So how are you spending this unusual summer? Assuming you and those you love are healthy and employed (all that really matters ultimately), what are you doing to honor this weird gift of a truly slowed down period of time during the best months of our calendar?
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A series of (seemingly) random fortunate events. But how random were they really?
One of Michael's recent posts extolled the virtues of an opportunity he had had a number of years ago to attend/audit a course through Parsons School of Design called Creative Careers. The whole email (and frankly all of them) was really interesting, but I truly loved this sentence:
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A season to remember
My beloved boy is home for a week. I haven’t seen him since Christmas. That’s not that unusual, except that Covid-19 and the fact that he lives in Los Angeles has added an extra layer of stress to him being so far away. I was overjoyed to lay eyes on him when we picked him up from the airport last week, to be sure. Having him home got me thinking about a piece I wrote the spring he graduated from high school—a year I was sure would lead to me shriveling up and dying the day I dropped him off at college in the fall. Clearly, that didn’t happen. In…
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Renaissance Weekend reflection, part II
Renaissance Weekend changed me--made me question everything I thought I knew about who I was and how I was perceived. But it also opened my eyes and forced me to confront some of my own prejudices and stereotypes. I guess my ultimate take away is that one person's remarkable might be another's so, so ordinary, so we all better get comfortable defining ourselves for ourselves and keep trying to shake off what other people seem to think.
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Just my luck
For one moment, the Earth stopped spinning and everything stood completely still as I darted my eyes out to the gaping-mouthed crowd. Then it started up again, and I turned my full attention to the audience, determined to take control of this preposterous moment...
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Taking tea and enjoying the journey
I took this trip as much for my former self as I did for my present self. That girl had great big dreams in spite of her challenging reality. In the face of economic struggle, she taught her young son to enjoy the simple act of afternoon tea and other little joys. She wouldn’t have believed she could ever even seriously contemplate a trip like this.
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Set up to win…if you are white, which I am, so I did
I never doubted that Quinn and I would get out of our circumstances. I certainly didn't know how I was going to ever earn much money, but it was just a given that I would eventually pull us out of that poverty and into the middle class. In fact, it was such a given that until I read this article earlier this week, I could never have even articulated this very notion. It was as factual to me as breathing or blinking or walking--nothing to think about because it's just a simple fact.
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What does your path look like?
This time around, I have let my mind, my gloriously creative imagination, wander to what ifs that are actually within my grasp. I'm not exactly sure how I'll get there, but that's part of the journey that I think you can't understand until you've walked a pretty significant piece of it.
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Committed to it all
So today I sit in my sunroom, overlooking the yard where we happily celebrated making this commitment to each other 12 years ago, and think, as I often have done in these past three years, what if I hadn't held on?
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Until my throat is raw
I have lived an incredibly privileged life, and I have never felt physically threatened by people who are tasked with keeping me safe.