Carpe Atumnus (Seize the Season)

I'm gonna lose 25 pounds by Summer!

I am going to finally get this place organized

By Christmas I will have paid off all my bills and have a little extra to spend on gifts

This is the year I go on safari and learn Italian

Well, 2011 is now 3/4 over.  How many of your do-or-die resolutions have been implemented?  I myself have somehow ended up sleep walking through the entire year to date.  At first I thought I just missed Summer - then I realized I'd more or less lost the bulk of the year!

It is tempting to just shrug off the rest of the year and allow it to be swallowed up by the impending holidays.... OR...... you can use this new season as a new start.  Can you imagine approaching New Year's Day with a project or two ticked off your tasks list, a lowered credit card balance and a better relationship with your bathroom scale under your belt? 

This morning I went through a couple of bags that had been stashed in the closet and started a new fitness tracking program using MyFitnessPal.  I have not eaten well so far today but hey, the day isn't over yet!  Before I turn in for the night I plan to do something ANYTHING nominally physical as well as do some recreational reading, even if it's only a page -- it's been far too long.

So who's with me?  Are you ready to embrace this glorious new season and make it your own?  If so, come share your quarter's aspirations on Facebook.  Next on the list - taking time to enjoy the awesome beauty of Autumn's foliage.

Thoroughly Modern Miserables?

Women are getting everything we wanted -- so why aren't we happier?
by Joie de Vivre

Regarding the state of the modern woman, Kate Mulvey of The Times UK writes, "The widespread view is that accomplished women are at a disadvantage in the marriage market because men start out by saying they want a strong, powerful woman and then end up running off with the secretary....... Since 1975 the number of women entering the workforce has increased by a third and in 2005 one-third of all managers were women. Women are better educated – there are more women with advanced degrees than before – and there are now more female trainee lawyers and doctors than male ones."

Vicki Haddock writes in the San Francisco Chronicle, "Factor in an unprecedented level of education, greater earning power, more economic independence, more reproductive control and access to virtually any career, from CEO to soldier to leader of the free world. In theory, at least, a woman's prospects for happiness have never looked brighter.....  Yet the paradox: Two recent studies reveal that a majority of American women are finding the holy grail of happiness more elusive. Researchers were startled to find that women now report less happiness than in the early 1970s; and where they once indicated greater levels of happiness and life satisfaction than men, that's now reversed."

Despite better education, higher paying jobs and husbands increasingly willing to pitch in domestically, the common lament is, "I'm just not happy.  I've lost my joy."  And it looks like this trend does not favor a certain female age group, pay grade, marital status or ethnicity.  So just why is it that while salaries have gone up and technology has taken up some of the chore-related slack, women have not become smilier?


Unsettling as it may seem, my research on this topic raised more questions than answers! I admit to having a tad of prescience when it comes to trend spotting.  A few years back I noticed a palpable absence of joy among the women with whom I came in contact.  Finally, last year I determined to put a stop to the madness by starting a female-centric business dedicated to helping women rediscover their joy. 

In determining the approach to take in accomplishing this tricky task, I chose what to me is the most liberating, empowering, beautiful and joyful activity a woman can engage in on her own -- dance.  And not just the time-honored American forms of tap, ballet and jazz.  Nope, I am talking about the stuff that reminds women of what it feels like to be them, and reminds them what it feel like to be beautiful -- Bellydance, Polynesian, Jazz age Charleston, classic Burlesque, Salsa and so on.  I especially like the dance forms practiced sans shoes. It's just so darn freeing.


Ironically, of the five women I had recruited to join me in this cause, all have had their own conflicts that have precluded their total involvement, despite their enthusiasm.  In short, they are just as busy and stressed out as the women they seek to serve!  So then, what to do... throw in the towel?  Not a bit of it.  The heavy setbacks I've encountered have shown me ever more clearly the need to act as a standard-bearer for joy. So I have rethought the business, am beginning to implement changes and to regain my own joy, which had been on hiatus this Summer. 

~ * ~

To get down to the brass tacks of what really makes us humans happy, here is a blog post I wrote on this very subject, done a couple of months ago for a sweet company for whom I was volunteering: Happiness Is as Happiness Does.