I hear adults talk all the time about how difficult it is to make friends once you graduate from college.  It seems, for many grown ups, that the workplace is the easiest (and sometimes only) place to meet people your own age with similar interests.

So, does that mean that you spend your weekends and down time hanging with your co-workers?  More specifically, will you be ringing in the New Year surrounded by people you work with?

Why do I ask?

For many people, New Year’s Eve is a chance to cut loose and partake of the booze.  And boozing often leads to - well, making a gosh darn fool of yourself, to put it mildly.

Will you be singing loud and out of tune karaoke with your project manager?  Is your office manager going to be tagging you on Facebook with pictures of a lampshade on your head?  What are the odds of someone accidentally hitting on your boss before the ball drops?

And - do you care?

Like many people I know, I’ve formed really great friendships with the people I’ve worked with at various jobs.  Some of those friendships extended to after hours fraternization (wait, that just means hanging out, right?) and, on occasion, laughs shared over drinks.  At the time, it seems like a great idea.

But I’ve also experienced a handful of Monday mornings when I really wished I could walk into my office without my weekend persona walking in my shadow.  It can be difficult to have someone take you seriously in an office environment if they’ve become familiar with you in a social setting - especially if that social setting involves liquor.  By the same token, if you’re spending your off hours hanging out with your superiors, the lines of authority can be a bit blurry once everyone is back at work.

As a general rule, I try not to act like an idiot.  Period.  But if my co-workers or clients are in the mix, I like to make a concerted effort to keep my cool.  Most of the time.

What about you?  Do you keep your work and personal relationships completely separate?  Do you ever find the lines getting blurred - especially after a big holiday party and a few glasses of champagne?

Photo credit: Ollie Crafoord

I handle the bulk of the customer service emails for my company.  I’m also responsible for writing all of our email marketing campaigns.

I sign every email I send to a potential client with “Sincerely,” followed by my name, title and contact information.

My boss signs his emails with “Regards”.  The first time I put together an email campaign, he assumed that my “sincerely” was a typo.  He suggested that closing with the word “regards” was more formal, and therefore more professional than using “sincerely”.

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It is day one of my son’s school Winter Break. He’s a kindergartner and thinks that getting two whole weeks of during Christmas is a gift from God.  I, as a full-time working momma, realize that if God had anything to do with it then he’s one masochistic son of a bitch. 

When my son was in preschool, he always had the week between Christmas and New Year’s off.  The school used that week to not only give the teachers a much needed break but also to use the time to perform maintenance.  One week a year was easy to manage.  I’d take a couple of days off, my spouse would take a couple, and a Grandparent would always step in when needed.
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Can we just commiserate for a minute?

The holidays are kicking my butt.

My family celebrates Christmas, and I absolutely love everything about the holidays.  I love the lights and the trees and the gift giving.  I love the magic and the anticipation and the planning of special surprises.

I am not, by any means, a Scrooge.

But holy cow do I need a holiday break!

Juggling family, friends and work in a normal week is a challenge.  Throw in the extra to-do lists and holiday distractions, and my balance has been lost somewhere at the bottom of a pile of shipping boxes and garland.

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I think I am ready to accept the fact that I will never live my life “in balance”.  Or at least, not in the way that most people imagine when they hear those words.

When I think of balance, I think of the center of something.  I imagine living firmly in the middle of two extremes, never getting to close to one pole or the other.  A little from column A, a little from column B, but mostly straddling the line between them.

It sounds lovely, in theory.  I imagine the middle to be a serene and peaceful place with very little need to run back and forth between opposite ends of the spectrum.  I imagine balance like that must be nice, but I have no practical experience with it.

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Even though we are not legally married, my partner and I often refer to each other as husband or wife.  We never correct new friends or co-workers when they assume that a couple with a child and a mortgage payment would be a legally married couple.  For all intentions and purposes, we are married.  We just chose to not get legally married. 

As a career woman, those who assume that we are married don’t think twice about me having my “maiden name.”  And that’s okay.  I don’t mind when people assume we are married.  I don’t mind being called a wife.  I love Neville as a wife loves her husband. 

But there is one part of this whole “married, but unmarried” lifestyle that I never considered. What will I choose to be called as a mother?

Our son has his father’s last name just as I have my father’s last name.   But since Neville and I aren’t married, I wonder what I am supposed to be called?

Am I Ms. Roark? Miss Roark?  Mrs. Roark?  Mrs. <insert Neville’s last name here>?
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I’ve recently started watching AMC’s series Mad Men, just three years after everyone else.  I’m nothing if not cutting edge.  (Also, I’m only halfway through season 3, so don’t spoil anything for me!)

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the TV show, it’s about the people who work at a Manhattan ad agency in the early 1960’s.  It’s an interesting look at values, relationships and society as a whole during that time, and it makes me awfully glad I was born in 1980.

There are two women who work at the ad agency that are standout characters, and they represent, to me, the two different approaches that women take to working in a “man’s world”.  While we could debate all day about how many offices are run by men today, there is no doubt that corporate America was still very much a man’s world in 1960, and watching how these two women navigate that landscape is fascinating.

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