Janet Kuras Eastman '79 (B.A. communications) is an "indulgence expert."
A multitasking single mother, Eastman seems an unlikely authority on relaxation, fitness and personal rewards. Yet she has written and edited lifestyle features for more than 20 years and serves as consultant on indulgence for Kraft Foods.
Eastman's popular book, Simple Indulgence: Easy, Everyday Things to Do for Me (Andrews McMeel 1999), is a collection of stories on how women relax. It has been featured in several national magazines, and Eastman has appeared on radio and television shows across the country.
"I remind people that it's OK to give yourself a treat, even if it's a very small one," Eastman explained. "I have stats and facts on how little pleasures improve us mentally, physically and spiritually."
Eastman is style editor at the Los Angeles Times's Orange County edition and was editor of Orange Coast magazine for her first nine years after college. Following her graduation, she earned a master's in English with an emphasis in rhetoric and composition from Chapman University.
Researching her book generated some interesting findings.
"The biggest lesson I learned from interviewing women for a book on relaxation is that having fun comes naturally to us," she said. "We did it so easily when we were kids. But we have been rewarded over the years for being productive and we never hear someone say, 'you did nothing today-well, good for you.' So we put aside our playfulness and become more and more productive.
"We do two or three things at once because that's the only way to stay ahead of our challenging days," she said. "But we need to reward ourselves for being so efficient. It's amazing how a five-minute break can change us from feeling like burnt-out machines to being our satisfied selves again."
As style editor, Eastman assigns staff and free-lance writers and edits features for the feature and California sections. She worked her way through college as an assistant at an Irvine advertising agency and as an editor at Maui Magazine. Perhaps it was an omen that, just out of college, she wrote a cover story for a national magazine on "Job Burnout," a new term that caught national interest and gave her 15 minutes of fame as a "burnout expert."
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