Life's Work

by Lisa Belkin

Overview

Life's Work is the story of one woman's search for balance -- and the realization that it can't be found. It is the story of modern motherhood, where true happiness is often reached when you finally give up and give in.
A few years ago, while trying to make sense of her own hectic world, award-winning journalist Lisa Belkin was asked to write a very personal column for The New York Times. She called it "Life's Work" because it was about the intersection -- or, more accurately, the collision -- of life and work.
Since then she's been inundated with stories of other people trying to catch their "balance": the CEO father-to-be who restructured his entire company so he would have time to see his baby, the divorced mom who thought she might have to give away the family iguana because the store that sold live food closed before she got home from work. But after hundreds of columns and thousands of reader e-mails, Belkin has yet to hear from a single person who has everything neatly under control. Finally, while trying to confer with her editor from a cell phone in her pediatrician's office, she reached an epiphany: No one can do it because it can't be done.
With natural wit and hard-won wisdom, Belkin takes on the myth of the Supermom. Fans of her "Life's Work" columns will find them at the heart of this book, but they will also find the life lived behind those columns -- stories of her husband, who really deserves more attention; of her two young sons, who might eat more vegetables and fewer chicken nuggets if she had more energy; of her editors, who expect her to fit some work into a day filled with school plays and science projects; and of her mother, who is always happy to offer advice about how things used to be. The book that results is a conversation between a columnist and her readership, between a work-from-home mom and her generation.
Lisa Belkin's Life's Work speaks to anyone trying to find meaning in a world where work has become life (and vice versa). Hers is the funny, poignant, and always dead-on story of trying to do it all...and learning that doing just some of it is enough.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780743228954
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	05/30/2002
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	284 KB

About the Author

Lisa Belkin writes about American social issues. Her many roles at The New York Times included national correspondent, medical reporter, contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine and creator of both the Life’s Work column and the Motherlode blog. She has served as a senior columnist at the HuffPost and chief national correspondent for Yahoo News. Belkin is the author of three books, including Show Me A Hero, which was made into a David Simon HBO miniseries with the same title. She teaches narrative nonfiction writing and reporting at the Columbia University School of Journalism. 

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

Introduction

LOVE (AND WORK) AND MARRIAGE

Work Ethic

For Love or Money

Competition

By Any Other Name

Lunch

Firewalls

BABIES

Pregnant at Work

Internet Baby

Maternity Leave

Paternity Leave

LOVE AND WORK AND MARRIAGE AND BABIES

Working Mom

Baby-sitters

The Grapes of Marital Wrath

Broccoli and Sauce

Take Our Daughters to Work, 2000

Take Our Daughters to Work, 2001

Take Your Parent to Work Day, 2002

BRINGING LIFE TO WORK

More Lunch

Briefcases

Sick at Work

The Child Is the Father of Man

Crying at Work

Stress and Chocolate

BRINGING WORK BACK HOME

Going Home Again

Life Is a Swivel Chair

Trying to Connect

Friends at Work

Getting Organized

(Lack of) Exercise

Riley, the Dog

GIVING IN TO WORK

The Internet Baby's Birthday

Vacation

Random Thoughts from the Middle of the Night

When the Muse Goes on Strike

Mini-Vacations

Working After Work

GETTING BACK TO WORK

Seasonal Guilt

September 2000

My New Computer

Organize (Again)

Calendars

Life from a Pay Phone

Saturday Night

Hotel Rooms

Home Office Charades

Life's Work

What Next?

Back from Lunch

Change of Life

Hubie

Succession

When We Grow Up

Time

Resolutions

September 11, 2001

Epilogue

Acknowledgments