I was always the youngest amongst my peers at work. At age 19, I was the youngest manager of a retail business. Age 29, the youngest director they’d had at the multibillion-dollar company where I worked. Age 32, the youngest executive MBA in my graduate class. Age 36, I was the youngest VP in my organization.

With the holidays coming up, we've been thinking about the perfect gift. The kind that makes you go, "Wow, this is exactly what I wanted!" None of those awkward moments when you're smiling on the outside but secretly wondering, "What am I going to do with this?"

"If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day." - E.B. White

How much do we love Sandra Wise, the “wise.woman.aging” sensation on Instagram (thanks to Saul for turning me on to her)?

I loved my co-founder Jeff Hamaoui’s blog post a couple of years ago about how the impostor’s syndrome can be remade into an explorer’s mindset (https://bit.ly/3GlvafJ). What an empowering idea.

Many of you know I struggled significantly in my late 40s, feeling more like a "modern failure" than a "modern elder." My life had become predictable and overwhelmingly negative. Everything was crap! To wrestle my ego, control, and status to the ground, fate threw me a curve ball. Really, it was more like a rare knuckleball, and I was striking out left and right.

It’s been a few weeks and I’m still reflecting on Saturday night’s high school reunion. Forty years ago, a group of 84 young women left for university believing they would seize the world. Then last Saturday, 56 of them, exactly 66%, reunited in Sydney, Australia.

I’m reading more books than ever. I have a long list in the not-yet-purchased queue, and a good 8+ that I’ve started but not finished. I wander between books rather than hunkering down with one at a time. It’s a bit of my wiring, I suspect. My style has always been to maintain a plethora of options, to ride each wave to the next wave to yet another wave, rather than riding one crest all the way to the comfort of shore.

To ferment is to distill something down to its essence and preserve it. We do it with beer, wine, yogurt, kimchi, and kombucha.

So, this Medium article (https://bit.ly/3uo1nAn) by Tris Harkness with the provocative title above caught my eye. Here’s her opening two paragraphs: