Work Life Balance: We Need a New Conversation

The kid lost her cell phone. Last we can tell, she had it a week ago Sunday at 10:24 am when she sent me a smiley face text.

A few days into the next week, no phone found. "Ok, no new phone for 2 years." Oh so the drama, right? My frustration was not with her or even that the phone was missing. I was frustrated that I couldn't piece together what I had done yesterday, let alone a week ago on the day the phone was last seen. 

Work. Life. Balance. The "there's no balance about it" conversation plays out with a common voice of struggle that sways between wondering how we can get it all done, accepting we can't and back to honoring the choices we make.

All in all, it's rather disempowering to me.

Form follows function, actions follow words yet the conversation is 50 shades of the same. I want something different; I want something more than a working mother's manifesto.

Is it about taking the moments of our lives and separating them from this conversation? What if the moments of our lives were actually the answer - and not the question?

I am caught in a loop of my own and it'll take nothing less than a complete change in the conversation <and some action> for me to break free. So, I have a question for you:

When it comes to work life balance, who is talking or writing about this in an empowering and completely different kind of way?

We need a new conversation. There is a Samsung Intensity metallic blue cell phone replacement (and my psyche) on the line.

HR Trendy: A Day in the Life Sunday

There is something about the number 3. When anything happens to me 3 times it catches my attention. The past 3 months went something like this, I made a decision, someone expressed an opinion and I responded,

"And here I thought I was being trendy."

Not. My personal eye for trend is limited and really, I am hopeless. But, I am getting better with a little help from my friends.

Take a look at the OlovesM yoga mat bags (aka purses). Cute, roomy and durable as all get out. Trendy?

Not. "Buy a real purse and take that one to the gym" is what my dear friends tell me. Is this Michael Kors any better? Does it make my butt look big? Now that I have one, am I HR predictable?

Looking for a gift certificate for one friend on the West Coast, another suggests The Container Store. Now, I've never been to a Container Store myself but if I was a trendy girl, I'd be a customer, right?

Not really. Turns out the nearest store is over an hour away and really not as practical as Target. "We aren't trendy, we're in HR" is what my dear friends tell me.

Looking for new eye glasses, I go straight for the optician certified trendiest pair of Morel's (picture them with black, brown, gold and silver specked rims) in town. The optician said they fit my face and I said they made my nose look big(ger).

There I was, eye to eye with trend and I could not do it. I circled through a ton of frames right back around to Kliik plastics, my tried and true. Where were my dear friends when I needed them?

Hmph. I am slipping on my Fryes, grabbing my iPad and heading to Starbucks accepting that I'm HR, I'm not trendy.

Really, help an out-of-sync HR girl out. What is trendy today?

Photo credit: iStockphoto