If I look back on my blog, I can see that each year there were one or two ideas that just blew me away and ended up dominating my thinking. For example, 2011 my year to be obsessed with school –  homeschooling and higher ed, 2010 was my year for disillusionment with happiness research, 2009 was when [...]

The best way to understand earning power—no matter what your age—is to understand the factors that go into it. For example, most people who have careers that are plateauing usually have a learning problem that manifests itself as an earning problem.
And for parents, schooling discussions are really earning discussions. Because you can say that kids [...]

When people tell me they want to stay home with their kids and they can’t afford it, I want to yell at them about how when I was trying to write freelance and take care of the kids I had a babysitter refuse to come to the house because we had no food in the house. [...]

I am not good at launching stuff. It stresses me out. I am not good at focusing on multiple things. Ryan Healy used to hate working with me because of this, and, frankly, I hate working with me because of this too.
I need to divide everything into very little projects in order to ensure that [...]

Melissa left yesterday. She moved back to Austin. She moved for a job that I think is totally stupid, but her future employer reads this blog, so I have to watch what I say. On the other hand, she ended up giving references the same day I posted about me worrying about her having an [...]

When the pig litters came in January, the Farmer helped my son pick out pigs for his 4H project. They picked four, because you never know, really, how a pig will grow. So you start with four and pick two after a few months.
My son woke up every morning and fed his pigs, for six [...]

I have never been a fan of vacations. Why would I need a vacation from my life if I like my life?
Also, I'm a fanatic about routine. After years of obsessive research about what makes people happy, I have determined that self-discipline is the key to happiness. And self-discipline is really difficult, but not in [...]

Father's Day is a big deal in our house because we have two dads. We have the boys' biological dad – my Ex – and we have the Farmer. On Sundays, including Father's Day, we all spend the day together, on the farm, in mostly harmony.
It is not perfect. A few weeks ago, my Ex [...]

The farmer tells me that farmers are going to the Capitol to protest on Saturday.
I tell him I think it’s stupid. It’s not like Walker broke a law. People who voted for him should think twice about right-wing fascists next time they go to the polls.
The farmer says fine. He wants to go and he [...]

Now that I live on a farm, which, by the way, has been inescapable for three days because of snow, I keep up with the world by watching trending topics on Twitter.
Right now, a trending topic is “Volkswagen commercial” which is about their new Super Bowl commercial. Volkswagen has conveniently released the commercial early so we [...]

This is a guest post from Cathy Reisenwitz, who blogs at Birmingham SEO Blog.
Time magazine reports that young, childless women are earning more than men. You'd be hard-pressed to find evidence of widespread discrimination against childless women in the workplace. But equally solid data confirms working mothers' suspicions that working moms do in fact get [...]

When I first met the farmer, I knew he was not a normal farmer because normal farmers don’t email bloggers for a date. But also, he gave himself away because he quoted Garrison Keillor to me. Then, when I thought I could not put up with him dumping me anymore, and this time would be [...]

People at work are asking me why I am not working as many hours as I used to. I am. But I am working on anger management. Here are seven tips I've tried using:
1. Face the problem and make it a priority.
I used to think anger management problem is a thing for men who are [...]

When I was in the mental ward, it was mostly girls in their teens with messed up track records and eating disorders. But my roommate was from Kellogg, a top-ten business school.
I thought it was insane that she was there. She was so smart. She was going to be great at work. Her only problem [...]

I wake up Wednesday at 4am to a phone call: The Guardian, in London, asking for an interview about my miscarriage twitter. Then a half-hour later, an Irish radio station. And then the phone kept ringing.
I tell Now Magazine (I think it’s basically People magazine for the UK audience) to call back after I got the [...]

The farmer broke up with me five times the first five months we were together, last year. So I learned that he had huge commitment issues.
I tried to do the advisable thing to do when you’re with someone who has commitment issues. I tried to fall in love with someone else. But I didn’t. I [...]

The generation leading the revolution in divorce is, of course, Gen X. The biggest change is that there is a generation of people getting a divorce who were more or less equals in parenting and in work. Baby boomers talked about it, but when the women went to work, they did all the housework and [...]

I have said about ten million times that there is no more glass ceiling, there is no more salary gap between men and women, and there is no reason to keep bitching about sexual harassment because it’s merely a legal issue, not a men-are-evil issue.
Okay. So if the gender gaps are not around these feminist [...]

My company is running out of money again. Well, really, it already happened. But it’s happened so many times that I am sort of used to it. It's a routine. You may recall that part of the routine is not paying my electric bill. But there is more.
1. Focus on something you can control.
You might [...]

I get questions all the time about how I manage having kids and a startup at the same time. After trying to answer the question a few times, I realized that there's the pretty-much-BS answer about how it's all about being clear on your values. Or there’s the complicated, too-long-for-interviews answer.
To really get tips for [...]