4 am awake

Do you ever wake up at 3:30 or 4 in the morning and can't get back to sleep? What do you do when the 4-am-eyes-wide-open-can't-find-a-relaxed-way-to-hold-your-legs times hit?

Do you wonder about a dream you just had? Or start worrying about a work issue, or maybe a personal relationship with a friend or family member? Or maybe, since you're faced with all this empty time before you have to get up and get started, you do all of those, cycling through them one by one.

This early-morning wakefulness seems to start happening more often as we grow older. Maybe we don't need as much sleep, but I know I always feel an odd sense of comfort when the subject comes up and someone else admits it happens to them, too.

At 4 am you can wonder about how the birds get started so early. You can examine your thoughts and get some distance from them--more easily, it seems, than when you're wakeful at midnight or 2 am. But then again, I'm a morning person. Maybe it's the opposite for night people.

Or maybe, if you like to write, you write in your journal or your blog. And hope what you're writing will still make sense when the sun comes up.

Scholarships for single moms!

It may seem like an impossible dream - to get a degree while raising your kids solo. I was blessed to have found Capital University back when I was trying to finish my degree as a single working mom. At least they only required me to show up in class once in two weeks and allowed me to create portfolios for course content that I'd already learned in my life and business career. They also, bless their hearts, allowed me to use coursework taken many, many years before towards my credits.

But now there's even a better way for single moms to go back to college. Elearners.com is partnering with several online universities for "Project Working Mom" - offering $2 million in full-ride scholarships. Options for majors can be anything from English lit to business and classes are online.

August 30 is the deadline for applications, so if you've been dreaming of getting that degree, log on and sign up.

Meanwhile, I think we ought to think of a new way to evaluate people's learning. Some of the very smartest people I know never got degrees. Gotta be a way. Suggestions, anyone?

DOES it get better than this?

I remember once seeing a newspaper article taped to someone's refrigerator. It was a well-written article talking about a commercial that glorified a just-the-guys' weekend--can't remember if it was hunting or fishing or camping. The main thing was, they had their beer and each other. And the tagline was "It doesn't get any better than this."

The author of the article, a man, went on to say how inappropriate he thought that tagline was. He talked about his relationships with his children, and particularly with his wife, and how that's the sort of image that really belongs with a tagline like that.

I remember having a brief discussion with my father about this. And what a point of difference we had--it just showed that we were living/thinking/breathing on such different planes that it was a miracle we could ever cross the divide and reach each others' minds.

We're going to be interviewing Dr. Karen Gail Lewis on our SWWAN Dive radio show on July 17. Her book, "With or Without a Man," is a sensitive analysis of what it really means to be single. She's a professional therapist/counselor, a single woman herself, and she'll talk frankly about both the bad and the good parts of being single.

"7 Shocking Truths Every Single (or Single Again) Woman Must Know" mark your calendar to join us on that call. Her stories are fascinating, and her advice is perceptive and wise. You might already know everything she's going to say. But sometimes it's exquisitely rewarding to share your dreams, hopes, fears and joys with others.

Getting outside really IS good for you

If you were a bookworm or otherwise inclined to stay inside when you were a kid, your mom may have yelled at you to get outside and play. Turns out she was right--that being outside is literally good for your health.

Vitamin D, that elusive nutrient that's only available from sunshine and from vitamin supplements, seems to play a significant role in death rates. A study shows people tend to die sooner from all causes when their vitamin D is lower than accepted levels. How's that for a powerful reinforcement of your mom's prescription!

Plus, I read the other day about a test comparing how students' hearts behaved while doing an assignment and viewing either a) a blank wall, or b) a video screen showing a nature scene, or c) an actual window onto the same natural scene. Guess what? The only situation that proved favorable to the students' hearts was viewing the real natural scene.

Advice for every busy single working woman to take to heart. Getting outside's good for your heart.

And oh, yeah, if you're in Chicago, come join us outside when we celebrate the opening of Single Working Women's Week by co-hosting a street fair booth with SWWAN vendor Radiance Fine Jewelry. Radiance offers all SWWAN members 25% off fine jewelry repairs all year long.

La Dolce Vita an exercise in male single-life fantasy

You know, I thought I had seen "La Dolce Vita" many years ago, but got it from Netflix anyway thinking, hey, it's a classic and can't hurt to see it again. Turns out I never saw it--or at least never got past the first part of it.

Why? It's really a vehicle Federico Fellini created for feeding male fantasties--definitely not high on my list of favorite ways to be entertained. The protagonist (I don't call him a hero because he's pretty much a rich lowlife with nothing on his mind but having sex with as many women as possible, despite the fact that he lives with a very beautiful woman who loves him) , played by a handsome young Marcello Mastroianni, wanders through the movie seducing and being seduced by women of every stripe--rich, bored heiresses, to older women, to 15-year-old girls. However, it all happens in opulent surroundings, with fancy cars (for the times), with people wearing beautiful clothes behaving in wanton ways throughout the two-and-three-quarters hours of the film, so it looks seductively attractive.

Marcello makes a bow to morality by asking his older friend who's settled--that is, married with two children he clearly loves deeply--if he shouldn't do this himself, isn't it healther? But, no, the calm and settled guy says don't let appearances fool you. Every day he regrets that he doesn't have a wider life with more options. Marcello returns to his playboy path. And just to drive the point home, Fellini has the calm and settled friend commit suicide later in the movie. Oh, yeah, and Marcello's live-in lover finally commits suicide, too.

There's an amazing sequence in the movie where two children are supposed to have seen an apparition of the Madonna--wild to see the gullibility of the masses. Reminds me of how easily human beings can be sucked into doing ridiculous--or hateful--things.

The movie's pretty depressing in its depiction of the various women as sluts, crazy, and so madly in love they give their own lives up. I was gratified on viewing the critic's comments of the DVD that he said this movie is not even considered one of Fellini's best. So guess I know now the reason why it's had such a long and popular life.

Early morning thoughts

It's just after 5 am. Ever have one of those nights when sleep was just refusing to cooperate? Couldn't get there...couldn't stay there...had to give up after waking at 4:15 and just lying there for an hour.

Much to think about for sure. Exciting new ventures for SWWAN in the making. Several big developments on the personal side. And sleep is such an elusive gift anyway. Look at how little sleep many new mothers--especially single moms-- have to survive on, sometimes for years. And the ability to sleep soundly often seems to deteriorate with aging--some older folks say they rarely sleep 8 hours and seem to wake often.

So heaven knows we humans can do it. But a lot of us need to develop tricks for dealing with nighttime wakefulness--and the racing thoughts that often come with it. One friend gets up and reads a not-too-intense novel til she falls asleep again. That works pretty well sometimes. If it's after 4:30 and I'm not too physically exhausted, I usually just get up and get a head start on my work day. When you're self-employed or otherwise deeply invested in your work, that doesn't feel too bad.

What do you do when you can't sleep? Does it happen often? Please share!

One woman's walk to a dream come true

Good story submitted by member Cynthia Clampitt about her 6-month walkabout in Australia and her permanent walk away from corporate America (edited a bit for space). You go, Cynthia!

"Despite years of success climbing the corporate ladder, I realized one day that this was not where I belonged. I had always wanted to be a writer, but my career was continually taking more of me. Somehow there was never any time to pursue my dream.

I knew if I didn’t leave, the dream would die.

So I planned and saved. And I nurtured my lifelong interest in Australia. A subtle country, someone once said, where "it is possible more easily to discard the inessential and to attempt the infinite." That was exactly what I wanted.

Then in my mid-thirties, I walked away from my career and all semblance of security. I traveled to Australia, where I circled and crossed the continent, covering nearly 20,000 miles. Some say it changed me. I say it helped me discover who I was and what I could do.

It wasn’t easy beginning a new career once I returned home. There were a few years of beans, rice, and potatoes, but in time, the sacrifice paid off, and work began to get steadier. And at last, I found the time to turn the hundreds of pages of hand-written notes from that trip into a book.

Waltzing Australia is a journal, a record of six months of joy and adventure. It is about change and discovery. And it is about all that made me fall more in love with Australia every day. The book is my way of sharing the story of my adventure—not just the physical adventure of exploring Australia, but also the emotional and psychological adventure of leaving the corporate world and starting my career over. Dreams come at a price, but they can come true.

Today, I am a freelance writer, culinary historian, and world traveler. I have returned to Australia three times. And the spirit of adventure awakened during that first trip has carried me far and wide: from Mongolia to Morocco, Iceland to India, Turkey to Tibet. I have never regretted the decision to pursue my dream. It had a price, but it was a price I was willing to pay."

Please send us your story of hopes, milestones, dreams, battles or whatever. We are glad to publish them here and will be collecting them for a book of SWWAN.

Do you feel like communicating with other single working women?

I didn't mean to drive anyone nuts with those couple of posts from when I was at the media-connections conference. What I was doing was practicing using Jott (god, I love that new program--here's my earlier post on Jott) to add posts, and using Blogger to send a photo with a post.

Anyway, if you got annoyed, sorry about that. Hope you'll ignore it and come back to see what else is going on.

By the way, we have established a couple of different ways to connect -- LinkedIn for SWWAN, yahoo groups for SWWAN/singleworkingwomen. Do you guys have a preference on how to connect with each other? I'm assuming you would like to communicate with other members, yet? Please email us to let us know your thoughts.

How's your relationship with your dad?

Today's father's day. Good holiday. I loved my dad so much. Trouble was, we only got to know each other after my mom died--and he was already 72 and it was a hard process. Don't know if other people in my age group noticed the same thing. Seems like when people got married back in the Depression era, many of them became very close. Like a closed society--just the two of them against the world.

That's how it was with my parents--safe in a closed society of their own. They were inseparable in a world of their own; we kids were outsiders they felt an obligation to take care of. And they did a wonderful job. But emotional closeness was a foreign idea to them. Their own upbringing was totally devoid of it, so clearly it wasn't something they knew much about or had any experience with.

Anyway, I don't know if any other single women out there had troubled relationships with their dads, but today seems like a good day to ask the question. Did you? Was your relationship with your dad a real high point of your childhood, or did it leave a lot to be desired? Seems like a question worth asking--and I bet any number of enlightened researchers who care about these things have asked it. Maybe we can find some information about it.

But meanwhile, God bless all fathers. Whatever skills they had, at least we are here because of them. Happy father's day, dads.

TV, print, PR insiders share tips

Tips for beginners: Do a public relations audit--strengths, etc. Establish your brand! Develop tightly focused key messages. First job is to create relationships, then to communicate.

Try sending editors op-ed pieces, especially for news-related stories. Tell a story!

Here at Community Media...

Here at Community Media Workshop. Lots of action here today. We are going to discover how a nonprofit gets media attention. Look for more from me later. listen

Powered by Jott

SWWAN celebrates Single Working Women's Week

Can't sleep. It's getting light at 4:30 these days, but that's not why. Have to be on the street by 7 am today. Attending a daylong seminar on getting your non-profit organization visible in the press and other media. Our non-profit arm SWWAN Academy will be providing opportunities for women to have extraordinary educational experiences--to help them grow as individuals and to hone the types of leadership skills needed in today's workplaces.

We're kicking off this year's Single Working Women's Week by co-hosting a booth with SWWAN preferred vendor Radiance Fine Jewelry at the Wicker Park Fest/Bucktown Sidewalk Sale July 26 and 27. Select items will be 50% off. Rebecca, Radiance owner, offers paid SWWAN members 25% off all jewelry repairs (not including watch repair). Plus, she'll be offering an additional 10% off regular merchandise for SWWAN members during the sale.

For your $50 annual subscription as a SWWAN founding member, you get a listing on our website, vendor discounts all year, and your own ad space-plus-links on the SWWAN website for your business or cause. Heck, you can't buy an ad for that anywhere. Such a DEAL!

Well, it's 5:20 a.m. Gotta go get ready for the long day away from the office. Thank goodness for cell-phones-with-email; at least I'll be able to respond to any urgent client needs.

Sleepless night / technology creep

Sleepless night. Toss and turn and finally give it up and get up. Sometimes I just read a novel til I get sleepy. Sometimes, like tonight/day, I am obsessed with work responsibilities and have to get on the laptop.

I keep my laptop on a rolling table in the living room next to the recliner chair. Gives me a a place to work early in the morning when I'm not ready to let Angelina the bunny out of her cage yet, or when I'm just tired of being in the office. Plus it's great to put my feet up a little bit.

But what's funny is, even though I got up to work, I don't immediately start doing the project that was on my mind. I turn to my emails instead--and suddenly I've got all this busywork to do to clear those up. As one colleague said, then email unwittingly "becomes the thing to do." Then I'm reminded of other things I haven't done, I notice stray documents on the desktop, open them up and find something I'd like to do with that as well. And too often, this goes on and I remain sidetracked and don't even get to the project I intended to work on... Oh, look, there's a receipt that needs to be entered into QuickBooks...

Then I notice things like, gosh, the birds are singing like maniacs at 3 a.m. Isn't that nuts? And of course I want to make a note of that on Twitter because...why? Why the compulsion to do these non-essential but sort-of-fun things? Don't know. Is this a function of a creative mind--or just a scattered and disorganized mindset? Then I feel the need to write a blog post about it, and I wonder if this happens to any of you guys, too?

Does the fact that I can do almost anything I want while sitting at my computer make me a victim of technology creep? Or how about the fact that I take my Treo phone with me when I'm away from the computer so I'm always able to send and get email. Well, I know this happens to a few other women.

The answer is to set limits and stick to them. Here's another post on how to cut down on technology creep--tried to comment on this post, went through the whole magilla of signing up for a TypeKey account to be able to comment, and then found the "site has not signed up for this feature." What a waste of valuable minutes that I could have been busy doing...well, something else.

Talk about contributing to the very phenomenon you're talking about curbing.

Tip for busy single working women--cool reminder system

How many times have you thought, while driving your car, "oh, darn, I forgot to..."? And of course, you can't type on your cell phone (assuming you have gotten one of those with a keyboard that receives email, and if you haven't, consider doing so--it will revolutionize your life) because you're driving.

Sometimes I've called myself at my office and left a reminder message to do the forgotten thing. But strangely--or maybe not so strange because my main office phone doesn't have a flashing light or other attention-getting indicator of when I have a message waiting--I often forget to check for messages when I get back in the office. And then I don't remember to do the thing.

Sometimes I'm in bed when I think "Oh, darn..." so I have to do one of two things: turn on the light to write it on the steno pad I always keep handy--because who wants to get up at 3 am on a winter night and go dig up something to write on? Or I have to turn on the light to see the keypad so I can dial my cell phone (I keep the sound off so I don't have to hear the ding-ding reminders of tasks and appointments I haven't yet cleared) and leave a message there. But that's not foolproof--when I'm in the office I rarely use my cell phone so often don't see "message waiting" notices.

The only nearly foolproof way for me to see something is to get an email about it, because I check my email religiously many times a day. In fact, when I'm in the office I live with it open. I've tried shutting it down so I can focus on a project, but half the time I end up having to re-open it--to send a client a question, look up a previous message, etc. So email is my most-used method of communication.

SO, if you made it through all that, here's the payoff... I've found a very cool program--free--that lets you punch a speed dial key on your cell phone (or dial from any phone if you have the number), speak your message into the system, ask for a reminder, specify the time, and then quit worrying about it. Fifteen minutes before the designated time, an email will appear in your inbox with your message nicely transcribed into print! And you can even Jott friends, family, and colleagues, too.

The Jott voice recognition software does a handy job with regular speech and is pretty good at guessing spellings of names, etc. It keeps lists online and a number of other things that might be helpful for you. So visit the Jott site and download it for free.

One caveat. When you choose to send a reminder to yourself, you'll receive an email, but you'll also receive a text message--and your phone may charge you big for that. They tell me they are working on fixing that so you can opt to send only an email to yourself. So if you say, "no" to "do you want a reminder?" you won't get the email, either. Then you have to remember to log onto the Jott site to see your reminders. But if you're like me, even that can be helpful because sometimes I remember I was supposed to do something but don't remember precisely what it was, so having it somehwere-I-can-find-it is still helpful.

As for friends, family, etc., you can avoid having them get charged for a text message by simply not putting in their cell phone number when you list them as a contact. Then they will receive only an email reminder.

Sending yourself or someone else an email with your voice. Isn't that a cool trick for when you're on the road?

Now, let's see, if I want to replace the light/paper/pen thing in the middle of the night, it means I would have to start keeping my cell phone in the bedroom when I go to sleep... But then how will I remind myself to go get it when I go out?

Sigh. Guess nothing's perfect.