Why are Mondays always so grim? We hate Mondays because somehow it symbolically means we have to stop everything we love doing and go to a job that makes us feel confined. As Americans, it is in every one of our natures to want to be free, and Monday certainly epitomizes everything anti-free. I know the economy is in turmoil, and unemployment is at an all time high with major historical giants falling on hard times and giving pink slips just as the Holiday approaches. Maybe though, if you look at it differently, it could be a time of re-birth for Americans. Do what you love for a living. Think outside the box. America is no longer the place to come to find work punching in and out each day. It is still about hard work, but a different kind of hard work. Mental work. It is time for Americans to reach out and embrace their inner creativity and find a way to serve themselves. It is still the land of opportunity! As I was watching the Amazing Race last night in India, I thought to myself, look at how these people live. It looked like complete chaos. We are very lucky here that we still have so much dispensible income that we can buy all the items that keep popping up on the market. How can we complain when most are just trying to stay afloat in a certain "way of life." Playstations, and Xboxs, and Wiis, and $100 American Girl dolls, and plasma televisions, and cell phones and I-pods. How are we affording all of those luxuries? And those are just middle class luxuries. We have to think hard about what we have to offer this world and work 24 hours a day to network and make contacts and sell our ideas. It is amazing that we can have ideas and actually turn that into a bank deposit, isn't it? We are the luckiest people on the earth that we can find every way to make money if we just put our mind to it. We have the freedom to be OURSELVES and that is the greatest thing we could ever ask for. We are so blessed to have freedom to go to church, to blog about anything we want to, to create a masterpiece of art or literature on any subject we wish, to go out into the street as a woman without a man or a headcovering, to have enough to feed ourselves and our children at an "all you can eat buffet. America news reports may make it seem that we are "down in the dumps" but we need to realize just how lucky we really are.

Women and Our Right to Vote

This year, I realized the importance of my vote more than ever. I guess in years past I just thought it was important to vote to put another number into the total towards winning of whatever candidate I hoped for. I felt that my one number could make a difference. I didn't realize just how proud I am to be a woman, until I joined Business and Professional Women. It isn't just the club or the people, but going to the national conference this year as Ohio's young careerist representative, allowed me to meet many women who know how important the woman's voice is and how important it is to keep working so our voice is heard. What? Yes, as Carolyn Maloney, D-NY, stated as I saw her speak and subsequently read her book, "Rumors of our Progress are Greatly Exaggerated." I realized, being as liberal and feminist and independent as they come, that I assumed all this time that women and men are on equal footing. I think I got knocked on my rear when I realized that women do still have to fight just to obtain being allowed the freedom to have a voice. Our state BPW this year has gone "Back to the Future" to teach and re-learn women's history. I learned that women before me like Alice Paul and Susan B. Anthony and others were jailed because they wanted a right to vote and have a voice, they ate food with worms, were abused, ridiculed, and much worse, just so that I...and every other woman in the U.S....would be able to cast a vote on candidates and issues that would govern the country we all live and work in. But what about the ERA...the equal rights amendment...when will that pass? When will women have the rights of men? Sorry guys...but we do ten times the amount of work that men do, yet we have half the voice. Well, it is time for our voice to be heard again. It is time for our voice to become louder again. This year, the voices of women were heard around the nation for Hillary. We almost elected a woman to president of the United States of America! I just want every woman out there to feel proud of herself that she had the right to cast a ballot and not take for granted what all the women before us endured just so we could do so.

Wow, I can hardly believe that Barack Obama won the presidency. History certainly has been made, with the first african-american president to take the helm of our rocky country. I am so estatic that we will have a democrat in office and that democrats seem to be winning more and more important races in the house, the senate, and local governorships and other offices. This means that America believes that it is time to see results. It is time for the melting pot to be led. We are not an all white country. We are a nation of mostly minorities who are making a huge difference in our world. Smart and intelligent people who are destined to be leaders. We are a nation founded on hope, not just democracy. Hope that we people would be able to live in a free country where people are judged by their religion, their race, and most importantly to me, their gender. I know that some people are worried about the socialist rumor. Obama only wants to turn things around so that people in our country have a fair shot in life. Having the government take over some things will help us all be able to live a more affordable life. It isn't taking our rights away, it is giving us more freedom. I am curious to see how the country reacts in the next year.