"Let’s have universal protests about the stupidity of school instead of universal pre-K."

"Let’s enable lower-income kids to have the benefit of being told their time is too precious to sit in school all day."

"15 Things Overachievers Do."

Penelope Trunk's list is — in typical Trunk style — highly provocative, full of surprising details and counterintuitiveness.

2. They use pharmaceuticals. Adderall is de rigeur [sic] for the high-powered jobs in high-powered cities...

8. They get pregnant at 25. If they’re a woman, that is. It’s clear that only a very small, anomalous group of women can have a high-powered job when they have young kids. So women should make a plan to have kids early, and then they can position themselves for a high-powered job once their kids are all grown up....

12. They don’t write books. The book industry is dead. They have no control over distribution channels and they have no control over author publicity, so the value publishers add in the book business is pretty much zero.... So for now, if you have an idea, put it in a blog. Harvard Business Review says that people who are serious about ideas are blogging.

13. They don’t let themselves get fat....

Read the whole thing... and this other thing that — in accordance with item #15 — she stole the idea from.

"[P]eople who want to take care of people and can’t stand doing work that doesn’t relate to that should probably be parents."

"There are very few jobs that are truly just taking care of people. And most of them pay very poorly, if at all. So you may as well do it for your own family, where the pay is not so important. It’s ridiculous that we don’t think of taking care of a family as a career path. That’s a good path for some people. Just like earning a shit-load of money is a good career path for other people. In fact, those two types of people should marry each other."

Penelope Trunk writes the smartest thing I've read in a long while. The post is titled "Secrets of successful yoga studios, and tactics to examine ideas that suck."

"The new job that everyone wants is stay-at-home mom. This makes sense to me."

"It’s clear that women don’t want to bust through the glass ceiling, or they’d have done it by now. And it’s clear that men are not pulled by kids in nearly the same way women are, because women’s careers tank when they have kids and mens’ careers don’t."

That's Penelope Trunk, noting a new Forbes survey that says 84% of working women want to stay home with kids. Forbes notes that "more than one in three resent their partner for not earning enough to make that dream a reality." Resentment is a bad place to be. I like these 2 items from Trunk's advice:

Live below your means.
You know at age 23 if it’s likely that you’ll want to stay home with kids. Which means the minute  you get married you should adjust your spending for one income....

Pick your spouse carefully.
If you want to stay home with kids, don’t marry a guy who can’t earn a living. If you want to stay home with kids, make it clear that even though you earn more than the guy, the guy will be the breadwinner. If you want to stay home with kids then you put all your financial hopes in the guy’s career. Whatever his earning ability is, then that is your earning ability, because you are a team, and he is the breadwinner.

Are people of today able to do and say such things? It seems radical and dangerous. But resentment... resentment is slow-growing and corrosive. 

"The world will not look kindly on people who put their kids into public school."

Writes Penelope Trunk (in a post titled "Blueprint for a Woman’s Life," which she wrote last August but keeps in her sidebar under the heading "Big Ideas"):

We all know that learning is best when it’s customized to the child and we all know that public schools are not able to do that effectively. And the truly game-changing private schools cost $40,000 a year.

It’s clear is that homeschooled kids will rule the world when Generation Z enters the workplace. So figure out a way to alleviate mommy guilt by homeschooling your kids to get them on that path. You don’t have to do the teaching yourself. You can pay someone. But you need to get your kids out of a system that everyone knows does not work. (Note: I just realized this. This month. And last week, I decided: I’m taking my kids out of school.)

It was interesting reading that right after reading this HuffPo piece by George Lakoff (and a co-author) called "The Wisconsin Blues." The main point is that progressives need better messaging. The conservatives always manage to put things in terms that resonate with people better, don't you know? Anyway, in his effort to improve left-wing propaganda, Lakoff has this about public schools (which I feel like calling government schools):

[D]emocracy begins with citizens caring about one another and acting responsibly both for oneself and others. The mechanism by which this is achieved is The Public, through which the government provides resources that make private life and private enterprise possible: roads, bridges and sewers, public education, a justice system, clean water and air, pure food, systems for information, energy and transportation, and protection both for and from the corporate world. No one makes it on his or her own. Private life and private enterprise are not possible without The Public. Freedom does not exist without The Public....

Public schools are essential to opportunity... They are also essential to democracy, since democracy requires an educated citizenry at large, as well as trained professionals in every community. Without education of the public, there can be no freedom.

At issue is the future of progressive morality, democracy, freedom, and every aspect of the Public -- and hence the viability of private life and private enterprise in America on a mass scale. The conservative goal is to impose rule by conservative morality on the entire country, and beyond. Eliminating unions and public education are just steps along the way. Only progressive moral force can stop them.

Discuss!

"I used to love blogging. I ate it, drank it, and slept on it at night."

"Then I became a consultant and professional blogger, earning a living giving advice and blogging for others.... Now I hardly blog at all. I returned to what I intended to do in the first place, before I’d ever heard of blogs: freelance writing."

Writes La Shawn Barber, who'd just run across an interview she did back in 2006, when she loved blogging. "Nothing profound. It just brought back memories."

From the old interview: "The more you blog, the more you love it, the more you have to say.... You need to blog because you like, or love, to do it."

The things that we do for love — and truly love — may be things we wouldn't love at all if it were paid work. Sex is an obvious example of that sort of thing. Here's a great old blog post by Penelope Trunk: "Bad career advice: Do what you love."

I am a writer, but I love sex more than I love writing. And I am not getting paid for sex. In fact, as you might imagine, my sex life is really tanking right now. But I don’t sit up at night thinking, should I do writing or sex? Because career decisions are not decisions about “what do I love most?” Career decisions are about what kind of life do I want to set up for myself?...

If you are lost, and lonely, and wondering how you’ll ever find your way in this world. Take a job. Any job. Because structure, and regular contact with regular people, and a method of contributing to a larger group are all things that help us recalibrate ourselves....

"Divorce is immature and selfish. Don't do it."

Says Penelope Trunk (who got divorced 4 years ago). I — who got divorced 22 years ago — agree with her. (Except to the extent that her pronouncement is phrased in absolute terms, which I doubt she believes. And not everyone who experiences divorce can be said to "do" it. It can be done to you.)

1. Divorce is a cliche among people in denial....

2. Divorce is nearly always terrible for kids. Your case is not the exception....

3. Divorce is for dumb people....

4. Divorce reflects mental illness....

5. Divorce is often a career issue....

Bullet points fleshed out at the link.

"I thought I’ll only be alive for maybe a minute longer, so I only have to keep trying to figure out how to save my life for one more minute."

"I told myself I can’t give up until I pass out. I remember that I hoped for a fast death. Then something switched in me. I was okay dying.... Now I realize that the time when I could not breathe was probably less than a minute. I had accepted the pain and my death after only 30 seconds."

Penelope Trunk describes her post-9/11 path, from high achievement in New York City to retreat, of a kind, in Wisconsin.

Who would seek this gift of knowing what you would think if you believed you were living the last 30 seconds of your life? But if that gift arrived... what would it look like?

Is traveling a good use of your time?

I keep trying to leave Madison, Wisconsin, and wondering why it never quite happens these days. Today, I ran across "4 reasons traveling is a waste of time," a blog post that Penelope Trunk wrote a couple years ago. It resonated. Especially #3: "People who love their lives don't leave."

Imagine if you were excited to get out of bed every day because you had structured your life so that every day was full of what you have always dreamed of doing. And you were in love with your boyfriend, and your job, and your new handstand in yoga. You love it all—imagine that. Would you want to leave all that behind for two weeks? What would be the point? You'd have more fun at home than away from home. So instead of traveling somewhere, how about figuring out what you'd really love to be doing with your time, and do that? In your real, day-to-day life.

Someone in the comments groused: "You are describing 5% or less of the population."

Today, it was was 67° here, and I took a walk along the lake path...



.... and through a garden....

"Take a picture of my pie. I need a picture."/"No. You’ll write that my rhubarb cobbler sucked and your pie was great."

Penelope Trunk writes about what do do if you think you're getting fired — and, most bloggishly — includes a lot of rhubarb, interpersonal dramedy, goat cheese, home repair, absurd photography, and career advice like: "wait for the words, 'You’re fired.' And then, no matter what words lead up to that phrase, say, 'I’m sorry you feel that way. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.'"

"So I love this commercial because it captures the shared experience of Generation X."

"We like being home to make our kids peanut butter and jelly. You could not sell Baby Boomers with this. They think it’s lame to sit in a kitchen waiting for your kid to be hungry. We like having a male breadwinner and we’re not afraid to say it. And we are surrounded by little boys in love with Star Wars...."

"How you answer the question 'What do you do?' is important..."

"... because it frames your story for you in a much more visceral way than it frames it for anyone else."

"How to get a workplace spouse to fill in the gaps in your marriage."

Penelope Trunk talks about why you might want to develop a relationship like this — not for sex! — and gives 5 rules:

1. Identify a relationship with a high chance for success....

2. Talk about a taboo topic.

Once a girl starts talking about sex, then the boy starts talking about sex....

3. Blur the normal boundaries between co-workers....

4. Ask for what you want....

5. Find a good balance between the official relationship and the unofficial relationship....

I smell trouble. Lots of trouble. Whatever happened to friends? Trunk tells us she has a husband who wants sex but is "sick of talking" to her. She wants someone to talk to and asserts that "when workplace spouse relationships do cross the line into the sex department, the relationship goes bad." But you can't neatly control relationships, and they do "go bad" — in many unpredictable ways.

"Women follow rules better than men do, so the women do better in school."

"But, there is no correlation between doing well in school and doing well in adult life. And there might be a reverse correlation, because school is about doing what you’re told, but strong performers in business make their own rules. Maybe this is why most big law firms have no women in their top 10 rainmakers. This is because it’s an ill-defined, outside-the-rules-of-what-you-learn-in-law-school kind of job. But these are the people who make the money and have the flexibility to have a lifestyle they want outside of work—one not so hours-bound. So for women to really get the kind of workplace they want – flexible, responsive, and engaging, the women are going to need to break some rules."

Says Penelope Trunk, who advises men to encourage women to break the rules, assuming men want to make work better for women... in which case they should also display their forearms... because women like to look at men's forearms. Wait! Forearms? Rule-breaking? I'm picturing intra-office sexual affairs. That might make going to work incredibly exciting, but it makes work much more difficult.

But forearms aside, I do think Trunk is right about women, rules, school, and work.

"I used to think diversity was my best friend marrying a black guy."

"But the guy graduated from rich-kid private schools and has tenure at UCLA and, at this point, I think diversity is not skin color but rather social upbringing."

Writes Penelope Trunk, the Brazen Careerist blogger, who married a farmer. The link post is actually about remodeling the farmhouse, or that's the factual context anyway. It's titled "How to cope with diversity." There's a list of 7 tips for coping with diversity, all explained in remodeling-the-farmhouse stories.

***

Here's a spoken-word performance that I love on the subject of home-remodeling: "Terrors of Pleasure," by Spalding Gray. God, I miss Spalding Gray.

And we missed Penelope Trunk, when she went almost a month without blogging after writing that post.

"This is not a good path for kids if the relationship isn’t going toward marriage."

"So I waited until a day when the farmer and I were holding hands, walking between rows of corn higher than our heads. And I told him that I can’t keep bringing the kids to the farm because we’re not getting married and I’m scared the kids will get hurt. The farmer didn’t say anything for five minutes. And then he said, 'Okay. Let’s get married.'"

"I'm in a board meeting. Having a miscarriage. Thank goodness, because there's a fucked-up 3-week hoop-jump to have an abortion in Wisconsin."

Twittered the Brazen Careerist blogger Penelope Trunk. She got the attention she wanted:

The Wisconsin resident said that her attempts to schedule an abortion in that state turned into a bureaucratic nightmare when she attempted to go through her insurance provider. She subsequently made an appointment to have one in three weeks in Illinois. But within three days of the appointment, she miscarried, she said.

"I thought a lot of people would be responding about having to cross state lines to get an abortion, but a lot of it has also been [about] whether you should be sad about miscarriage," Trunk told ABCNews.com. "I think the issue surrounding the three-week wait is controversial, but not the relief."...

"If the public at large had to face up to the fact that not every miscarriage is met with a vale of tears, that could have a dramatic impact on how we regard pregnancy, abortion, and women's diverse experiences with our reproductive functions," wrote Amanda Marcotte in the women's issue blog, "XX Factor."

Oh, Amanda Marcotte is there with the commentary. I've had my issues with Marcotte over the years, but did you know that Penelope Trunk once interviewed me, then blogged that her attempt at interviewing me was a "bust" and proceeded to explain what she thought I said and got it completely wrong? When I blogged about that, she showed up in the comments and it didn't go too well.

As for Marcotte and Trunk's attitude toward abortion, it does not help the cause of abortion rights. Abortion rights are most firmly grounded in the recognition of the pregnant woman's serious search for meaning. As Justice O'Connor wrote in Planned Parenthood v. Casey:

Our cases recognize "the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child."... Our precedents "have respected the private realm of family life which the state cannot enter."... These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.

If this process of finding meaning excludes respect for the potential life of the unborn, it becomes much harder to accept the woman's right to freely choose. Should Trunk (and Marcotte) pretend to care? It would be a good strategy for preserving abortion rights, I think. But shouldn't we want to hear the truth?

"People are so hard on Kate Gosselin, but I think she is an anthem to Gen X women."

"She has taken charge of her career, and she has a job that accommodates her doing what she's good at, and her making time to take care of kids. She's an homage to the fertility mess Gen X has found itself in. She an homage to the fact that Gen X — not Gen Y — is the first generation to manage their children's online identities, and she's handling the issues with flair. And Kate is the quintessential Gen X mom getting post-baby plastic surgery. I love that she has a husband who is fun and cute and not a demon but yet, the marriage still isn’t working out, because that's what life is like. It's not good and bad. It's messy, and Kate's figuring things out. Gen X is great with messy."

Presented here not with approval but for discussion. The author, Penelope Trunk, is particularly enthusiastic about keeping the children in one house that the divorced parents taking turns living in.

"A book is something you write in order to get you to where you're going."

Writes Penelope Trunk:

If you have nowhere to go, a book will insure that you stay where you are: Lost.

People use books like law school. They think if they have some piece of paper – a degree, a contract – then people will respect them and then they'll respect themselves. But self-respect comes from having some sort of vision for one's life and heading in that direction. And there is no one who can give you that vision – you have to give it to yourself, and before you can feel like you have direction, you have to feel lost — and lost is okay.

So stop with the idea that you need a book. Most people who think they need a book deal probably need to answer the question: What will I be doing two years after that book? Do you really need the book to get where you want to go? Probably not.

And yet Penelope Trunk wrote a book. What's going on there?

Disclosure: Past history of Penelope Trunk and me not getting each other.

Time management expert does an interview with me and considers it "a bust."

Because unlike everyone else she selected to interview, I didn't produce a list of time management tips. Well, now I have one: If you're looking for a list of tips on time management, don't interview Ann Althouse.

Anyway, she seems to acknowledge -- six months on -- that I may have had some "philosophical tips" in my seemingly useless interview. Though I don't remember giving the interview, I think I can reproduce what I said better than she does. In fact, I think she quite misunderstood me: She thinks a quote of mine -- "You can’t like everything you do" -- means that I don't like blogging about subjects other than constitutional law!

I'm sure my point was that if you do something that you love, that is intrinsically rewarding, you don't have to think of making time for it. It makes its own time. The trick is to find your way into a life where you do what you love, something with intrinsic value for you. I blog about what interests me; blogging is a process of being interested in things. If I threw in "You can’t like everything you do," it was only an acknowledgment that some parts of my job -- certain meetings and so on -- and certain necessary tasks -- like cleaning the bathtub -- are not very intrinsically rewarding and I still have to slot them in.

Clearly, I am not on the same wavelength as a time management expert. Which is fine.

IN THE COMMENTS: The time management expert -- Penelope Trunk -- stops by and does one of those nonapologies: "I'm sorry that you didn't like how I wrote about our conversation." She also sends us to a post of hers about why people "feel misquoted." Okaaaay. Let's look at it:

The reason that everyone thinks journalists misquote them is that the person who is writing is the one who gets to tell the story. No two people tell the same story....

Journalists who think they are telling “the truth” don’t understand the truth. We each have our own truth. When you leave out details, you might leave out what is unimportant to you but very important to someone else, and things start feeling untrue to the person who wishes you included something else.

This is a good time management tip. Say what you want, use what you want, pick your favorite interpretation and run with it. If anyone demands "the truth," just brush them off as shallow for not understanding the rich, multiple dimensions of this thing we simplistically call "the truth." Job accomplished! Wasn't that efficient?