Thanks for all the kind comments last week! I pulled it together, made it through, and I’m back in the groove this week.

Today is Blog Action Day, so I thought I’d talk about going green at the office. There are some fabulous companies out there who go beyond what’s required of them, and corporations can implement many eco-friendly ways and means, but what can we do this week, right now, to go green at work? These suggestions aren’t new, but not everyone is practicing them. I’ve worked places where there was a paper tidal wave, and no recycle bin. I hope your office fares better.

Let’s start in the breakroom. Buy a sugar cannister, and re-useable cups and spoons, or switch to cups that are biodegradable. According to Tree Hugger, “…in 2005, Americans used and discarded 14.4 billion disposable paper cups for hot beverages. If put end-to-end, those cups would circle the earth 55 times. Based on anticipated growth of specialty coffees, that number will grow to 23 billion by 2010—enough to circle the globe 88 times.” Wow, maybe we should give Starbucks a call, and ask them to switch too. What an impact that would make!

And what about what we put in those cups? Buying fair trade coffee and teas not only helps the communities that grow them, but also helps the environment. Fair Trade farmers generally aren’t clearing forests, or using chemical fertilizers and pesticides. They don’t have the capital, first of all, and secondly they’re generally very concerned about the environment, since they have a much more cause/effect relationship with the earth than we do. Not only that, but companies like Green Mountain Coffee and Newman’s Own have a track record of helping coffee-growing areas hard hit by natural disasters.

Paper and printer cartridges are two items that can have a huge impact on the environment. Do you use the front and back of paper, when you can? Do you use scrap paper, instead of buying those cute printed list pads, and notebooks (I’m a sucker for cute paper, so this is an area where I could stand some improvement). Is your office using recycled paper? 100% recycled? No, it’s not a quest for the holy grail, you can buy it at Staples, for corn sake. So even if no one else in your office switches, you can. I hope wherever you’re working you have a recycle bin. If not, just grab an empty box, and voila, you’re greener already. I admit, I don’t refill my own printer cartridges, but I do buy refurbished ones. I use ASAP, who I’m happy with (I’m also cheap, so there). In many areas you can donate your old cartridges to charity, earning you two gold stars.

And how about that pain in the neck otherwise known as carpooling. Yes, I know, you have to give up the comfort of your own car, and if your an introvert like me, you must suffer the ghastly practice of making conversation (makes me shudder just to think of it). Not to mention, you have to arrive and leave at the same time, so you give up some convenience. But come on, if you carpool just once a week, you’ve already reduced your emissions by 20%! Baby steps.

So there you have it, a few simple, easy (my two favorite words) ways to make the world a better place, and your kids’ world too.

I’m losing it. Work has been swamped because I keep taking jobs that require me to draw, and I. don’t. draw. I mean I can draw, if I want to make 10¢ an hour. So over the past few days instead of interacting with my kids, I’ve mostly been looking at them when they are regaling me with stories, while in my head, I’m thinking, “When are you going to stop talking so I can get back to work?!” Last night for dinner I fed my kids Dino Nuggets. That’s it, no broccoli, or salad, not even a limp piece of celery.

I was supposed to take two of my kids to the doctor yesterday, one for booster shots, the other for a check up; I missed the appointment. My husband needed to print a copy of his offer letter; we’re out of paper. I sent one of my daughters to school with her hair pulled up in a pony tail, because it’s greasy; I forgot it’s picture day. My house is right on the cusp between “manageably messy,” and “pig sty.” I have bills I need to pay, overdue library books that need to be returned, grocery shopping that needs to be done, ad infinitum.

Because I don’t have enough to do, I told my kids I’d take them to Amish country this weekend, and throw them a Halloween party weekend after next. Today I’m supposed to volunteer in one of my kids’ classes, and I’m so tempted to cancel. Except I’d feel compelled to lie and say my son was home sick, because I don’t think I can say, “Hey, I’m really off my game, and this is the only child-free morning I have this week, and I need to use it to pull my shit together.”

And how’s your week going?

Hi! And welcome back to Let’s Choose A Job, the game show that’s sweeping the nation! I’m your host Monty Hall, and here are the jobs!

Behind door #1 is a job with a stable, larger company where there would be opportunities to advance. They don’t work a lot of hours, and the benefits are terrific, as is so often true with large corporations. We’d be living in a great city. The downside: because of the cost of living in the new city, our standard of living wouldn’t improve, and might even have to come down a smidge.

Behind door #2 is a job with a small company, it would pay quite a bit more than we make now, and we could stay in our neighborhood, and oh, how I love and adore this neighborhood. The downside: they work more hours, expect faster turnaround time for prototypes, and the benefits aren’t quite as good.

Honestly, we’re very fortunate to be in a position to choose from these options. We’re in a very good position, and either job is going to be good, so there’s really no wrong choice. What it comes down to is the equation that’s going to bring the most job satisfaction to Aaron. Which got me to thinking about the equation of job satisfaction.

What criterion do you use to decide if a job is right for you? There are so many variables. Is it a larger paycheck, being challenged, or a friendly working environment? How important is loving what you do, and being good at it? (Aaron loves his work, they could pay him in T-shirts and pizza, and he’d be happy as a lark.) How do the number of hours you work impact your job satisfaction? Do you balk at having to put in extra time at the office? What about having autonomy, good corporate culture, a short commute? Free cookies? Come on that’s got to be in the top ten.

So tell me, what ranks high in your list of priorities for job satisfaction? And let’s play Let’s Choose A Job in the comments. Will you choose door #1, door #2, or the “mystery prize” behind door #3? (Psst, it’s litter of puppies, but keep it under your hat.)

(Edited to add: He took the job behind door #2. Whew, that was tough. I would’ve been happy either way, for different reasons. Right now, I’m just glad we’re through hashing it out six ways to Sunday!)

Aaron, my husband is looking for a new job. He has a few offers on the table right now, one of which is in our town, and the others are out of state. Changing jobs is hard, even though it’s not my job!

Aaron is a hardware-design engineer, and there’s not a lot of that type of industry in our area. In Aaron’s line of work, people don’t generally stay with a company more than 8 years, unless they’re planning on staying until retirement. I really don’t want to move, but it’s almost inevitable that we’re going to have to, it’s just a matter of when.

Financially we’re probably better off to stay here, if he can wrangle a commensurate salary. The out of state jobs include a moving allowance in their offer, but we’d have a second mortgage, deposits for a rental, the expenses of moving after we buy a home, and all those other costs I tend to forget about until my VISA bill is staring me in the face.

Plus we’ve only been here 3 years, in some ways I feel like I’m just getting settled. There is a certain kind of currency earned when you’re a part of a community. You have a reliable mechanic, doctors you know and like, you know your way around town, you have people you can call up for dinner, or trade baby sitting with. All that is worth a lot. Imagine “a lot” in 40pt red letters.

The advantage of moving is that the companies are larger, and more stable than the in-state offers. There’s more opportunity for growth, and a lot more industry in the area, so hopefully we could settle for good someplace. One major concern we have is the kids. Is it better to pull them out of an amazing neighborhood, with tons of kids, so our eldest child doesn’t have to make a move during middle school?

It’s so difficult to know what’s the best choice for our family’s future. How do you make decisions that effect your family?

This weekend I read an article about home-based business in the New York Times. Essentially the article encourages people who run home-based businesses to be transparent, and represent themselves accurately. If you run your business out of your kitchen, say so. If you’re self employed, don’t pretend you’re a “we” when you’re really an “I.” Pretending to be something your not isn’t going to gain you respect in any meaningful way, and may eventually backfire on you. (This is precisely why I don’t have “CEO” or some other title on my business card. I don’t need a title, it’s just me and my shadow running the show.)

But something tangential occurred to me as I read this article, and that is how “female” business has become. I’m a newcomer to the business world, and my expertise on feminism doesn’t extend much beyond a few Women Studies classes at Smith College, so I may not articulate this very well, but it seems to me that the win/lose, zero sum, black-and-white, either/or male model of business is a dying breed. It’s exciting to look around and see the transformation business is undergoing, and I think the much of the credit is largely due to women, or at least a more feminine way of looking at the world.

The article I referenced states that 50% of business are home based, and their earnings are half a trillion dollars. There are so many non-traditional business models: coworking, freelancing, web-based business, mompreneurs, and more. Within corporate business, flex-time, on site daycare, casual Friday, and yes even bringing pets to work, and the ubiquitous lava lamps, and large rubber balls, are changing the flavor of business.

And it’s not just business modes and methods, it’s our interaction with careers that have changed as well. According to the Labor Department, “the average person born in the later years of the baby boom held 10.5 jobs from age 18 to 40.” In 2006, the most recent year for which there are statistics, 54 million Americans, or 40 percent of the work force, left their jobs. If people aren’t changing jobs they’re likely to be specializing in different areas, or acquiring additional vocations– no one, it seems has only one job, every one is a lawyer/writer/life coach. The slash has become an indispensable mark of puncutation. Along with Americans changing jobs, or adding to the jobs they already have, there is (for better or for worse) the inevitable blurring of work and home life.

I can’t help but think (although my opinion isn’t based on any hard evidence) that these revolutionary changes in business are largely derived from the contributions and (though I hate to use such a woo-woo term) energy of women in the workplace. What do you think?

Yesterday Mir posted about severing ties with a client, and a while ago she wrote about evaluating which clients to take on. These posts got me thinking; even though I’m just starting out, it’s probably a good idea to have parameters in place for the type of jobs I want.

Of course, freelancers don’t typically blog about turning down work, but after perusing the internet, I found some guidelines. Don’t pick up clients who are difficult to work for, or people who have burned you in the past. Don’t do pro-bono work, unless it will lead to future opportunity, or other non-monetary reward. That’s pretty much common sense, but what kind of work should a freelancer pursue?

The consensus seems to be you should commit to projects you feel enthusiastic about. Pamela Slim, who writes at Escape from Cubicle Nation says that even when times were lean, or she could have made substantially more money, she still turned down work she didn’t feel passionate about.

Be ruthless in defining the kind of people you want to work with and the kind of work you want to do. If anything seems inappropriate, unethical or is not a good fit, run screaming! Go after business you do want with a vengeance.

Steve Pavlina believes that it pays to be discerning about your clients, and that one of the most common mistakes made by the newly self-employed is casting too wide a net in the client pool. He’s another successful business person who declines any offer which doesn’t inspire him. It makes sense, doesn’t it? If your pumped-up about your work, that enthusiasm carries a lot of momentum to help propel you through problems. It’ll give you a sense of confidence, which may in turn, increase your competence. And generally the things we feel passion for are the things we value, which, according to Steve Pavlina, is what business is all about.

“It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the purpose of a business is to make money. But the real purpose of a business is to create value. While it’s possible to make money in the short run without creating much value, in the long run it’s unsustainable.”

Not only that, but lets face it, if you like your job it’s a lot more fun to go to work every day. Even if work is in your dining room.

MSNBC has an article profiling a new device called the Energy Pod. A high-tech version of the Kindergarten mat, it affords sleep deprived employees and executives a power nap during the day. Invented by Arshad Chowdhury, founder of New York based MetroNaps, the company hopes to introduce the Energy Pod into the workforce in order to “improve employee morale, while boosting the bottom line.”

While the business person in me loves that Chowdhury launched his company in order to solve a problem (and very creatively at that), and though I think this could really come in handy for post-lunch hours at work, and ultimately it’s healthier than another pot of coffee, the mother in me isn’t impressed.

The “sleep industry” is now a booming business, which pulled in 20 billion dollars last year. Americans working more and sleeping less, sometimes with dire consequences– over 100,000 car accidents each year are the result of drowsy driving. It seems as though every magazine, and morning news show has some kind of feature on how overworked and exhausted we are. Some people even seem boast about it, as if you can earn some sort of merit badge for running yourself into the ground.

I know there are circumstances from time to time which require us to sleep less, and of course there are millions of Americans who suffer from insomnia, but what I’m talking about is the general trend in business that promotes sleeping less and working more. Doesn’t the Energy Pod encourage that trend? Instead of trying to re-order our lives so that we can get the sleep we need, now we can just catch a cat nap at work.

Well, another venti latte with an extra shot, or a 40 winks in a fiber glass bed isn’t going to cut it. Geez, America, you need your sleep! So turn off the blackberry, close the laptop and go to bed.

Sometimes it’s lonesome out here on the freelancing frontier. No one around for miles, just a dusty wide open (office) space, where only the occasional howl of a wolf, and the chime of the email notifier are heard. A few tumbleweeds, and diet coke cans blow across the deserted expanse. Just me, riding my ergonomically designed, leather steed across the wooden floor to the waterin’ hole. Yesirree Bob.

Which is why freewheeling freelancers like me need to network. Joshua Levy wrote a post for Web Worker Daily, and states the problem beautifully.

“When I go too long — more than a day, really — without significant human contact during the workday, I feel like I’m wilting. It’s as if human interaction is the sun, and without it I can’t grow. I get less and less sharp the longer I go without it.”

Yeah, trying being a stay-at-home-mom, Joshua. Oh sorry, did I say that out loud? Anyway, Joshua is absolutely right. Since I’ve been at home for nearly a decade (Dear Lord, I swear I just felt ten hairs turn gray as I typed that), the transition from raise-kids-at-home to work-at-home didn’t change my loneliness factor, but it is, definitely a BIG factor.

But, I face the same problem as a freelancer as I did as a SAHM. I don’t really know how to network. Aside from the fact that I break out in hives whenever I have to interact with strangers, I’m not exactly sure how to get started.

There are sites like LinkedIn, and Facebook, both of which I joined, was baffled about how in the world to use the darn things, and quickly deleted my account faster than you can say “wallflower at the prom.” Web Worker Daily also had an post about how to use LinkedIn more productively, which I read, then stared at the screen catatonically as drool rolled down my chin. Have any of you used these sites as a source to find clients, or meet other professionals?

Researching further, Shane and Peter recommend going to business conferences, and chamber mixers as a way of meeting new clients, and these could be places I could meet fellow graphic designers, as well as joining professional associations. But how do I find these professional networks? I’ve scoured the internet, and can find hide nor hair of any events I could attend. Of course, I live in the sticks, so that doesn’t help matters. How do I scope out other freelancers in my area?

Co-working, or sharing office space is also a growing trend among freelancers. Although those aren’t options for me right now, I’d be interested in hearing about anyone’s experience with them.

Another thing I’d could do is partner with another graphic designer in a mentoring relationship. I would love to have the benefit of someone else’s experience. Or I could partner with another writer to collaborate on projects.

Obviously there are a lot of options, but I’m not quite sure how to explore them. If any of you can recommend resources, I’d be much obliged, ma’am *tips Stetson*.

Last week I crossed the rickety wooden bridge strung between two cliffs. I turned down work. It sounds daring, but really it was a no-brainer. A while back I had a “client.” (And I use the term loosely. In place of client, fill in your favorite noun swear word. It’s like Mad Libs!)

When I do a design for someone, after I complete the initial design there’s generally a lot of back and forth emails as we collaborate on changes. So this client and I are working through these changes, and the emails stop. After a couple of days I re-send my suggestions, and let him know I’m ready to finish tweaking it, he emails me back, says he’s busy, and he’ll get to it next week.

Fine, no worries I have other projects to work on. Ten days later I email him again, and he says blah blah blah, discontinuing project. No problem, my contract states that if you cancel mid-project, I bill you for hours worked to that point. I send an invoice, and wait.

Well, you know how the story ends.

So last week I get an email.

Long time no see! Let’s finish project!

Hi! You owe me money! Please pay now!

No problem! Let’s finish! I’ll pay a lump sum at the end!

Hi! You owe me money! Please pay now!

Yes! Later!

Wow! I’m all booked up!

Actually I’m surprised the guy contacted me again. The audacity of some people amaze me. Now I’m pondering small claims court all over again.

So, nothing but crickets chirping on that last post, huh? Okay, moving on, let’s talk about dropping your kids at daycare. Will continues to weeeep in the mornings as I drop him off at school. This morning I decided to let my husband drop him off, because he’s used to saying goodbye to him every morning. Or, maybe because I’m sick of hearing him scream, and I foisted the drama off on Aaron, I really couldn’t say.

Anyway, I know from working with wee ones that his separation anxiety is just a phase, and eventually he will be able to say goodbye without tears. There are some things you can do to ease the time of separation.

• Invent a goodbye ritual. It should be short, and simple. Tell your child the night before, and in the morning when they’re getting dressed, how you will say goodbye. (”We’ll hang up your coat, and say hi to the fish, and then I’ll give you a hug and kiss.”)
• Let you child take something comforting at home with them, a blanket or special stuffed animal.
• Tell your child when you’ll be back, even if they’re not old enough to understand time, tell them you’ll be back after nap time, or snack, etc.
• Don’t prolong goodbyes with extra hugs and kisses, or comforting words, it won’t make it easier for the child to say goodbye to you.
• Be upbeat. Instead of telling the child you will miss them, tell them you’ll be glad to see them later. Smile, and don’t sneak a look back once you’re headed out the door.

Even though you’re doing all these things, it may take some time for your child to say goodbye without a fuss. But eventually (s)he will adjust to separating. Most kids do stop crying within 10 minutes or less of the parent walking out the door. Some within seconds. I’m hoping Will gets used to saying goodbye soon, because as you know, it’s a real heart-breaker. I’ll be curious to see if it was easier for him to say goodbye to Aaron.