Last week, I wrote about balance -- and I can't let it go quite yet. Right now, I'm conducting the ultimate experiment in balance. Or, maybe, the ultimate challenge. Or, I suppose, the ultimate balance boot camp.

Whatever it is, it's big: I have two weeks off. Like, really off.

I've been thinking about working remotely. No, no, don't give away my desk just yet, I'm actually talking about working with people who are nowhere nearby, which is an ever-growing trend these days.

We talk about this a lot, sometimes even face-to-face. In our office, we have a core group that shows up pretty much every day. But if Amy or Prashant or Katrina instant-message me, I don't always know whether they're at their desks one floor down, or at their desks at home. If Brian needs to attend a meeting, but is on the road, we'll Skype-video him in, and see/talk with him at his laptop "office".

Even my good buddy Kate, who I've known for a couple of years now, shares thoughts on email, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Yet she is a colleague who lives half the country away -- and we've never met, never even spoken on the phone.

Now I'm not going to go all retro on you, insisting that in the good old days (2007??) there was less remote interaction, and work/life was better. Nor am I going to say that the new version of the "virtual" workplace is ideal (have you ever phoned into a large meeting/conference call?) Things have changed, and we are all continuing to adjust in many ways -- partially because of the economy, partially because it's just a newer way of working.

I love that people are embracing some new ideas, and that others are working very hard at figuring out better ways to stay in touch -- at work, in the education community, so very many places. How you are figuring it out? Get in touch, let us know.

Photo by Kristin Wolff

I got a one-liner email today from the one-and-only Ken, who 3Gen readers know well:

“Miss your 3Gen writings …. :)”

My first thought: Wow, I do, too!
My second thought: Crap.
My third thought: Ken is so nice. Who else would say get-your-blogging-butt-in-gear in such a nice way…with a smiley face?!

So first, to take care of No. 2 and No. 3 – I’m very sorry to readers and The Boss for slacking. It will never happen again (well, until the next time I have jobs, classes, training, life, etc. all piled up on top of me…which will probably be soon…but I will try much harder next time to stick a hand out of the top of the pile and type out a post…I promise). :)

Now, No. 1. I love writing for 3Gen – and I hate letting it slip through the cracks. But with my crazy-busy life, I’ve found things slip a lot more often than I’d like. Which brings me to a topic I’ve been thinking a lot about lately: BALANCE.

I’m most certainly a multi-tasker. And a go-getter. And a can’t-say-no-er. Which makes for a nasty combination when I’m trying to, like, relax. Or focus. Or just finish one darn thing without being distracted by another. Maybe because I’ve been living this way for years now – probably since middle or high school, constantly – I’m starting to feel the beginnings of burn out and, thus, am craving a little more balance up in here.

During my year “off” between college and grad school, I worked a 9-to-5 nonprofit office job though the AmeriCorps VISTA program – and having few other real commitments was a total shock to my system. Likewise, when I started two fulltime master’s programs, two jobs (one fulltime and one parttime), marathon training and the exciting role of dog-mom, my system was shocked again.

And although I’ve learned to juggle all of those things over the past year, I’m definitely an amateur juggler who can barely toss three scarves up and catch two. You won’t catch me with 10 flaming things in the air anytime soon – but I’ll probably try (and perhaps accidentally catch on fire).

So I’m trying to streamline.
To make connections between what I’m doing personally, academically and professionally so that my brain doesn’t have to switch gears 180 degrees many times a day.
To not bite off more than a hundred of me can chew.
To take a few minutes each day to breathe, practice yoga, watch some trashy TV, whatever.
And, of course, to blog religiously.

Are you pulled in a gazillion different directions daily? How do you cope? How do you take it down from a gazillion things to maybe just a million or two?

[Update: In the course of writing this post, I had a great phone conversation in which I turned down a fabulous professional opportunity in order to focus on the fabulous opportunities I'm already knee-deep in. I might be making progress!]

Thanks to NCinDC for the great photo -- I gotta learn me some moves!

For a couple of years now, the most prevalent workplace generation gap issue I hear about is the "Tech Gap". It goes like this -- if you're a Gen Y'er, you're always struggling to help Baby Boomers understand how to use technology. If you're a Baby Boomer, you can't get GY'ers to use technology for serious business.

How does this translate to the workplace? It looks to me like there is a wholesale shift to technology that's taking place across the three generations that share office space. Remote users everywhere. Everybody has an iPhone, nobody wears a watch anymore. Lots of changes as everybody learns to deal with each other, with business problems and solutions. If this is happening using online resources, that's a game changer.

Imagine a company -- your company? -- sharing and collaborating online, and then moving on to solving marketing gaps with social media. They can be remote users, they can be using new media, they can be using shared spreadsheets. Doesn't matter, because each generation is bringing its own special tech knowledge to the table.

Who knows, if that keeps up, maybe we won't even be talking about generation gaps any more -- is that possible? What do you think?

Photo by Wili Hybrid

Now I'm the first one to gush about how thankful I am to have a job -- a good job -- but as unemployment seems to be the norm these days among my 20-something friends, I daresay it's becoming...glamorous.

Really. Sure, the unemployed Twitterers I follow complain about cover-letter writing and pulling together interview outfits, but they also talk about rolling out of bed at 11 a.m.. Walking around their neighborhood in search of a leisurely lunch. Getting a nice, long workout in at the gym before the after-work crowd rolls in. Jetting off for a long weekend to visit a friend. The list goes on.

And the more jobless there are, the more they can do these fabulous things together.

Like shop all day. (Not sure how that one works out monetarily, but it sounds fun to me.)

And I can't help but wonder whether recent grads -- such as those profiled in a recent New York Times piece -- are being picky about jobs because they like, or at least don't mind, the idea of the unemployed life.

As someone who works a fulltime job and a parttime job, is a fulltime student in two master's programs and is training for a marathon, I can't lie -- it intrigues me.

But, of course, the grass is always greener, and I'd undoubtedly stay on the side with the, um, actual green. Props, though, to those making the best of an unfortunate situation!

Are you unemployed? Are you loving the vacay or antsy to get back in the game?

It's not totally a laughing matter, but we can't really help ourselves sometimes. This week it's been the lawsuit filed by a 27-year-old unemployed graduate of Monroe College. Her claim? She paid the college $70,000 in tuition and she says she hasn't received the job leads that she feels she was promised by the school.

Knowing how tight the job market is, it's surprising this hasn't happened before. For many students and alumni, the frustration of not finding a good job in a bad economy has them worked up. Maybe it's all about blaming someone, or in this case, maybe it's about recovering some money from the school to keep the job-seeker afloat for a while.

Couple of questions here.

First question -- schools, are you in the business of making claims that you will find jobs for grads, or are you in the business of educating them -- not only in academics, but also in the "science" of careers? Simply having a career center on campus is not the same as getting the students (and alumni!) involved on a REQUIRED basis.

Second, for grads, are you still assuming that old (from 2 years ago) myth that a degree is a guaranteed ticket to a job? Wouldn't the reality be something different -- more like, it took me years of work to learn the basic skills to prepare me for my chosen career field. Why should the process of finding a career be more intuitive?

So I wish the suing graduate all the luck in the world finding a career, but not necessarily in pursuing a lawsuit. I do hope that they can take advantage of all the career resources available -- such as those Experience.com provides, as well as those provided by their schools.

And maybe we've all learned a lesson or two from this. What do you think?

Photo by Diego Cupolo