"Lean In": About empowerment or just power?

How's my lean?

Sheryl Sandberg's new book Lean In is personal for me because I am one of the statistics she quotes so woefully when she writes about the scourge of today's "leadership ambition gap": I am a Yale-educated MBA graduate. I have held management positions for Fortune 100 companies in three countries, doing business in more than half a dozen. In my late 30s with two toddlers at home, likely close to achieving an officer position with the esteemed Blue Chip firm who employed me, I dropped out.

That's what Sheryl Sandberg and others call what I did: dropping out. And Sandberg's data forecasts a grim future for me: a 30% reduction in my earning power after only two years out of the workforce (p. 102). I have been out for three.

Cannery Row Is a Poem

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered...

History Rampage!

In the Jamestown Settlement, indoctrinating my young'uns.

I do love me some good history!

Are you still reading?

OK, for the three people who are still reading, let me tell you how much I love it. I love it so much that every family vacation I plan (which is all of them) has now turned into what my husband glibly refers to as a "history rampage."

Last August, I planned a week-long trip for the four of us to, yes, the U.S. mecca for all history lovers: Colonial Williamsburg!

Activities for my five and six-year-old sons included: butter churning, hammering sooty hinges in the blacksmith's shop, eating non-descript tavern gruel, touring un-air conditioned houses, walking several miles a day in a perfume of gnats, and admiring the ear-splitting parade of the fife and drum corps!

In-Flight Confession

Photo by Kash_if

You guys seem to really like it when I break the law. More people read my December 2012 post about trying to fight a moving violation in a Hoboken court than read the three posts following it combined. And one of those posts even featured an orgasm. But still... you wanted most to read about me breaking the law.

So here's some more law-breakin' for ya'll!