Life's Work is the story of one woman's search for balance -- and the realization that it can't be found. It is the story of modern motherhood, where true happiness is often reached when you finally give up and give in. A few years ago, while trying to make sense of her own hectic world, award-winning journalist Lisa Belkin was asked to write a very personal column for The New York Times. She called it "Life's Work" because it was about the intersection -- or, more accurately, the collision -- of life and work. Since then she's been inundated with stories of other people trying to catch their "balance": the CEO father-to-be who restructured his entire company so he would have time to see his baby, the divorced mom who thought she might have to give away the family iguana because the store that sold live food closed before she got home from work. But after hundreds of columns and thousands of reader e-mails, Belkin has yet to hear from a single person who has everything neatly under control. Finally, while trying to confer with her editor from a cell phone in her pediatrician's office, she reached an epiphany: No one can do it because it can't be done.