Shortly after my son was born 11 years ago, a friend of mine – the father of three much older kids – asked me how I was doing. At that point, I think we’d moved safely into that phase where I was no longer feeding my son every three seconds, he’d begun smiling at us, and my husband and I had more or less adjusted to this massive change in our lives.

“It’s such a great age,” I commented.

“They all are,” he replied.

It’s true, they *are* all great ages and I’m continually mystified by how exciting and interesting each phase of parenting is (even when I’m going through them for the second time with my daughter.)

But it’s also an ongoing challenge to parent and one always feels a bit behind the eight ball as you try desperately to figure out how best to react (or, indeed, whether to react at all) to our children’s behavior and emerging personalities.

To that end, this week I thought I’d share some new (but really) old parenting strategies that seem to prove their value again and again:

1.Incentives are better than punishments. When your kids misbehave – and particularly when they do the same annoying thing repeatedly – there’s a temptation to take something away from them: no television for a week, no play dates, no dessert. But rewards for good behavior are also much more effective than punishments for bad behavior, especially for younger children. In my own case, my daughter takes an inordinate amount of time to get dressed in the morning, producing frequent (and repetitive) conflicts. While my first instinct was to take away her computer time, I opted this week to try something new: if she can get dressed, brush hair and brush teeth each morning (and the reverse each evening) in under ten minutes, I’ll give her 50p a day. At the end of two weeks, if she does this consistently, she can buy a present for herself. (Bear in mind that she doesn’t have allowance right now.) I explained to her that we wouldn’t carry on buying gifts on a regular basis, but I’m hoping that by heaping praise on her in the next two weeks while we do this trial period, she’ll internalize the positive reinforcement and want to get dressed/undressed quickly, rather than only working for the extrinsic reward. So  far, so good.

2. Hitting doesn’t work. If you think that doesn’t bear repeating, think again. Here in the U.K. where I live, a Labour politician – who was, I kid you not, the former Education Minister – recently declared that if working class parents had more freedom to hit their children, we wouldn’t have had the riots that broke out here last summer. No sh$!. In a poll taken not so long ago, nearly one half of British parents surveyed said that they thought that teachers should be allowed to hit children to keep them in line. This, despite mounds of evidence showing that while spanking is very effective in the short run for altering a child’s behavior, in the long run it is completely counter-productive.

3. Understand where your kids are at, developmentally. Like many parents, I was absolutely fascinated by a recent article by Alison Gopnik  in The Wall Street Journal about the teenage mind. The upshot of the article is that teenagers are hitting puberty – and all the attendant hormonal, risk-taking changes in attitude this phase of life produces – much earlier than ever before, while becoming “adults” (in the sense of assuming responsibility for their own lives) ever later. The result is that their emotional development is out of sync  with their ability to exert judgment and self-control  in a way that it wasn’t even 20 years ago. Once I read this, I thought, Eureka! So that’s why my 11 year-old loves listening to Rap music but can’t be bothered to cut with a knife and fork properly.

4. Don’t micro-manage. I attended my son’s parent-teacher meetings earlier this week and was told by several of his teachers, independently, that they felt that while he had come into the school year a bit jumpy and unsettled, over the course of the year he had really calmed down. As a fellow manic, I can’t really criticize him too much on this score – the apple, as they say, doesn’t fall far from the tree. But I couldn’t help but wonder if my own New Year’s resolution to chill out and try to control him less wasn’t helping, in part, to chill him out in other parts of his life. Coincidence? Maybe. But I’m going to press on with this resolution – despite temptations to “fall off the wagon” – and see if I keep observing positive change.

5. Keep reading  books by Faber and Mazlish. Believe it or not I do think that you can over-train yourself in the art of parenting. Some of it has to be instinctual – and based, crucially, on your particular child’s nature – or you’ll drive yourself insane. But I will put in a plug for two books by parenting experts Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish that I will stand by: How To Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk, as well as their companion volume, Siblings Without Rivalry. I remember parenting blogger Lisa Belkin saying that for many years, she and her husband kept dog-eared copies of these books by their respective bedsides. Ditto.

What tried and true parenting strategies work for you?

*****

If you’re interested in hearing my views on why we should all – including Marco Rubio – be reading Fidel Castro’s new memoirs, head on over to The Washington Post’s She The People blog.

Image: Little Johnnie Totally Deserved It by feminaerecta via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

Following the big splash around Jodi Kantor’s new book – The Obamas – where she provides an in-depth look into the First Family’s marriage, it seems like everyone has an opinion on Barack and Michelle’s relationship and what it has to say about the institution of marriage more broadly.

But apparently, not everyone’s on the marriage bandwagon.

According to a recent report from the Pew Research Institute, marriage is on the decline in the United States and elsewhere. Barely half of Americans over the age 18 are currently married, and the number of couples married in 2010 dropped five percent from 2009. This comes on the heels of a 20% drop in the overall number of married couples in the country since 1960.

These findings mirror those observed in the UK, where researchers found that only 48 percent of adults there were married.

So I thought it might be time – much as I did not so long ago with divorce – to pinpoint some smart posts out there being written about marriage:

1. All The Single Ladies – In addition to being the title of the runaway Beyoncé hit single, this is also the title of a provocative cover story in The Atlantic from November. In it, author Kate Bollick, traces the familiar evolution of marriage from an economic partnership (pre-20th century) to an idealized, romantic “coupledom”  in the 20th century. But she also points to a new trend – the rise of single, non-married women (the result, baldly stated, of an ever-shrinking pool of “marriageable” men.) Bollick makes an impassioned case for why this sociological trend may not actually be such a bad thing, and why it may suit women to seek out unconventional partnership arrangements that stray from the norm. As I watch friend after friend on the brink of separation and divorce, I’m having a hard time disagreeing with her, even as someone who tries very hard to stay married. Well worth a read, if you haven’t already.

2. Generosity is good for marriage – Or at least, so suggest the results of the University of Virginia’s National Marriage Project, which recently studied the role of generosity in the marriages of 2,870 men and women. The survey found that men and women with the highest scores on the generosity scale were far more likely to report that they were “very happy” in their marriages. Apparently, even something as trivially small as making your partner coffee goes a long way towards keeping the flame alive. (For me it’s buttering his toast, as my husband would never dream of letting me near his coffee, but it’s the same idea.) And of course, that makes sense. Even when some of us may be inclined to give our partners the ‘death look’ when they fail to pick up after themselves (or in my case, profess not to remember how to turn on the dishwasher – yikes!), it’s important to remember that putting in that extra effort, even on something seemingly trivial, can make a difference.

3. Acceptance is also crucial. I remember when I was applying to my first set of jobs, straight out of graduate school, and one of my advisers sagely warned me: “All departments have their warts,”  which was his shorthand for “Nothing’s perfect.” He was referring to political science departments which might later employ me, but he may just as well have been speaking about future potential spouses. Elizabeth Weil has a great post on precisely this sort of acceptance in the most recent Modern Love column at The New York Times. Weil – for those who don’t remember – is the woman who went public on the cover of a New York Times Magazine a couple of years back about how she and her husband had undergone couples therapy to improve their marriage, even though nothing was really wrong. Now she’s back, explaining that what she learned from that experience is that the key to a successful long-term relationship is to accept that you will never entirely remove your partners warts (my term, not hers.) Yes, you’ll smooth some down, but they don’t go away. And for her, marriage is thus about learning to love your spouse very specifically, not despite – but because of  – his or her specific, individual flaws.

4. Nagging, however, is bad. There was an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal last week arguing that nagging is far more prevalent than adultery in modern marriages, and potentially at least as toxic. According to Howard Markman, a psychologist at The University of Denver, couples who became unhappy five years into their marriage had a roughly 20% increase in negative communication patterns consistent with nagging, and a 12% decrease in positive communication. Not surprisingly, nagging becomes particularly conducive to divorce when couples start fighting about the nagging itself. (Can’t imagine doing that. Ever.)

5. Silence can be golden. I was also quite taken with a post by Karin Kasdin on the New York Times Motherlode blog last summer about what it’s like when you grow old with someone and no longer have the multiple distractions at hand – especially with kids in tow – that force you to speak constantly to one another:  the day-to-day scheduling, the finances, the trip planning, etc. She remarked that one the surprising lessons of the empty-nest syndrome is that even while you might fear, as newlyweds, the day you no longer have something to say to one another, perhaps the best sign that your marriage is actually O.K. is when you can grow comfortable with the silence and realize that you won’t fall apart without the chatter.
Here’s to that.

Image: marriage by jcoterhals via Flickr under a Creative Commons license

I’ve been thinking a lot about middle age of late, and what it is – exactly – that makes us more or less happy as we round this phase of life.

It might be that my 46th birthday looms on the horizon next week, which makes me feel like I’m already entering the second half of my existence. (For reasons I can’t explain, I have apparently decided that I’m going to live to 90.)

Or it might be that Blue Monday (the third Monday of January, purported to be the saddest day of the year) just passed. Fictitious or not – that milestone always prompts me to reassess my emotional state and decide if I’m happier or sadder than I was at this time last year.

To that end, I’ve taken a keen interest in recent research on emotional health in adulthood and what makes for happier grown ups:

1. Maternal Care – While the research is still confined to rats, it looks like maternal care influences brain chemistry into adulthood. Most of us would probably agree that this statement is likely true. But scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg have demonstrated that intensive maternal care during infancy promotes the development of a specific hormone in the brain, which in turn controls the development of anxiety and stress responses. While the study still needs to be extended to humans, the preliminary results suggest that how much your mother dotes on you when you’re very young may be key to understanding things like post-traumatic stress disorder and other anxiety disorders as you age. Ditto the adverse effects of maternal favoritism.

2. Religiosity – Another important factor in determining emotional well-being in adulthood is how religious you are. Modern happiness research leaves no doubt that religious people are happier than their contemporaries. This is something that has been born out both within societies and across them. Interestingly, however, American Jews scored the highest of any religious group on a “well-being” index within the United States, even though more than half of Jews are non-religious. So disregard all that kvetching and moaning; behind it all, Jews are actually feeling OK. (Perhaps that’s why I identify so much with them?)

3. Imaginary Friends – Oh! How excited I was to learn this:  a recent study out of NYU shows that having imaginary friends in childhood lays the groundwork for a more stable emotional adulthood. And that’s because through these imaginary friendships, what you’re actually doing is practicing how to express your emotions without fear of censorship or derision, all the while bolstering your creativity and verbal skills. As someone who grew up with a best friend called Con Brick Chair – and must listen endlessly to my own daughter chattering away in her imaginary play – I’m so pleased to hear that this behavior may actually be functional!

4. Early Sex – On the less encouraging end of things, research also suggests that early sex could trigger mood swings in adulthood. Again, the research has so far been conducted only on animals. But it implies that there may be an appropriate “age” to begin having sexual relationships, and that adolescents begin too young, this may have negative consequences for anxiety and depression later on. (Interestingly, being sexually active doesn’t seem to affect their school performance.) Something tells me that – if born out on real teens – these results might be of interest to politicians!

5. Choosing Happiness – I was delighted to happen upon a summary in the New York Times of a new book by Karl Pillemer called 30 Lessons For Living Well. In it, Dr. Pillemer – a human development scholar at Cornell University – interviewed more than 1,000 Americans from different economic, educational and occupational strata to get their personal views on what has made them happy throughout life, ranging from marriage to careers to aging itself. The article is fascinating on many counts, but one particular result stood out. Almost every single one of the interviewees concurred that happiness is a choice, not the result of how life treats you. So regardless of what happens to you early on in life, the consensus from those who’ve been there is that you are in charge of how you react towards those stimuli and for adopting a pro-active approach to being happy.

It’s nice to end on a positive note, no?

Image: Self Portrait by kasi metcalf via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

Well, it’s that time of year again. The New Year rolls around and my inbox/RSS Feed/Facebook page is inundated with the resolutions of friends and strangers far and near: Lose five pounds! Run a marathon! Write that #$%@ novel!

I’m a big fan of making resolutions. (As those of us blessed with an overly health super-ego tend to be.) Not just because they impose self-discipline for things like leading a healthier lifestyle. But also because – if you choose your goals wisely – they can genuinely make you happier.

And apparently, I’m not alone. Research shows that 40-45% of adults make one or more resolutions each year.

The trick, of course, is following through. One study in the U.K. showed that as many as 78% of those who set resolutions for themselves in the New Year failed to stick with them.

Bummer.

I personally think that one way that you keep your resolutions alive is by saying them out loud. Because I firmly believe that if you tell other people what you’re shooting for, you’re more likely to commit to a goal.

(I’ve tested this strategy out. After announcing on this blog couple of years back that I was going to take Saturdays off for “me time,” people still chide me if they discover me lurking on Facebook or Twitter when I’m supposed to be resting. I love that they do this!)

In that spirit, I’m going to share my own resolutions for this year:

1. Get a job. Yup, that’s still top of the list. While my She The People gig at the Washington Post is fantastic, it’s just that: a gig. So I am still out there pounding the pavement: networking, sending in applications and combing job listings. I do, however, have a brand new (top secret!) strategy for my job hunt, which I’ll reveal when (God willing) the time comes. So that, at least, feels like a new wrinkle on an old-ish goal.

2. Be more romantic. While we were in Argentina, I couldn’t help but notice how affectionate, physically, Latins are with one another. It’s been so long since I lived in Latin America that I’d completely forgotten that aspect of life down there. The importance of things like hugging for marital success has long been documented. Seeing this on action in Argentina reminded me that even when you’ve been with your partner for awhile, you really need to fight the instinct to take him or her for granted. Which is why I’ve resolved to do more things one-on-one with my husband in the New Year, including the odd romantic getaway, when/as/if we can afford one. (See #1). I don’t know about you, but I want to die like this couple.

3. Ease up on my kids. Yeah, I know. I’ve said that one before too. I tend to be a bit of a control freak where my kids are concerned. Part of this is situational: I work at home so I have ample opportunity to “hover.” And part of it is just my make-up. But one of my close friends took me aside during our trip to Argentina and suggested – in the friendliest, I’ve-been-there sort of way – that I ease up a bit, particularly with my son. If I loosen the reins just a bit where he’s concerned, she convinced me – based on her own experience – that I’ll not only be doing him a favor (vis independence, less need to act out later on, etc. etc.) but myself as well. (It’s hard work trying to control other people’s lives!) She wasn’t the first person to suggest this; but somehow, coming from a close friend who herself has a tendency to helicopter parent, I actually listened. So far, so good on that one. (More to follow on this, rest assured.)

4. Eat less meat. You may wonder, after I waxed rhapsodic about the joys of eating Barbeque last week, how I could possibly now suggest that I would renounce eating meat? I’m not actually resolved to stop eating meat altogether. (Although part of me wishes that I could.) But yes, I’d like to move in the direction of becoming a Flexitarian – i.e. eating less meat without becoming a vegetarian – a new trend that’s gaining currency in the U.S. (Hey man, we all need a group!) I just think that I’d be happier and healthier consuming less flesh. (And perhaps if I substitute the word “flesh” for “meat” on a regular basis, I will become a vegetarian!)

5. Discover the United Kingdom. We’ve traveled a fair bit since moving to London five and a half years ago. But the vast majority of that travel has been outside the country. I’d like to change that. I feel like I really don’t know my adopted country nearly as well as I should and that there’s no time like the present to alter that. First stop? Wales. Because once you hear someone pronounce the name of the world’s longest railroad station, you, too, will think: I gotta meet those Welsh folks.

What are you resolved to do in 2012?

 Image: hugging by lanier67 via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

Well, I’m back from Argentina – the land that brought you Eva Peron,  the Tango, Gauchos and so much more. But before bombarding you with some of my choicer tales, both personal and political, from the journey, I thought I’d do more of a travel post to convince you why it might be worth your while to plan a trip there in the future, if you haven’t already been.

Because it’s truly a spectacular country and on this visit – unlike my previous trips there – I was actually able to get out of the capital city and see more of the countryside.

To wit, here are five reasons to visit Argentina:

1. The food. When I say “the food,” I really should calibrate this by saying “the meat.” It’s no secret that Argentine’s consume an inordinate amount of meat. (They have the highest per capital consumption of beef in the world.) It’s not at all unusual for them to have beef for lunch and dinner – sometimes even for breakfast too, for good measure! – and they have no concerns that this is at all unhealthy. So it was with some trepidation that I warned my husband – who fancies himself a Pollo-Vegetarian – that we would be consuming a lot of meat on our holiday and that there would be nowhere to hide. (Except pasta; because of their strong Italian heritage, Argentines also eat a lot of pasta.) But lo and behold! He loved it! Once our hosts started cranking up the asado (barbeque), he thought he’d died and gone to heaven. Lamb, pig, cow – you name it. They really know how to prepare it in the most succulent ways imaginable. (Shame that my daughter announced mid-way through the first week that she was a vegetarian. I told her that little experiment in identity-formation would have to wait until January 1st.)

2. Tango. I’m sorry. I know that it may sound cheesy to some, but you simply cannot leave Argentina without seeing a Tango. You don’t need to go to one of the over-priced dinner-theatre “shows” in central Buenos Aires to do this. We saw our first Tango on a square in the middle of the Capital’s artsy San Telmo neighborhood one afternoon, and the second one performed by my friend’s 78-year-old parents in in her living room on Christmas Eve. There is something utterly captivating about the intricacy of the footwork, the dramatic flourish of the music and the smoldering, sexy undercurrent of the dance itself. Have a look.

3. Glaciers. After a week in Buenos Aires, we headed South to Patagonia. (While you’re there, get a hold of Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia. Great travel partner.) I’ll be honest. I’d never given much thought to Patagonia before, beyond the odd nod to those super-cosy, colorful fleeces we all don. But Patagonia is also home to the most amazing Glacier National Park. I’d seen glaciers years ago in the United States and Canada, and I thought they were pretty cool. But those paled by comparison. The glaciers in Patagonia were unbelievable – each one had its own shape and character – personality almost- and extended on for miles. If you were lucky, you could witness a small piece crumble, break off and fall into the water – adding to the pool, which was truly spectacular.

4. Penguins. Even further South lies Tierra del Fuego, the self-described “end of the world.” We took a boat from the city of Ushuaia to check out some penguin colonies, along a route once traveled by Charles Darwin himself. (Thank goodness all that seventh grade social studies finally came in handy!) Particularly cool – if you ever make it this far South – is the Museo Akatushun on the Estancia Harberton, a working museum/laboratory on one of the little islands along the Beagle Channel where they dissect and display marine wildlife from the region. Check out the bone house – an olfactory wonder!

5. Psychoanalysis. I read somewhere not so long ago that Argentina has more psychologists per capita than any other country in the world. So when my good friend there suggested that I take my eleven year-old to see an analyst to deal with his asthma, I had to smile. My own view is that my kid probably needs a new inhaler rather than a shrink, but I love the fact that people there are so open to and open about therapy. God knows they could they use some of that up here in the U.K.

Image: Glacier Upsala by Médéric via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

For the last four days, I’ve been down for the count.  A horrible stomach virus swept through our household, claiming first my daughter, then my husband and myself (simultaneously) and then, finally, pulling my son down with us.

Unlike my daughter and my husband, who suffered a shorter, more violent episode of said bug – (and yes, I’ll spare you the gory details) – mine was of a more protracted nature. No vomiting. No extended stays in the bathroom. Instead, intense stomach cramps, chills and a low-grade fever. And an overwhelming sense of fatigue every time I stood up or tried to do anything other than drink Seven Up.

It doesn’t help that I saw Contagion last weekend – which is enough to make you think that every time you cough, you’re about to turn blue and start frothing at the mouth. (Other than that, I’d love to look like Gwyneth Paltrow, thank you very much.)

But I’m slowly emerging from the death throes of this thing. And as I do so, I realize that I learned a few things from this most recent brush with mortality:

1. Your kids are more independent than you realize. I wrote a post not long ago in which I vowed that in this new school year, I would do less for my kids. That resolution was partly driven by my own desire to be less of a control freak (hey, good luck with that!) and partly by the feeling that as they rounded the corner to eight and eleven respectively, my children ought to be taking more responsibility for themselves. And boy, lemme tell ya, there’ s nothing like having not one, but two (!) parents incapacitated to demonstrate what your kids are truly capable of. One day, my daughter (8) made lunch for my son (soon-to-be 11) and volunteered – without being asked – to sew a badge onto his football jersey. Meanwhile, my son, who’s favorite catch-phrase of the moment is “CBB” (which stands for “Can’t be bothered“) was suddenly jumping up to toast his own bread, take his own asthma medicine, get himself to football practice and back and – miraculously! – put himself to bed without listening to the iPod or reading a book. (I really *must* do this more often…)

2. Old movies really do rock. I wrote a post around this time last year when I was similarly afflicted by some hideous bug entitled Five Comfort Activities When You’re Sick. Right up there on that list was watching old movies. And you know what? It’s still there. This year, we cracked open some Sherlock Holmes. As we’d already made our way through all of the early versions of the series starring Basil Rathbone, we began to plumb the depths of the 1980s series starring Jeremy Brett and David Burke. Bliss!

3. Cars seem less of a luxury when you’re ill. Those of you who’ve been reading this blog for a while will know that I am fairly fervently anti-car, for health, environmental and aesthetic reasons. Nonetheless, I would by lying if I didn’t tell you that I miss driving when I’m ill. Because when you’re sick, there’s something really nice about being able to jump in the car in your PJ’s and zip down to the local corner store to pick up some Saltines (or rich tea biscuits, depending on the continent) and be back at your perch on the couch in five minutes flat. Because, seriously. Having to walk to the corner store when you’re under the weather? CBB, man. CBB.

4.  The homeless are deserving of our sympathies. There was a point, early on in this illness, when I was required to spend about six hours outside when I really wasn’t up to it. My daughter had a dress rehearsal for a play, followed immediately by a dance recital, and there was simply no way that I couldn’t accompany her. So during the two-hour rehearsal, I took myself down into the basement of a local theatre, lay down on a sofa in my gigantic ski parka, clutched my smart phone to my chest, and took a two-hour nap. Throughout the ensuing two hours, workers would periodically shuffle through the room and ask me to switch sofas or gently prod me in one direction or the other so that they could clean up or rearrange chairs. And I realized – in my half-awake, feverish state – that this is what it feels like to be homeless. And I felt – quite sincerely – a newfound sympathy for their plight.

5. I do too much. Period. Remember last week’s Yuletide post about my not-so-relaxed-downhill-slalom-course-into-the-holidays? Nothing like a stomach virus to force you to drop everything and sleep. Overnight, I began missing deadlines, canceling meetings, and turning off the answering machine to avoid the sound of the telephone. And you know what? It felt great. There’s a lesson in here, folks. For me, definitely. And for some of you as well, I suspect.

Happy Holidays. Be Happy. Be Healthy. Be Relaxed.

Sick as a Dog…by Chewy Hooey via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

Well, tis’ the season and all that good stuff. But if you’re anything like me, you’re not exactly gliding into the festivities this year, a glass of eggnog in one hand, some gift wrap in the other and a sprig of holly dangling playfully from your neck.

Rather, you’ve got the disemboweled remains of your daughter’s reindeer christmas cracker in one hand, a to-do list in the other hand that’s so long, the paper has actually begun to curl and some masking tape stuck to the back of your hair which you haven’t washed since last Tuesday.

I just glanced down at my own to-do list – you know, the one that’s meant to get me through this week and next before my family takes off on a two-week trip to the end of the earth (literally) – and it read something like this:

Alongside the sort of monumental, life-changing, BLOCK PRINT, do-or-die tasks like:

*turn in job applications by designated deadlines

*decide whether or not to buy the exquisitely-located-but-slightly-too-expensive-and-slightly-too-small-flat, and

*have that discussion (again) with ten year-old about sex,

I’ve got an equally long list of imminent tasks like:

*sort out food for coffee morning AT MY HOUSE this Friday

*finish buying Xmas gifts for all friends in Argentina (and make sure that there are enough Hanukkah candles for home…where did I buy them again last year?) and

*clean up dog poop in foyer before coffee morning (and we all know how I feel about dog poop…)

In short:  I’m frazzled. And I bet you are as well. Here are five tips for remaining calm during the holidays:

1. Just say no. Gretchen Rubin had a great post over on The Happiness Project recently where she encouraged readers to think of themselves in the third person as a means of taking better care of their own needs. In her own case, for example, she pretended that she was answering phone calls for herself by saying things like “Gretchen gets frantic when she’s really hungry, so she can’t wait too long for dinner” or “Gretchen really feels the cold, so she can’t be outside for too long.” In my own case, I have a terrible tendency to over-schedule my weekends, which just leaves me feeling absolutely wiped out by Sunday night. So particularly during this overly-hectic holiday season, I’ve been trying to remind myself that “Delia needs to chill on the weekends now so that she has energy to enjoy the holidays when they actually arrive.” Externally, this has translated into my canceling some dinners, play dates and even holiday parties so that I can just relax.

2. Accept being invisible. This comes from communications guru Chris Brogran, who has recently made a conscious effort to become not only less busy, but less public in his professional life. Brogan’s basic point is that for many of us, much of our alleged “busyness” is really about responding to our underlying fear that if we aren’t perpetually “out there” getting noticed by others, we’ll no longer be relevant. But that’s not only exhausting, it’s also – ironically – counter-productive, because it draws us away from core focus. Brogan’s talking mainly about bloggers and other heavy consumers of social media, but his point applies equally well in real life, particularly during the holidays where there is such an over-abundance of social gatherings. You don’t need to go to every cocktail party or to be seen at every coffee morning.  You might find that once you show up at fewer holiday parties, far from detracting from your holiday happiness, you’re actually more chipper because you’re spread less thin and investing your time more in those areas that you care about most.

3. Triage. I once wrote a post about productivity in which I suggested that one way to get on top of your to-do list is to divide your list into long-term and short-term items. Each day, you tick off one item from the short-term list. Each week, you take a concrete step towards something on the long-term list. This has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas per se, except that if you’re like me (see above) you’re going to need some extra help “getting sorted” round about this time of year. Translated into my own current set of competing demands, then: dog sh$! now; sex talk later.

4. Do less for your kids. Sure, this is meant to be a season that’s all about giving. But chances are that if you’re a parent  – and particularly if you’re a working parent  – and super-especially if you’re a working mom kind of working parent – you’re already multi-tasking way more than everybody else out there anyway. And enjoying it less.  So by all means, assuming your kids are old enough, hand off as much to them as possible so that you can take care of all those extra items that have quietly found their way onto your to-do list of late. (Did I mention the Hanukkah candles?) Let your kids decorate the tree. Hang a wreath. Cook the latkes. Not a parent? Do less for your spouse or partner. But whoever you are, do more for someone else. It’s a great time of year to volunteer.

5. Do something for yourself. Again, this might seem like a counter-intuitive message for the holiday season. But if you’re feeling stressed out and overwhelmed, think about one simple thing that is entirely yours and which might – amid the chaos – stop time for an hour and help you to relax. It might be something as simple as getting a massage or taking a walk in the park. In my own case, I’ve been working hard over the past few months at making some new friends. So one morning this week – when I had so many deadlines pressing down upon me, I felt like I could barely breathe – I went for a quick coffee with a woman I’d met and we talked about a book we’d both read. So much fun. Afterwards, somehow everything else didn’t seem so onerous after all.

How about you? What do you do to stay calm during the holidays?

Image: Fuck the deliveries by Funky64 via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

Over the course of last week’s blackout at RealDelia – or “blogout,”  as I ‘m now calling it (Can I coin that term?) – one of the many things that caught my eye was an article by Zoe Williams in the Guardian suggesting that we should all ditch novels in favor of non-fiction.

Her argument basically boiled down to the claim that  in dire, apocalyptic times like these, where we face the threat of global warming, financial crisis and political turmoil on a daily basis, we can’t afford to bury our heads in the airy-fairy world of fiction. Rather, we need to don our serious hats and seek to better understand the origin of earthquakes and trade deficits and the like.

I’m not sure I see that there’s necessarily a trade-off between the two. More to the point, however, I completely reject her premise that fiction is so obviously apolitical.

I don’t know what sort of fiction Ms. Williams is reading – and I hope, and rather suspect – that she wrote the article as a form of link-bait more than anything else. But I read a lot of fiction, and much of it is not only political, but highly timely and relevant.

So, just as I once recommended five political films worth viewing, I hereby submit five recent political novels worth reading:

1. Freedom. Say what you will about Jonathan Franzen’s latest epic novel about America. Some people loved it; some hated it. I was in the “loved it” camp. But however you felt, there is no denying that this is a deeply political novel about the United States at the turn of the twentieth century as it confronts the inevitable limitations and contradictions  embedded in its love-affair with personal choice. Along the way, we get a full-on immersion in party politics, environmentalism, college athletics and infidelity, all presented through the central prism of one family’s slow and painful collapse.

2. Saturday. This novel traces a day in the life of a middle-class doctor in London who goes to work on that precise Saturday in 2003 when thousands of people turned out to protest the War in Iraq. OK, sure. The War in Iraq now feels like yesterday’s news. But the anger and outrage that brought all those people out onto the street  still exists, even if the target has changed. (Today, two million people in this country participated in a 24-hour walk out to protest against pension reforms put forth by the current government.)  But author Ian McEwan is also addressing a deeper point in this brilliantly crafted novel about the political mood in Britain post 9/11: what it means to be political and whether one can truly remain detached from politics in this day and age.

3. The Tiger’s Wife. This novel has been nominated for every award in sight over the past year and justifiably so. It is a beautifully written, almost fable-like tale about family and history in twentieth century Yugoslavia. Although told with a sort of magical realist veneer, the horror and tragedy of the war that ripped apart this Balkan nation is never far below the surface. Plus, once you learn that the author, Téa Obreht, is only 25, you’ll be green with envy.

4.  The White Tiger. Another beautifully written book which has the added bonus of being laugh-out-loud funny. This book addresses politics in the developing world – specifically India. Through the rags to riches story of one boy-turned-man, the author, Aravind Adiga, exposes two sides of India (and practically every other poor country out there):  the vast, seemingly endless stretches of poverty and kinship ties and the small, almost impenetrable circles of wealth and greed. It’s a damning  – if not humorous – indictment of how it really works in most countries facing a similar socio-economic predicament. You will laugh and cry in equal measure.

5. American Wife. I just finished this (on the recommendation of a friend) and must confess that I could not put it down. As some of you may know, this book is a fictional account of Laura Bush’s life prior to and during her role as first lady. It’s not autobiographical in any way, shape or form, and is not meant to be factual, although it does include some incidents that bear an uncanny resemblance to Laura Bush’s life. I adored the author – Curtis Sittenfeld’s – first book, Prep, about what it’s like to be a Midwestern misfit at a posh, East Coast boarding school. And American Wife has that same sort of observant, interior voice that was featured in Prep. It’s a book that will definitely make you think about marriage. But it will also make you think specifically about political marriages. In an era where the First Lady is widely being touted as President Obama’s best “electoral weapon,” how much are political spouses expected to believe in their candidates?

OK, so those are just a few of the political novels I pulled off the top of my head. I didn’t even include any of the explicitly 9/11 novels like Neverland and/or The Submission because I haven’t read either of them yet.

What am I missing? What good political novels have you read lately and would you like to add to the list?

Image: Protest 11 by marcovdc via Flickr under a Creative Commons license

Lately, I’ve been struck by how much the nature of work seems to be changing right now.

Not just because of the seemingly endless recession that’s sapping all of our jobs and igniting political and social change across the globe.

But also because the very definition of work – what it means and how it’s carried out – seems to be in so much flux.

To wit, here are five new trends in the way we conduct work:

1. Offices are a thing of the past. These days, it’s all about the virtual company. Abolishing most – if not all – of a company’s physical space saves a ton of money. It’s also ecologically friendly, productivity-enhancing (no commute!) and tends to make workers happier. As this fascinating case study of Inc. magazine details, there are some hurdles companies need to overcome as they transition to the virtual office (i.e. how to maintain a vibrant organizational culture.) And you definitely don’t want to do it if you have children or other dependents at home while you’re trying to work. But at least for certain jobs, telecommuting  is emerging as an efficient business model, according to the latest research.

2. If you need to set up an office, shared work space is where it’s at. With independent workers now comprising a full 30% of the workforce in the United States, shared office spaces – the term of art is coffice – are proliferating around the globe. (Why do I love this term so much? I think it’s because it reminds me of coffee.) Apparently, coffices have become particularly attractive for female entrepreneurs, as a space in which to network and share ideas.

3. Think in terms of income streams, not jobs. This comes from career coach Ford R. Myers, author of Get The Job You Want, Even When No One’s Hiring. Some 6.9 million Americans, or 4.8 percent of the U.S. workforce, hold multiple jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But Myers says that this doesn’t necessarily mean that all of these people are working a double shift just to pay the bills. Rather, they are more likely doing part-time contract work, running a side business, or teaching a course – in short, building flexibility into their work life – by thinking in terms of multiple income streams, rather than multiple jobs. Or, as blogger and business communications guru Chris Brogan puts it, work will be more modular in nature.  Sounds good to me.

4. Working fewer hours can make you more productive. Yeah, yeah. I know. We’ve heard it all before. The Four Hour Work Week and all that good stuff. But it turns out that it might be true. According to a recent study in published in Psychological Review, the key to great success is working harder in short bursts of time. Researchers found that across professions, productivity is enhanced when you work in short, highly-focused bursts with no distractions, rather than across long periods of time. As someone who’s always put in long days, this is music to my ears.

5. Internships aren’t just for college kids anymore. Rather, unpaid adult internships are the new normal. This is either exciting vis à vis the whole concept of “second acts.” Or just a horrifying sign of the dire economic straits in which we find ourselves. But it’s a reality. In a country with an unemployment rate hovering steadily just below 10%, more and more college graduates and even middle-aged professionals are willing to work for free in hopes that it will help them land a paying gig. Yikes.

Image: Day 308/365  – Rough Day At The Office by Kevin H. via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

Well, after yesterday’s rather somber post, I thought I’d lighten the mood around here today with some pop culture fun.

I don’t watch a lot of television, but when I find a series that does strike a chord, I tend to become obsessed and arrange my entire week around it.

For a while, that show was Glee. As I wrote not long ago, even when I began to find the story lines a bit tired, I was still inspired by the singing and dancing.

My TV obsession du jour right now is Downton Abbey. I almost gave up on it after the first few episodes, but now I’m thoroughly addicted.

Here are five reasons I’d recommend that you privilege Downton over Glee:

1. Plot. We’ve just finished Season Two of Downton over here – so I won’t include any spoilers. But suffice to say that while Glee felt really fresh during its first season – forcing us all to go back to that awkward, uncomfortable space called High School – it hasn’t really evolved very much, plot-wise. The basic arc every season seems to be one of the Glee Club being threatened with destruction – whether from inside or outside – and having to somehow manage to overcome that implosion. And after a while, that just gets boring. Downton, on the other hand, started off in an almost ridiculous fashion. (I don’t know about you, but when that guy died having sex, I nearly clicked the “off” button. When, since Private Benjamin, has anyone had to rely on that kind of plot device?) Since then, however, they have figured out ways to make the plot grow outward, rather than inward. Sure, it’s a soap opera. But at least there are multiple and constantly moving threads, rather than one central narrative.

2. Character Development. Similarly, and I’ve harped on this before, the characters in Glee feel like they are becoming more and more one-dimensional, while the characters in Downton are getting more nuanced. It’s true that Glee has done a great job in Seasons Two and Three of featuring some of the minor characters like Brittany and Mike and Tina. But I’ve been particularly disappointed by Sue Sylvester (played by the marvelous Jane Lynch) who – other than a very moving episode where her Downs Syndrome sister dies – has become a sort of sinister, freak show maniac over time. As Downton moved into Season Two, in contrast, I felt that all of the main characters – and particularly the nastier ones – began to show their humanity, which really went a long way towards making the show feel more realistic.

3. Leading Man. This is, of course, purely a matter of personal preference. But I’ve always been pretty creeped out by Matthew Morrison (Mr. Shue) and it’s not the hair gel. Downton’s Hugh Bonneville (The Earl of Grantham) isn’t exactly about to win People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive award. But there’s something wonderfully noble and endearing about him that makes you want to sit down for an extended fireside chat. (Or is that just me?)

4. Leading Lady. This is a really tough call because it’s comparing apples and oranges. I adore Jane Lynch, (along with just about everyone else on the planet, as far as I can tell.) If she hasn’t yet won you over, watch her perform one of former Representative Anthony Weiner’s Facebook messages with Bill Maher (NSFW). But Downton has Dame Maggie Smith in the role of the Dowager Countess of Grantham. And as we all know, there is nothing like a dame. (You can see how terribly hard it is for me to renounce the show tune aspect of Glee…)

5. Setting. Sorry, Ohio. I know that you’re a pivotal swing state and all. And I’ve always adored this song about you, which was apparently performed by Jane Lynch and Carol Burnett last season on Glee. But suburban, mid-western America can never hope to hold a candle to the breathtakingly beautiful English countryside. I don’t even think that the town of Rippen – featured in Downton Abbey – actually exists. But, oh, how I long to go there all the same. Don’t you?

Image: Downton by lauredhel via Flickr under a Creative Commons License.