Birthdays

Baseball, Birthdays, and The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

September 04, 2015

Some weeks fly by faster than others. Some are more filled with simple pleasures and everyday adventures. I just experienced one of those weeks when my mom came to visit for a week. She lives in California, so we’re lucky to see each other once a year.

We started by anticipating the pleasure for several months leading up to her visit. Anticipation is a great simple pleasure, don’t you think? After we made airline reservations, I started making lists of things I wanted to do while she was here. Mostly what we wanted to do was talk and be together, so we didn’t plan activities for every day. We spontaneously chose to do what we felt like doing, whether that was taking a swim in the pool, shopping, or going out to lunch. I put aside my usual chores and activities so that I could sit and talk. And watch movies in the afternoon—decadence!

Some other highlights:

We had a family gathering so she could reconnect with my husband’s family who live locally. We used this get-together to celebrate two milestone birthdays: my son’s 21st and my father-in-law’s 80th. They share the same birthday!



We headed over to St. Petersburg for a Tampa Bay Rays baseball game. My mom loves to go as much as I do, and Nick joined us. The Rays have been having an up and down season, but they won the day we went—go Rays! (Maybe we should go more often?)


Entrance to Tropicana Field

Nathan Karns pitching

We all went to Cinebistro for dinner and a movie on my son’s actual 21st birthday (Cinebistro is a 21-and-older establishment), one of our favorite outings. (We saw The Man From U.N.C.L.E.—a fun movie we all enjoyed.)




Now Mom is safely home, and I will be playing catch up on household chores and writing tasks. I feel refreshed from slowing down and enjoying the moments we spent together. It’s September, so I’ll be thinking about how this year has gone, and what I still would like to accomplish in 2015. (After all, September is the New January.)  And trying not to think about how long it will be before I see my mom again.

Mom getting ready to go home. Isn't she cute?

Henry Rollins

Summer's Ghost

September 02, 2015

Photo courtesy Aaron Burden

“We know that in September, we will wander through the warm winds of summer’s wreckage. We will welcome summer’s ghost.”
—Henry Rollins

Happiness

Link Love—Too Darn Hot Edition

August 28, 2015


I’m done with summer. I want to cry every time I go outside. It’s been hot and humid for a long, long time and I’M TIRED OF SWEATING EVEN WHEN ALL I’VE DONE IS GET THE NEWSPAPER FROM THE DRIVEWAY. Sorry about that—just my little rant for the day. Instead of putting my antiperspirant to the test, I think I’ll stay indoors and surf the ’net. Want to join me?

Does happiness scare you? Check out this post for ways to allow yourself to feel joy.

Solo travel—for women, it's one contributing factor for happiness. 

Zenpencils.com turns quotes and concepts into cartoons. I discovered the site through this one. Here are two more of my favorites: http://zenpencils.com/comic/94-the-two-wolves/ and 
http://zenpencils.com/comic/kalam/.

The Yet Mindset. It’s more empowering than simply saying “I can’t.”

Can reading make you happier? I think so. And so does Ceridwen Dovey in “Can Reading Make You Happier?” 

It might seem odd to include this link in Link Love, but “Is It Time for a Digital Break?” As summer winds down, wouldn’t it be nice to take a day, a few days, a week, away from the digital world, clear your mind, and get ready for the season to come? 

Happy Friday!

Barbara Ellen Sorenson

Down Among the Mallards

August 26, 2015

Photo courtesy Gunter Hofer

Introduction by Ted Kooser: Several years ago, Judith Kitchen and I published an anthology of poems about birds, and since then I keep finding ones I wished we’d known about at the time. Here’s one by Barbara Ellen Sorensen, who lives in Colorado.

Pelican

Under warm New Mexico sun,
we watched the pelican place
himself down among the mallards
as if he had been there all along,
as if they were expecting the large,
cumbersome body, the ungainliness.
And he, sensing his own unsightly
appearance, tucked his head close
to his body and took on the smooth
insouciance of a swan.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2013 by Barbara Ellen Sorensen from her most recent book of poems Compositions of the Dead Playing Flutes, Able Muse Press, 2013. Poem reprinted by permission of Barbara Ellen Sorensen and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2015 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Flow

Summer Rerun: 7 Things You Can Do to Feel Happier Right Now

August 21, 2015

Note: I'm taking a more relaxed approach to blogging this summer, so occasionally I'm going to rerun a previous post. I hope you enjoy this one, from 2013.



You probably have a pretty good idea of what gives you deep, lasting happiness and contentment. But sometimes what it takes to reach that deep happiness doesn’t make you feel…all that happy. What if you’d just like to give your mood a little boost—what can you do to feel happier right now? Here are seven simple things you can do to feel happier right now:

Make a List. List your dreams, your goals (but not your chores), your top-ten favorite movies, the books you’d take to a desert island, the five happiest moments you can remember, or the next three places you want to visit. (As I was preparing this piece, Gretchen Rubin put up this post, strictly about making lists!)   Gretchen writes, “Making lists of this sort is a terrific exercise to stimulate the imagination, heighten powers of observation, and stoke appreciation of the everyday details of life.” 

Go outside. A dose of natural light might be just the ticket to make you feel happier. If you can be near trees or water, that’s even better. Connecting with nature is a better pick-me-up than a cup of coffee, according to research published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology. So step away from that computer screen and take a walk in the park. 

Reframe “failures.”  When you’re striving for an ambitious goal, you’ll probably face some setbacks, and yes, even some failures. One way to feel happier about this is to reframe your “failure,” according to happiness researcher Robert Biswas-Diener in The World Book of Happiness. “Sometimes your most treasured goals run up against serious obstacles. Sometimes these obstacles are outside circumstances and sometimes they are related to how we have framed the goal in the first place. When this happens we tend to react with frustration and disappointment. But by learning to think flexibly about our goals and to adjust them in the face of failure, we can end up feeling happier.” Thomas Edison is probably the best known proponent of this theory—he is often quoted as saying, “I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” 

Go for the flow. According to social psychologist David G. Myers, “Happy people often are in the zone called ‘flow’, absorbed in tasks that challenge but don’t overwhelm them” (The World Book of Happiness). Take up a hobby that offers the chance for flow—gardening, sketching, crafting, baking—whatever appeals to you. You’ll find more happiness when involved in one of these activities than if you spent the same amount of time watching TV, for example.

Complete a nagging task. You know, that errand you’ve been putting off, the phone call you need to make or the household chore that you hate but you have to do. If you’re like me, unfinished business nags at the back of your mind, draining some of the happiness out of your day. Gretchen Rubin writes about this here, and about how to get yourself to do those tasks you don’t want to do here. 

Listen to upbeat music. Researchers at the University of Missouri found that participants’ feelings of happiness increased when they listened to upbeat music and focused on lifting their moods. Other studies have found that music not only affects mood, but changes how you perceive the world. Create a playlist with your favorite songs for times when you need a mood boost. (And for extra happiness, sing along!)

Choose to be happy. Commit to enjoying the next 24 hours no matter what. It’s amazing what a simple commitment to being happy can do for you.

How do you lift your mood?

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

An Excess of Shells

August 19, 2015

Photo courtesy Unsplash

“One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. One can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few. One moon shell is more impressive than three. There is only one moon in the sky….

“There are so few empty pages in my engagement pad, or empty hours in the day, or empty rooms in my life in which to stand alone and find myself. Too many activities, and people, and things. Too many worthy activities, valuable things, and interesting people. For it is not merely the trivial which clutters our lives but the important as well. We can have a surfeit of treasures—an excess of shells, where one or two would be significant.”
—Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift From the Sea

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Books

Why You'll Have to Pry My Books From My Cold, Dead Hands

August 14, 2015


“I love the book. I love the feel of a book in my hands, the compactness of it, the shape, the size. I love the feel of paper. The sound it makes when I turn a page. I love the beauty of print on paper, the patterns, the shapes, the fonts. I am astonished by the versatility and practicality of The Book. It is so simple. It is so fit for its purpose. It may give me mere content, but no e-reader will ever give me that sort of added pleasure.”—Susan Hill, Howard’s End is on the Landing.

I could have written these words. Like Hill, I am a bibliophile—one who loves and collects books. My books are friends. To have my friends around me is a comforting simple pleasure, a delight. I’m all for living with less—less clutter, less activity, less stress. Except when it comes to my books.

You’ll have to pry my books from my cold, dead hands.

In addition to my ever-growing pile of to-be-read (TBR) books, I have many shelves of books I’ve already read. They’re not valuable first editions, but they’re treasured and priceless to me. I cull them from time to time, but I take so much pleasure in my personal library that it would be painful to disperse it. (If you’d like a peek at my shelves, click here—I was part of Danielle’s Lost in the Stacks Home Edition feature at A Work in Progress.)

I don’t keep every book I buy—only ones I think I’ll reread at least once, books I’ll use for reference and/or inspiration, and books that were once important to me that I can’t quite give up yet.


Some of the books I own I’ve searched for over years, or stumbled upon serendipitously. Less than a handful are autographed by their authors, including a copy of the children’s classic Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day. Many years ago I heard the author, Judith Viorst, speak at my local library, and was completely tongue-tied when I asked her to sign my book afterwards. Just looking at that book reminds me of the entire experience of that night.

My books don’t have to be beautiful, but as I’ve gotten older (and my bookshelves more crowded), I’ve started being pickier about what they look like. It pained me that my second-hand copy of All Passion Spent had an unattractive cover illustration (but not enough for me to turn down the copy that became available on Paperback Swap). I covet the lovely dove-gray Persephone books, though I’ve yet to collect my first one. Perhaps looking for books I think are attractive will slow down the entire acquisition process!

I use books to boost my mood, and it’s comforting to have my favorites at my fingertips. There are certain books I reread frequently—not having them on hand might constitute an emotional crisis.

As William Giraldi writes in “Why We Need Physical Books”: “Across a collector’s bookshelves, upright and alert like uniformed sentinels, are segments of his personal history, segments that he needs to summon in order to ascertain himself fully, which is part of his motive for reading books in the first place—whatever else it is, a life with books is incentive to remember, and in remembering, understand.”

I start every day in my office, where I allow my eyes to play over the titles on my shelves while I drink my morning coffee. So many of the books I’ve kept have left a lasting mark on me, and sometimes I need to see them to remember. I need to pull them off the shelf and flip through them, letting them transport and transform me for a second time. What could be more of a simple pleasure than that?

Do you keep books after you’ve read them? What are your favorites?


Entertainment

Now What?

August 12, 2015

Photo courtesy Mikael Kristenson
Introduction by Ted Kooser: A poem whose subject needs no introduction! Melissa Balmain lives in New York State, and her most recent book is Walking in on People, from Able Muse Press.

Nightmare

Your TV cable’s on the fritz.
Your Xbox is corroded.
Your iPod sits in useless bits.
Your Game Boy just imploded.

Your cell phone? Static’s off the scale.
Your land line? Disconnected.
You’ve got no mail—E, junk or snail.
Your hard drive is infected.

So here you idle, dumb and blue,
with children, spouse and mother—
and wish you knew what people do
to entertain each other.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2014 by Melissa Balmain, “Nightmare,” from Walking in on People, (Able Muse Press, 2014). Poem reprinted by permission of Melissa Balmain and Able Muse Press. Introduction copyright ©2015 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Horses

If My Horse Had an Instagram Account

August 07, 2015

No matter how old you are, every summer needs a little bit of silliness, don’t you think? Back in May, I shared photos that my cat might have posted if she had an Instagram account. Well, it’s a Friday in August (need I say more?) and I’ve had a busy week, so today I’ll turn the blog over to Tank and his (imaginary) Instagram account:

One of my jobs is to stand guard over our property. This is what I see from my post. Sometimes THINGS rustle around in there and I have to sound the alarm by running around and bucking.

This is where I do my work with my human. I like it best when we try something new. Or when we stand while she talks to the other riders. I could do that all day.

We’ve been jumping over this black thing lately. I could do more challenging jumps, but she’s still learning and I have to take care of her.

This is my best friend. We play together over the fence line, and sometimes he takes off my fly mask for me.

This thing sometimes dispenses treats when I spin it (you can see my teeth marks). It appeared in my paddock one year at what my human calls “Christmas time.”

Be it ever so humble, this is my very favorite thing. I’m a man of simple tastes.

I am handsome, am I not?

Happy Friday!

Rest

On a Summer's Day

August 05, 2015



“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.”
—John Lubbock, The Use of Life

Music

Speaking of Downpours...

August 03, 2015



It’s been raining here for what feels like forever, but is really only about two weeks. But still. This is the Sunshine State, not the I-Haven’t-Seen-the-Sun-in-Days State. Everything is wet. Fortunately, we have no flooding in my neighborhood, but there are streets closed in Tampa and elsewhere because of the rising water. All I want to do is curl up under a blanket and read or watch a movie (and snack)—I have to force myself to get my work done. I miss the sunshine, and the energy I get from it.

And to make things worse, my iTunes shuffle has been playing rain-related songs this morning! It started with Neil Sedaka’s “Laughter in the Rain,” and moved on to Sara Bareilles’ “Let the Rain.” So out of curiosity I checked my song list to see what other songs I had that were related to rain. I came up with “It’s Raining Men,” by The Weather Girls, “Here Comes the Rain” (The Mavericks), “Here Comes the Rain Again” (Eurythmics), and “Africa”—as in “I miss the rains down in…” (Toto). On a brighter note, I also have “Here Comes the Sun”  (The Beatles), and “Chasing the Sun,” (Sara Bareilles again). Should I make a playlist?

If I wanted to, I could download and add the following rainy songs:

“Singin’ in the Rain,” Gene Kelly
“Rainy Days and Mondays,” The Carpenters
“Who’ll Stop the Rain,” and “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” Creedence Clearwater Revival
“Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” B.J. Thomas
“It’s Raining Again,” Supertramp
“Fire and Rain,” James Taylor
“Bring on the Rain,” JoDee Messina and Tim McGraw

But I don’t think I will. I’ve had about enough of the rain, and I want to keep music the simple pleasure that it is.

I hope your Monday is sunnier than mine.

What’s your favorite rainy day song?

Juliana Gray

Summer Downpour

July 29, 2015

Photo courtesy Gabriel Santiago

 Introduction by Ted Kooser: I’ve talked a lot in this column about poetry as celebration, about the way in which a poem can make an ordinary experience seem quite special. Here’s the celebration of a moment on a campus somewhere, anywhere. The poet is Juliana Gray, who lives in New York. I especially like the little comic surprise with which it closes.
Summer Downpour on Campus

When clouds turn heavy, rich
and mottled as an oyster bed,

when the temperature drops so fast
that fog conjures itself inside the cars,
as if the parking lots were filled
with row upon row of lovers,

when my umbrella veils my face
and threatens to reverse itself
at every gust of wind, and rain
lashes my legs and the hem of my skirt,

but I am walking to meet a man
who’ll buy me coffee and kiss my fingers—

what can be more beautiful, then,
than these boys sprinting through the storm,
laughing, shouldering the rain aside,
running to their dorms, perhaps to class,
carrying, like torches, their useless shoes?

Reprinted from “The Louisville Review,” (No. 59, Spring 2006) by permission of the author. Copyright © 2006 by Juliana Gray, whose most recent book of poetry is “The Man Under My Skin,” River City Publishing, 2005. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Everyday adventures

Five Ways to Cope When You're Overwhelmed

July 27, 2015

Photo courtesy Schicka

Every life has its ups and downs, its simple pleasures and everyday adventures. It also has times when an adventure becomes a bit more than “everyday”—when it challenges your skills and emotional resilience, stretches you beyond what you think you can do, and threatens to overwhelm you. This is how you grow.

Lately, overwhelm has been my constant companion. I’m hip deep in revitalizing my freelance writing—simultaneously taking online classes, building a writer’s website, and brainstorming ideas for pitches. There’s nothing at all curvaceous about my learning curve right now: it points straight up!

I know I’m not the only one who’s experienced this. We all have times in our lives when we take on big projects or face major life changes that leave us feeling exhausted and scared. Here are some ways I’ve been coping that might help you, too:

Do something related to your project every day, no matter how small. Make lists of ridiculously small steps and cross them off as you go. Build on those steps. If you’re learning something new, reread the information you read yesterday and you’ll probably understand it better. Experiment over and over with that new art technique, or set a timer and work on your project for 15 minutes. Just keep at it. Working on it every day helps to desensitize you to the scariness.

Sit with the uncomfortable feelings. Let them roll over you, and often you find they pass and you can get on with your work. If you’re especially worried, allow yourself a designated “worry time,” and whenever anxious thoughts arise, tell yourself that you’ll think about them during worry time.

Plan treats for yourself while you’re going through this experience. Choose something comforting for mind, body, or soul, something that refills your emotional well. Last week I had a massage and met a friend for lunch to offset the hours I spent struggling with my new website.

Keep your focus on the small step right in front of you. Don’t allow yourself to drift into thoughts of “what if,” fantasize about failure, obsess about the next 10 steps you’ll need to take, or even let your mind wander to the big picture. There will be time for that later. I’m encouraged by E.L. Doctorow’s words about writing: “[It] is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

When it all becomes too much, step aside before you reach the crying and/or cursing stage (or, even worse, the drinking stage). If I’m tired, or if I’ve been at it for several hours, little setbacks can seem insurmountable. When I start to feel overwhelmed and hopeless, I know it’s time to stop for a while. I’ll return when I’m feeling rested and energetic again.

Even though I’ve felt overwhelmed lately, I’ve also felt more energetic and excited than I have for a while. I think the challenge is worth the struggle—and that makes me happy.

When you’re faced with a big, overwhelming project or experience, how do you cope?

Experiences

Never Regret

July 22, 2015

I regret nothing.

“Never regret. If it’s good, it’s wonderful. If it’s bad, it’s experience.”
—Victoria Holt

Comfort zones

Summer Rerun: Why You Should Do Things Badly

July 20, 2015

Note: I'm taking a more relaxed approach to blogging this summer, so occasionally I'm going to rerun a previous post. I hope you enjoy this one, from 2013.

 When I started writing this post, I had just gotten back from riding my bike for the first time in…years. My kind husband recently cleaned out the garage, brought my bike down from the ceiling where it had been suspended, pumped up my flat tire, lubed the chain and adjusted the seat so it’s just right. I finally wheeled it out onto the nature trail, and while I hadn’t exactly forgotten how to ride a bike, let’s just say that I didn’t look very graceful doing it. There was some irrational weaving and one or two interesting experiments with gears and braking, but soon I was pedaling happily down the trail. I wasn’t very skilled, but at least I didn’t hit a tree.


The Great Bike Ride was, I hope, the first of many rides, each one getting a little smoother. I admit that on this first ride, I felt kind of silly. I *should* be able to ride a bike, right? I learned long (long) ago. But right now, I do it kind of badly. And that’s OK. Doing things badly is important, and you should be doing things badly, too. Want to know why?

If you never try anything you’re not already good at, you’ll never learn anything new.

Maybe you’d like to learn to sketch, try salsa dancing, or bake the perfect pie. If you’ve never tried it before, it’s likely that you won’t be good. It’s the rare person who is good at something the very first time he/she tries it (and you have my permission to hate those people). If you never step outside your comfort zone and risk doing things badly, you’ll never know if you even like to samba or how creative your sketches can be. (And if your goal is the perfect pie, please call me—I’m willing to taste your experiments.)

Once you’ve tried something for the first time and you decide you like it, guess what: you might still do it badly for awhile. Many, many worthwhile and satisfying things take time to master. The point is, if you’re not willing to do something badly, at least for a little while, you’ll never know just how good you can be.

For me, horseback riding has been a prime example of doing things badly. I recently saw a video of my first ride on Tank, and frankly I was appalled (and I felt sorry for Tank). In the years I’ve had him, I’ve taken many riding lessons and spent hours practicing, and I know I’m a much better rider than I was then. Thankfully, I didn’t give up when I found that good riding is much harder than it appears.

When you try your new things (and I write this to myself as much as to you), be patient and don’t be embarrassed or self-conscious about doing things badly. Realize you’re learning and expanding your horizons. Be proud of your badness for badness, eventually, leads to goodness.

What would you like to do badly?

Still practicing... (Photo by Holly Bryan)

Chelsea Woodard

Plucked From Memory

July 15, 2015



Introduction by Ted Kooser: Surely, some of you have paged through an old book and come upon a dried flower, fragile as a spider web, the colors faded. Here’s a fine poem about pressing flowers by Chelsea Woodard of New Hampshire, from her book Vellum.

The Flower Press

It was the sort of thing given to little girls:
sturdy and small, round edged, wooden and light.
I stalked the pasture’s rough and waist-high grass
for worthy specimens: the belle amid the mass,
the star shaming the clouds of slighter,
ordinary blooms. The asters curled

inside my sweat-damp palms, as if in sleep. Crushed
in the parlor’s stifling heat, I pried
each shrinking petal back, and turned the screws.
But flowers bear no ugly bruise,
and even now fall from the brittle page, dried
prettily, plucked from memory’s hush.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2014 by Chelsea Woodard, “The Flower Press,” from Vellum, (Able Muse Press, 2014). Poem reprinted by permission of Chelsea Woodard and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2015 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Beauty

Five Ways to Cultivate Pronoia

July 13, 2015

Um…cultivate what?

I just came across the term pronoia recently. Have you heard it before? According to Rob Brezsny’s book Pronoia: The Antidote for Paranoia, “It’s the understanding that the universe is fundamentally friendly. It’s a mode of training your senses and intellect so you’re able to perceive the fact that life always gives you exactly what you need, exactly when you need it.” Wikipedia has this to add: “A person experiencing pronoia feels that the world around them conspires to do them good.”

We often don’t have much control over what happens to us, but we do have the ability to choose how we see the world. If we find what we look for, and we get what we expect, why not expect the best?

Here are five ways to cultivate pronoia:

As corny and simple as it seems, count your blessings. Health, family, friends, home, comfort in all its forms—your most basic blessings are the most precious…and often the most overlooked.

Choose your input carefully. With what kind of images, stories, and news do you feed your mind? The frightening, sad, ugly, and negative? Or the beautiful, uplifting, joyful, and positive?

On a related note, actively search for beauty. Look for it in nature, music, art, architecture, food, literature, and so on. What do you find beautiful and uplifting? (For more about the importance of beauty in our daily lives, click here.)

Mahatma Gandhi said, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” If you want the world to be a nicer place, do something nice—for yourself and for someone else. In this way, you’re an active part of the conspiracy to do good.

Let go of judgment when seemingly bad things happen. Life may conspire to give you what you need, when you need it, but it doesn’t always give you what you want, when you want it. (And sometimes it gives you what you definitely don’t want.) You can waste a lot of time bemoaning circumstances you don’t like, or you can listen to some widsom from Captain Jack Sparrow: “The problem is not the problem; the problem is your attitude about the problem.”

Author Susan Jeffers said, “We have been taught to believe that negative equals realistic, and positive equals unrealistic.” But we don’t have to continue to believe that or live it. Let’s cultivate pronoia instead.

Beliefs

First Change Inner Beliefs

July 08, 2015


“There is little sense in attempting to change external conditions, you must first change inner beliefs, then outer conditions will change accordingly.”
—Brian Adams

Refilling the well

I Got Nuthin'

July 06, 2015


Nuthin’ to say this morning, that is. It’s summer. It’s hot. And it’s time to relax. For the next few weeks, I’ll be posting a little less, and Summer Reruns will reappear later this month. I have been working on freelance writing projects, and finished up an essay for a travel writing contest over the weekend (link to come).

Summertime in Florida, with its draining temperatures and wild thunderstorms, is the perfect time for me to let go of my strict schedule, refill the well, and reevaluate where I want to be in a few months’ time. I’m giving myself permission to take time to do all those things.

How about you? Do you have any fun plans this summer? Will your schedule change?