Get a cup of coffee with lots of cream, grab a chair, and get to know me...
Let's just start with the tags: I'm an overachiever. Yep, it's in my blood. I'm someone who's great at starting things and terrible at finishing them (just try to click on *all* the links; I'm sure you'll find at least a few that don't resolve). I have to have my fingers in everything - it's my unique brand of insanity.
I win my bread as editor of BloggingStocks, WalletPop and Luxist, publications of AOL Money & Finance. That's right, I blog for a living! Well, and I also launch blogs, manage bloggers, and make lovely Excel spreadsheets all about blogs. I've loved other jobs, but none so unreservedly. I can't believe my good fortune. I started out my blogging-for-pay career writing for one cool parenting blog and the foodie blog to the geeks, and then I fell into finance -- one of my true loves. In the background, I'm noodling on a book or four. I'm also involved in some fun projects and other extracurriculars. Recently I began writing for Culinate about my commitment to eat local foods. I love my job, and I love that I get to combine motherhood and work so seamlessly moderately well. I'm so lucky, and blessed, and ... whatever else you want to call it.
When I'm not working for pay I'm a mama, wife, knitter, photographer, bread baker and chicken keeper -- or maybe you could say, urban homesteader. My three little boys are the considerable energetic force of my life; Everett was born July 2002, Truman was born April 2005, and Monroe was born July 2007. My husband is a wonderful funny man, a great dad, and now...a soldier. Our love story is really cool. We don't drive; you can read about my mamabikeorama here. My friends are some of the coolest people in the whole world and mostly mamas (plus one very cool aunt); I have a fantastic network of mama friends I met on Craigslist and blogging and some bestest most wonderful friends from Wharton, where I got my MBA.
Along the way I also got a degree from Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, in English & Journalism; worked at First Union in Charlotte doing Loan Syndications, Merrill Lynch in New York doing Investment Banking all kinds, ReturnBuy in northern Virginia doing just about everything, a direct marketing company in Portland, Oregon with a fancy operations-related title, and at JanRain, a software incubator where I helped develop ideas and marketed a few of them -- this last one has changed a ton. I am so lucky to have had these great experiences that have brought me together with so many close friends and other great people.
So, you ask, why "cafemama"? I love coffee, I deeply identify with being a mama, and it just seems to flow, doesn't it? (Note that CafeMom.com was started years after the establishment of cafemama, coincidence, I think not). I love metaphors and I think it's a good one for a blog, especially *my* blog.
Emails: I can be reached at mama [at] cafemama [dot] com. Want to help fill up my gmail account? sarahgilbert [at] gmail [dot] com.
If you're here because you love my writing, and you'd like to publish something I've written, or hire me to write something entirely new, please, please, by all means, contact me! I do freelance work from time to time, if I'm not too busy (hah). I'm also available for speaking engagements on a wide variety of subjects, from urban homesteading to new media; a few recent appearances include my Ignite Portland talk on keeping chickens and the technopreneur panel at Startupalooza.
