I launched my blog in 2009 when I was wrestling with a midlife crisis. Since then, the digital world has changed so much. I was new to both Facebook and Twitter when I started blogging, and I was still rocking the BlackBerry for email. Instagram hadn’t launched yet. Podcasting and short videos are what the cool kids do these days, blogging is considered old fashioned. But I still find it the best way to share my thoughts and to profile people who inspire me.
I hope you’ll find something here that inspires you, or at least sparks a conversation. Some of my favorite posts are pinned to the top, scroll down a bit more to find the most recent, or check out the categories in the sidebar.
I’ve had a huge spike in traffic to my blog in the last 24 hours or so, and almost all of it seems to have come from people looking up the search term “Chuck Close” or “Chuck Close portrait” and landing here. In case that sounds familiar, and you’re wondering why on earth you landed on a career blog, here’s…
Remember in high school art class, when you learned that two parallel lines like railroad tracks converge in the distance? Joel Zeff’s career path looks like that, with his day jobs as a reporter and PR guy merging with his hobby as a stand up comedian and improv troupe member in his current incarnation as a motivational speaker. The beauty…
This isn’t a change someone has made but one I’m asking you to make: Before it’s too late, think about the businesses you love that are still around and make a short list of the ones you’d be devastated to see shuttered. Then make an effort to throw some support their way.
Previously on Newvine Growing (read that in the Battlestar Galactica opening sequence voice) I’ve profiled people who’ve reinvented themselves by changing jobs and starting down a new career path. That’s all well and good, you think, but when unemployment is hitting double digits in some states, maybe this isn’t the best time to make that big switch. Not only are…
You can always tell when I’ve been traveling — I love reading fluffy fashion magazines when I’m flying, and our trip last weekend was no exception. I brought Glamour and Marie Claire onboard a puddle jumper headed to Pittsburgh when we went for a lovely weekend with friends. I got excited when I saw this article headlined “The Art of…
You might not think of Joel Peterson as a transformation story — he grew up in a wine-loving family, and he started Ravenswood in his 20s then stuck with it until he made millions from a wine that’s become a household name. But I think the way it happened speaks to evolution and passion. And since it’s my blog, I not only get…
After I wrote about transitioning out of newspapers, I emailed a few recovering reporters to ask for their take. Nancy Ross-Flanigan, one of my favorite coworkers at University of Michigan, took the time to craft a thoughtful email on her leaving the Detroit Free Press to take up university PR part-time. She continues to have a thriving freelance business with…
A few years back, John and I stayed in a beatiful bed and breakfast in Amsterdam as part of a European vacation. We were pretty worn out from an overly aggressive agenda in France, so by the time we got to Amsterdam, we accomplished close to nothing on our list: no boat ride on the canal, no Van Gogh museum,…
Many of my friends are journalists — reporters, editors, photographers, the many things people do to deliver you the news every day. But with advertising drying up and Wall Street hammering on news organizations that mostly still seem flummoxed by how to make money online, that’s a tough place to make a living. A graphic designer started keeping track of all…
It would be hard to write a blog about change without mentioning the historic events in Washington this week. But while it’s easy to hold up a “Change” poster at a campaign rally, real change can be hard. It would seem particularly so in politics, where not only…
I can’t stop reading about Flight 1549. You can’t even call it a plane crash — it was more an unplanned landing in the Hudson River. It would be easy to spin the story to make it fit with my blog’s theme of transformation. The Times today has a story about how a brush with death can change survivors of something…
Editor’s note: This post is by far the most popular on my blog, thanks to people landing here searching for Chuck Close. If you are interested in art and painters, please check out some of my other posts with those related tags. In the green bar on the right, scroll down until you see “tags” and click on any word…
If you’re humming “Love the One You’re With,” you’re on the right track. Even if you are dating yourself a bit. On a December work trip to London, I picked up Red magazine. I’d never read Red, but it appears to be a British version of Glamour or Elle. Since the nice people at Hachette Filipacchi, which owns Red, apparently…
Tonight when I was at the gym — no, this isn’t relevant to the story, I just want it out there that I worked out — I caught a story of transformation on the evening news. CBS frames a life change in economic terms — a woman who lost her six-figure job and decided to start a business teaching kids…
Eight years ago, I had one of the worst weeks of my life. One day I was laid off. The next day my mom was diagnosed with cancer. I was newly married, a new home owner, and the primary bread winner in our household. I’d left a newspaper with a job-for-life promise to its employees to pursue a new opportunity,…
One of the cliches that stuck with me from business school is that industries change either through evolution or revolution. I think that applies to people, as well, and I find both kinds of change interesting. Last weekend, the New York Times ran an article that expressed well some of what I’ve been feeling lately — that society gives so much attention…
