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.
Though the 10 years I’ve been in New York are apparently long enough to give myself permission to buy some pretty outrageous clothing and jewelry, the Midwesterner in me worries my choices might be too far from the norm. I imagine arriving at a party, a restaurant or the office and all of a sudden it’s middle school again and the cool girls are snickering.
Lately I have been pondering what else I can do with our living room concerts — showing art on the walls while musicians perform, hosting writers for a reading in between music sets? Or maybe I try something different entirely — a home-based supper club idea with food or cocktails as the focus instead of music?
James Reindl worked for 31 years for The Associated Press in roles from journalist to corporate staff. He and his wife, Graca, decided in 2012 to change their lives by applying for the United States Peace Corps. They have been serving as agri-business volunteers in rural Ghana since October 2014 and will finish their Peace Corps service in December.
I don’t know many people who don’t have goals or aspirations but almost everyone I know feels the tension of not accomplishing what they’d like. Some people struggle to find their passions but it seems many more have an idea in mind yet keep getting pulled away by distractions, procrastination and just life itself. Why is that? A blog post by Jennifer…
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.
Not long into the first day of a weekend improv retreat, one of the women asked somewhat plaintively, how can we get to this place in real life? How can we be comfortable risking embarrassing ourselves and how can support other people in taking risks?
Lara Zielin was inspired by reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Big Magic” and running into Josh Gates from “Expedition Unknown” to overcome fear and have adventures again.
Amanda Enayati tells us that when it comes to stress, it’s less about what’s actually happening to you and more about how you think about what’s happening. Perception is everything.
Set yourself up to succeed this year by not trying to make too many changes at once, by focusing on your goal but not giving up if you slip, and by remembering why you want to make the change.
An article on Business Insider headlined “A neuroscience researcher reveals 4 rituals that will make you happier” summarizes some key findings of UCLA neuroscience researcher Alex Korb and his book The Upward Spiral.
Few people are brave enough to own their honest story in the way Jojo did, even fewer would put it on their business website. I asked for her permission to share her story of finding happiness through trial and error and eventually getting brave enough to listen to her heart.
I’m grateful she and Rachel both said yes so I can share with you this story of loving hard.
Let’s not forget about giving thanks — really giving thanks and meaning it, on Thanksgiving and beyond.
I cringe every time I see a fellow biker with no lights. Not only is having a white front light and a red rear light the law, it’s just good common sense to make yourself visible to drivers, pedestrians and other bikers. You wouldn’t drive your car at night without turning on your lights, would you?
If you aren’t a morning person, you’re like about 40 percent of people who aren’t the early bird that catches the worm. Research says your body clock is unlikely to change, so best to embrace your night owl preferences.
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…
We don’t all have a choice about our circumstances in life — where and when you were born, your skin color, gender and medical condition when you were born, the resources your family had were all dealt to you. We do have a choice about how we view our circumstances. For everything I can think of to complain about in my life,…
A few years ago, I wrote a blog post wishing we had a regular local hangout but lamenting that it didn’t seem meant to be. I thought we didn’t go out often enough to cultivate regular status, and that on those occasions we did go out, we were inclined to try someplace new instead of returning someplace. Turns out we…
Real estate signs in fancy neighborhoods promise “luxury living,” but I know better. True luxury is actually owning a house rather than being owned by one. My family used to live in a fancy neighborhood. Really fancy. It was a planned subdivision as flawless as a movie set. A hundred houses sat on wide, curving streets featuring cul-de-sac islands filled…
A recent visit to my hometown had me reminiscing about one of my favorite high school jobs. As a teenager, I lucked into a surreal collection of work experiences. My first job, if you don’t count baby-sitting in middle school, was as a clown. I hosted children’s birthday parties, painting kids’ faces, making balloon animals and running a series of loud,…
The last few days, my heart has ached with the suffering of others. Several friends are going through difficult times, including grief, illness and break ups. On the larger scale, it’s news of yet another mass shooting, continuing tensions between police and black civilians, children who don’t have enough to eat … so many big issues, so much heartache. It can make…
I have been using my meditation time to work on the notion of letting go of the past. If someone hurt me in the past or I made mistakes, it’s time to move on. I can learn from those experiences while not dwelling on resentment or regret. If I behaved in a certain way because I felt it helped me in an earlier phase of my life, I don’t need to continue that behavior if it no longer serves me.
We’ve been invited to join one of the elaborate villages that particularly impressed me last time, Black Rock French Quarter. A collection of camps surround a structure that echoes the design of the New Orleans French Quarter, with offerings including a bakery, a farmers market, a bath house, and our camp, Golden Cafe.
Celebrating its lucky 13th year on playa, the Golden Cafe is your home for exotic cocktails and live music since 2003.
My mom was the opposite of a helicopter parent. I’ve heard terms like free-range parenting and no-rescue parenting, all of which sound like my mom. Though she expected me to excel in school and respect my elders, she left it to me to figure out much of how to live my life. I often went out to play for hours unsupervised, and as…
I have begun setting my passwords using motivational phrases so every time I log into my computer, it acts as a technological mantra.
