Between booking the trip and heading to the airport, however, I found out that a major school project would be due the day after my return, for which the professor would not grant an extension. A group project in the other class was due the day I left, and two other papers were due as soon as I got home. Gulp!

Around the same time, entrepreneur Peter Shankman — founder of Help A Reporter Out — blogged about people who comment that they are “jealous” when he travels. He says, “They were jealous that I took the trip. As if they couldn’t.”

He went on to bust the top six reasons people say they can’t take a trip or  “jailbreak” their lives: no money, job doesn’t allow it, friends won’t understand, wife and kids, scared, don’t have time. All excuses:

“If you really want to make more time to do the things you ‘have’ to do, thus allowing you to do more of the things you ‘want’ to do, you need to do a few things differently,” he says.

There were reasons not to go on that trip, but I had plenty of reasons to go on that trip, too, and I did. And you know what? The prof miraculously gave the whole class an extension on one of the assignments, I negotiated an extra day on another, all projects got done on time, and I had a great trip.

As I’ve blogged about before about the need for balance, work will always be there, but the choices you have may not be. Don’t miss them. So next time you’re wishing you could do something but don’t think you can, think again. Are you sure?

Image credit: Arvind Balaraman and FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

As a mother, I can only begin to imagine the heartbreak Jamie’s family is going through. And while I can’t understand the depth of despair that would make anyone think dying is better than living, I can see how saying “It gets better” is a slim lifeline when bullies make your life a living hell. As Rick says, we have to make it better now.

Is getting the hashtag #NoMoreBullies trending on Twitter any use? Is blogging about it? I don’t know, but it can’t hurt awareness, can it?

A Mac IIsi (shown here) helped me launch Get It Write in 1991. Today, I use a MacBook Pro that’s a fraction of the size of my original Mac and many times the storage and computing capacity. In between, I’ve had other computers but stayed true to the intuitive and easy-to-use Mac. When PC fans scoffed at my choice or accused Mac lovers of just trying to look cool, I would say, “You don’t understand. Macs just get it.”

So an appreciation for the deceptively simple and elegant products created by Apple — including the iPod and iPhone — is part of the reason I have long been a Steve Jobs fan. Yet that in no way explains why I feel such a profound sense of loss for a man I didn’t know and never met.

Perhaps it’s the sense of passion and purpose that seems to have driven the way he lived his life. I’ve already spent far too long today reading the many eloquent posts about him, viewing clips of significant moments, and recalling the many heartfelt words of wisdom he shared. You’ll find some of his best quotes in the Wall Street Journal, many from the 2005 Stanford University commencement speech. (Have a listen, if you’ve never done so. All the more heartbreaking is when he talks about being diagnosed with cancer, having had the surgery and putting it behind him.)

One of my favourite Steve Jobs quotes is this excellent philosophy on life:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

9/11. It’s become shorthand instantly understood around the world for a day filled with tragedy. Can it really be 10 years since we watched, horrified, as one plane and then a second crashed into the World Trade Center?

I was at work in my home office when my husband called. He was on his way to the U.S. by car, and was stuck in a lineup at a border that had suddenly slammed shut. “Turn on the television,” he said.

Funny how work that seemed so important minutes earlier instantly became pointless.

Today, newspapers, television, social and other media are filled with memorials and memories — like Life Magazine‘s 25 most powerful photos — and reminders to treasure the people who are important to you. Let’s hope that spirit will translate into a stronger movement for peace.

Image: Doves for peace, from Paul Brentnall and FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

In honour of Valentine’s Day, here’s to heartfelt writing:

The Toronto Star recently shared some pointers on writing a love letter. Writer Niesha Lofing points to a U.S. survey, in which two-thirds of women respondents aged 18 to 70 said what they most wanted for Valentine’s Day was a love letter, “in the handwriting of their beloved, sealed in an envelope and mailed or delivered.” The piece includes eight steps to help the romantically challenged write such a letter, including the advice to end with more than “Love, [Name].” Try “Dream of me, my love,” Lofing suggests.

Need some inspiration? Here’s a peek at some famous love letters. I love Beethoven‘s opening words to his “Immortal Beloved” (identity unknown): “My angel, my all, my very self.” And Elizabeth Barrett Browning‘s words to her husband, Robert Browning: “You have touched me more profoundly than I thought even you could have touched me – my heart was full when you came here today.” Then there’s Napoleon, writing to his Josephine: “I wake filled with thoughts of you. Your portrait and the intoxicating evening which we spent yesterday have left my senses in turmoil.”

You’ll find more touching and romantic offerings in the wonderfully evocative book, Other People’s Love Letters: 150 Letters You Were Never Meant To See; I share some of my favourites here.

And if you need a reminder about why sharing love is so important, read my friend and colleague Susan Crossman‘s beautiful, touching essay on love and loss for the Globe and Mail.

If you have a favourite line from a love letter or poem, please share it. And go forth and have a happy Valentine’s Day, won’t you?

Do not wait to live your life until you find the perfect man or woman.

If the Sexiest Man Alive (so named by People magazine), Ryan Reynolds, and the Sexiest Woman Alive (so named by Esquire magazine), Scarlett Johansson, cannot find happiness together and are throwing in the towel after just two years, why do people persist in thinking Mr. or Ms. Wonderful will make everything right? As comic Tina Fey apparently said when Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston broke up, “If these two are tired of having sex with each other, what hope is there for the rest of us?”

I’ve said it before: Don’t hang your hopes on meeting Mr./Ms. Wonderful, getting thin or winning the lottery. Don’t wait to live your life. Go do it now.

I have borrowed shamelessly from the ever-thoughtful Patti Digh (“What would you be doing today if you only had 37 days to live?”) for the title of this post, which references her own about National Coming Out Day, observed today in the United Kingdom and yesterday elsewhere. The date of October 11 marks the anniversary of the Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, and the day encourages discussion about gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual and transgender issues.

It’s especially appropriate, coming as it does on the heels of the recent number of teens who committed suicide after being bullied for being gay. As a mother, my heart just aches to read about them. But what can we do?

As blogger Japhy Grant said in a recent post about it (also found via Patti), it’s pretty simple:

“You have to speak up. If you’re upset over the four [now five] gay teens who have committed suicide in the last three weeks, speak up! Your silence is killing us…We need you to speak up when someone calls someone else a ‘Fag’ or calls something uncool ‘Gay.’ You need to speak up even when there are no gay people around. In fact, especially when there are no gay people around. And if you’re still saying those kind of things, stop it. It’s not funny.”

Columnist Dan Savage started a campaign called “It Gets Better,” encouraging people to upload videos like his own talking about how life for gays and lesbians gets better after high school. The Atlantic recently posted an article that wonders if this campaign is enough, and of course it’s not (scroll down and read the comments after the article); but it’s a start.

Patti’s post touched me, especially this:

“I want my daughters to grow up knowing that love is love, that straight love and gay love and everything in between is beautiful and right and complex and sometimes painful and life-affirming and the only thing there is. At the end of it, love is what’s left.”

I want everyone to grow up knowing that. Why is that so much to ask for?

After spending three weeks in academia, with no time to read newspapers or watch the news, let alone be active on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and such, it’s been interesting getting (slowly) back into the swing of things. Today, in between researching topics on peer-reviewed journals for a paper I have to write, I caught up on some blogs. (Er, can you spell “procrastinate,” class?)

I’ve been neglecting blogs, and not just my own. Looking through my feeds, I see several blogs that have 200 posts I have not read, nor is it likely I will get to them. The ones I do read regularly — and make sure to catch up on during times like this — are written by people I know, feel I know, like and respect, or that make me laugh or are related to work or inspire me. It seems the ones that fall into the category of 200+ unread posts are the ones that just post too darned often. And yes, every day is too often, no matter how brilliant you are.

But having time to write for and read blogs is all a matter of maintaining balance, something my team tackled in a group presentation we had to do last week for the Public Speaking course (go Team 3!). We took the position that cramming the extra 15-20 hours of work that will apparently be required of our BA program is doable. We tried to make it clear, though, that adding extra schoolwork means adjusting time spent elsewhere, not taking away family time or neglecting our health. After all, if Canadians typically watch about 22 hours of TV a week, how difficult can it be to pry ourselves away from the tube and instead hit the books?

By coincidence, one of the blog posts I read today touched on the very topic of balance. The always inspiring Colleen Wainwright, Communicatrix, suggested shared an update to the instruction often given by agencies and independents: “Fast. Good. Cheap. Pick any two.” In other words, if you want it good and you want it tomorrow, be prepared to pay extra for it.

Colleen suggests credits the hilarious David Sedaris (writing in The New Yorker) for the “Four Burner” model worth aspiring to: “Family. Friends. Health. Work. Pick any three.”

The idea is not that you can’t have all four; Colleen says, “it’s that you can’t have an exceptional level of all four at once.” So if you are a workaholic, and your family and friends are important to you, then maybe your health is going to suffer. Or if family is everything, one of the other three is going to get a lot less attention. Or, you’re going to keep juggling all the balls in the air by merely doing the best you can, and that’s fine. Her advice:

“Pick one to hit out of the park or pick a life that lets you gracefully enjoy a bit from the sampler plate of all four. Pick, though. Pick today, and then pick again tomorrow…”

The key here is making it a thoughtful choice.

(In case you’re wondering, the photo above is the bridge in the Japanese garden at Royal Roads University in B.C.)

There are few things more intimidating in the photo world than a passport picture. Maybe it’s because you know it’s going to stick with you for at least five years, and the “neutral” expression you’re supposed to have will actually end up making you look grim and ill. In fact, you’ll look more like a terrorist than ever. And isn’t that just perfect, when everyone at the airport is already so touchy?

My passport expires this fall, so getting my photo taken is on my list of things to do. So I laughed when I found — through the serendipity of the web — this perspective, called Has Anybody Seen My Lost Looks? from Jenny Allen in More Magazine:

“The last time they took your two-by-two inch photo, back in the day, you were OK-looking, even in that ghoulish post office fluorescence. You didn’t think you looked OK at the time, but it turns out you were incorrect. You should have appreciated the medium-attractive looks you had…You could have taken pleasure in them! You could have used them to get people to sleep with you and buy you things!…Particularly in light of recent events. Recent events being that your looks seem to have gone away.”

The hilarious Colleen Wainwright aka Communicatrix also blogged about the endless preparation leading up to getting a passport photo taken, in the hopes of looking OK:

“I’d think about getting my passport photo taken, the first step in crossing ‘Renew (expired) passport’ off my list, and then I’d think, ‘Well, I’ll just wait until…’ Until my hair was freshly colored. Until my hair was having a good day. Until I’d figured out an outfit, and bought some makeup, and had had enough sleep. Until, that is, monkeys flew out of my ass. In formation. Typing Shakespeare.”

You may be wondering what communications has to do with passport photos, and yes, there is a link. I think we see ourselves based in part on the feedback we get. When we don’t get much in the way of positive feedback, we might think it’s because there is nothing good to say. More likely, it’s because others just aren’t thinking about your looks, or maybe they think you don’t need it.

For example, when I was on vacation recently, I met a strong, vibrant 60-something woman who really was beautiful, though perhaps not in the tiny, airbrushed model sense. She was absolutely floored when I told her so.

In the case of your corporate job, others expect you to do good work and you do; most times, they don’t think about complimenting or praising you for it. There’s a reason that employee surveys often show that management (sorry, “leadership” is the current buzzword) is doing a less-than-stellar job of reward and recognition.

So here’s an idea. Let’s all try to compliment people a little more. Express appreciation for work done well, even if you expect it, the person has never done anything BUT good work or it’s part of the job. Recognize when someone has gone out of their way for you.

And if all else fails, take heart that you really don’t look much like your passport photo, especially when you smile. So smile!

A dog-walking buddy (someone encountered while we were both walking our dogs) recently lost one of her dogs to cancer. Holly was just two, really still a puppy, so my friend thought there was lots of time for treatment. There wasn’t. Holly died within two weeks of the cancer diagnosis.

People — mostly those who don’t HAVE a dog — will say, oh, it’s just a dog. But it’s never ‘just a dog’ to someone who has been on the receiving end of the total adoration that is a dog’s bond with his or her human.

When my husband and I finally gave in to the pleading and agreed to get a dog, I seriously thought about how old our youngest son would be when the dog inevitably died, reassuring myself that he’d be old enough to handle it. There was no question that my own ability to handle it would be iffy, at best.

There was a wonderful piece in today’s Toronto Star on losing a dog that eloquently captures how I  know I will feel when Jake dies. Lauren Crothers writes:

“Grieving for a dog is an incredibly profound experience and no easier than the death of a human…While trawling the web for information on the process of euthanasia — so I would know how Murphy was going to die — I came across a comment left by someone along the lines of, ‘Who cares? It’s just a dog.’ It is for fear of this kind of reaction that many dog owners internalize their pain as they grieve. Just because it had four legs, chewed all the baseboards in the kitchen and perked up its ears at the sight of a bone doesn’t make the hurt any easier to bear.”

And later,

“Death is not easy to come to terms with. Losing a best friend is particularly difficult. It is never ‘just a dog.’”

I sent my friend a card to acknowledge her grief; it had a touching photo of an empty collar and leash on the front, which was enough to bring a lump to my own throat. Even though Jake, too, chewed all the baseboards in our kitchen, sheds so much that daily vacuuming is needed to keep the tumbleweeds of fur down, and has had me out walking in rain, snow and sub-zero weather, I know I’ll miss him when it’s his turn to go.

For now, thankfully, it’s just his turn to go for a walk.