Hello all! Good morning from a very rainy California! You might have heard, California has been dealing with severe rain in recent weeks, specifically the past week, and we have been under evacuation warning due to risk of flood a few times in the past week. Some nearby areas have actually been evacuated. The state … More Musings from Flood Warnings
When they were young, my kids really loved the kiddie rides at Funland in Rehoboth Beach DE. It’s extra special there because many of the rides have been maintained for several generations. As a kid, I rode and loved some of the same rides my daughters did. One of our favorites was one we called … More Death, Daughters & Kiddie Rides: A Lesson
If you’re a long-time reader of my blogs, you know that I spent about two decades living the life of an expatriated American. I am proud of that time in my life. I first went abroad as a Peace Corps Volunteer, to Poland, not long after the collapse of the Soviet system, and then lived … More Beware: Garbage In, Garbage Out
Have you ever felt like quitting? Whether it’s a martial art, a marriage, or a job, we’ve all felt like giving up the fight at some point in our lives. So what do we do when we face the temptation to walk away? Why people quit. Some do it because of the stress involved in … More Quitting: Should I walk away?
I had an epiphany a while back: The Neverending Story is an entirely different movie when you are an adult. I watched it with my kids a while back and they loved it. My son requested it daily for several days afterward. The scene with the wolf scared him slightly, but much like Sebastian, he … More The Books You Read Are Safe…
So, as I have mentioned more often than is dignified, I have a theater company. Specifically, an online theater company we started in 2020. We did well critically in our first season, but the opposite of well in terms of making any money. We were also really bad at even breaking even. Frankly, we weren’t … More Allow Me To Use This Space To Express My Opinion That I Have Too Many Spaces To Express My Opinions
Several days ago, I found myself sitting in a Zoom meeting at work. My mind was wandering, mostly because I wasn’t even for sure why I’d been invited to participate. An idea suddenly came to me, so I reached for the notebook I always keep at hand to capture writing topics when they come. The … More Troy’s Law of Complexification
Leonardo da Vinci was the most creative genius in history. Of course, saying that I learned things from Leonardo is perhaps a bit risky, because in fact Leonardo is the very embodiment of genius. As we know, Leonardo lived in a particular era for humanity, the Renaissance, when literature, philosophy, science and the fine arts … More What I Have Learned from Leonardo da Vinci
Billy Osogo I ponder endlessly on writing. As an art, there’s so much to it that even those we look up to as its masters seem to be just scratching the surface. I recently came across an excerpt by Kenyan writer Bivanyanga Wainana. In his book, One Day I Will Write About this Place he … More WRITING SPRINGS
I find writing to be an immensely rewarding investment of time. Whether it’s writing poems like my friend Ellen or plays like my friend Jack Canfora. Whether it’s journaling, writing short stories or full length novels. I came across an excerpt that struck a chord. It’s by Nobel Prize Winner Mario Vargas Llosa. In his … More CALLING ALL WRITERS: ASSEMBLE!
More or less every week for the past year I’ve put 3 random thoughts together, along with a couple of quotes and other bits and pieces, in a post called 3-2-1 Mindset Mondays. Anyway, below is a highlight reel of those thoughts. I started with 150 and kept cutting it down till I got bored. … More 88 Pointless Thoughts About Life
Greetings, Dear Reader! The SnapDragon Family is currently on the road, seeing some sights during this all-too-depressing season of lockdown during winter in Pennsylvania. (starts shivering, and hides head beneath a blanket) We’re cozied up in our Berkshire Class-A RV, embracing the open road and relishing the chance to travel to the American southeast. Sure … More SnapDragon Speaks: On All I Need.
Hi. SnapDragon here. It’s been awhile. And who knows why, really. I mean, I do have a toddler. I tend to the house and home. I technically work full-time, although it’s more like a part-time, online gig at the moment. (No complaints. But it still takes up minutes of my day.) And by the time … More SnapDragon Speaks: On Thought-Jelly.
“Throughout our lives we long to love ourselves more deeply and to feel connected with others. Instead, we often contract, fear intimacy, and suffer a bewildering sense of separation. We crave love, and yet we are lonely. Our delusion of being separate from one another, of being apart from all that is around us, gives … More Missed Connections
“I’d far rather be happy than right any day” – Douglas Adams We get addicted to the stories we are spinning. It feels good in our minds to “figure it all out” or “be in the know.” Somehow we believe that if we know what is happening we will be safer from it. I can … More Being Right is a Powerful Narcotic
Provided by Marushka from Skeleton At The Feast There are many good arguments on behalf of contentment. I am in fact completely in favor of contentment, so if you find yourself at peace with your life please don’t read any further – because today I make the case for a creature called Dissatisfaction. What is this … More Dissatisfaction: A User’s Guide
These three aspects seem to be so well delimited that it’s hard to believe they co-exist inside of us all the time. Even though yesterday seems to be over and that tomorrow is yet to come, we do think and behave now based on yesterday and tomorrow. Wanna hear how this got into my mind … More The Past, The Present and The Future
Since yesterday I posted something about dreams, I’d continue the “series” with the reasons why sleep matters so much. Since we sleep somewhere around one third of our life, I think it’s important to find out what’s its purpose, don’t you think? If you’re a human, you sleep. However, let’s get a more “professional” look … More 4 Reasons Why Sleep Matters!
This is a veeeery tricky and important question for me. I don’t even know if I should ask it. So what is blogging? A blog is a site, but what does this verb refer to? Is it about writing? Is it about reading? Is it about both and many more? Is the purpose of it … More What does Blogging really mean?
Would you like to get more things done on a daily basis? Do you feel like losing too much time with… nothing? And nevertheless, you still are afraid of a tight schedule? Regardless the general impression, a tight schedule brings more freedom than anything does. And it allows us to get more things done. I’ve … More How to Manage Your Time Better