This assignment asks us to be vulnerable, honest, brave and willing to both praise and censure ourselves as well as accept praise and censure from others. What could happen in your life if you got honest with yourself and if others were willing to go to a place of loving honesty to really give you the opportunity to reflect and grow as a person? Could you take it? Would you hear it and ponder it, or would you ruffle your feathers and defend your actions?
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25 trips around the sun with my boy
Even in that moment, holding this tiniest, most perfect of little persons, my mom didn't say yes or no. It wasn't that all these people didn't have opinions, but every single one of them knew I was going to have to do this largely by myself; that answer had to come only from me. I looked down on little Quinn John, and I decided to be his mom.
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2020: my year in review
Beyond the devastation (and our late in the year diagnosis), COVID was a gift for Dr Marry and me. I closed down my offices in March and have been working from home ever since. That means Dr Marry and I had all spring and summer and much of the fall together since his job was also a hybrid of in-person and virtual teaching. We walked and biked more than we ever have. I baked copious amounts of bread and went back to my pre-full time job delight of searching for and trying fun new recipes.
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Daily Dose celebrates 100 episodes!
Starting today, we're moving Daily Dose to its own Facebook page. It's time for it to have a new life of its own, separated from my work with extraordinary. We hope you'll tune in, like the page and start sharing it with your network. At its core, Daily Dose is about exploring the things that are holding us back and finding ways to move forward into our best, most joyful life.
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Winning the game
But it's hard to play defense against a player you've never encountered. Turns out that the x I was trying so desperately to solve in the equation was something utterly out of my control: another person and his secrets. I grew up in a household where one person managed and controlled all the money, and that one person was not even the one making the money. Some stuff becomes hardwired in your brain, even if you know it's not absolutely correct. This was one of those things.
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Finding a financial shoreline
I simply don't care about bean counting. In fact, Quinn and I took Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University program at our church when he was in high school. Dave's a bean counter; I knew pretty quickly it wasn't going to resonate with me despite some good ideas. That and he's one of those conservative religious guys who says things like, "Guys, you know your wife's gonna shop, right?" [barf!]
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Putting our money where our mouths are
In all the months of COVID, Dr Marry and I have eaten out very little. But one day this week, he came home early, and it was a beautiful, sunshiney fall day. I asked him if he would walk to my office to check mail with me. It's a perfect 1-mile walk, and on a day like that, it's a dream to traipse under the golden canopies of trees and crunch through the dry leaves under foot.
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tempus fugit*, part II
I'm leaving this residency a less fearful and more inspired, thoughtful person. The entire time I lived in income-based housing, I said that I wasn't really working much because what job could possibly pay me enough to value the one commodity I have always prized above all else? Time. (Believe me, I look back on that version of me with some level of shame at that entitlement. Reality Bites is hardly comedy or fiction for me. #HardcoreGenXer)
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I’m all out of sorts
I think I got cocky about my "new" rhythm, assuming (incorrectly as it turns out) that in the nine days since my first round of this unease, I had shaken it and formed a completely new set of habits that would just carry me going forward. I was utterly certain that Dr Marry could come visit (wouldn't change that, regardless this dumb day's outcome, likely in part from that disruption) so far into my time away that it wouldn't throw my routine into chaos. Turns out my confidence was misplaced.
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The day before my world turned upside down
So I try to keep September 10, 2001, always present in my mind, even though I can't tell you a single thing that actually happened on that day. I keep it present because that day is a perfect example of the "before" time to whatever instance abruptly stops you in your tracks and hijacks your world. Before the diagnosis. Before the accident. Before the breakup. Before the ______________.