Blog
I launched my blog in 2009 when I was wrestling with a midlife crisis. Since then, the digital world has changed so much. I was new to both Facebook and Twitter when I started blogging, and I was still rocking the BlackBerry for email. Instagram hadn’t launched yet. Podcasting and short videos are what the cool kids do these days, blogging is considered old fashioned. But I still find it the best way to share my thoughts and to profile people who inspire me.
I hope you’ll find something here that inspires you, or at least sparks a conversation. Some of my favorite posts are pinned to the top, scroll down a bit more to find the most recent, or check out the categories in the sidebar.
We’ve taken extended trips to New Orleans and San Francisco. We also lived in New York for a month before ultimately moving.
Because so many people have asked how we’re able to pick up and live elsewhere for a few weeks, I’m starting work on an e-book answering that question.
Once I stopped coloring my hair, I began to understand I was defying the cultural expectation that we not age, like Peter Pan, and that challenging social norms is unnerving to some.
One night, when I was having a recurring nightmare of being chased by an unknown attacker, I just stopped.
I turned around to finally see who was chasing me.
When I stopped running, he stopped running.
And I woke up.
I have never had that nightmare again.
Writer and artist Emilie Wapnick says you’re not a quitter or flaky or waiting for your real passion to show itself. Instead, if you’re a polymath or Renaissance man, you bring three superpowers to your multiple interests.
The cliche of the middle-aged guy buying a sports car and ditching his wife for a girl half his age always struck me as a desperate move to avoid aging — when the pressures of parenting and career collide with the increasing aches and pains and wrinkles of a body in decline, hook up with someone who knows nothing of those…
My husband and I have thrown dinner parties for years, but I always thought of them as big social occasions — a reason to haul out John’s mom’s silver, to set a proper table with fresh flowers and present a multi-course sit-down meal. We started hosting weekday spaghetti suppers late last year, inspired by our friend Pableaux’s weekly red beans…
Late in the summer, I finally made it through an aging copy of Psychology Today in a magazine stack next to the bed. I kept that magazine since 2010 because its cover promoted an article on making your own luck, though I can’t begin to explain why it took me two years to read a well-written piece on a topic…
There are certain life events that seem to amplify our natural tendencies toward perfectionism — planning a wedding and hosting Thanksgiving dinner among them.
We pull out a Martha Stewart yard stick to measure our efforts and almost certainly fall short. In real life, most of us don’t have a staff of dozens invisibily helping and we won’t make five turkeys so we can photograph whichever one looks most perfectly golden, then Photoshop out any flaws.
In short, real life is messy.
What do you think when you watch re-runs of old TV shows where married couples retire to a bedroom with two twin beds a very safe distance from one another? You might make a joke about how Lucy got pregnant with Ricky way over there — remember, it was a time when you couldn’t even say “pregnant” on TV —…
Oyster happy hour at Fort Defiance is one of many things about this Red Hook bar that’s a little off the radar. Red Hook is a Brooklyn neighborhood that’s legendarily hard to get to. The closest subway stop is maybe a 15 minute walk and bus service can be spotty, even on a night when it’s not pouring rain on…
Crisscrossing New York to eat oysters is more than gastronomic exploration, it’s a celebration of New York’s history. In a story on the New York Public Library website headlined, History on the Half-Shell: The story of New York City and its oysters, Carmen Nigro writes: “the oyster reigned supreme as the quintessential New York City food long before pizza, hot pretzels, bagels,…
Sometimes making Month of Oysters work is more a game of logistics and timing than taste and aesthetics. Tuesday night I had an evening meeting so I had to work around the timing and location of that commitment. It was an engagement worth accommodating. One of my favorite authors, Richard Russo, asked for my help rounding up younger writers and…
Venue: Desnuda Location: 122 E. 7th St., East Village, Manhattan Phone: 212-254-3515 Website: http://desnudany.com/main.php Oyster happy hour: Sunday and Monday, $1 oysters all day. At their new location at 221 S. First St., Williamsburg, Brooklyn, oyster happy hour is the same thing plus $1 oysters 6-8 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. When I started researching oyster happy hours for this series, it seemed Desnuda turned up on everyone’s…
Venue: The Wayland Location: 700 E. 9th St. (corner of Avenue C), in the far East Village, also known as Alphabet City, Manhattan Phone: 212-777-7022 Website: http://thewaylandnyc.com/happy-hour-menu/ Oyster happy hour: Monday-Friday, 5-7 p.m. oysters are $1 East Coast of the chef’s choice, $4-5 beers, $6 wine, $7 cocktails, $5 oyster shooters One of the sad facts of life is that happy hours are more common during…
Venue: Blue Ribbon Brooklyn Location: 280 5th Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY Phone: 718-840-0404 Website: http://blueribbonrestaurants.com/rests_brass_brook_main.htm Oyster happy hour: Oyster of the bar’s choosing for $1.50 each, $8 for a glass of l’Oiseliniere Muscadet, from opening to 6:30 p.m. seven days a week. Monday through Friday, they open at 5 p.m., Saturday and Sunday you can get started at 4 p.m. Several years ago, my husband and I…
How the hell do you do that? It’s a question my husband and I have gotten frequently since 2011. That’s when we first went to live in New Orleans for two months. Since then we’ve returned to New Orleans multiple times, we have lived for a month in San Francisco, then after that in a small town in southern Long Island close…
We just celebrated 21 years of marriage John and I got married 21 years ago today. I can confidently say I love him more today than I did back then. One of the reasons I love him more is that I love me more – and that’s in part because he’s helped me grow into a happier, healthier, more loving and generous…
Where did you get your ideas about what it means to get older? Are they serving you? Too late I have this vivid memory: I’m in middle school, that time when being cool becomes so intensely important. I get a too-short haircut I hate. I worry about how long it will take to grow my hair back out, because what if…
The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020 Somehow it feels like more than a year and less than a year. Amirite? What’s better and what’s worse in your life? So many people have lost work and more than 500,000 Americans have died of COVID-19. Even those of us who are healthy and employed have seen changes…
Getting clear on what you need can help you teach your loved ones what to do for you And you thought the Bernie memes were done … What is your ideal Valentine? If you watch Valentine’s Day ads, you would assume every woman is pining for roses, diamonds and a car. If they are moms in pandemic, they might actually just want…
Even though we knew a new calendar doesn’t fix anything, so many of us were looking forward to a fresh start. The occupation of the U.S. Capitol showed us the error of our ways. Are we really still only in January? Just this month, we’ve watched video of armed protesters overtaking the U.S. Capitol, read about a new more contagious…
Even if the external environment stays as troubling as it is, we can make small tweaks to improve our day-to-day lives. In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear advocates for small improvements compounding over time. He calculated that if a plane takes off in Los Angeles bound for New York but it’s off course by just 3.5 degrees, it will land in Washington,…
With all the extra work of staying on top of 2020’s challenges, have you lost the time and energy for fun? Girls just wanna have fun … I bet you do, too. Just like kids, we need recess, too. When you hear “play,” do you translate that to goofing off or wasting time? Do you feel you’re just too busy for…
Do you know that adage about the frog in a pot of boiling water — the frog doesn’t notice as the temperature slowly rises until he’s eventually boiling? If you’ve been too busy just staying afloat to reflect on how your life has changed during the pandemic, maybe it’s time to take the temperature of your water. What’s better? What’s worse?…
We can get so attached to the way things are, which can mean working really hard to protect against any dangers we imagine. But who imagined the coronavirus pandemic and related recession rocking our worlds, followed by demonstrations for racial justice? Could you have planned for 2020’s many jolts to our before lives? The truth is: Life is always changing. Once…
We are here, you and I, because our mothers lived long enough to bring us into the world. And their mothers survived and their mothers before them.
We inherited the DNA of survivors.
Whatever your family suffered through, whether that’s slavery, war or the Holocaust, your bloodline was not snuffed out. The women who delivered you here endured.
I pray that our societal near-death experience gives us a shift in perspective, and that we don’t simply recover but transform through it.
Would you decide where you’re going on a road trip, drive until you get there, then just zoom on past without even getting out of the car?
Or would you take time to enjoy the destination?
Experts point to cognitive, physical and physiological benefits when families eat together.
It also just feels good to connect.
Need some inspiration or pointers to share a meal? Check this out.
Welcome to the new home of my blog, Newvine Growing! For a decade now, I’ve written about what I describe as evolution, revolution and living life intentionally.
When I was in business school, we joked that cleaning the bathroom never sounds as good as when you have an exam to study for. Usually cleaning the bathroom sounds tedious and dirty, but compared to feeling confused or overwhelmed by difficult material, scrubbing the toilet feels like safe harbor.
If you work full time, a Mayo Clinic study suggests you might lower your stress level by spending the equivalent of just one day a week doing work you find meaningful. So four days a week can still be filled with tedious meetings and administrative bureaucracy for you to feel good about your work.
It might be time to let go of my concern that the popular middle school girls won’t approve. Whose opinions do I actually value instead?