Cookie Cutters
In a Bucknell alumni magazine, under Reviews & Criticism, I ran across the following blurb about a recent book:
Which is sort of what I imagine the book to be about (I admit, I have not read it). How you can tweak your lives to effectively get everything done in the day that you want. If you want to work and be a parent, you can make simple changes to try to balance your life, and those changes -- and here's a shocker -- will be different for different cases! Maybe I only have to sacrifice a full-time career because of my four kids and the priority I place in them, whereas someone else might have to sacrifice her love of volunteering because of her career.
But what if what you want is simply a list that looks like this: wife, mom, chauffeur, former certified public accountant, founder and CEO of the firm One Woman + Husband + Kids + Animals, local school volunteer, writer, parenting expert and blogger, one who is consistently cited on kids' list as top 100 moms. What if during your day you have the uncanny ability to start and finish the laundry, put the house in order, magically make meals appear on the table, read books for book club, manage to do grocery shopping, gardening, and teach your children to read. None of the descriptions above are solely mine (Come on, can you see me as a CPA? Ever?), but I thought to myself as I read the blurb that, here we go again. Let's read another book on how to make everything work well in life, so that all of us can have what we want and when we want it: career, family, home life.
I, for one, am sick of those sorts of books, and even though I am not a complete SAHM, I am here today to say, if you want to be one, then go for it. Even though you haven't had the opportunity to run a Fortune 500 company or be cited on the top of anyone's list but the PTO's, I still applaud you for doing what you want, regardless of what society says you should be doing. I thank my lucky stars each day that I have the opportunity to stay at home as much as I do. I also thank those same stars that some of the people I know do not stay at home as much as I do. Let's all stop thinking that one cookie cutter is the only option.
And that, my friends, is probably what the book is trying to get at. But because some goofball decided to write up a blurb that made me want to hurl the magazine at the wall in disgust as I shoved one of my homemade cookies into my mouth, I'll never know.
Tweak It (Center Street): Negotiating a busy career, attending kids' recitals and mailing the Christmas cards before the holidays are not problems for Cali Williams Yost despite a resume that reads -- deep breath -- wife, mom, former commercial banker, founder and CEO of the consulting firm Work + Life Fit, media commentator, author, Mashable Top 14 Twitter career expert and blogger, one who is consistently cited on Forbes.Com's list of Top 100 Websites for Women. She takes to task employers or workers who insist on one way: sacrificing personal lives for work. Her most recent venture is the "Tweak It" program, which draws on the experiences of "naturals," men and women who make small changes in routines to keep everything that matters in the daily picture.I have to be honest, I walked away with a bad taste in my mouth after reading the blurb. First, the paragraph was neither a review nor a criticism, more of a look what's been published recently. I expect alumni magazines to get it right, and it didn't. (Thank goodness this wasn't my alumni magazine; mine would have done just fine and properly placed the paragraph. Go Blue!) Second, I didn't appreciate the use of the words, deep breath, and then a list of what the author has accomplished. Perhaps it's my own insecurities here, but I felt as though whoever wrote the blurb was trying to shove down our throats all the things that this person did in a day, and say to us, if she can do it, why can't you?
Which is sort of what I imagine the book to be about (I admit, I have not read it). How you can tweak your lives to effectively get everything done in the day that you want. If you want to work and be a parent, you can make simple changes to try to balance your life, and those changes -- and here's a shocker -- will be different for different cases! Maybe I only have to sacrifice a full-time career because of my four kids and the priority I place in them, whereas someone else might have to sacrifice her love of volunteering because of her career.
But what if what you want is simply a list that looks like this: wife, mom, chauffeur, former certified public accountant, founder and CEO of the firm One Woman + Husband + Kids + Animals, local school volunteer, writer, parenting expert and blogger, one who is consistently cited on kids' list as top 100 moms. What if during your day you have the uncanny ability to start and finish the laundry, put the house in order, magically make meals appear on the table, read books for book club, manage to do grocery shopping, gardening, and teach your children to read. None of the descriptions above are solely mine (Come on, can you see me as a CPA? Ever?), but I thought to myself as I read the blurb that, here we go again. Let's read another book on how to make everything work well in life, so that all of us can have what we want and when we want it: career, family, home life.
I, for one, am sick of those sorts of books, and even though I am not a complete SAHM, I am here today to say, if you want to be one, then go for it. Even though you haven't had the opportunity to run a Fortune 500 company or be cited on the top of anyone's list but the PTO's, I still applaud you for doing what you want, regardless of what society says you should be doing. I thank my lucky stars each day that I have the opportunity to stay at home as much as I do. I also thank those same stars that some of the people I know do not stay at home as much as I do. Let's all stop thinking that one cookie cutter is the only option.
And that, my friends, is probably what the book is trying to get at. But because some goofball decided to write up a blurb that made me want to hurl the magazine at the wall in disgust as I shoved one of my homemade cookies into my mouth, I'll never know.
Comments