When someone you love dies, you will remember the oddest and most ordinary things. My mother, for instance, who died when I was in college, would always leave the last bite of her sandwich uneaten, claiming she was too full for more. Then I grew up and did the exact same thing, unconsciously mind you, which made sandwich eating its own kind of grief counseling. I can’t remember a single trip we took, other than to visit family, though surely we must have taken vacations together. But I...
24 days ago • 2 min read
Not to brag, but this summer I grew fourteen gorgeous heirloom tomatoes from a single plant. The tomatoes were so tasty and sweet, I (briefly) considered ditching chocolate for my daily dessert. In early August, as I snipped the last tomato from the vine, I noticed many of leaves looked dry, a dark purple creeping around the edges. Spots dotted the trunk and branches. I was sure the plant was a goner, a pessimism echoed by gardeners who tole me it was time to chop the plant down and look...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Welcome to all the new subscribers! I’ve been on a delicious summer break and this is my first newsletter back. In case you forgot what you signed up for, this is a bi-weekly newsletter where I get curious about life’s complexities and ways to unlock human potential. I recently heard someone refer to climate change as a “walk around problem,” a problem that seems neither immediate nor catastrophic, allowing people to ignore inconvenient realities as if they aren’t there. It’s an apt...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
If you read personal development stuff at all, you’ve almost certainly heard about how Warren Buffett tried to help his private pilot, Mike Flint, get some focus in life. He instructed Flint to make a list of his top twenty-five goals, then circle the top five. As the story goes, his pilot assumed the top five were meant to be his areas of primary focus. But no no! Buffett told Flint that he now had only five priorities. The bottom twenty were distractions he should avoid at all costs. When...
5 months ago • 2 min read
There are two occasions that seem to stimulate our fear of missing out (FOMO): events that are rare and events that everyone we know will be attending. The first is about feeling special while the other is about feeling included. In my mind, what made the recent display of the northern lights so cool was that it produced both FOMO conditions simultaneously. The large explosions of electromagnetic radiation were considered rare, but they were also widely accessible (at least in some parts of...
5 months ago • 2 min read
There’s an adage in the writing world that I love: all it takes to call yourself a writer is to write. You don’t have to publish, you don’t need to make a living from your writing. You don’t even need to be very good! Now that I’ve actually started writing my first novel, it’s a reminder I need almost hourly. You are who you say you are. But there’s a danger too, one we don’t talk about much in encouraging, self-help circles. You are who you say you are, and you alone get to decide who you...
5 months ago • 2 min read
I like to imagine Earth Day is like an anniversary where I just so happened to marry a planet. Which makes it a good time to think about how I might be a better partner. Because I feel like the Earth has been trying to tell me something, tell us something, and none of us have been listening very well. (I realize this might be awkward if you’re just learning now that the Earth has been in a polyamorous relationship with every living creature since the beginning of life itself, but you were...
6 months ago • 3 min read
When my high school kid started a unit on poetry in her American Lit class, I was both surprised and delighted she asked for my help. As someone who reads and has published poetry, it’s not hyperbole to say I’ve been preparing for this moment my whole life. My goal wasn’t just to help her with her homework, but to help her see that the interpretation of art is an act of creation in its own right. My father, another lover and reciter of poetry, used to tell me that words have flavors. Which...
6 months ago • 3 min read
I found myself staring down a familiar conundrum this morning. The soap dispenser was getting low (we use the foaming kind), and even after several vigorous pumps, the result was only a few small puffs with hardly any lather. It’s a pedestrian problem, I know, but I hate to waste. Usually I just keep the ineffective pumping going until I can’t stand it anymore, then throw it away. Or my husband will add some water, which never works, and we end up dumping it anyway. But this morning I had an...
7 months ago • 4 min read