women and ambition
sari and
women and ambition
“Too much life enters this house,” Tillie Olsen, the writer, labor activist and mother of four girls, wrote in a letter to the poet Anne Sexton. “Up at 6, breakfast in shifts, lunch packing — then, if no one ill, or it isn’t a holiday, or any of the other ORs, the day for work until 4, sometimes longer or an evening — depending on housework load, s... See more
Opinion | The ‘Impossible Life’ of Equal Devotion to Art and Mothering
She may agree with the poet Mary Oliver that “creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration. . . . It needs the whole sky to fly in, and no eye watching,” or with Gertrude Stein, who warned, “It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.”
Julie Phillips • The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem
For a millennium, rivalries between and among Byzantine noble families propelled public life, with the kind of bloody factional maneuvering that makes the Tudors look like the Waltons in comparison.
Though political power was usually a male privilege in Byzantium, a striking feature of the Byzantine tales is the prominence of women as political play... See more
Though political power was usually a male privilege in Byzantium, a striking feature of the Byzantine tales is the prominence of women as political play... See more
Edmund White • The Misunderstood Byzantine Princess and Her Magnum Opus
Tillie Olsen wrote: “In the twenty years I bore and reared my children . . . the simplest circumstances for creation did not exist.” It was a physical problem, a time problem; it was also a question of selfhood. “The obligation to be physically attractive and patient and nurturing and docile and sensitive and deferential . . . contradicts and must
... See moreJulie Phillips • The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem
I’ve spent a lot of time with intelligent and determined women.
What have I noticed? Achieving the vision of ease is ironically arduous. It’s diligence and conscientiousness behind the scenes. Behind glamor is effort . I absorbed early that beauty and competence aren’t heaven-sent but goals to continuously chip away at. Many of us silently believe t... See more
What have I noticed? Achieving the vision of ease is ironically arduous. It’s diligence and conscientiousness behind the scenes. Behind glamor is effort . I absorbed early that beauty and competence aren’t heaven-sent but goals to continuously chip away at. Many of us silently believe t... See more
Nix 🕊 • ambitious women
Whatever initial appeal this argument has, it owes to the unpleasantness of corporate drudgery in general, not to the predicament of female corporate drudges in particular. Invariably, the job that features in articles like Andrews’s is soul-sucking, pointless and therefore presumed to have been chosen solely for the prestige it confers (although s... See more
Becca Rothfeld • Women’s Work | The Point Magazine
I've seen women insist on cleaning everything in the house before they could sit down to write... and you know it's a funny thing about housecleaning... it never comes to an end. Perfect way to stop a woman. A woman must be careful to not allow over-responsibility (or over-respectabilty) to steal her necessary creative rests, riffs, and raptures. S... See more
andrea and
True confidence is believing in the validity of your own core desires, which also means identifying what you’re willing to sacrifice and bear for certain conditions to yield fruit. When there are competing needs, true prioritization reveals itself. A woman defining her own career path will learns this across various dimensions.
Nix 🕊 • ambitious women
People who do great work are not necessarily happier than everyone else, but they're happier than they'd be if they didn't. In fact, if you're smart and ambitious, it's dangerous
not
to be productive. People who are smart and ambitious but don't achieve much tend to become bitter.
not
to be productive. People who are smart and ambitious but don't achieve much tend to become bitter.
How to Do Great Work
“Curious about how does one ‘have it all’? 3 young boys, 2 booming businesses, an incredible creative partnership and new business with your husband... what does hired help look like?” - Joanne
‘All’ isn’t possible, or even desirable. For me, a full, fulfilling life requires plenty of room for living and all the unplanned stuff that inevitably take... See more
‘All’ isn’t possible, or even desirable. For me, a full, fulfilling life requires plenty of room for living and all the unplanned stuff that inevitably take... See more
Emily Sundberg • The rules Clare de Boer lives by.
Clare de Boer on balancing work and kids