Good/interesting/provoking finds I’ve stumbled across this week: 2014-12-14.

• This post from www.handsfreemama.com wonderfully describes my same feelings last year when I was frustrated with how I was becoming as a mother. My role at home last year was turning into a family manager, instead of family nurturer. When both parents are working and have work schedules to commit to, you start trying to manage people to do things to your schedule, like at work, except these people are your young children who have different wants and needs than your coworkers. Thanks to Cookie1968 for sharing the link for me to find, in her own great post calling BS to the whole work-life balance thing.
• Why Poor People Stay Poor: this excerpt from Linda Tirado’s book Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America gives an account of how the daily realities of a working poor person makes it hard to get ahead, no matter how conscientious and hard working they are. This is should be a must read for all those who shape policies thinking poor people stay that way because they are lazy or don’t work hard enough.
• I was excited to find this Kickstarter campaign for the Spark Notebook because I like using an actual physical notebook for work, but was never really satisfied with any notebook I had found for being able to not only take notes of meetings, but actually strategize and plan ahead my goals and my progress towards them. This notebook looks like it may satisfy that!

~Jen

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