In therapy lately I am learning to identify my feelings. Maybe you’re thinking this is elementary, but did you know that envy is about wanting something you don’t have, but jealousy is the fear of losing something you already have?

I am thinking about those two things. I am almost never envious, but I am often jealous. Most of my emotions, in fact, are rooted in fear.

I am thinking a lot lately about where my joy comes from, and one thing I love is writing well. When I have a blog post that people love I am happy for weeks. And the excitement of doing good creative work gives me energy to do more.

So I have been thinking about how to get better at writing, and I’ve been trying to notice stuff that I wish I had written. The process teaches me a lot about identifying my own emotions.

1. A New Yorker article.
There is not much in the New Yorker I wish I had written. Most of it I think is too long and could use a stronger editor. (Like this article about Ikea.) But there is a piece in the Nov. 28 issue that is just one page, and so funny that I carry it with me and make people read it just so I can watch them laugh.

It is We are the One Percent, by John Kenney. Will you click to read it? Go read it now.

I'll wait.

I am not funny. I mean, I am funny but in an unintentional way. When I try to make a joke it is usually a pun. I love puns but I have realized, late in life, that people do not think puns are funny.

When people read my writing and say that I am funny, I feel lonely, because I know better than to try to be funny on purpose. So honestly, I don’t feel that funny. It’s a lot like when people say that I write stuff just to get a lot of traffic. If I knew how to churn out a 300-comment post on demand, don’t you think I’d do it every day?

In fact, it’s like funny. I have no idea when it’s coming. Feeling: Lonely, because I’m always surprised.

2. An email from Melissa.
I wrote to Melissa that I messed up my PayPal account and I hit my limit on money I can transfer to my checking account and I wanted the money right then, while I was in Florida, with the kids. We were at the Waldorf in Boca, which I would have never chosen, but there was a wedding.

And actually, in the list of things I wish I had written should be the pricing plan for this resort. It reminds me of buying a printer. They seem so reasonably priced until you get killed on the ink. And that’s what happens here—when you have to pay five dollars for an apple juice, and $25 to get the hotel to remove the $5 juice from the fridge in the room so the kids don’t drink it.

Anyway, I asked Melissa if I could pay her through PayPal and use her credit card at the hotel. This is the sort of fucked up behavior that Melissa and I have done in the past, so it seemed like a reasonable request.

Melissa wrote back, “No. I’m not doing stuff like that anymore.”

And I thought, “She is really smart. Of course we should not do stuff like that anymore.” It is bad boundaries and I am working on having better boundaries with everyone, even Melissa.

I am hoping she will send me an email asking for something bad so I can write a response that blows her away with my ability to establish good boundaries. Feeling: Determination to change and excitement about what my life could be like with good boundaries.

3. The ad copy up there.
The girl. In the hot outfit, with all the guys around her. Do you see her? It’s an ad for work clothes, of course. But it’s an ad that gives women the freedom to use their sexuality to get everything they can get. I love that. Women are doing better than men are at work in their 20s. Women earn more and women are less likely to get hit in layoffs.

OK Cupid – one of my favorite blogs for the combination of amazing data and amazing analysis, and really, that should be on my list of stuff I’d like to write too, except that the guy who writes it – Chris Rudder – has his personality all over it which makes me just want to enjoy it and not be it. Like Joel Stein’s column in Time magazine. It’s too too too him for me to want it to be me. But I love reading it.

Anyway, OK Cupid concludes that women are in highest demand when they are in their late 20s. Which makes sense to me—they are high earning, stable, and still very hot.  So women should leverage their sexuality to get promotions, make sales, get high-earning husbands—great legs help with all that stuff.

I want to write advice like the advice in this ad. Be great. Reach high. Inspire people around you by being inspired yourself. And when you don’t feel that way, at least look that way and eventually that good look will get you back on track.

Feeling: Hopeful. The ad reminds me of all the positive psychology research – that you can create hope in yourself by giving it to other people.

If I focus on what I wish I'd written, I realize that what I'm scared of  has nothing to do with other writers. What I'm scared of is not growing. It's freeing to recognize that, really. Because I can't control what other people write. But I can control how much I push myself to grow. And I'm convinced that jealousy and envy — whichever is your sin of choice  - have very little power over us when we are growing fast enough to surprise ourselves with what we can accomplish.

When we were at LegoLand I was struck by the high emotional intelligence of the employees. Their job is to make everyone feel like their Lego project is great. (You'd be surprised how many parents are there, swiping the white blocks from little kids at the Lego snowman contest.)

High emotional-intelligence jobs are very hard, and I would rather sweep floors. But I force myself to try to improve my emotional intelligence because people who don't try to improve it generally suck at it. And people with high emotional intelligence are fascinated by how to get even better at reading people.

So I'm always seeking out new data points for emotional intelligence so I can get that social skills boost I most definitely need.

Here's what I've learned about the social skills secrets of successful people:

1. Don't try to fake emotion.
The first thing you should do is stop trying to fake that you care. It simply doesn’t work. You know the studies about smiling? They show that if you really smile, your eyes wrinkle. If you fake smile, those wrinkles are not there. And we read that subconsciously.

In fact, most of what we read subconsciously is correct. Here’s a good summary of that in the Economist.  But the bottom line on reading people is that we have had millions of years to perfect the skill, and we’re good at it.

We can also tell right away how someone feels toward us. Researchers at the University of Toronto found that people judge empathy accurately in just 20 seconds of video without sound. This means we are reading the face. This also means that it’s pretty difficult for someone who doesn’t feel empathy to feign empathy.

2. Focus on doing rather than feeling.
I read a lot of books about how to have good social skills, and the instructions are always something specific I should say or do. For example, if someone is talking about themselves, I should not interject to talk about myself, but rather, ask a question about the other person.

I can do this. But I have a hard time caring, and it shows up as awkwardness—an act of empathy but no empathy showing in my face. Now I get it:  the whole “passing for normal” goal is useless.

It’s much easier for me to follow rules that involve doing instead of caring.

3. Pay attention to personality types.
You know you should make people feel good by recognizing them for their work. But it’s actually difficult to know the right way to do that; one way won’t work for everyone, and, not surprisingly, it comes down to personality.

There are four dominant types of personalities. (Take the Myers Briggs test here to find out yours. It’s free.)  There are four dominant types of people, each motivated primarily by either power, relationships, craftsmanship, or ideals.

4. First recognize then reward.
It's important to first recognize a job well done, with gratitude. But also, if you reward the person with appropriate work then you'll encourage a repeatedly outstanding performance. (Insights is a company that trains managers to think like this.)

Here are the four personality types and how to inspire them.

Power. Type-A types. For a job well done, reward this person with public recognition when a task or project is finished. Reward the person with visionary, forward-thinking projects.

Relationships. The cheerleader type. This person also wants some sort of public recognition, but it should be fun. And the thank-you speech is really important to this person. Reward them with projects that are varied and well defined.

Ideals. The crusaders. This person wants to be rewarded along the way, not just at the end. Reward this person as part of their team, not alone. Show faith in their ability to build strong partnerships by giving them more work to leverage that skill.

Craftsmanship. The perfectionists. Reward this person for attention to detail, and do it in a private, one-on-one way. They don’t want big fanfare. This person wants acknowledgement that they did a good job by seeing executive management adopt their work as the standard.

4. Judge yourself on how precisely you give a compliment.
You might not be in a position to reward someone at your company, but you are always in a position to acknowledge the work someone has done. This information helps you understand who wants acknowledgement for what. And you can mention something to them.

This seems subtle, but the difference between high emotional intelligence and merely average is that everyone knows you should give compliments when you can. But not everyone knows who needs what sort of compliment.

Then I received an onslaught of emails reminding me of how I have always said that it’s stupid to try to earn money blogging. Here’s the post where I outline the rationale for this. But the bottom line is that making money from blogging based on getting tons of traffic is a terrible goal because so few people can do it.

So most advice about blogging is stupid, because making money from ads on your blog is a lost cause. But you know what you can do really well with a blog? Create a stable, engaging, career – that is not blogging – that accommodates your personal life. Because a blog is a career tool, like a resume. It's the magic pill for your career.

Here’s a photo of what I did last week. I went to galleries, in New York City, with my kids.

Do you know why I can do this stuff? Because I have a secure career. I can always make money, I can control my own hours, and I can always find someone to give me work if I need it. I am not more diligent than you or more lucky than you. I am a fanatic about always making sure I can make money in ways that are interesting to me.

So when I tell you to blog, I tell you that as a way for you to give yourself the same sense of career stability that I have. I worry about a lot of things in my life, but I don’t worry about being unemployed or having boring work.

I can show you how to get that confidence. That’s why I decided to do the Blogging Bootcamp.  Here’s what blogging can do for you:

1. Blogging makes career change easier.

Most people have trouble with career change because they know what they want to do but they can’t get a job doing it. A blog allows you to show people your ideas and your investigations in a given field. And that’s what being an expert is:  asking the best questions. Make your blog an exploration of the field you want to be in, and sooner than you realize, you will actually be qualified to be hired in that field. This is not rare: it happens all the time, in a very wide range of fields.

2. Blogging lets you skip entry-level jobs.

No one wants an entry-level job if they can avoid it. The pay is low, the responsibilities are questionable, and the assumption is that you are paying dues. A blog can allow you to skip over this drudgery by making you well known in the field for your ideas, rather than for your experience. Also, as you are linking and responding to other bloggers in your field, you are building a network of people who know you as someone with a reputation in the field and they can help you land a job that’s not entry-level.

3. Blogging opens up the world of part-time work.

Pew Research reports that most moms would rather work part-time than have a full-time job or be a stay-at-home mom. This means that almost every mom is the US is competing for the jobs that are engaging, well paying, and part-time. How do you stand out in this crowd? Blog. A blog shows people how you think and how you’re connected in a way that a standard resume or standard work history simply cannot. A blog is a differentiator when the competition to get the job you want is fierce. You don’t need a lot of readers, you just need one reader, who is able to hire you, and is impressed with what they read.

4. Blogging makes it easier to re-enter the workforce.

If you’ve been out of work for a while, your resume probably has a hole in it, and your network is waning. A blog can solve both problems by showing you as intellectually vibrant on your blog and engaged in your field. Your blog is a better calling card than a resume if you have been out of the workforce.

5. Blogging builds a network super fast.

When you blog about the arena where you want to get a job, you start building a network of people who can help you get that job. Blogs are best when they are filled with ideas, because people like to talk about ideas, and share ideas, and we all like to be around people who are interesting thinkers. Your blog creates a magnetic force that brings people who would be interested in you toward you. When it comes to getting a job and staying employed, you’re much better off spending time cultivating a network like this than spending your time actually hunting for a job. With a blog-generated network you won’t have to look for a job again—they will be there when you need them.

If you want a stable career, if you want to take charge of where you’re going in your career, then you should be blogging. But you need to know how to manage blogging in your life so you don’t spend too much time on it, and so you don’t get sidetracked by snake oil salesmen telling you that you should make money from your blog.

So look, this is why you should learn how to blog. You should learn how to blog to get the life you want. So you can go to art museums in the middle of the day, so you can have someone to build Lego projects, so you can think about things that are more fun to think about than how to stay employed.

So sign up now.

I’m doing a series of webinars about how to blog.

I will teach you how to set goals for blogging and meet them, continuously. I’ll also show you how to develop an approach to blogging that will get you noticed by people you care about very quickly. The bootcamp takes place November 14-18. You can sign up here.

Here’s more about what we’ll cover:

1. Use blogging to jumpstart your career and your earnings.
Blogging will transform your work life. Here are things you can do with a blog:

• Double your earning potential
• Switch careers with flair
• Win a more flexible work schedule
• Create a reliable revenue stream
• Build a large, useful network very quickly

Blogging is something you should do to meet a specific goal. I’ll show you how you can meet almost any goal with a smart approach to blogging.

2. Advanced methods to gain traction for your blog.
Some of you are already bloggers. For you, this bootcamp is full of methods I’ve learned from years of running tests on my own blog. For example:

• Why I steal headlines from Yahoo

• Why the best guest posts I write are the dumbest topics

• Why the most lucrative blog posts are the ones where there’s no advertising

I’ll also discuss how to insert yourself into the content just enough so that you make it interesting, but not so much that you end up boring people. (You'd be surprised, by the way, how boring it can be for someone tell their deepest secrets on a blog.) (Also, are you wondering about the photo up top? I think it's a great example of inserting yourself in just the right way. I didn't take the photo. The Farmer did. I stole it from his blog.) (We will also talk about topics like how to steal stuff from other peoples' blogs effectively, even if you are not having sex with them. And how to use creative grammar, like obsessive parenthetical statements.)

3. Differentiate yourself as a top corporate blogging expert.
There’s also a huge range of fun jobs that are open to people who understand blogging. After this bootcamp, you will know enough about blogging to get a corporate blogging job. And, it just occurred to me now, we will also cover how to make yourself look like a blogging genius on your resume.

Hey! I’m doing this because I think it will be fun. I hope you guys will sign up. My favorite part about this bootcamp is that it’ll be a conversation. You can ask questions the whole time, and the last day (my favorite day) will be a free for all, where I’ll answer questions about anything. I’m really looking forward to that day – I think your questions will be a lot of fun.

Sign up for Blogging Bootcamp now.

I need to divide everything into very little projects in order to ensure that one project does not ruin everything else around me. This is why, in the past, blog posts have been the perfect length for me, and having a startup has derailed my whole life.

The first thing I’m launching today is a homeschooling section. To be clear, I don’t homeschool. But I definitely think it’s a huge trend that will shake up all of our lives, because homschoolers will take over the workplace in the next ten years. I am worried that I’m making the wrong decision by keeping my kids in school. So this is the spot where I will worry about it discuss it. Here is the post where I explain in more detail why I'm adding the homeschool section.

The other section that I’m launching is Mailbag.

I answer all my email. People are often shocked by this, which, in turn, shocks me. I mean, what am I writing a blog for if I don’t want to communicate with people?  But I decided I should publish the questions and answers since many people ask the same type of questions. (Don't worry, I'm changing details to conceal the writer's identity.)

When I met my Ex he was working for Sony. He was in charge of online properties for Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. The marketing people always said that people watch Jeopardy to say “He’s so smart!” and people watch Wheel of Fortune to say “He’s so stupid!”

I think that marketing approach may be applicable to the questions in Mailbag. Hopefully you will think my answers are smart. But if you don’t, there's room for you to give your own answers.

On Sundays my Ex comes to our house to hang out with the kids, which made today a great day for my launch.

Also, do you ever wonder what my Ex looks like? Here he is — well, about one-third of him — with my son.

Here's a question I get a lot: Does your Ex mind being on your blog?

Here's the answer: He's probably really happy  being on with just one-third.

Melissa and I were so excited when the books arrived. But there was not a lot of pause for celebration because the books were literally three months late.

You'd think, since we printed the books in China and then had them shipped on a boat, that the delay would be due to the Chinese. But in fact, the Chinese printer was amazing, and the shipping company was good, too. The problem was a US company: PayPal.

Our plan was to get people to pay for the book first, and then we'd use that money to print the book. But PayPal put a hold on our account as soon as we took in money. And—I'm not joking or exaggerating—PayPal has been holding our money for the last 90 days.

When I twittered about how much I hate PayPal (two tweets, actually) I got a surprising number of responses from people saying they had the same problem with PayPal. So here's my warning to you: PayPal has put a hold on lots of funds.

Okay. So, PayPal managed to turn our small-scale, smooth cash-flow operation into a mess. Eventually, Melissa caved and put everything on her credit cards.

Here's a picture of the book cover — not to make you want one, because we are sold out. But it's to make you want the next book we do. I think there will be another one. It was really fun to make a product I can hold, and give to people. I like that the book is pretty, like a treasure. It's the type of thing I'd like to have in my hand or give to a friend. (If only I hadn't sold all the copies I was planning to give to friends…)

So for a week, we had sort of  a nice rhythm. While I put the kids to bed, Melissa organized envelopes and labels and numbered books.  (There were 1000 books printed. All but six were pre-sold. And each book has a number.)

At first things went slowly. We didn't really have a system. Melissa gave me an envelope and a book and I signed and put the book in the envelope. I told her that when I signed books (my first book) in bookstores there was someone sitting next to me to open books to the page I was signing. That made it go really fast.

So Melissa did that. And then I couldn't stop thinking of Esther Williams. Do you know who she is? She was an Olympic swimmer who couldn't go to the Olympics because of World War II so she went to Hollywood and became a pinup doing swimming pool musicals.

I used to have a job signing her autograph. If you click to her fan site, and scroll halfway down the page, there's an autographed photo of her. That's the one I would sign. I'd open her fan mail and sign her name and send the photo in the mail. She would give me oversight like, "make the E's loopier."

I found myself making my P's extra loopy during the nights I couldn't get her out of my head. I also found myself signing my name a little differently each night. And I remembered the autograph collector who sent me two signed photos of Esther that looked very different and he said one of them must be a fake and he was upset. And I wanted to tell him, "That's not true. Both are fake."

So I signed tons of books and then Melissa handled all the addresses and envelopes.

The books were late, but of all the people who bought books, I only got one really angry note. Unfortunately she put the note in my comments section on the blog, for everyone to see. Fortunately, it's my blog and I can do whatever I want, so I deleted the comment. I sent her a nice response, though. I did not tell her that she is outside the US and because I am a mail-order rube, I gave all international orders free shipping. But at least now I can say I've got experience in the export business.

Actually, it'll probably be Melissa who puts the import/export thing on her resume. She is a resume writing genius. She probably already has something on her resume about  building a small planet.

Okay, so we got a pretty good book system going: Just around the time when fireflies come out, the kids would fall asleep and I would want to fall asleep, but downstairs, in Melissa's room, I'd hear her sliding stacks of books across the floor. I said, "Melissa, let's go out and see the fireflies."

She says, "No. We have to do books."

I go outside for a quick firefly check while she does books inside. And then we begin.

I read each comment I get on the blog, and I read about 300 emails a day,  so there are lots of names that are familiar to me. And each name I saw I would think, "I think I know this person." And my inclination would be to want to check to see if it's the Mark I know, or if it's the Kate who comments a lot. But it ended up taking way too much time. So unless you have talked with me in person about 20 times, I probably didn't recognize your name as your book came up.

You'd think I'd just write the same note for everyone, but I'm not a person who can easily write the same thing over and over again. So I tried variations, but I kept making mistakes in things like spelling a person's name wrong, because I was thinking about what was a good thing to write. And then I'd have to write a big long apology for misspelling the person's name. (Although I have to say that there is a trend among my female readers to have names that begin with K that are difficult to spell.)

For the most part, I signed each book, "Good luck with your career! - Penelope Trunk."

When the Farmer saw the inscription he said, "Good  luck?!!!? They don't need luck if they read this book! They'll have skill!"

"Melissa," I said. "This is terrible. He's right. It's a bad inscription."

"No," she says. "No. No. No. It's a good inscription."

We look at each other.

I say, "Talented people make their own luck. I am wishing them the talent to make their own luck."

"Right," said Melissa.

"Yeah," said the Farmer.

And then he looked at our piles and piles of books and smiled and said, "Good luck."

It is not perfect. A few weeks ago, my Ex left early because I'm so annoying to him. And just this morning, the Farmer and I had a fight that scared the kids so much they cried. But I think we are doing okay. And on Father's Day I feel particularly grateful for both men, because they work really hard to make sure the kids feel like they have an integrated, stable family.

The New York Times says that women go into politics to change something, and men go into politics to be someone. I think this is true for all work, not just politics. I think women are more likely to feel important because they are home with kids, which is why more women than men leave the workforce to be with kids.

Men are changing how they parent, but not too much, because there's still this survey from ERE that shows men prefer work to being home with kids. I do not believe we can change things completely. We are who we are. Men and women are different. The more I write about these differences in the workplace, the more I appreciate the differences at home.

We all know that if a mom is at the playground with three kids, no one notices, but if a dad is there, people say, "He's such a great dad."

I know that Father's Day is traditionally the day to say how great dads are blah blah. But I have a feeling that the biggest compliment we can say to a dad is that he's showing up. He's there, reliably, doing his job, and it's no big deal. Because dads are expected to do their job.

So today my Ex played with the kids while I surfed the web, and I saw that the Farmer posted to his blog about Father's Day. And he quoted my son's blog, about the farm. And now I'm going to quote both those posts. And if you are thinking that you are blogging because you are going to earn money from it, think again. Blogging is about ideas, self-discovery, and growth. And anyone who lives a life about ideas and self-discovery will be worth more in the workplace, no matter who else is reading your blog.

So, here's the Farmer's post from his blog, that quotes my son's post from my son's blog:

Happy Father's Day!

This is my second Father’s Day, but the first where I feel I’ve really put in the work.  Parenting has more challenges than rewards, but I’m thankful to have the opportunity.

Shepherd is a budding writer, and updates a blog for family and friends.  I thought I would share the following entry from his blog.  It made my day.

Last year I raised baby tadpoles and set them free as frogs. And this year I’m going to do it again. A few days ago, I went down to my grandparents pond with my dad and we caught one very interested toad, but we let it go because the tadpoles are what we want to raise and we will just let frogs and toads be loose. That’s the main thing in project.

It’s fun to catch the tadpoles in the pond. Me and my dad also caught a leopard frog. It’s a not a frog-sized leopard! It’s basically a leopard-quick frog that’s yellow with black dots, but not poisonous.

Two big achievements that me and my dad made were:

1. Catching a bullfrog tadpole with legs. The back row of legs, that is.

2. Another thing we did was we found the tadpole nest. But we didn’t take anything from it because it would disturb the nest. That’s where we found a leopard frog, but we didn’t catch it. We found the leopard we caught on our way back to the truck. The reason we didn’t keep the frogs and toads we caught was because they would probably eat the small tadpoles.

I had a great time.

And this is my food blog post for all of yeterday's commenters who think I would not be a good food blogger. You will love this post:  it’s about what to do if you think you’re about to be fired.

1. Be really interesting. And fun. It’s a lethal combination.
This photo looks disgusting, because that is the truth about food. Most of it looks disgusting. Even stuff that tastes good looks disgusting in a photo. It’s like sex. If you have a cinematographer and three lighting guys and a foley artist who comes in at the end, then the sex looks great. But if you take a picture of yourself having sex, forget it. You look like gross, retarded animals.

So even good food looks disgusting. But this photo is not actually an example of that, because this rhubarb cobbler tasted disgusting as well. Too much flour, I think. Although Melissa kept saying it had too much butter. Maybe too much flour and butter and it needed more rhubarb.

The thing is that Melissa made the rhubarb cobbler. She has cooked exactly three times in the five weeks or so she has lived here. But I liked that she cooked. Cooking is so nice. It’s just a generous and vulnerable thing to do for the person who is eating. So I didn't care if she did a good job or not. I just liked that she tried.

This reminds me of the research about how people who are incompetent but likable almost never get fired. I mean, Melissa refuses to work on my goat cheese startup, and she seems to have lost my books in China (please, do not ask in the comments when my book is coming. It’s coming) and she spends so much time obsessed with Cullen that it’s like she has only half a brain when she’s with me, but still, I like her so much. So I accept her rhubarb cobbler as an adequate attempt at doing valuable work.

2. Don’t worry about who gets credit and who gets blamed. It’s boorish to care.
We have tons of rhubarb in the garden, left from the people who owned the house before the farmer. The rhubarb is huge and all last year, while the farmer and I were fighting about that I could not get the bathroom tile installed so we were bathing by running up and down the Slip 'n' Slide Double Wave Rider, all last year people would come to the farm and say how could I let the rhubarb go unused. It is such good rhubarb.

So this year I’ve been diligent about pulling off flowers before they flower so the rhubarb lasts, and I give handfuls of it to everyone who comes by, because in the country everyone knows how to make rhubarb pie.

I made rhubarb pie.

I said, “Melissa. Take a picture of my pie. I need a picture.”

She said, “No. You’ll write that my rhubarb cobbler sucked and your pie was great.

“No, I won’t.”

“Yes you will.”

“Just take the picture.”

I saw her spending a lot of time on the picture. I had high hopes.

Here’s what she took:

The pie was good. But, honestly, I sort of cheated. I got a crust from Trader Joe’s. I love this brand. And it comes in pieces so it’s hard to put together and I get to squeeze the edges so my finger prints are on the pie and I think people like that. Also, I mess around with the insides. Rhubarb is a flexible pie inside. I just need some sugary sticky stuff inside. So I put pie filling sometimes. Like, the paste of the canned blueberry filling, or strawberry applesauce. I buy the Whole Foods kind because expensive ingredients make you look like a good cook. (Remember this when I charge you and arm and a leg for humane goat cheese.)

Is it cheating, though, that people give me credit for being a good cook? I don’t hide that I’m taking ingredients that are not from scratch. But really, don’t tell me you make your pies from scratch. Do you harvest the wheat? I do. Well, I’m going to bale hay this summer. So it’s sort of harvesting wheat. But I don’t get credit for scratch, so neither do you.

And the thing is that people just want nice stuff. Good food, good conversation, interestingness in pie fillings. They don’t care who gets credit—Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, whatever. People who stress the most about who gets credit and who deserves it are a bore, and they end up getting no credit because they end up getting fired.

So I say nothing about the pie. I do not fret about whether I should get credit or not, thanking the Farmer when he is effusive about each randomly mixed rhubarb non-recipe for pie I make. Well, I do fret, but I tell myself not to. It’s so easy for me not to care about this stuff at work, and so much harder when it comes to food. But I think it’s just because I’m new to cooking.

3. Prepare a speech.
I had to go to Madison to get food for dinner. We go there for cello. Who drives four hours round trip for a cello lesson for a five-year-old? Only a farm family, I think. Or an insane overachieving Westchester family, maybe. Both family types are insanely protective of the lifestyle they are determined to have.

On the way home, my neighbor Kathy called to see why I wasn’t at home when she walked over to say hi. I tell her to wait—to just walk in and open a bottle of wine and we’ll be there soon.

Kathy is upset because she thinks she’s getting fired tomorrow.

Melissa and I ask her, “Why do you care? We’ve been fired a million times.”

Kathy tells us it’s different in a small town.

I tell Melissa to take Kathy out to the field to collect nettles. It will cheer her up.

Kathy grew up on a farm. She is not going for the nettles.  “Nettles?!?! Like, the weed? You eat those?”

I tell her the Farmer is obsessed with his book about how to forage for food. I do not tell her he is trying to teach himself to live off the weeds on his farm. I have empathy for Kathy.  On my first date with the Farmer he served me dandelion leaves for salad. I thought he was too poor to buy real food, so I ate them all, to be respectful.

I explain to Melissa that Kathy will not be consoled with nettles.

They watch me cook.

Kathy stresses about getting fired. Melissa stresses about Cullen, which is sort of like stressing about getting fired, especially if one considers that her primary job is to get married.

I tell Kathy getting fired just means it was a bad match. She’ll find something better to do.

Although I am not sure what else there is to do in Darlington besides work on a farm or in the school. But there must be something. Or if there isn’t, there must be a big grant for creating Internet startup jobs in rural towns.

We eat rhubarb salad. It’s not bad with canned mandarin oranges.

Melissa tells stories of getting fired like Vietnam vets tell stories about Phnom Penh. It’s a lot of death with a sort-of-inappropriately cavalier tone.

Melissa tells Kathy to wait for the words, “You’re fired.” And then, no matter what words lead up to that phrase, say, “I’m sorry you feel that way. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.”

Then Melissa tells Kathy to just be quiet. The silence will be unnerving to the person firing her.

Melissa tells Kathy that also, sometimes you lose your hearing when you’re fired. It’s true. I can’t believe Melissa remembers this detail. I’ve been fired 20 times and I didn’t remember.

Then Melissa writes a script for how to act when you’re fired for Kathy to memorize. If the first book we published hadn't gone missing, I would suggest to Melissa that she turn her advice into a book.

We eat some leftover rhubarb pie for desert.

Thank you for a fun year. I feel so grateful to have my blog. Being able to write for this community and read the consistently insightful comments has made the year so much better.

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