For those who take their coffee with a strong dose of political commentary, this year’s Starting Line event, hosted by CommonWealth magazine, was a double espresso.

By Alison Lobron

“I would love to do what you’re doing,” a 20-something friend said. “But I need benefits.” She went on to tell me about her dream of starting an interior design company, a dream she’s put on hold until — well, until someday.

I heard comments like hers often in the year I spent as a freelance writer, so I said to her what I said to many other friends: You can buy benefits. You just have to factor it into your costs when you consider whether a business idea can work.

By Alison Lobron

 “All I wanted to do was help kids write college essays,” Julie, a 24-year-old friend, told me. “It should have been easy. But I called a few different places that do college prep stuff for kids who can’t afford to hire a tutor, and none of them could figure out how to use me.”

 Julie is, in many ways, a dream volunteer. Enthusiastic and public-spirited, she has a college degree, a job that doesn’t ask very much of her, and plenty of free time. Yet despite all that, and despite a clear sense of how and where she wants to pitch in, she isn’t doing any community service — perhaps in part because the brand of service she’s interested in isn’t the one that’s currently “in.”

By Alison Lobron

I have a confession: I recently spent a week’s vacation watching the entire second season of AMC’s Mad Men. True, all sorts of wholesome outdoor activities occupied the daytime hours, but every evening, we’d dim the lights and turn a Vermont cottage into a 1960s New York advertising agency. Escapism was the goal, yet the more I watched the frustrations of rookie copywriter Peggy Olson, the less the show felt like an escape. Instead, Madison Avenue, circa 1962, began to remind me of Massachusetts politics, circa 2009 — at least with respect to gender dynamics.