Stating the Obvious, Eh?

Hello, friends! 

Apparently it's been nearly a month since my last missive, which seems impossible, but I won't bore you with tired observations about the rapidity with which time appears to pass. The other day my husband and I got seated uncomfortably close to another couple at a fancy hotel breakfast, and while they basically didn't speak to each other, they did have one exchange I couldn't help but overhear—the culmination of which was:

"Time really does fly, though.""It really does."

Both of these statements were said in a tone that suggested new and unique observations about the human experience were being made.(By contrast, later that day we overheard a guy comment, "Some days are nicer than others" with a charming level of sincerity. So clearly my tolerance for cliches is dependent on whether or not they're being voiced by snide WASPs who are overly captivated by their smartphones.)Besides those interesting little moments, what else has been happening? Let's see. Oh, my book came out! That was cool. (The following day was my birthday, which made the rest of the week kind of anticlimactic.) If you happen to have read it, let me know what you thought! Or better yet, let the world know what you thought by leaving a review somewhere...unless you hated it, then just email me directly and we'll hash it out.I collected a hilarious roundup of work-disaster stories, TWO of which involved a particularly insidious typo. As someone with a deep investment in textual accuracy (some might say excessive—see below), this filled me with glee.I've also been making various online appearances beyond The Billfold as part of the book-release excitement. Working Mother ran an adapted excerpt about salary negotiation (equally relevant to non-parents, I promise—I should know, as I have nary a child to my name) and I did this interview about my writing process among a bunch of other things. And a reviewer said Is This Working? was "like your mom at the door before you left for school. Full of reminders and reality checks." I got a kick out of this, but it was especially a hit with my actual mother, who is indeed the reminder and reality-check champion. So...I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.You'll notice that I haven't included a link to a new Dear Businesslady column, and that's because I, er, haven't written it yet! I really need to though. Got an urgent job crisis? Send it my way, and you might get an answer in a matter of days. (And if it gets relegated to the backlog, well, next month is right around the corner.)I've still been thinking about the last installment and some additional anxiety-management tips I had to cut for space. But I think I'll save that for a subsequent letter because I'm not exactly in the right head space for something so serious-adjacent.Instead, I'll conclude with a happier work-related observation. Yes, jobs can be a necessary evil, and are often actively unpleasant. But sometimes they can have positive personal-life side effects too. For example: the aforementioned fancy hotel breakfast was part of a weekend getaway that Doug and I took to celebrate our wedding anniversary (9 years! Speaking of the rapid flight of time...). We went to Toronto, which is within road-trip distance ever since his career transplanted us to central NY. And the breakfast was free because I've achieved what I like to call "baller status" with the Hyatt loyalty program thanks to the work travel I've been doing the past few years. Even the idea of visiting Toronto has a tangential job connection: I first went there a couple years ago on assignment to do an alumni magazine interview.I'm sure if we still lived in Chicago, we would've done something cool for our anniversary, but it wouldn't've been the same. So thanks, jobs. I'll try to remember this the next time I'm ready to fling my laptop at the wall in work-related frustration.Plus, Toronto is amazing, and you can stop by Niagara Falls on the way back, which is basically Nature Vegas. Highly recommended.Doug—who's next to me reading Beloved as I type this (speaking of seriousness)—just observed, based on all the keyboard clicking, that "this doesn't seem like a very tiny letter" which...yeah. Time to wrap it up.~court, AKA BusinessladyIntroducing: CORRECTIONS! An Inevitably Recurring SeriesIt came to my attention (translation=Doug noticed) that I committed the dread "affect"/"effect" mixup in the opening paragraph of my previous tinyletter, referencing anxiety's "potentially poisonous affect on relationships." Typically the distinction is just verb vs. noun, but for those of you who don't regularly encounter a certain type of literary criticism, "affect" is also (per Webster's) "a set of observable manifestations of a subjectively experienced emotion." I can try to justify how it still makes sense based on my very tenuous grasp of affect theory, but let's not play: it was a typo. I regret the error. (Now let us all revel in my observable display of regretful-ish-ness.)Perhaps I shouldn't take a casual medium so seriously? But who can say? [Meaningful look, tone of sage wisdom.] I guess that's just how it goes sometimes.PHOTO TIMEI brought my book on our trip because I'm a huge dork. Behold its documented presence in Canada!