In 300 words, here are my recent favorite witticisms from my children. #5: Where do we keep the long-handled things? Last night, my four-year-old was looking for a hockey stick. I told him it was where we keep the brooms. When I saw him a few minutes later, I followed up. “Did you find it?“ “Yes,” he replied. “I found it in the broom room. … Continue reading I Found It In the Broom Room – Five Witticisms from Children
Disney announced they are releasing, Mufasa: The Lion King at the end of 2024. December 20th, to be specific. More than thirty years since the first release in this beloved series we are getting the backstory on Mufasa. How did he become one of the greatest leaders of the Pride Lands? Why was Scar so angry and cynical? I love backstories. They help me understand … Continue reading The Gift of a Backstory
Over the 62 episodes we’ve produced, I’ve been lucky to talk with enough bloggers on the Sharing the Heart of the Matter podcast that I do with Vicki Atkinson to know it’s a pretty universal experience that we felt that nervous feeling before pushing the “publish” button. Definitely for our first post – and for many subsequent posts as well. It has me thinking about … Continue reading Bravery, One Publish at a Time
I think I’ve been using the word “hope” wrong. I often use it interchangeably with “wish.” As in, “I hope you have a safe trip.” Researcher and author, Brené Brown, describes hope as a cognitive process: “But hope is not what most of us think it is. It’s not a warm, fuzzy emotion that fills us with a sense of possibility. Hope is a way … Continue reading The Cognitive Process Called Hope
Recently I was in a noisy restaurant with some friends and acquaintances recently when I heard someone behind me say, “Before I became a parent, I never thought I would ever…” It caught my ear so I turned to find it was a friend, the mother of a three-year-old, who had started the sentence. I asked her to repeat herself. “Before I became a parent, … Continue reading In Hindsight
My brother introduced me to a new phrase when were talking a few months ago about Dutch Bros Coffee. Dutch Bros is a West Coast company that he described as “an overnight sensation thirty years in the making.” I asked for clarification. My brother said that Dutch Bros is a darling of Wall Street since this went public at the end of 2021. But they’d … Continue reading Years In The Making
I was standing frozen on the front on my yoga mat this morning. I do a series of seven sequences of about 14 poses each. It only takes me about 15 minutes but it’s amazing how often I unroll the mat, step into position, and find that I don’t want to begin. I know that the sixth sequence with side plank pose is the hardest … Continue reading Just Start
I have a friend who is doing some work for one of the Internet’s earliest entrepreneurs. He started out from humble roots – one of his earliest entrepreneurial endeavors was collecting wayward hubcaps and selling them to a local body shop. But he also had an aptitude for computers so he earned himself a scholarship to Stanford. One of his first businesses was the only … Continue reading You Get What You Pay For
Several years ago, a friend of mine went to climb Kilimanjaro with her then boyfriend. She was in her early forties, about 5 feet tall, and about 100 pounds. He was 6’3” tall and probably 250 pounds. Because she had climbing experience and he didn’t, she’d did as much as she could to help him prepare. She worked out with him. She helped him with … Continue reading What Do You Do When Things Get Hard?
Have you ever browsed through buy nothing or free-cycle listings? The posts for items people are giving away for free are delightfully creative. Recently, a friend turned me on to them and the micro-stories were so intriguing. Here are some examples: Example #1: I can get rid of it now that the son-of-a-b!tch is gone. Example #2: I should have known that I’d never use … Continue reading Micro-Stories
Why does change get a bad rap? Our cells are dying and being replaced continuously. I think the skin on your pinky finger will completely slough off by the time you finish reading this post. Okay, I admit, I just made that metric up and this post isn’t THAT long. But generally speaking, we’re always changing, right? David Eagleman, a neuroscientist who teaches at Stanford, … Continue reading Ch-ch-changes
The mom of one of my dearest friends passed away recently. I’ve known this family for almost 50 years, so she was like a second mom to me as well. Because her death was expected, I’d been dancing with grief for a couple of weeks before it actually happened. But even so, when I heard the news, a heaviness settled onto me. It was sadness … Continue reading The Therapeutic Effect of Stringing Some Words Together
The other day I clicked on a headline that was presented to me on the default home page for my browser. It was something like, “This is the best hike in Washington.” The article that it took me to was crap. So much for AI generated content. While it did name the trail, it gave its location as something south of the border with British … Continue reading The Internet Is Sometimes Desperate
A couple of weeks ago, I took my kids to a performance of The Nutcracker. As an indication of how steeped they are in the style of the Pacific Northwest, where getting dressed up means putting on your good fleece, I said something my eight-year-old daughter about wearing a dress. She practically choked out the words, “What do you mean, dress?” But I digress before … Continue reading A Note About Style and Newspapers
The other day I was editing a post I’d written about the dichotomy between gratitude and greed when a similar post popped up from the delightful and lovely blogger, Julia Preston. It wasn’t exactly the same – she was talking about a similar tension between love and fear. But it was close enough that I felt my internal defensiveness spark off instantly. Something like a … Continue reading Am I Copying? Getting Over Writing Defensiveness
The last time I took a new job I wasn’t a writer. Well, I wrote white papers and technical manuals so I could put pen to paper. But I didn’t have a personal writing practice. But four months into a new job and I’m surprised how much creativity is a part of my job. Sheesh, that sounded dry. Bear with me – I think I’m … Continue reading Creativity as a Job Skill
Two days ago, I was in the car with my friend on the way to listen to a book reading. As we drove, my friend commented on how observant my four-year-old son is. It immediately sparked some stories about conversations we have when he’s riding in the back seat of the car. Like on a recent frosty morning when we passed a baseball field and … Continue reading Creatively Seeing
What happens when your husband dies in an avalanche and then you marry his best friend? It’s a fascinating question that artist and writer Jennifer Lowe-Anker set out to answer in her 2009 book Forget Me Not. The Backstory Jennifer Lowe-Anker was married to the famous climber, Alex Lowe, and they had three sons together. When Alex had another really early morning departure for a … Continue reading Climbing to The Top of the Rankings
At a recent elementary school open house, my daughter’s third grade teacher said something profound. Well, she said a lot of wise things, because the knowledge of teachers is immense. But one particularly thing about writing and reading that caught my ear. Here it is – that she looks for books for these young readers to be either “windows” or “mirrors.” Windows are the books … Continue reading Writing Windows and Mirrors
Jesus wept. The shortest sentence in the Bible. As a pastor’s kid, this is the type of trivia that I know. Although I know I’m not alone, and that one doesn’t have to be a Bibliophile to know this. The short sentence has power. You couldn’t guess that I know this from my writing though. The readability analysis of my writing is forever telling me … Continue reading The Power of Short Sentences
