Anything that seems overwhelming can be transformed.

Every year I take a few days off around the holidays, and my brain uses every scrap of free time it gets to fill up with a thousand hopeful resolutions for the year to come. This is energizing and a little sad, since I have never, ever enjoyed a year of being like “Good job, you! Nothing to fix here. Relax.” This year I started to scribble my goals on the whiteboard I keep in our kitchen (placed there in an attempt to capture as many of my hyper thoughts as possible). It looked something like

Today I drove to a New Jersey beach at a ludicrously early hour, ensuring there wouldn’t be many other surfers. I can’t steer. Yet. I stood on my first wave less than 18 months ago. That was in warm, sunny Costa Rica, at Witch’s Rock Surf Camp. You must drop everything and go there, actually. Find a way. But I digress. This morning, I pulled a wetsuit on. Imagine dressing in a dry sponge. I breathed deep to fight off the nervous stomach pains—they still come every time I approach the ocean.

It’s been one month since the holiday season came to a close. Do you know where your gift cards are? If not, go find them right now. I’ll wait. According to advisory company CEB TowerGroup consumers spend more than $130 billion on gift cards each year, but about $1 billion of that goes unredeemed. Don’t add to that billion dollar figure! Here are a few easy ways to remember to spend your holiday gift cards, thanks to Gift Card Girlfriend, Shelly Hunter: • None Store them in your wallet with y

How many birthday gifts for babies have ever made parents inwardly groan? The too-loud toy. The ugly outfit. The useless gear that gets forgotten. Because ALL baby gear is designed to seem cute and necessary, it can be easy to fall into this trap, especially if you don’t have a baby yourself, or yours is a little older. All that sleep deprivation in the early days can make it hard to remember what you loved getting when your little one was even smaller! Never fear. If you’re looking for baby bi

You see, I waste 30 to 40 minutes each morning torturing my husband through the synthetic sunlight and multiple rounds of birdsong emanating from a fancy light-up alarm.

I gave the advice “Fake it til you make it,” before. I did it happily, borderline smugly even. Usually, I follow it up with a classic career story of mine, which I will now tell to you (Lucky you; Please imagine me smoking a pipe in a mahogany office). Many moons ago, on the first day of my first real journalism job in NYC, my editor asked me to write “umbrella quotes” for a few features being printed in the next issue of the business magazine I wrote for. I had no idea what an umbrella quote

My morning routine is a work-in-progress, but having a framework has saved me from complete a.m. insanity.

Imagine going to work and this happening: A coworker spots you, smiles, screams your name, and runs at you full force, colliding in a bear hug.

I have this vest. I got it at the Columbia outlet store, which is a dangerous place for a mom, no matter how hip you are – or once were.