Pre-Ramble:  It’s official — I am the happiest person in the world.  I have just returned from my happy place — Starbucks — with a piping hot cup of dark roast.  Why the delirity (made up word for “state of delirious-ness”)?

The Harvard School of Public Health has studied 50,000+ women in the United States and have found that “drinking two or more cups of coffee a day is associated with a reduced risk of depression in women.”

Excellent news!! As a daily coffee drinker, (and a woman in the United States …) I am thrilled to know that the research is on my side. The new study is yet another to suggest that the consumption of coffee, like its sweet brown caffeinated buddy, chocolate, may have compelling health benefits.

Actually, more precisely, the study reported that … “women who drank two to three cups of caffeinated coffee per day were 15 percent less likely to develop depression over a 10-year period, compared to those who drank one cup of coffee or less per week.”  One of the researchers notes that:

“ … These results [can] reassure coffee drinkers that there seem to exist no glaringly deleterious health consequences to coffee consumption … “

Not exactly a resounding endorsement … but, in the spirit of implied happiness, and as one who likes to avoid “glaringly deleterious health consequences,” I prefer to think positively here.  According to the experts, “Caffeine can make people feel more energized, focused and put them in a better mood in general.”

Cheers, then to some factoids about coffee consumption brewed up by The National Coffee Association and The Specialty Coffee Association of America:

• Americans consume 400 million cups of coffee per day making the United States the leading consumer of coffee in the world
• Over 50% of Americans over 18 years of age drink coffee every day — representing over 150 million daily drinkers
• 30 million American adults drink specialty coffee beverages daily which include a mocha, latte, espresso, café mocha, cappuccino, and frozen/iced coffee beverages
• Among coffee drinkers, the average consumption in the United States is 3.2 cups of coffee per day
• The average coffee cup size is 9 ounces
• 65% of all coffee is consumed during breakfast hours, 30% between meals, and the remaining 5% with other meals
• 35% of coffee drinkers prefer black coffee; 65% prefer to add sugar and/or cream
• There are an estimated 50,000 coffee shops in the United States, with Seattle, Washington and Manhattan, New York having the most coffee shops per capita

The Take-Away:  Carpe coffee!  … Help yourself to an extra cup of sunshine tomorrow morning and just watch the “energy, focus and better mood in general” zing into your day!

Pre-Ramble:  Great.  Now, in addition to generating a constant stream of insightful and entertaining content for my website, winging it with witty banter on Twitter, and logging in with the latest professional brag-tag on Linked-In, I now have to present the perfect and enviable timeline of my life on the “new and improved” Facebook.

No pressure there. 

Let me tell you – this new form of electronic exposure is ten times worse than, say, the old scrapbooking days where simple snap-shots were magically spun into gold, … all tricked out with sticker themes, color schemes, matching boarders and plastic page protectors.  Gals used to pack all their photo gear, a hot-dish and a box of wine into rolling duffels and shuffle over to someone’s house once a month for “craft night.”  If you didn’t completely and creatively document entire decades of precious family memories over the course of the evening, it was fine. No one was checking your work.

I’m not making fun here – I was just never that organized or industrious to dominate in scrapbooking.  It’s no coincidence that my online photo file looks exactly like the hundreds of warped Kodak envelopes that are still stuffed into two ratty moving boxes in the back of our cedar closet. (I almost wish the moths would get in there and organize that mess for me.)  Thank goodness online photo filing systems provide a dated and alphabetized inventory list … If only I could remember when stuff happened and what cleverly mundane name I saved it under … ( … “that trip” … ).

Plaid skirt and knee sox.  The one thing I came to count on with the “old Facebook” was the very lack of choice that they have now “fixed.”  Like school uniforms, there was only one font, there was only one size and orientation for photos, and there were only a few simple maneuvers to master.  You typed in your quippy comment … attached a lame photo or two … and Bam.  Done.

But now — Shoot.  If I’m going to be anywhere near competitive in the realm of this ”new Facebook” forum,  I am seriously going to have to hire an in-house staff … agent, archivist, photo stylist and a couple of full-time tech support people.  I can see it now … my personal paparazzi standing by to capture every Timeline-worthy event.  Of course, there will have to be redo’s on suboptimal momentous occasions … “Oh honey, could we relight those candles? The ambient fill was all wrong … “ …. Or, “Could we re-release those doves? My lens cap was still on … ”

Back in the good old Facebook days (way last year), we used to be able to get by on our wits and a prayer.  Now the damn thing has news stories, moving parts and sound tracks.  What’s next? … “Click here for mood lighting and the scent of freshly baked bread?”

The Take-Away:  Now, instead of concealing the hapless disorder of my life from a few close family and friends (DON’T GO IN THAT CEDAR CLOSET!!!), … I am now obliged to fabricate my perfect life in a timely and orderly fashion, or risk being exposed to the ridicule of potentially millions of complete strangers. … Yipes.  I’m not ready for my close-up, Mr. Zuckerberg!

Post-Note:  It might just be a coincidence, but when you look for the correct spelling for Zuckerberg on Google, the first words to come up for longer than you’d expect are variations on the word “zucchini.”

Pre-Ramble:  In case you missed it, last night was the Emmy Awards – the show where a bunch of actors and actresses get lacy golden statuettes for outstanding performances on the small screen.

It’s kind of a runner-up to The Peoples’ Choice Awards, which is a runner up to the Golden Globe Awards, which is a runner up to the Academy Awards, which is the runner up to getting into heaven … you get the idea.

Lots of fancy dresses, film clips, quippy repartee and sticky envelopes … That’s not me at right, it’s happy Gwyneth Paltrow at the Emmys.  (I was her one halloween … in her pink dress from the 1999 Academy Awards … she won best actress for “Shakespere in Love” …. )

Never mind.

Drama!  And, there’s always some backstage scuttlebutt. This year it was the potential smack-down between Charlie Sheen and Ashton Kutcher. Turns out Sheen is too exhausted to riff on anything and Ashton just has too much class to stoop anywhere near there.

So, somewhere around the 3,000th commercial break, I got to wondering what it would be like to be an actor/tress and win an Emmy Award and act all surprised and walk up all those stairs in my super tight dress and super high heels.

Then I got to thinking that there must be some kind of award for outstanding bloggers … Musn’t there??  … Although, clearly I have never won it, or I would totally know that it existed.

And, The Bloggy goes to … If there is an award for outstanding bloggers, it’s probably called “The Bloggy” … or maybe more appropriately, “The Sloggy” … Which would stand for:

• Sublime
• Litany
• Of
• Giddy
• Gibberish …
• … Yay!

There really isn’t a good “starts-with-a-Y” word choice … (However, in the spirit of good fun and crowd-sourcing, please feel free to submit your own acronym.)

The Take-Away:  I look at it this way – everybody is award-worthy at SOMETHING.  While there might not be a big ol’ glittering telecast, you can sit back and recognize your personal stellar achievements at any point of any day …

So, Yay!   (And, think how much $$$ you save on botox and back-up dancers.)

Post Note:  Apparently some guy named Kevin Marshall has actually created/received a Blog Award (that’s it shown below). His schtick goes something like this:

“So, in honor of the hard work that may have been missed by readers – as well as my own unrelenting ego – I present to you the 2010 Kevin Marshall Blog Awards. (Note – yes, J. Eric Smith did something similar already. And guess what? I don’t care, because I’m self-centered and deluded. So there.)”

Something to aspire to!

Pre-Ramble:  Since it’s Fashion Week, I thought this was a fitting little snippet …

German costume designer, Heather MacCrimmon, noticed some children’s drawings on a friend’s refrigerator of “princesses in fantastical dresses.”

She thought it would be fun to actually MAKE the dresses exactly as they were drawn … to “bring to life the clothes in children’s artwork, designs by children too young to be influenced by commercial fashion.”

An example of her work is shown at right (the drawing below) – A red linen dress with appliqued white geometric designs imagined, drawn and modeled by 7-year-old Anne Marie Perelwitz (photo by Heike Isenmann).

The Take-Away:  How awesome is that!?  I love it when people have an interesting, fun idea like this and follow through on it.  And, if only there really was a way to get the perfect clothes that you can imagine in your mind’s eye — and never find on the rack!

Pre-Ramble:  Where were you when the terrorist attack on 9/11 happened?

I was in my family room, picking up a basket of laundry when my friend called me to tell me to turn on my television.  Like millions of Americans, I watched in shock as the second tower was hit.

In tribute, I’d like to share something that I discovered about that day that I had never heard about before –

“Frank Shane, a professional dog therapist and CEO of the K-9 Disaster Relief Foundation, had to improvise when he brought his golden retriever, Nikie, down to Ground Zero. There was no protocol for anything—from the kind of footwear Nikie should wear to how Frank should deal with the unfathomable grief of 9/11. Yet from the moment Frank and his dog stepped onto the site, they both knew they had a job to do. As it turned out, a pair of soft ears and a wagging tail offered one of the best ways to connect to the people on the ground.”

The Take-Away:  The powerful presence of Nikie, a trained service dog (shown above with his trainer Frank Shane), at Ground Zero (WSJ, p. C3) speaks to the “unspoken bond” that animals can make with people.  I experience this connection with my dog Daisy every day and am thankful that Frank Shane was compelled to take Nikie to Ground Zero to do his special work 10 years ago today.

Pre-Ramble:  Great. It’s Fashion Week.   Didn’t we just do this?  I assure you, I didn’t wear “dressy shorts” with patterned tights and stacked wedges last season, and I won’t wear them this season either — even if they come in that fancy new ”vivid sorbet yellow.”

Yes, this is a time to celebrate the Beautiful People, … in their Beautiful Clothes, with their Beautiful Sunglasses, tucked into their Beautiful Handbags, hanging on their Beautiful Shoulders, as they strut around on their freakishly long Beautiful Legs. It’s the long legs that really tick me off.

People with long legs look fabulous in everything.  And the rest of us look like trolls.  (That’s us, shown above.) People with long legs look good in vivid sorbet yellow dressy shorts. … Even if a short-legged person is wearing vivid sorbet dressy shorts with super-tall shoes, she really still looks like a troll, … on stilts.

Beautiful people are everywhere. Heck, even the the National Football League is getting into the act. Yesterday’s WSJ sports section ran a piece on the ranking of NFL teams according to cumulative scores around their “facial symmetry.”  (I LOVE the Wall Street Journal.) Apparently, research findings show that the degree to which the features on both sides of an individual’s face are symmetrical is a reliable indicator of human attraction. The “Pretty in Pigskin” rankings answer the question on everyone’s mind – ”Which NFL team is the handsomest?”

Turns out the most attractive group of players, with an average symmetry rating of 99.47 is the Buffalo Bills.  Clearly, beauty does not correlate with games won — the Bills had one of the worst records in the league (4-12 last season).  The least attractive team was the Kansas City Chiefs, who came in last with a symmetry rating of 94.6 (but won its division title and made it to the play-offs).  My hometown team, the Detroit Lions, came in at a respectable 98.1 (we won’t talk about their record … ), while the Minnesota Vikings ranked 30th out of 32 teams rated with a pitiful 96.4.

The Take-Away:  In all fairness, very few of us can carry off that shade of purple and nobody looks good in those stupid horn/braid hats.

Post-Note:  Speaking of beautiful people, is it just me, or did the GOP debates look like a homecoming court?  The only thing missing were boutonnieres and a tiara.

Pre-Ramble:  This year, Labor Day coincides with a persistently high unemployment rate … over 9% last time I checked … and an astounding 0% up-tick ( … no-tick?) in jobs created in the month of August.  This unfortunate and frustrating state of affairs will be the topic of President Obama’s upcoming talk on job creation and the languishing economy.

Cut to a recent article in the Atlantic written by Sara Horowitz (and tweeted by business and technology writer, Daniel Pink) — The Freelance Surge Is the Industrial Revolution of Our Time.  As a freelance writer, this title got my attention immediately.

Horowitz describes the “boom in independent work that is changing the way we think about jobs and careers.”  She talks about the Rise of the Creative Class and the Freelance Nation (the first is the title of a book by Richard Florida (2002) and the other should be the title of a book … well, it’s close to Free Agent Nation by the abovementioned Daniel Pink (2002) … ) and the fact that job titles and careers no longer fit into neat little categories – Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief.

Crazy quilt – Instead we are seeing a major transition in the workforce where individual workers wear many hats,  piecing together many different types of work and juggling vastly different areas of expertise. Presumably, they do this to make a living wage, maximize their given talents, and exercise a more flexible, balanced  kind of work-style/life-style.  Horowitz calls this transition “profound” and discusses the practical implications of a growing freelance workforce …

“This transition is nothing less than a revolution. We haven’t seen a shift in the workforce this significant in almost 100 years, when we transitioned from an agricultural to an industrial economy. Now, employees are leaving the traditional workplace and opting to piece together a professional life on their own.  As of 2005, one-third of our workforce participated in this “freelance economy.” Data show that number has  increased over the past six years … Entrepreneurial activity in 2009 was at its highest level in 14 years, online freelance job postings skyrocketed in 2010, and companies are increasingly out-sourcing work.”

Nice to know I’m not alone, but that’s about as far as the comfort zone goes.  While Horowitz works her way around the practical matters of policy and job security for independent workers, I find that my day-to-day experience as a freelance worker involves concerns at a more personal level.  As an individual with what I would characterize as a between-the-cracks, non-traditional skill set, I am constantly challenged with the identity issues associated with this “brave new world” of freelance.

I’m a creative thinker/co-creator with a left brain component that likes to corral complex concepts, relationships, processes and/or dynamics and boil them down into a tight, accessible one-page visual overview. I am the conceptual/project development equivalent of Google maps … the GPS … the little rippling wave of blue light that radiates out from the current location as seen in the context of the ultimate destination point …

My dream job is to trot my “curious outsider” perspective into corporate cubicles and corner offices and chat about what folks are working on.  I want to know what they are thinking about, the successes they’ve had, and the unique problems that they are grappling with.  Then I want to figure out new ways to address/clarify/articulate/develop those things with them.

So, what is this job called?  Where on the online job application do these descriptors go?  How will President Obama’s proposal for job creation accommodate me and the rest of the freelance workforce?

The Take-Away:  Freelance workers don’t just represent temporary patches on the fabric of the American workforce — If we play our cards right (and the stakes are pretty high here), the estimated 30% of the U. S. workforce are the very fibers of innovation and enterprise that must characterize a strong, competitive American workforce.  I hope that President Obama’s jobs plan includes a way to cobble all of the untapped expertise represented in misaligned, under-employed or unemployed workers into a nice tight weave that can drive and thrive in the marketplace of the future.  ( … which from where I’m sitting, is the marketplace of the NOW.)