If you want to fight like a girl, make up a bed with my mother.
I guarantee you’ll lose.
I also guarantee if you can make a bed to her standards,
you won’t have a bit of trouble in bootcamp out on Parris Island.
Even Mom's older sister, who can be bossy, won’t make a bed with her.

Mom is 92 years old, so needless to say she has no option but to be old-school. But I have to admit, I like some of her old-school, exactitude ways, and making a bed to perfection is one of them.

“Growing up in the South isn’t really about the geographical location, it’s about the people, the pace and the perspective.”  — Me 

Looking back, I reckon I had an idyllic Southern childhood, except for the dysfunctional family part. But that didn’t matter, because what do they say in the South? “We don’t hide crazy, we put ‘em on the front porch so they can wave at everybody as they ride by.” I can definitely relate, I’m just glad I wasn’t the one they expected to do the waving.

Last month, Facebook was filled with happy pictures of parents dropping
their children off at college and setting up cute dorm rooms,
all of which is a wonderfully exciting time. Congratulations to you all!
You’ve worked many years to get your children to this point.

Some freshmen are filled with dreams and aspirations, while others are excited to be at college, but have no idea what they want to do career-wise, and that’s alright. While I had a great career in marketing, I didn’t find what I really wanted to do until I was 38 years old, but my years spent at college helped me get there. A college education expands far beyond academics. In fact, most graduates come out of college knowing more about how to persevere, how to get along with people, how to say no to a party in order to make it to graduation, and how to negotiate (or plead) with professors than understanding the ins and outs of business law or calculating odds in statistics.

“I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.”
—Diane Ackerman

I want to encourage you to take a moment and rise above yourself in your thoughts. Take an aerial view of your life. Look at it as though you are viewing it from an airplane window. From 5,000 feet it looks pretty neat and orderly, doesn’t it, like those plots of land and color that are perfectly squared off when viewing them from above?

Have you ever wondered exactly how your life got from there to here? Here where you are today in your relationships, your career, your satisfaction, your health, your happiness, your attitude? As the creator and owner of Pink, I am often asked how I started it, or what made me do it. My answer is the same every time: When I step back and take an aerial view of my life, the path is perfectly clear, and that path lead me straight to Pink.

Every time I go into the grocery store I spend far more time than planned. When I walk out, I feel as though I’ve been in a time warp. The other night, I spent almost 15 minutes just in front of the egg section trying to decide which eggs to buy. In the past, I would casually stroll up to the eggs (there wasn’t really a “section”), open the lid to make sure none were cracked or leaking, put them in my cart and stroll on. I mean, eggs are eggs, right? Not anymore.