’s day.  Cool slices of banana cream pie – my dad’s favorite – would be dished up in the warm summer months.  These were not fancy, complicated meals served on our best, chipped china; rather, they were an everyday centerpiece to our small family of three being in one place, at one time, one day of the week.

As my thoughts turn towards my own soon-to-be family of three, I’ve become interested in resurrecting this particular version of the Sabbath; one that has not religious meaning but a personally spiritual one.  And it seems as if I’m not the only one concerned with rewriting what it means to take a day of rest.  Over the last year, I’ve noticed the publication of books like Judith Shulevitz’s The Sabbath World and Dani Shapiro’s spiritual memoir Devotion. I’ve dipped in and out of the blog A Year (or More) of Shabbats, tracing one family’s journey to share Friday night Shabbat dinners with friends.  Just last week, The New York Times featured an article (also by Shulevitz), Creating Sabbath Peace Amid the Noise, which highlights the different ways in which people are adapting ancient Sabbath rituals for modern times, from eating a special meal to forgoing shopping and disconnecting from technology.  Taken as a whole, I can’t help but think that, as a culture, we are itching to bring more quiet, more meaning, and more connection into our everyday lives.

Sometimes I let my mind run wild with visions of the small Sabbath feasts that I will make tradition in my expanding family.  Home-cooked meals will be served on the delicate Noritake china that my mother-in-law gifted me.  We will toast to the clink of the Waterford crystal goblets that were passed down from my parents.  We will sit around the stately cherry dining room table that was my grandparents’, swallowed whole by candlelight.  And this will happen every Sunday, without fail.  But just as soon as I create this gauzy vision it is withered by reality.  Once again, my imagination has set me up to fail, and I’ve missed the point completely.  As I think about rewriting my relationship to Sunday, I’d be smart to pay attention to two pieces of wisdom from Shulevitz’s article:
1.  “Sometimes doing things halfway is exactly what we need to do.”
2.  “The second you write down the rules, it doesn’t work.”

In other words, like living Life in Pencil itself, we’d be wise to create our own version of the Sabbath in a way that works for us, and to keep rewriting it as our lives change.  Traditions are wonderful, but we’re more likely to maintain them if we take a flexible approach.  As I reflect on the Sabbaths of my childhood, the shards of memories that glimmer from the corners of my mind are those of good food, quiet, and togetherness; you don’t need any elaborate ritual to do that.

Are you as enamored as I am with this idea of the modern day Sabbath? Do you have a Sabbath day ritual, secular or non-secular?  What ideas do you have for creating or maintaining a day of rest?  I encourage you to read Shulevitz’s New York Times article; it is short, but instructive.

Posted by Elizabeth

“Perhaps we feel so inadequate as parents not because of what we don’t know but because parenthood shows us the limits of what can be known.” ~ Karen Maezen Miller, “Hand Wash Cold:  Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life”

I stand gaping slack-jawed at the tower of books heaped on my bedside table, which stare menacingly back at me.  I’ve spent months reading and rereading my well-worn copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting, trying my best to absorb all I need to know.  I raced through Birthing from Within and slowly worked my way through Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth. But The Happiest Baby on the Block still languishes in the pile, along with many others, mocking me every time I flip through the ever-growing stack.  I managed to convince myself that once the reading was done I could sit back, relax, and enjoy these waning days of pregnancy.  Instead, new books – books that presage what’s to come – have taken up permanent residence on the pile.  What to Expect the First Year slumps heavy at the top, The Vaccine Book taunts me from below, and it finally dawns on me that this parade of expert opinions is never-ending.

Each time I pick up a parenting book these days, I quickly shut it with a sigh.  I am researched out, ready to live the experience rather than read about living the experience.  The only book I can’t put down is Karen Maezen Miller’s Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life, the solitary one that offers no easy answers.  I am particularly taken by her chapter on parenthood, because the lessons it offers – often ripe with paradox – are universal ones as we face the doubts and uncertainties of living a life in pencil:

I’m still hard at work on what doesn’t need any work.

Nothing compares to being a parent.  And yet, all we do is compare.

When we judge ourselves as inadequate parents, we judge our children as the inadequate result.

There is no right way to parent; there is only a right-now way.

Freedom is instantaneous the moment we accept the way things are.

We hurt ourselves, too, every time we fix on one way as the right way.

When we focus on what is in front of us, what is truly facing us in a situation, we know what to do and not to do.

Do we ever notice, and trust, the wonder of life happening continually and miraculously by itself?    Do we ever see how effortless life is?

Regardless of the life change we’re facing – whether it be a new baby, new career, or simply a new way of being – I think we all reach a point in the process where we’ve taken in as much expert opinion as we can.  Then, we must tune into our intuitive voice which, combined with that book knowledge, will help guide our next steps.  But so often we continue to cling to the books, digging insistently deeper, searching for absolute truths where there are none.  We forget to listen to the voice that whispers quietly, but persistently, from the dark.   Information is good, but our over-reliance on information can undermine our inner knowing.  Miller suggests that parenthood is not the impossible task that we’ve made it out to be, and I would argue the same for personhood.  All too often we use information as a talisman against doubt and uncertainty, but the truth is we already have everything we need to be good parents, just as we have everything we need to lead a good life.  No expert can instruct us otherwise.

For the next five weeks I am packing up the books and the professional opinions in an effort to coax my cowering voice out of the dark.  Right now, I’ll tell myself, what I’ve learned thus far is enough.

How much do you rely on expert opinion and book knowledge to help you navigate uncertain situations?  Do you have a hard time listening to that often-elusive inner voice?

Posted by Elizabeth

I stand at the arrivals gate, part of a pulsing mob waiting for the same thing:  the first glimpse at a blond head bobbing through the crowd, a peek at an orange shirt, a broad smile of recognition.  My best friend, Heidi, has flown in from Las Vegas just to throw me a baby shower.  We spend Friday madly dashing around, taking care of last-minute details.  I arrange to have our feet perfectly manicured for the big day.  I drive us to the old-fashioned candy store where I choose Holland mints in pale shades of spring, stuffed into wicker booties that my mother-in-law sent from Mexico.  Have you called the tearoom to give them the final head count? I call to her through the bathroom door.  Try as I may, I can’t help but micromanage the details of a party for which I am the guest of honor.

When Saturday afternoon rolls around, I tick the items off my to-do list and pack the car with pretty packages as Heidi irons out the wrinkles of her salmon blouse and runs from room to room with a hair clip in her hand.  One moment I see her furtively scribbling at a card, the next she is wondering where her camera went.  Are you ready? I yell to her from the garage.  Almost!, she shouts.  If humans had calls, these would be ours.

At the tearoom, we are a flurry of hugs and hellos.  In between introductions I catch Heidi’s eye.  Can we get into the room early to place the favors on the table?  It looks like we’re missing someone.  Where’s the herbal tea? Once seated, she wrestles the camera out of my hand and the gifts I am balancing on my lap and insists that I do nothing for the next two hours.  Soon I fall into a steady rhythm of simple pleasure, munching on treats, chatting with friends, tearing into wrapping paper.  Before I know it the chimes tinkle gently, letting us know in the most civil way possible that our time is up and a spell is about to be broken.

After a leisurely breakfast the next day, crammed with deep conversation, Heidi gets ready to fly home.  Minutes before we need to leave for the airport she is slowly, carefully penning a list of the gifts I received for the baby’s book on beautiful blue paper. I flutter nervously around her, asking her what snack she’d like for the plane, if she’s remembered to pack everything, if she’d like a copy of a recipe.  Without answering, she continues her meticulous writing, her focus laser sharp.  I finally cram a triangle of homemade blueberry pie into a Tupperware container, calling Are you ready?, from the kitchen.  Almost.

Racing to the airport, less than an hour before her departure time, Heidi says to me, “I never worry when I’m around you, because I know you’re doing enough worrying for the both of us.”  While I dash around this world with pen clutched firmly in palm, Heidi is flowing through life with an eraser.  Whenever I am in her presence, she reminds me to let go, to have fun, to live my life in pencil.  She reminds me that a perfect sheet of paper that will live forever in a memory book is more important than being a few minutes early to the airport.  She is my ultimate counter-weight, the one who helps me craft my world through moments, not lists and details.  She reminds me of how far I have yet to go on this journey.

Who’s your “counter-weight?”  Whose simple presence reminds you to live your life “in pencil?”  Do you have a hard time letting go of the details of life?

Posted by Elizabeth

One of my favorite columns in the Sunday New York Times is Preoccupations, a small square of space dedicated to the unusual career paths that people have chosen for themselves.  As a former career counselor, I can’t help but be fascinated by the ways in which people recast their professional identities, morphing from journalist to boat builder, or Wall Street whiz to communication coach who specializes in introverts.  We have a great deal to learn from the stories of others; hearing successful anecdotes of people who’ve taken the plunge to rewrite their life helps us to make the leap when we’re faced with similar choices.

Often, Preoccupation stories revolve around choosing between the well-worn path and the road not taken.  In my own life, these have been some of the most difficult decisions to make.  Do I stay in this graduate program or switch to another?  Do I stick to this career path or start over in a new one?  Do I continue with this steady job or travel around the world? While I tend towards risk-taking, it’s usually not without a great deal of vacillation, which is what attracted me to last week’s column, Taking a Chance On Yourself. Here is the story of a young woman who traded in a lucrative business consulting position for a shot at entrepreneurship after trying time and again to make the conventional path work (to no avail).  Although she is quick to point out the pitfalls of starting one’s own business – long hours, uncertain outcomes, financial concerns, the constant threat of failure – she reminds us that,

No matter how tough things get, I wake up every morning with renewed hope and excitement for what lies ahead.  The fact that I am working on my passion gives meaning to even the most mundane tasks.

Reading those words sent a chill up my spine.  When we take a chance on ourselves and dare to engage our passions, everything we do crackles with life.  When we follow our natural energies and inclinations, what others perceive as risks suddenly don’t feel risky.   In the words of Ms. Gupta, “Work is no longer work.  It is life, and a good one.”

What risks have you taken in your own professional life that did – or didn’t – pay off?  Are you facing any dilemmas right now?