I have always wondered if this is true for salary as well. For example, if your salary goes up by $50,000, how much more likely are you to receive oral sex?

I cannot find research to support that women who earn more receive more oral sex, which is why I am conducting my own research on this week’s poll.

But I have a hunch, based on a string of research that I have cobbled together:

People who are open to new experiences live in big cities (except for Chicago), and high-earning women do best in big cities.

High earning women do well dating because they are better looking than average, and because men prefer dating women who make a lot of money.

The highest earning women tend to be single, and women who are single and high earning tend to look harder to find those who are good in bed.

So, it goes to reason that women who make a lot of money receive more oral sex than women who do not make a lot of money.

Whenever I mention the fact that I have an editor for my blog, people ask why. Today is a good example: You cannot be a CEO writing about how much oral sex your own demographic receives without having someone take a look at the post to see if it’s okay to run.

And, for those of you who doubt the usefulness of my editor, here is his input on the topic:

“Let's assume that men give oral sex only because women ask for it. That's probably 95% true. Then who asks for it? Women who consider themselves at least equally deserving of that sort of consideration -the women who are going to be better earners because they are educated enough to know that they deserve it (both the income and the oral.) So I think they are coincidental, not causal. A woman who earns more has the self-confidence (and the self-worth, boosted by external factors like earning ability, education, etc.) to ask for oral.”

I’m hoping that his comment is the first in a string of insightful comments on the causal or not causal relationship between salary and sex…

So two days before Christmas, I am going nuts, trying to close a bridge financing from the angel investors who funded us initially. Which means that these guys are very rich, and traveling for Christmas, and totally not interested in being bothered with the minutia of our depleted finances.

I'm desperate. We've already skipped one payroll, and it's hard to think of a worse time to do that than the week before Christmas.

When 70% of young people say they want to run their own business, they are probably not thinking they will fund their business themselves. Since they probably have no money. So they are looking at taking in investors. But I'm not sure that 70% of young people want to take in angel investors, because here's what it looks like:

1. You are on the phone all the time.
Tuesday before Christmas: I am glued to my phone: Investors don't work on a schedule. They are millionaires. They are trying to sail their boat in Bermuda but they live in Wisconsin which means they have to make ten connecting flights from snowbound airports, and my chances of catching them between flights are slim. So I spend my day waiting for someone to call in with another clever idea for taking more equity from the company and redistributing it to the investors.

2. You're always sick, but not take-a-day-off-work sick
And I have pinkeye. It started on Monday, when 20/20 was in our office to do a story on salary. Yep. That's right. The company that is not paying salaries right now is featured on 20/20 as the poster child for transparent salaries.

The camera is right in my face while I'm talking about how the only people who benefit from hidden salaries are managers who made hiring mistakes and don't want to fix them. "Management should not hide behind their weaknesses," I say. And then I say, "Do you have something in that camera that can fix my pink eye?"

The camera man says, "Yeah. And I can make you thinner, too."

So I suffer with the pink eye, because it's not having all that gross green discharge yet, so I think I can deal with it after funding.

3. You always think of funding. No matter where you are.
On Tuesday, I'm driving to the office to tell everyone that we are going to make payroll any day now, and while I'm driving I'm talking to this guy on the West Coast because I think if there is any way to rescue myself form our angels it's going to be with my relationships on the west coast, and then, I realize I can't see. Did you read the book, Blindness? It's like that, except in the book there is a great undercurrent of romance, and with me I just think I'm going to die.

I shut my eyes and pull to the side of the road with them closed. Then I tell myself people do not go blind in real life. I tell myself that it's probably stress. That's what all the doctors tell women when there is a mysterious ailment, and after decades of this, women internalize the diagnosis.

Wait—here is the best book in the world about the topic of misdiagnosing women. It's a book of the real writings of psychologists in Germany during Freud's heyday where the women were diagnosed as crazy from stress and the psychologists attempted to solve their stress-induced craziness by giving the women orgasms. So the book is the doctors describing themselves standing around a patient's bed, giving her an orgasm. Really. It's one of my favorite books and the blindness has been worth it now, because I am giving you the link.

Okay. So, in keeping with the history of Freudian psychology, I diagnose my blindness as stress related. I continue to talk with the guy about the future of recruiting, and luckily, I can talk about the future of recruiting in my sleep and still sound like sort of a visionary. Get it, visionary?

4. There is no time for family.
Then I sit in the car and I shut my eyes, trying to figure out how to drive home.

I can't. So the house manager comes to get me. For those of you who wonder what I do with a house manager, now you know: She's my go-to person for blindness.

She drives me to the urgent care place, which runs tests for an hour while my kids watch the Incredibles, probably catching obscure diseases, because who takes their kid to the doctor two days before Christmas unless it's really bad?

We have to go to a different doctor because the urgent care place has no idea why I can't open my eyes. My kids are heartbroken and I have to lie to them and tell them that opthamologists are reknown for having a great selection of children's movies. "Way better than the Incredibles," I say.

5. Life is painful.
So it turns out that I have this disease (Thygeson's Keratitis) and it is a very very painful disease that most people don't wait around to treat. So the eye doctor has not seen such an advanced case and she brings in the residents into the room for an educational moment.

The residents are impressed at the amount of pain I've tolerated.

I say, "You know what? My eyes are nothing compared to the pain of raising money in this market."

6. You have to fake that you are in control. But sometimes you can't.
So once we figure out that I'm not actually blind, I'm just so sensitive to light that I feel blind, I can focus on funding. The house manager drives me home and my new board member calls. I tried to get out of talking with him by telling him I had eye trouble, and while I didn't lie and say I was dripping green puss, I tried to imply that it would be dangerous to meet with me. So I got a phone meeting, and at least I did not need to put on clean clothes. Which has been a problem lately.

It's only the second time I've met this board member, and since he has not appeared on the blog before, and really, how can you blame anyone for not wanting to appear on this blog, let me just say that he's a really nice, smart guy, and I'm happy to have him on the board.

Okay. So with that out of the way, let me also say that I really did not want to talk with him that day. Because your board is supposed to help you run the company but how can you think about running a company when your company is out of money?

I pretend, of course. And this is why he's a good board member. Because I tell him I'm great under pressure, and I show him plans for spring. And he tells me he thinks it's ridiculous to think about long-term stuff when I cannot even get tomorrow's financing done. I am unrelenting in my tough-girl routine, and I tell him that there is nothing I can do about the financing. I just take the terms people offer and hope they close the deal before everyone disappears for the rest of the December.

The board member says he'll write a check to bridge me to the bridge. Maybe this is a sign of how bad the financing world is right now. I do not think this is typical, but I think this is a good reason to have rich board members. Finally, here is a bit of career advice in this post: Get rich board members.

So he says he'll write the company a check to get us through the payroll we missed.

And I start crying.

Not like, little, eye-doctor tears, but blubbering tears. Tears so much that I whisper to the board guy, "Hold on. I can't let my kids see me this upset about money. Let me get out of the car."

So the house manager pulls over and I get out and I cry to the investor from inside the lobby of Chase bank.

7. It doesn't end.
That's the end. I want to tell you there's a nice, neat end here. But there's not.

There are about 400 posts about how to be a CEO of a startup during a bad economy. Here's a good one from Tech Crunch. They are all a little annoying because the authors tell you, in hind sight, how great a job they did at getting through the last downturn. I could write that post, except that it would have to include that the last time I was running a startup when the market crashed was in 1999, and my hair started falling out.

So just forget all that sunny stuff about how to run a startup during a financial crisis. Here's what venture capitalists are telling me when no one else is listening: Try really hard to sell if you can, because getting through the next year in a bad cash position is gonna suck.

Today I was besieged by out of the office responses. Of course, everyone is out of the office. Very little news happens between Christmas and New Year’s that you can’t predict and write beforehand.

The time between Christmas and New Year’s is a great time for you to take things into your own hands. During this time, almost all of senior management is completely checked out in most industries. After all, this is what senior is all about – getting to go where you want to at the end of December. So you might find that there are opportunities to get a big break.

For example, two years ago, my investment banking brother was sitting around in December and a big merger came up. He got to do high-level work on the deal because no one wanted to interrupt their vacation. And here’s another example: I know that what’s going on in Israel is not cheery news, but there is a bunch of western journalists getting their their first chance to report on a big story because the big-story journalists want to be with family and friends the last week of December.

So much of career advice is about finding someone to mentor you and taking jobs with people who will create opportunities for you. But that’s not enough. You also have to take responsibility for yourself.

So use this time to make your own big break. Keep alert for something big that might need doing, and, in the meantime, if there’s not something big, here are five ideas for what else you can do at work between Christmas and New Year’s.

Posts about my divorce weren't my most popular, but I learned the most from them:

A Case Study in Staying Resilient: My Divorce Feb. 2008 (131)
I was scared to post an announcement about my divorce because I was in the middle of raising our first round of funding, and I thought I'd freak out investors. But I was more scared that if I stopped posting about myself I'd ruin the blog and my desire to write it. So I followed this post five seconds later with one about me being on CNN in an effort to distract investors. It turned out that investors were much more interested in divorce than CNN, and I realized that I was being rewarded by investors for being true to myself. Bonus: We raised $700,000 in funding.

Keeping an Eye on My Career While I go through a Divorce May 2008 (95)
The New York Times wrote about my divorce and questioned whether I should be blogging about it. My divorce lawyer told me I was going to jeopardize my settlement by blogging. "You look reckless," he told me. I decided that I was willing to lose money in the settlement to be able to keep writing about my life. Addendum: My almost-ex-husband never complained about the blog.

Posts about the farmer were also not my most popular. But they were the most exciting for me to write. It's been a year full of soul-searching about a lot of things in my life, including this blog. I knew I didn't want to 500 posts on how to write a good resume. But I knew I wanted to still write about the intersection of work and life. The farmer gave me the opportunity to try something new. And these posts ended up opening a larger conversation among you guys about what I should be writing on the blog — input and insight that I really appreciate.

A New Way to Measure Blog ROI June 2008 (112)

How I Started Taming My Workaholic Tendencies June 2008 (136)

Vulnerability is the Key to Likability at Work (and on the Farm) Aug. 2008 (104)

Self-Sabotage is Never Limited to Just One Area of Your Life Oct. 2008 (47)

How to Go to a Meeting When You Want to Site Home and Cry Nov. 2008 (103)

This is the list you were probably expecting. Before I got sidetracked:

Subjectively popular posts of 2008

The Hardest Part of My Job is that Everyone Lies about Parenting June 2008 (161)

Plastic Surgery is the Next Must-Have Career Tool, Maybe May 2008 (126)

Advice from the Top: Marry a Stay-at-Home Spouse or Buy the Equivalent May 2008 (168)

7 Reasons Why Graduate School is Outdated June 2008 (135)

Living Up to Your Potential is BS June 2008 (202)

My Annual Rant about Christmas at Work Dec. 2008 (187)

Post that generated the most thank-you notes:

How to Answer the Toughest Interview Question Feb. 2008 (117)

Post that I cried the most while I wrote:

The Part of Postpartum Depression that No one Talks About Feb. 2008 (102)

Post with the most diatribes in the comments section:

Writing Without Typos is Totally Outdated May 2008 (151)

Post that generated the most interviews from mainstream media:

Give Thanks that there is No Job Shortage for Young People Nov. 2008 (115)

Most popular guest post:

Twentysomething: Why My Generation is More Productive than Yours Sept. 2008 (140)

Thank you so much for all your comments and emails. The blog continues to be my favorite part of my job. And maybe my favorite job that I've ever had.

In general, my point on the Christmas stuff is that religious holidays don’t belong at work, and that people who don’t celebrate Christmas should not be forced to use one of their religious holidays on Christmas. Why do I use a floating holiday for Yom Kippur and no one uses a floating holiday for Christmas? It’s preferential religious treatment and there is no reason for it when you can give each employee x number of days off to use as he or she chooses.

Before you complain about this line of reasoning, please click on the links and read the posts I linked to above. Then you can argue.

I know that you guys have a lot to say about Christmas, not just because of the comments these posts receive, but also because over the years I have found that for the most part, Christians comment publicly, and Jews send private emails to me.

And this is, of course, the root of the problem. Christmas is totally Christian and totally religious and the Christians love to debate this point and the Jews think it is absolutely not debatable but the Jews never speak up because we feel we are just lucky to be where we are in the United States – doing very well, in general – given our history of being economically and culturally trampled for most of the last 2000 years. (I am not linking to this. Look it up at Jewish.com or something.)

So I am thinking that this year I’ll turn my Christmas rant into a poll, and then maybe the people who are used to being publicly silent on this topic will speak up, by voting. (For those of you reading this post via email, the poll is on the sidebar of my blog.)

And, since there will be discussion in the comments section as well, here are some starting points:

1. Please do not tell me that this is a Christian country. Commenters say this every year. It is factually incorrect. And I know you know this from sixth-grade civics.

2. Please do not tell me that I am ruining the Christmas spirit. Will you please get a life? One, single, Jewish blogger does not impact the Christmas spirit. Do you want to know who is stealing Jesus from Christmas? Check out the department store windows in New York City (which, by the way, are phenomenal, and they are one of the things I miss since I moved away from NYC).

3. Please consider the idea that progressive companies come up with good ways to accommodate many religions. How about if we discuss possible solutions?

In order to get the response you’re looking for, you need to ask a very good question. Here are five ways to do that:

1. Don’t send an essay. Your whole email should not exceed five sentences. If you need to give the person a lot of information in order to help you, send them an email asking if you can send more information. But here’s a tip: You’re most likely to get a response if you don’t need to send more information. A direct question is easiest to answer, and it doesn’t take a lot of space.

2. Don’t be vague. Here’s an interesting question: "Is there a god?" But it’s not a question for email, because any answer would be very long and philosophical. For this question, go buy a book. But that's not even the worst type of offender. At least "Is there a god" is a short, direct question. Emails that call loudest for the delete button are those with vague requests for help followed by a long-winded personal introduction and no real question. Test yourself: Write a concise subject line, and then go back to the email and delete anything not directly related to that.

3. Do heavy lifting in the self-knowledge arena before you ask for help. Most people who are lost have huge questions: Should I start a company? Should I quit my job. If you are really, really lost, don’t approach someone who is really, really in demand. You need a specific, high-payoff question for the person you are approaching. Which means you really need ask a lot of questions to get to the good question.

For example, the question, Should I quit my job? is usually about Does my job really suck? or Could I get a better job? And then there are specific questions related to that. Once you drill down to the core question, for example, is Phoenix a good place to raise kids or should I get a job somewhere else before I have kids? Then you can ask a child-rearing expert who lives in Phoenix. But no one can answer the broad question, should I quit my job?

4. Ask the right question of the right person. The best type of question is a very specific question in the exact sweet spot of this person’s expertise. I know this because I field a lot of terrible career questions.

Last week someone I barely know asked me what she should get her boyfriend for a gift. Of course, I have no idea. But a good question for me would be what to get her boyfriend a gift if her boyfriend is her boss and there is company-wide public gift-giving. That’s an office politics question, and it’s specific, and I write a lot about topics like this. So I’d take some time to answer the question. (If you’re wondering: buy a gift certificate to a bookstore. Totally impersonal and appropriate. It’ll throw everyone off.)

5. Admit when you don’t have a good question. It’s hard to ask a question that meets all this criteria. That’s because good questions come from good thinking, and it’s easier to fire off an email than to sit on your sofa and think. But most answers to most tough questions are either in your heart or in Google. So try those avenues first. Then ask an expert. Because by the time you’ve exhausted your heart and Google, you’ll probably ask a good question, because you’ll an expert as well.

You will be interested to know that four days included one plane trip, meetings with six investors, and one date (I smelled the shirt right beforehand and it seemed okay. I didn't think he'd be getting that close anyway.)

The last day was when I was really sure I was going to change outfits. I had an interview with Elizabeth Vargas for 20/20. I packed a huge suitcase full of everything that might look good on TV and I told myself that I'd figure out what to wear the morning of the interview. But the morning of the interview I was actually crying to my attorney about how complicated our second round of funding is becoming, and I told him that I was going to quit the company and get a job writing for a local newspaper. I really said that.

Forget the fact that local newspapers really are not hiring writers. Really. I think I was just saying it to him so he could understand how totally stressful it is raising money in this financial environment. Plus, it's totally not cool to be admitting to such huge stress levels when you are the CEO. I mean, who wants to fund a company when the CEO is having a mental breakdown? But really, every CEO who is raising money right now is staying up all night worrying. And not telling anyone.

Well, except me. I am telling my attorney. And now you.

Okay. So I spent the morning crying and screaming at my attorney. In between phone calls with investors where I try to sound really, really pulled together. Like I don't really need their money. Which is how you have to sound if you are ever going to get money.

And sometime during all that, I messed up time zones, and, as I was cleaning the most recent torrent of mascara down my cheek, I noticed that I was actually in the process of standing up Elizabeth Vargas.

So that was day four of my successful-CEO outfit: On 20/20. Mascara streaked. But, as I said earlier, the outfit is all black, and in a happy coincidence, so is my eye makeup.

I think the interview went well. We talked about salary and I went on my usual tirades:

All salaries should be transparent. The only people who benefit from hidden salaries are incompetent managers who are either overpaying or underpaying and don't want to fix it.

There is no gender disparity. Women earn more money than men in their 20s and when they have kids, women choose to downscale and men don't, so why don't we all shut up about the pay disparity and talk about the parenting disparity?

You earn a higher salary if you are good looking. This bias runs so deep that even better looking babies get better treatment from mothers. So forget social justice and just get Botox.

Then I went back to my hotel room. And, finally, I considered changing my clothes. But before I could do that, I took a look at the community at brazencareerist.com, and I was totally taken aback by what I saw.

We are running a contest for people in their twenties to write about how blogging affected their life, and the winner gets a free trip to SXSW (a totally cool conference that I love going to each year.)

The posts people wrote are great. They provide moving descriptions of why it's important to blog and to make sure your blog is part of a community.

So many days I think I am nuts to do this company. It's so hard to do a startup in a any economy, let alone a bad one – the pressure to keep believing in yourself is intense, and the long hours are too. But today I am so happy to be doing a startup. Because the community at Brazen Careerist is exactly what I had hoped it would be: Meaningful conversations about things that matter to people who are earnest and honest and want to have great lives.

Here are links to eight of posts that make me feel lucky to be struggling to fund my company. Because I am lucky to be able to have my career, and my heart, linked to this community.

Nisha Chittal
"The difference between me pre-blog and me post-blog is simple: I went from an invisible, hiding lurker to a real person, and an outlier. Seems simple, but that transformation is empowering in a way you’d never expect. I went from letting others define me to defining myself."

Milena Thomas
"It would be a bit of an understatement to say that blogging has changed my life. It's been the most important element in leading an examined life, because of the conversations and reflections other bloggers and commenters provide."

Andy Drish
"Mike: If you’re graduating in a year, you need to be blogging right now. It’ll help you get a job.
Me: Blogging? That’s a fun word."

Jarred Taylor
"On our résumés, though, we both proudly proclaimed ourselves as co-founders of the blog and included a link. And, though I haven’t independently confirmed this yet, I’m pretty sure that’s how I got my job at Google."

Jon Bishop
"With little to no previous experience in this type of work environment, my application was in jeopardy. However, I was able to land the job on a trial bases because of… my blog."

Holly Hoffman
"For me, the power of my words is used to share what little I’ve learned, and more often than not, to show what I haven’t…blogging.. reminds me each and every day that I’m not alone, that my situation isn’t unique."

Kathleen Argonza
"I created my blog, Tough Girl 101, to rekindle whatever spine I had before the marriage drained it away. I remembered being a tough girl once, I figured that I could be again… Blogging was the first step in getting myself back on track."

Taylor Ansley
"That’s how I’ve changed through blogging. I’m less likely to deliberate quietly on an issue and instead more likely to provoke debate. I’m quicker to throw my thoughts or beliefs into the (modest) spotlight and more likely to change my mind."

If you don't read about celebrities, you're missing a big learning moment. Of course, you're missing a learning moment by not dating a farmer, too. But some things are more time-consuming than others. And I have to say that flipping through People has relatively high payoff. Here are some reasons I do it:

1. Use celebrity messes to gauge how you're doing in your own failures.
One of my (many) past therapists told me that you can't really tell how well you're doing until something bad happens. Most of us manage ourselves fine when everything is going well. We discover our level of resilience only when things go poorly (download movies).

But how do you learn about this when most people hide themselves when things are bad? Most people hide and most people don't talk about what's truly sucking in their life, so we don't really see how their resilience is tested until their problems are so over the top that they're uncontrollably leaking into all aspects of life.

The best place to see people coping with the dark, dirty side of sunshine and roses is People magazine (or your favorite stand-in, like the Enquirer or, on an especially smutty week, New York magazine). This is where people can't hide their problems because they have made their lives public property to further their careers. We benefit because we see what people do to stay resilient.

Sure, you cannot compare yourself to a celebrity when they are dressing for the Oscars and you're going to a party, too. But you can compare when they are getting dumped by their lying boyfriend and you are in love with a liar as well.

2. Dress yourself like a celebrity by picking one to mimic.
When I wrote about Sarah Palin spending lots of money on clothes and Michelle Obama knowing how to work J Crew, there was a lot of hoop-la in the comments section about how you need to learn how to dress right for your body.

If you live in NYC or LA, it's not that hard—most women there are good at dressing themselves. Looking good is super important because there’s no shortage of competition. Not so true in the Midwest. (I would know—I'm there right now. ) Just as you get more happy being around happy people, you dress better being around good dressers.

People magazine is a way to compensate for a lack of role models in your town. Look for someone who has the same body type as you and start watching what they wear. It'll save you a lot of time and a lot of mistakes.

3. Know the rules to follow by noting the rules celebrities ignore.
The smaller our world, the more constrained we are by social norms. Sometimes that's good because being part of a community is important. But often it's mentally constraining. I like reading the perspectives of celebrities because they are exposed to a wide variety of things that I am not. So they have fresh perspectives on topics I am not as smart about.

Celebrities use a more diverse arsenal of tools than most of us do to manage our own brands, like marrying someone a lot older to look like a more serious actor. And celebrities feel less of a need to adhere to rules that do not help them to be their true selves, like, don't have six kids in four years or you'll go crazy. I like watching people make their own rules for themselves—not necessarily the choices I would make. But I like seeing what happens.

I have always thought a good mood is contagious, but now there's more proof, in a study published last week in the British Medical Journal, (and in the Los Angeles Times, for those of us who like our research sliced in candy-sized bites.) The researchers followed 5000 people for decades and found that if you hang out with people who say they are happy then you are more likely to report that you are happy, too.

This might be a peer pressure thing, except it's really a moot point. Because if you say you are happy, you get all the health benefits of being happy (image hosting). And, of course, those benefits are huge. It doesn't really matter that it is irrational to be happy—you will mentally and physically in better shape if you go down that irrational path.

So even though I tend to choose rational discourse over cheery conversation, today we can have both. Here are three places where I found happiness and work intersecting.

1. This is my favorite time of year for news. Because there isn't any.
We are entering the slowest news time of the year, yet the December 8 issue of Time magazine is great. When the world would stops generating big, huge, overwhelming news like world peace, world hunger, and world war, then Time magazine reporters spend their time finding the workplace angle on stories I care about.

One article that is great is How to Fix America's Schools. Michelle Rhee came to DC to overhaul the school system and in eighteen months she fired 270 teachers. Surely we can each pick out the worst teacher of our lives and fantasize that she is one of the ones. But that's not the happy part of this story.

The happy part is that the Rhee got offered the job when she was separated from her husband, sharing joint custody of two grade-school girls, in Colorado. And here's what I love. Her sort-of-not-husband relocated so that she could take the job. Of course I love that she has a sort-of-not-husband, because so do I. And it seems so hard to explain to someone I want to date, but it seems so straightforward the way Time magazine reports it. So that makes me happy.

2. Even former spouses can work together to change the world.
But here's really what makes me happy. The sort-of-not-husband said, "Moving did not seem like a whole lot of fun. But I genuinely believed that she had the potential to be the best superintendent in the country. Michelle will compromise with no one when it comes to making sure kids get what they deserve."

Here is a marriage falling apart, but the people are so much bigger than the failing marriage. They are staying together, in an odd sort of way, for the kids—not even their own children—and thus are supporting a career to change the world. That a spouse in a failed marriage will relocate to support the other's career seems big to me. Maybe this happens all the time, but I think this must be rare. Because so many things have to line up: two people that understand how a divorce can destroy kids, a man who can be secondary to a woman's career, and a woman who can risk a lot for her career. And not get killed for it in the media. This all makes me happy.

3. Telling people what makes you happy is a high form of generosity.
And here's another thing plucked from that issue of Time magazine: Joel Stein's column on The Cupcake Kings. He writes about how he gave money to kiva.org, a web site that allows everyone to participate in microfinance. It's a good way to assuage a heart that's guilty of wanting to help more people make change in their life, but not doing so. Or, it's a good way for the greedy who have been bounced off Wall Street to think they are still making investment decisions by sending $50 to the Ivory Coast to launch a pottery barn.

In Joel's case, he chose to send the startup costs—$25—to a baker in Nicaragua. And then, because Joel is not only a columnist but a nut case, he called the guy—with a Kiva.org translator—to bug him about how to run his business. (Which, by the way, is how US investors function as well, though the stakes are higher—more money and more annoying phone calls.)

Here's a great quote: "My first suggestion was to change the name of the place from the Little Mango Bakery to the far more compelling Joel and Freddy's Extreme Cupcakery." And, "Before I got off the phone, I asked the translator to quietly try one of Freddy's pastries to make sure I didn't have to bring in a new head chef." (They were delicious.)

The things that make me happy are that Joel's writing is so exuberant, and also that he's plugging a great cause. Which is what we can all do to spread a little happiness: Tell people the stuff that makes you happy. Because happiness is contagious.

The poll is a fun way for me to think about career topics. A new format always gets me going. But it's also fun because even after writing about careers for ten years, I have a lot of questions in my head that I have not found research to address.

Today's poll is one of them. I know the research about who is bulimic and what happens to them. Mostly because I was bulimic all through college and I thought becoming an expert on the topic would help me stop throwing up. (That didn't work, but the mental ward did). But there is no workplace research. And I'm curious. So I wrote the poll question because I genuinely want to know the answer: What percentage of women in corporate America are bulimic? I think the answer is higher than anyone would expect.

I know that my poll would not pass scientific muster. But I like that we are at least going to start talking about my question. Well, that's what I was thinking. But then I realized that my poll idea—while a grand opportunity for snark, and also an opportunity to fulfill my dreams of writing quizzes for Cosmo—is not the depth of conversation I am hoping for.

So maybe, I am thinking, I will write a post about the poll each week, to hear what you all think of the topic. I still want you to vote on the poll. Who doesn't love a good statistic about sex (last week) or bulimia (this week) or the intersection of sex/bulimia/work (maybe every week)? So you all should love the poll archive.

Some of you will ask, "Why are we talking about bulimia and sex on a career blog?" Here is some career advice for you: The best thing to do in a recession is make your focus on keeping your learning curve high. Forget about rank —it's going to be hard to get internal raises or big jumps from job hopping. But eventually the recession will end, and you want to make sure you're in a good position to take advantage of that.

People who are always curious and always learning are keeping the recession from killing their career trajectory. You don't need to have a job to be learning, you don't need to have a great title to be stretching your skills. And really, really, you don't need to go to graduate school and earn a degree to prove that you are learning.  In fact, maybe you need to take a job you're not thrilled with, but remember that no one can dictate your learning curve. You control that.

My curiosity about bulimics at work is a reflection of the curiosity that got me through the recession that existed when I entered the workforce. When I was unemployed, I worked in interesting jobs for free. When I was employed, I read outside my expertise at night. When I was out with a group of people, I looked for the people who could teach me something new.

So, some of you will go for the bulimia poll, and some won't. But regardless, each of us should ask engaging questions each day. It's a lifestyle, and it's cheap, and it keeps our learning curve steep, so it's a great way to face down a tanking economy.