Then there's also the final word of the existing phrase to contend with: "Disruption." I'm sure the word came to me because I was literally experiencing a massive disruption to my routine: I was away from home and work for 14 days with only my thoughts to keep me company. It was a huge jolt to my systems—to the way I had been kind of autopiloting through life: Get up, go to spin, get ready for work, go to work, come home, make dinner, attend an arts event, come home, read, go to bed. Repeat.
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Lessons from cross country skiing
Sometimes the path you thought was smooth sailing goes awry—a bit or a lot. Sometimes it falls completely apart. It's in those moments that you need to know your why. Why are you venturing out on your own? Trying to start a new business? Working to leave what is certain behind and move into the great unknown? And then you have to simply put one foot in front of the other and trust that the uncertainty won't last for very long and that you can weather it.
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2022, here we come!
What are your goals for 2022? What word or phrase resonates with you and why? If you're stuck on identifying a word, try this clarifying worksheet. As I said at the start of 2020, it might not feel like it's shedding light on anything immediately, but let it percolate a bit and see if you don't hear something when you read it out loud that inspires you.
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The start of the next leg of the journey
Look just at the path. Look as far down it as you can. Notice how it bends ever so slightly, out of sight? We think we're on a straight, even path, but we can only see as far as we can see. What is coming is completely unknown to us. That's my favorite thing about literal paths. I love it when they disappear, which they all do because our eyes can only see so far; they move beyond our sight line. However they cease to be immediately visible, that's the part of the journey that has anticipation, anxiety, fear of the unknown and mystery. It might be more of the…
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2021: My year in review
n other ways, COVID has opened up the world because there's been different time to explore people and things online. I've enjoyed developing new relationships with people who are invested moving through the world like I am, and I've rekindled some very old friendships with regularly scheduled zoom calls. *Because of that, I think some of what is dragging on me is that I'm realizing that some of the friendships I thought were rock solid have just not held up very well these last couple of years. People who were once important to me have not felt very supportive of the path I am pursuing. This isn't something that I've…
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We’re day drinking all week long, and then this popped up. What a difference five years can make.
If alcohol is ruining your life or the life of someone you love, I implore you to get real about it and find help to overcome it. I promise you there is an abundance on the other side of drinking to excess. There can still be trips to fancy bars and fun holiday drinks to order. But there's also human connection, real engagement and a healthy, joyful life.
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The wisdom in his eyes
Of all the things I'm grateful for, and that list is lengthy!, the fact that I was so distraught I never made a concrete decision about the arrival of this little unplanned person ranks right up there. That decision was made for me when Quinn arrived and there was no alternative plan in place.
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A ripple effect of being married to an alcoholic enjoying sobriety
I can see in retrospect, and with so much more knowledge about Mazz in particular and alcoholism in general, that I was making my own sets of excuses. I was desperate not to believe what this person was saying about Mazz. In re-reading these exchanges, which I haven't looked at it in nearly 10 years, my stomach is tight, my anxiety is ratcheting up and I am immediately back in the swirl of knowing something is desperately wrong but not being able to articulate it. I don't know this because I haven't spent enough time with spouses of addicts or those in recovery to prove this theory out, but I…
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Change is inevitable; how you manage it is up to you
This weekend, seven years ago. I thought my heart would break in two and never recover. It was a time I had dreaded for a number of years: the weekend I took Quinn to college. I would never have chosen for Quinn to leave. I loved having him across the hall; I adored seeing him everyday, and our 18 years together flew by all too fast. But the thing is, my life, all our lives, couldn’t grow, evolve and get even better, until we accepted that first hard change of moving Quinn to college. Let me tell you a story from Quinn’s drop off day: Freshman weekend there were a…
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Now I gotta cut loose, footloose…
I didn't do anything particularly incredible yesterday, minus start to articulate my performance art piece to Laura—that is going to be incredible, but more on that as it develops. Yesterday wasn't for dong anything incredible. Yesterday was for stopping to mark the transition between a life of "have to" to "get to." It was a day for reflecting on where I was 25 years, 6 months and 27 days ago and where I am now.
