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fun on Friday: cupcakes!
Friday, February 6th, 2009chocolate cupcakes with white chocolate buttercream
It’s the month of the cupcake, with the front of Martha Stewart living covered in them and several articles like this one in last week’s Guardian. So I decided to go for it, and baked a batch yesterday with the big American buttercream on top, instead of my usual fairy [...]
Hugh Macleod’s “crofting” metaphor: thoughts on why & how to do various different jobs at once
Monday, October 20th, 2008I am very interested in Hugh Macleod’s idea about combining multiple career paths, “crofting as a metaphor for the new world of work?” The metaphor describes a way of work that puts life first- independence, doing your own thing, doing what it takes (nb. I’m reading the metaphor here, not Hugh’s mind). It’s about combining [...]
money first, then art?
Friday, October 17th, 2008Seth Godin’s post, maybe you can’t make money doing what you love, adds to a longstanding cultural debate about whether you can or should try to do “what you love” for a job. There is a Boomer idea that yes you can and should, sometimes that success can be defined by so doing, which Penelope [...]
How not to plan your life
Saturday, October 4th, 2008I’m reading (and working through) Martha Beck’s Steering by Starlight, which is a quite new-agey self-help book and lots of fun if you like that sort of thing, which I very much do. This passage made me laugh out loud, and also sums up pretty well what it is I like about Martha’s use of [...]
Success! what for?
Friday, September 26th, 2008I’m a bit obsessed with the issue of success: what is it? do you need it? why? how is it measured? and so on. I don’t know what about this idea especially fascinates me, especially as a person who opted out of the “rat race” early on to raise and homeschool my kids. Maybe because [...]
do a scary thing every day
Wednesday, August 27th, 2008I have spent quite a lot of time pondering the adage “Do one scary thing every day”. Not sure where it first originated (ideas?) but most recently it was in my latest self-help book (yes, I am a self-help addict, there are worse things), Martha Beck’s The Joy Diet. Building your Courage Muscle seems to [...]
startling genius
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008I really love this art by Moshe Hammer, a young man who was tragically killed before the world got to enjoy his talents. Robert Avrech writes the story beautifully. When I started reading his post, I was in a tired grumpy mood, and thought, Well, isn’t that typical- the world is probably full of this [...]
married people actually have sex shocker!
Saturday, July 12th, 2008This week we read in the shocker-tastic British press about the married couple that had sex for 101 days in a row, and the wife who gave her husband a gift (or “gave” her husband a “gift”) of sex every day for a year- which apparently they almost actually managed.
If you consider it perfectly [...]
tips on supporting friends going through divorce
Wednesday, June 25th, 2008Oh how I wish I’d had Gretchen Rubin’s excellent list of suggestions a few years back! To give other people who needed it, of course. Ahem.
My favourites are: include divorcing friends in your plans, don’t be judgemental, don’t assume you know who is “right” and who is “wrong”, and don’t insist on being given a [...]
forget social convention, follow your star
Wednesday, June 25th, 2008The social self isn’t opposed to you reaching your North Star per se; it just won’t allow you to proceed until you get Everybody’s permission. Actually, the social self would prefer that you don’t do anything, anything at all, until Everybody kneels down and begs you to do it.
Martha Beck, Finding your own North Star
This [...]
