Last week I was asked if I would be interested in a job with my old team. I was flattered. I have tremendous respect for my former colleagues – I really liked working with them. They are some of the best people I’ve ever worked with. The organization is growing and doing lots of good…
Category: Life
Morning Punctuation
I don’t say this enough, much less think it, but I am thankful for the small moments of splendor and wonder that punctuate my days. Em dashes and ellipses that are more about pauses and parenthetical asides than they are omissions and deletions. The sky this morning has all the makings of a painting… stripped…
Swimming Upstream
On Tuesday, I went to the bank. The teller said hello, asked me how my day was. This was a work trip – I make deposits at this bank almost every week. I asked her how her day was and she replied with that half-joking voice of dread we’ve all come to recognize in our…
Morning, Noon, and Night
Morning: Hunger It’s early. The sky is starting to show the first pinks of light. My view of the horizon is blocked by trees and I’m tempted to run out to a field where I can see all the colors of dawn. I’m hungry – enough so that my stomach feels…. I can’t figure out…
Wasting Their Sweetness (and Resenting It)
Expectations are resentments under construction. -Anne Lamott A few weeks ago, I sent a few poems off to a friend for some feedback. I’m not sure why. In my mind, I feel like I’m at a crossroads of sorts. I don’t really need someone to tell me to keep at it, but I kinda want…
Brain Tuning
I used to have ideas. I haven’t had a good idea in a long time. I stole that sentiment from a spoken word song by Morphine, “My Brain” My whole brain was out of tuneMy whole brain was out of tuneI don’t know how to tune a brain, do you?Went into a brain shopThey said…
June 16, 2018
Four years ago I went on a first date that ended up changing the course of what I consider to be my second adult life. I suppose if I take a butterfly effect view of life, I could argue that I’ve gone on lots of first dates that changed the course of my life –…
Fool on the Hill
The other day, driving and listening (because that’s what I do), I was wondering, almost wishing, I could get my father to listen to some of these podcasts about introspection and the internal self. I don’t think he would do it. I started to think of it as a potential mission – to maybe save…
Save the Cats
The piece of papery trash swirling under the car in front of me emerged from the shadow of the undercarriage. A black and white kitten stumbled and spun, stumbled and spun. I swerved to the right to avoid hitting it. I straddled it between my tires and quickly passed over it. In my rear view…
3 Days, a Lot of Words, and Little Progress
June 7: It’s not quite 6 am as I start this. I’ve spent the last twenty minutes noodling around with two ideas. One was an imagined conversation with a therapist in which I’m told to be kinder to myself. It’s filled with phrases like, “give yourself permission” and “start using could instead of should.” I…
A Bucket Full of Knots
Say you promise to be at your desk in the evenings, from seven to nine. It waits, it watches. If you are reliably there, it begins to show itself – soon it begins to arrive when you do. But if you are only there sometimes and are frequently late or inattentive, it will appear fleetingly,…
Lost and Found
I am embarrassingly late to the podcast craze. Enough so that I think it may have peaked and started to fizzle a few years ago. I hadn’t ever listened to one until a few months ago when I started listening to Hidden Brain. I don’t know, I think I felt somewhat above them – a…