If you’re dying to see me in a video interview, head over here to see our chat about coaching, consulting, sex writing, and the many levels of TMI.

Aside from the amount of times I say “um,” it’s not too horrific. In fact, I dare say that I actually sound… articulate. ::confetti::

Related: Receive Some Guaranteed Awesome In Your Inbox, Career Stalled? What You’re Doing Wrong

So I took advantage of the long, holiday weekend. I went hang gliding and wine tasting, drank lots of sangria at my in-laws’ annual July 4 barbecue, and made some headway on a few personal projects. This included rethinking the services I’d be offering as a career coach, and updating the content on my coaching site.

Among the latest updates? A sign-up form for my new, monthly newsletter. It will include original, coaching-related content; news on the publishing industry; and information on any forthcoming e-courses, webinars, events, and more.

Now if that doesn’t sound like a piñata filled with Awesome, I don’t know what does.

I’m so excited about all the plans I have for Career Coaching for Word Nerds, and I hope you are, too. If you are, do sign up.

Related: My New Web Platform Has Launched!

I am going to try so. hard. not to overload you guys with shameless LoveMom promotions, but I really wanted to share the post I wrote this week. Because  it was an exceptionally personal one, and because it felt so good to write it all out. I’ve already received so many helpful comments on the post, something that makes me all weepy with gratitude. I love that I have writing to turn to when it comes to things like this.

Without further ado:

I try to divorce Michael at least once a month. I blame this on my PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder, or what I like to call “PMS on crack”), though I’ve also been diagnosed with chronic depression and anxiety and, once, a psychopharmacologist told me I had obvious bipolar tendencies. Either way, I’m not the easiest person to live with (as if you didn’t already feel bad enough for my husband, due to my sexual issues). Sometimes, I fling my wedding band across the room, or lock myself into the bathroom, or scream myself raw. And once, I dumped a freshly-baked pan of cookies on top of his freshly-cleaned clothes and stomped up and down on them.

The worst was the time I tried to barricade myself in our bedroom. After sweating and straining to move his nightstand in front of the door, he pushed his way in. When I made a run for the great outdoors, he wrestled me to the floor, and carried me back to the bedroom. I kept fighting him, my hair dripping with my tears, my body weak but my adrenaline pumping. At one point, my tooth got chipped, and my lip bloodied. The ironic part? He was trying to keep me safe. He didn’t want me driving my car while angry, because he was afraid I’d hurt myself.

We haven’t had a bad scene like that for quite some time now. I put myself back on Lexapro for awhile. Then, after the PMDD diagnosis, I realized that switching to Yaz (a birth control pill that is also supposed to help with PMDD) was sufficient for managing my wild mood swings. I kept a bottle of Xanax in my top dresser drawer for emergencies.

Then, I decided to have a baby.

I try to divorce Michael at least once a month. I blame this on my PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder, or what I like to call “PMS on crack”), though I’ve also been diagnosed with chronic depression and anxiety and, once, a psychopharmacologist told me I had obvious bipolar tendencies. Either way, I’m not the easiest person to live with (as if you didn’t already feel bad enough for my husband, due to my sexual issues). Sometimes, I fling my wedding band across the room, or lock myself into the bathroom, or scream myself raw. And once, I dumped a freshly-baked pan of cookies on top of his freshly-cleaned clothes and stomped up and down on them.

The worst was the time I tried to barricade myself in our bedroom. After sweating and straining to move his nightstand in front of the door, he pushed his way in. When I made a run for the great outdoors, he wrestled me to the floor, and carried me back to the bedroom. I kept fighting him, my hair dripping with my tears, my body weak but my adrenaline pumping. At one point, my tooth got chipped, and my lip bloodied. The ironic part? He was trying to keep me safe. He didn’t want me driving my car while angry, because he was afraid I’d hurt myself.

We haven’t had a bad scene like that for quite some time now. I put myself back on Lexapro for awhile. Then, after the PMDD diagnosis, I realized that switching to Yaz (a birth control pill that is also supposed to help with PMDD) was sufficient for managing my wild mood swings. I kept a bottle of Xanax in my top dresser drawer for emergencies.

Then, I decided to have a baby.

*** You can read the rest here. ***

Hey there guys. I’ve finally carved out some time to build up my coaching practice. Before giving things a big marketing push, though, I’d like to evaluate everything I’m offering, and make sure it’s everything I could and should be offering.

So I drew up a market research survey, and I’d really appreciate it if you could fill it out for me. It would be a huge help.

And feel free to pass it along to anyone you think might be interested, or in need of my services.

Thanks. You’re a peach. :)

My life has been pretty full lately. A little too full. But in case you were wondering what I looked forward to most in the course of my work week (aside from the moment when the lights go out and my head hits the pillow), I thought I’d share with you one of my latest projects.

LoveMom is a new mommyblog on YourTango, a web magazine featuring content and love and relationships, and the place where I work as Assistant Editor three days a week. Last month, our VP of Content and Branded Media asked me to launch and manage a mom blog on the site. She wanted it up by Mother’s Day. I launched a week in advance, and learned a lot in the process: how to go about choosing a brand name, designing a logo, hiring writers and setting up a production schedule/editorial calendar, reaching out to other sites regarding content partnerships, etc. At the moment, I’m figuring out how to set my monthly traffic goals for the rest of the year. You know. Stuff I never really worried about so much here at Freelancedom.

All of this is a ton of fun (and makes me feel quite powerful), but my favorite part of this whole endeavor is the fact that I’m blogging for LoveMom, too, about my efforts to get pregnant. Last week, I blogged about whether or not there was actually a perfect time to get pregnant. This coming week, I’ll be blogging about my sex life. (Doesn’t it always come back to that?) Or maybe my issues with depression. We’ll see. All in good time.

I’m also feeling sort of proud of myself for getting such fabulous content from a number of other writers. Here are my favorite pieces so far:

• 3 Zen Ways To Keep Connected After Having Kids
• When It Comes To Parenting, Does One Size Fit All?
• How To Be A Mother, A Wife–And Yourself
• How To Fight In Front Of Your Children

And here’s an excerpt of my piece:

I tossed my last pack of birth control pills into the garbage and carefully lined up bottles of prenatal vitamins and folic acid pills. “So, are we officially trying now?” my husband Michael asked.

“Not yet,” I said, even though I was itching to get started. But…

Public knowledge indicates that there is never a perfect time to get pregnant. There will always be bills. Lack of space. Job instability. Michael and I figured that we could at least plan for nearly perfect. So, for the past three years, we held off. We waited for our careers to take off and become more lucrative. We waited to feel more secure in our marriage (my chronic depression and PMDD used to have me trying to divorce the poor man almost monthly). We waited to build up some more savings, so that we could upgrade from our one-bedroom condo to a three-bedroom house.

You can read more here.

The other day, I wrote a post on mentors, and where you can find them. I wrote it as part of a round table Holly Hoffman was putting together on her blog, WorkLoveLife. Well, the round table is finally up! Head on over to read 21 other posts about mentors. Among my favorites:

• Renewabelle’s Of Mentors and Countrypeople…
• The Blisscipline’s Mentors: How Important Are They To Your Success?
• To Undertake To Express’s My Mentor
• Restless Like Me’s Give Me Failure, or Give Me Death

Related: 6 Ways To Find Your Next Mentor

Hey there guys! Before I give you your link love for the week, I’d like to indulge in a little bit of self-promotion. I’m thrilled and honored to report that Brazen Careerist has named me as one of the nominees in their Top 50 Blog Posts of 2009/Blogger of the Year contest! There are a lot of great writers on the list, and it feels pretty darn good to be among them. If you find me worthy of top honors, however, I’d appreciate your vote! Instructions — and a link to the other nominees — are at the link above but, really, all you have to do is tweet the following:

I’m voting for @stephauteri’s post in the #Brazen Careerist #BestOf 2009 contest: http://bit.ly/UaRsw

Hashtags, URL, and all. (That link, by the way, leads to my winning blog post.) I’d appreciate any Twitter love you can give me! (Plus, your votes enter you for a chance to win a Starbucks gift card. Coffee = Major Win.)

And now that I’ve gotten that out of the way…

• The Freelance Writing Jobs Network’s Identifying the Reasons Your Freelance Writing Business Isn’t Growing
• WordCount’s Lessons Learned from a Year on Twitter
• Brazen Careerist’s How I Failed at Networking
• Brazen Careerist’s I Didn’t Do Vacation Right
• Words on the Page’s If It’s December, It Must Be June
• BayNewser’s Top Twitter Trends of 2009
• Mediaite’s The Gawker Decade: How Gawker Media Defined the 2000s
• Mashable’s 10 Rules for Increasing Community Engagement
• The Wall Street Journal’s Coping with Criticism
• Open Forum’s Document Collaboration Tools for the Small Business
• Diana Vilibert’s Queefs, Balls, and Why I Write
• NWJobs’ Your Company Holiday Party as a Networking Tool
• Copyblogger’s Why James Chartrand Wears Women’s Underpants
• Jezebel’s “Taking a Man’s Name Opened Up a New World”: Why a Blogger Hid Her Gender
• The Freelance Writing Jobs Network’s Do Male Bloggers Receive More Respect?
• Design Informer’s The Bare Bones That Every Freelance Contract Should Have
• Freelance Folder’s Freelance Overload: How To Deal with Too Much Work

[Photo via]

A little over a year ago, I ceased working in the city after the NY Sun folded. It was almost a relief as, by that point, I loathed my commute so much I was having panic attacks. But once upon a time, back when I was working at the Feminist Press, I didn’t mind the commute so much, because I was just so darn excited to get to work every day. Amazingly, I think I may have found that reason for commuting again, in a part-time Assistant Editor job at YourTango.

I am wildly excited to head into the office next week for three reasons:

1. This job will provide regular, supplementary income to my more irregular income, while still allowing me the time to work on other projects and work my way through my career coaching certification program.

2. This job will get me out of the damn house, and among people again. A really cool group of people. And, as we know, I’ve been desperately lonely lately.

3. This job sounds hella cool…a great experience and a really good item to add to my resume. I have written for YourTango before, about topics as disparate as sex parties and debt, but I’m excited to now have the chance to not only create content, but also edit, manage freelancers, explore more social media marketing opportunities, work on video content, and whatever else they throw at me.

I’ve been spoiled these past two years — rolling out of bed at 8:30, working in flip-flops and pajama pants, and watching reality TV during my lunch breaks — so I’m nervous. Can I achieve full consciousness at an earlier hour? Can I survive the commute? Will all that practice I’ve had having intense conversations with my cats translate to real-world interaction? I don’t know, but I’m excited to find out. Wish me luck!

[Illustration by Deanna Staffo, via TONY]

Hey there you guys. I thought I’d just quickly indulge in a little bit of shameless self-promotion by linking to my latest two published pieces.

Last week, an essay of mine about finding love in the Lincoln Tunnel ran in New York Press. I tweeted a link, but didn’t mention it here on the blog. Though it had been awhile since I’d sent anything to the alternative weekly, I got the idea to submit something to their Flavor of the Week column after reading through mediabistro’s series on personal essay markets. It was fun concentrating on the personal essay again, after so much time focusing on short-form blogging. Once upon a time, they were all I wanted to write. The only problem with that idea? Though some editors will express interest in an essay before seeing the finished product, most editors prefer that you submit them whole. A time-consuming proposition when you consider the fact that there’s no guarantee of acceptance.

This week, my third piece for Time Out New York went live — Sex Play for Prudes. It’s a resource piece for the sexually shy, (obviously) based in NYC. It was a good deal of fun to research, and also very important for me to write. If you’ve read my piece on getting my nude portrait done up, you know that I have my own share of sexual dysfunctions. (I am also amused by how much the guy in the illustration above reminds me of my husband, all tall, scrawny, and with geek-chic glasses.)

Looking at the pieces I have coming out — and the ones I’m working on — makes me wonder if I need to specialize a little bit more (where does wine fit in with sex and dating…or career content, for that matter?). But, much in the same way that I love receiving a patchwork paycheck, I also love mixing things up when I write. I hope you enjoy my latest!