Some people work a job to pay the bills. They slog into the office at the prescribed time, maybe even a few minutes late, punch a clock, literally or metaphorically, and sit behind a desk until the clock says it’s time to leave.

Those people complain about their lives.

They lament their situation, they hate their bosses, they spend evenings in front of the TV and wish things were different.

Or maybe they don’t. Maybe they like to complain because complaining is familiar and known and, truth be told, if they were freed from the prison of their lives and could actually choose their situation (which they can you know, they just don’t believe that) - they would freeze up and not know what to do.

And then there are other people. The ones who love what they do because they’ve constructed their lives around their passions, their interests, their skills and their strengths. They’re the ones who’ve made choices about what to spend their days doing.

I’m one of those.

I don’t skip down the golden sidewalk every day singing, “Lucky am I!”, of course, but I do feel an immense gratitude to the universe that I am able to do what I love, select the people and companies I work with, and find meaning in the minutes, hours and days.

Because that’s what it’s all about: MEANING.

My client, Yoga Shelter, helps people find their voice, find their edge, shed their baggage and gain strength.

My client, AskInYourFace.com, is partnering with the Michigan Young Farmers Coalition and the Haven to build a community garden to empower people rebuilding their lives after enduring abuse and feed the people who need good, quality, local produce the most.

The dance students of my client, Joe Cornell Entertainment, raised more than $5,000 for Kids Kicking Cancer.

My client, ORT Michigan, is retraining Michigan residents to find jobs in the worst economy since the Great Depression through the David B. Hermelin ORT Resource Center, and they’re raising money to build schools and educate people in 63 countries.

This is why I am lucky. I get to work with amazing, insightful, inspiring people who are making a difference in the world. Which means I get to make a difference by working with them.

What are you doing in your every-day to make a difference? It doesn’t have to be big. It could even just be listening to someone who has no one to listen or giving a small amount of money each month to help those who need it.

Think about it. You hold the power to your life. Make it about something you can be proud of.

I completely agree with Seth Godin’s blog that business owners shouldn’t worry about the pennies but rather make big-picture decisions.

BUT…how much debt is appropriate to incur for a startup biz? How much are you comfortable with as the business owner? And how much is too much - is indicative of a sure fall?

I’ve always believed that you must stand out from the crowd and TAKE CHANCES. Not a fan of sinking in the mud, though. It’s a tough line to walk.

Post-Script:

I emailed Seth Godin a comment this morning. He responded immediately and personally. Impressive. Here’s the conversation:

LMS: Hi Seth, I’m an avid reader and fan and I went to comment on the Pennies & Dollars blog – but can’t find the place to comment. So I’m emailing you instead.

Here’s the point – it’s easy to say spend the money and the money will flow, but what if there’s limited funding in the first place? I’m a small business owner in doomsday

But the cash flow is not flowing exactly. Sure, I could hire the limo at the trade show – but then what? And how much of the line of credit is appropriate to use before it’s just too much? I’ve had very limited startup costs and remain nimble but I also don’t want to run up a mountain of debt.Thoughts?SG: it’s entirely possible that there’s insufficient demand, that there’s no fish in that lake.

in which case, you need a new lake, no?

LMS: Wow I appreciate the quick and original response. It’s a good point – but the geographical “lake” is one I’m stuck with for various reasons – perhaps it’s the intellectual or professional lake I need to redefine. Thanks.

SG: exactlythe internet is a very very big lake, no?

At Cranbrook Institute of Science recently, the kids and I strolled through a new anthropological exhibit called The Story of Us. Diaramas and displays detailed the tools of life - how we find nourishment, how we warm ourselves, how we build relationships and how we believe.

In the belief section, no typical symbols of mainstream Christianity or Judaism were among the ancient and Eastern icons. So be it. Everyone needs an occasional bite of humble pie.

What caught my eye was the devotion to “Sub sis tence” and its explanation: a source or means of obtaining the necessities of life.

What do we need vs. what do we want?

That is no short answer so I won’t even try. Have you ever written a vision for your life? Merging personal and professional and striving to fulfill it? Finding a way to make your work mesh with your quality of life instead of letting it lead you by the nose, as a pet on a leash?

The range of our interactions is virtually limitless. Relationships are the fabric of our humanity.

Re*la*tion*ships - the connections that bind people and communities together. When you realize that you are really a part of a team.

Who are your players? Do they have your back when you fumble a play? Is the clock ticking down with nothing to show for it?

The sky is white this Wednesday morning and the ground is cold. I can see a perfect icicle from my office window. Last night, I slept soundless and with peace. It’s another day. Another funnel for possibilities. Another opportunity in front of my feet.

I created Your People LLC in 2007 as an innovative way to help others build their businesses. My premise was, and it remains, that if you create genuine relationships between a company and its clients, you will generate loyalty, satisfaction and in the process, a burgeoning community.

And what does that do for business? Ideally, it builds the bottom line. Because everyone knows that when you feel a fondness and an allegiance for a person or place, you return there again and again.

I read in the Winter 2010 Michigan Alumnus magazine about Welcome Wednesdays at the Alumni Center in Ann Arbor. Last fall, the University of Michigan Alumni Association started offering free bagels and coffee, Wi-Fi and big flatscreen TVs on Wednesdays starting at 8:30 a.m.

At first, 135 people showed up. Now, more than 2,000 turn up for the casual cafe gathering spot. They’re fed, they’re kept warm, they’re greeted with a friendly grin and a sincere hello - and they create a connection with this place.

Well, the Alumni Association is sure hoping that turns into a lifelong relationship.

Any relationship takes time and effort to build, and nothing good happens overnight. I cringe when a client says, “What results can you guarantee?” Because really, the answer is, “None.”

I can get them out there and I can create exposure in all sorts of mediums. Given enough time, I can build a buzz around their brand. If need be, my team can create the brand they need to make a mark.

Guarantees? There are none, you know. Life is a marathon, not a race. You need endurance to make it to the finish line. And if free bagels, coffee and Wi-Fi don’t do the trick to expand the alumni reach for the University of Michigan, then they’ll try something else. They won’t fall to pieces.

But imagine the possibilities: boy meets girl on a Welcome Wednesday, they fall in love, get married 10 years later and have a lifelong fondness for the Alumni Center in Ann Arbor. Maybe that’s where they host the wedding. Maybe they bring their kids there 20 years later.

Maybe best friends meet there. Maybe two students link up and find they have compatible skills and talents, form a business and take it to Fortune 500. You never know where an idea will lead.

And if you don’t try it, it’ll go nowhere.

Early on a Sunday morning, and she’d had enough of sleep. And so she climbed from the warm bed into the dark and cascaded down the stairs into the quiet house to find words for her tossing in the night.

The month of betrayal had ended, or was almost finished, and a new year had begun. She was nervous to trust people now - new friends, of course, but there had been an old friend, a very long-time person whom she thought she knew in excellent character, and still the betrayal had come.

It was like the darkness all around her - even with the lights on, shadows collected in corners and there were always going to be things she didn’t see.

The year had begun in quiet and she had only two goals: peace and simplicity. The prior year had ended in tumult - like a pinball game of people and work and time and money, all wrapped up in a cyclone-swirl of chaos and disbelief.

And now. She had found love. She had located clarity on a beach in Mexico. She had finally set parameters for her thoughts and her time and she was beginning to step back from telling every story to the world.

She operated now on a need-to-know basis.

In Thomas Lynch’s The Undertaking, he proclaims that all of life revolves around questions of sex and death - the book-end opposites of passion and peace, of beginning and end, of creation and destruction.

She read those words and knew them to be true. And she wondered if the rest of time was filled with attempts to cheat one or find the other?

It was an early Sunday morning and the house was still. She would rush through another day and end with the same kind of quiet. Only she hoped that by day’s end, she would have silenced the echoes in her head and quieted her mind enough to gaze into sleep.

The front cover article of today’s Detroit Free Press & News is about a pending piece of legislation to grant protection to nursing mothers when they feed their babies in public venues. The article, and the bill, look at whether this is a civil right and whether it needs protection.

A case in point concerned a local mother who was asked to leave a Target store because the security guard said it was illegal to breastfeed in public. Not true.

Are we really still debating whether a baby can feed in plain sight? Really? This has nothing to do with feeding a baby, you know - it has to do with other people’s discomfort at seeing a little bit of naked breast - which of course, they have no problem with when it’s in a low-cut shirt or bathing suit. But with a baby attached to it, for nourishment, well, apparently that is a supreme offense.

And what this is about more than anything is people’s overarching concern and judgment of others.

We are faced with two choices: look inward, or cast your glance everywhere else. If you choose option A, you stop being concerned with what others are doing, saying, feeling, thinking and attempting to do. You focus on your own energies and where you pour them and you focus on ways that you can make a difference on this earth.

For that is the whole point of our being here, in fact. If we are not here to contribute something, to make a difference, to make the world a better place, then what is the point?

Choose option B and you’ll spend your life blaming others, pointing fingers, feeling dissatisfaction at every turn. For it is impossible, truly, to control anyone outside of yourself. Even our own children - they are not extensions of us; they are whole individuals in their own right and while we mold them and guide them and hopefully teach them right from wrong, they still have their own leanings which we have nothing to do with.

Let the mothers nurse. Let the babies feed. If you’re uncomfortable with the way that we were created, steer your cart down another aisle or avert your gaze. It’s none of your damn business anyway.

I’ll be the first to say my BlackBerry saves the day. I’m connected, hooked up, in tune, linked in, facebooked and more. I text, I bbm, I email from remote locations. Technology is good. It gets things done. It’s immediate. My clients never have to wait.

And it’s bad, bad, bad. When I met C. and wanted to go on a date with him, he said, “Isn’t it just fun to text and email and talk?” Um, sure, as another way to connect after building a foundation face-to-face - but not in place of it!

He’s not the only single man these days who relies on distant forms of communication to take the place of actually meeting up for coffee, seeing if there is chemistry in real time. It’s a trend, I find, and not a good one.

I’m done with dating men who don’t go on dates - texting does not a relationship make. And as far as clients go, well, even in the business world we’re all guilty of staying in touch via remote tools like email and text messages, in place of meeting over a desk and feeling the energy of real-time work.

Sometimes, it’s a good thing. And sometimes it’s not.

I built my business two years ago on what I perceived as a widespread need for connection. I was on Facebook one night, while chatting with an old friend, and we noticed that 50 of our high school buddies were on FB too. Not huddled under the covers with a spouse or reading a book or having a glass of wine and staring out at the stars.

Online, trying to connect but really just looking at a screen. This distant mode of communication - it’s a good placeholder. But it can’t replace real connection.

And what is it, exactly, about face-to-face that is so scary? Isn’t that the only way to find the kind of intimacy and connection that we all crave?

I’m throwing in the towel today. I want real-time. I want a face.

I learned recently that a particular local publication will not write about my company’s success because I used to be a freelance writer who contributed to that publication. One editor there has decided that it is a conflict of interest.

I respect the editor’s journalistic integrity, truly I do. And yet it appears to be unnecessary and arbitrary. Because if we are truly dedicated to rebuilding Michigan and seeing our local economy once again thrive, then I believe we all ought to support one another and celebrate the success stories of individuals who reinvent themselves.

We have no shortage of dismal stories to tell - companies closing, bankruptcies, stores standing vacant on streets and downtowns known for decades for upscale spending. People out of work. Families floundering. Homes lost to foreclosure and nowhere for a couple or family to turn.

I am certain this editor would write about me if, God Forbid, I had tanked as a journalist and lost my family home and ended up on the street. That’s news? Not in my book. And thankfully it didn’t happen.

While I was a journalist for 15 years, I always cringed to read story after story devoted to the sadness, the devastation, the scandal and the corruption, for I am and always be an idealist who believes in silver linings and sunlight on dark days.

In any economy, I am grateful to my clients for the interesting, challenging work they give me and my employees. I am grateful to my parents for encouraging me to strike out on not one, but two entrepreneurial paths. I’m grateful, too, that the same editor will write about my interesting and innovative clients when they do newsworthy things.

And I am grateful for my perspective: that there is room for everyone, that there is enough business to go around, that competition is healthy but meanness is not, and that all it takes to succeed is try, try, try something new and keep trying new things all the days of your life.

I’m all for putting my hands in the dirt and doing whatever it takes to make it. If that isn’t a great story, I don’t know what is.

Last night, women gathered in the beautiful Maria’s Bridal Couture boutique for an evening of introductions, of networking, of kind interaction. Carol Kirkland of AVE Office Supplies spoke about the importance of relationships in business.

There was wine and shrimp and homemade mini-muffins with olive and feta cheese. Samira made three desserts by hand. And a feeling of pervasive warmth and integrity permeated the night.

Except for one woman.

She came late, and in the middle of Carol’s speech, said loudly, “Sorry I’m late.” As if anyone knew her. I didn’t even, and I was the host of the night, but then I’d invited everyone via email with the hope of bringing together good people who do good work.

We exchanged a chuckle at one point of the night, she in her heavy irreverent smoker’s voice, and I thought I had expanded my circle. Until I learned from two of my clients present in the night that she had slinked up to them and said, “I know you’re working with Meredith, but if you want another perspective, give me a call.”

They told me, I cornered her and frankly, I don’t know if it was that she didn’t even get my name right, or that in the generosity of my invitation she viewed an opportunity to try to steal business.

But I operate with integrity and from a place of goodness and so I know that my hard work stands for itself and the people I trust are worth trusting. I called her out, she apologized to all, and slinked out the door into the dark of the night.

And then she sent me an email, calling me insecure and tacky and pointing out that it was a networking event, wasn’t it?

I asked kindly to be deleted from her contact list. And I wondered where some people learn their definitions.

Yes, it was a networking night. Carol spoke beautifully about the power of a handwritten note and the kindness in a gesture like a birthday card unexpected or a bag of bagels before the meeting.

I was taught by mentors, my parents and virtually everyone I know that networking is an opportunity to introduce yourself and show what you stand for. That in-your-face tactics never get you far and your integrity and work ethic and the actual work you do say more than anything else.

Yep, it was a networking night and a beautiful one at that. But the bad energy seeped in through the glass doors. I’m sending it back to the universe and residing only in goodness.

Mommy, what do you think the future looks like? If there is a future, that is.

This from my 7-year-old at dinner last night. Lamb chops and couscous, pizza for those not so inclined toward meat on a Sunday.

“If there IS a future?”

Well, if we don’t reduce the carbon footprint, the earth will explode. Deductive reasoning for a second-grader, but oh so fatalistic.

I looked into his peering blue eyes, the concern pooling like a wading pool on a summer hike. He truly believed the world could end imminently and that only we could stop it. What a burden for small narrow shoulders.

“We can only do what we can do, honey,” I said.

We can take a vote. We can tell everyone in the country, and then in other countries, until we tell everyone in the world that they have to change their habits to save the world.

“I think you should work toward a future as an activist,” I said.

I cleared the dishes from the table, and my daughter and I set about making a cake in the Easy Bake Oven. The baby stood alongside his sister on a kitchen chair to frost the small round treat. Eliana poured too many sprinkles on top of the chocolate frosting. It took the two of them 3 minutes to ingest the entire thing.

Then, we climbed into my bed to read books. Eliana brought The Lorax. Where was Asher when we were to read a metaphor for industrial damage?

“I love this book,” Eliana said.

It’s a metaphor, I said.

“What’s that?”

When a story seems to mean one thing but really means another, I said. This one is about a made-up creature called The Lorax but really it’s about the damage humans have done to the environment with their factories.

“I like the Truffula trees,” she said. “They’re pretty.”

And we watched as the pages turned and the trees disappeared, and the sun hid, and the smog clouds covered the landscape, and the fish walked away on their fins, and the brown Barbaloots suffered crummies in their tummies and everyone had to leave but the Once-ler.

It ends on an up note, though. The Once-ler tosses the listening visitor the very last seed to plant a Truffula tree and start the world over again. And we close the book, thinking it’ll happen and the landscape will change.

Asher was in the bathroom while I read the book. I called to him and urged him to come, but he was reading his own tome and waiting for me to clean his ears. I didn’t know. “I can’t read minds, you know,” I told him as I tucked him into bed.

Can I show you the books in this Illustrated Classics series? he asked.

“Of course, honey.” And we set about counting how many we’ve read and how many we have yet to read.

Belief that you can change the world is the quintessential characteristic of an entrepreneur. And my little boy is off to a great start.