Magazines Magazines Everywhere But Not the Time to Read!

Magazines
I couldn't keep up with all the magazines that kept flooding my mailboxes here at home and at the office, so I decided to winnow it down. It wasn't easy, but I based my selection process on the magazines I actually wanted to read cover-to-cover every month. So I ended up selecting two "personal life" magazines and three "business life" magazines.

Notice how I keep my two lives separate? That's for another blog entry, but suffice it to say that I don't like my two lives intertwining because it ends up feeling like I have no personal life at all and believe me when I tell you that my personal life gets short shrift enough already!

So my business life magazines are Fortune and Business 2.0 - plus one magazine specific to the industry I'm currently in. Between them, I get lots of insight into how best to run, manage and finance a business. I also read lots of stories about people who have fabulous ideas, risk everything, work their asses off, and end up creating a multi-million dollar business that goes straight to IPO and leaves them rich and looking for a way to launch their next multi-million dollar business or product idea.

First of all, let me just be perfectly clear. If I'm ever lucky, clever, industrious and/or brilliant enough to create a multi-million dollar business that goes straight to IPO and leaves me rich - you won't catch me spending one cent of that money on another big business idea! Really, I don't understand those people. It's like when people who win the $500 million dollar lottery keep buying scratch-off tickets. Why?! They''ve already won the Big Jackpot - leave some for the rest of us, you selfish bastards! Believe me: if I ever win the Big Business Jackpot, I won't spend even one more minute in the office, in a meeting or on a conference call! I won't write one more business plan or create one more blue-sky budget or blow smoke up even one more investor's smoke hole. No! I'm done! I will selflessly take those millions and buy an island somewhere and live happily ever after - and give the rest of you a chance!

But since I'm a long way from winning the Big Business Jackpot, of course, I still read the magazines, believing in my heart of hearts that the next article will show me The Way to Big Business Riches ...

As for my personal life, it's very simple really. I subscribe to O Magazine and More. What else could I possibly need? Oh, and let's be honest. I also buy In Style - but that's not really reading. It' s more like Playboy used to be for men. I look at the pictures - I don't really read the articles.

Throughout the ups and downs of my own life, I have read articles in O that inspired me to take a deep breath, say a prayer of gratitude for all that I have and all that I am, and believed in my heart that, if Oprah can do it - well, damnit, I can too! In More magazine, I am constantly inspired by the strong and independent women who have found new life as they turn 40 or 50 or 60 or 70! Of course, the downside is that, at 50, I feel I should have found my new life by now - you know, working at something I love, with plenty of free, grace-filled time on my hands to hike the Himalayas and climb Mt. Everest or something. And even though I have absolutely no desire to climb more than the stairs in my house, I still feel that I have yet to find my calling, that time is running out, and that I'm definitely missing something, but have no way of finding out what that is.

Which is why I keep reading these magazines, believing in my heart of hearts that the next article will show me The Way to A Richer, More Fulfilling Life ...

Believe me: when I get there, I'll let you know!