Newsletter Therapy

Hey Reader! There is altogether too much summer happening for me to be serious about work right now! So today I'm just writing you a note to tell you that you're on the right track, you're doing good work, and you deserve all the best. Keep working, keep trying, keep doing what you're doing. If you're anything like me, sometimes your idea seems like the best in the world, and sometimes it feels like you're knocking your head against the wall. But you ARE in the right place, at the right time,...

Hey Reader! When I graduated from college I assumed I'd be doing a lot of traveling. ✈️ 🚐 🚌 🚢 🚲 🚁 🛳️ 🏍️ 🚞 I'd already been to Europe and South America and Africa, as well as a majority of these United States; it seemed a reasonable assumption. 🌎🌍🌏🌎🌍🌏🌎🌍🌏🌎🌍🌏🌎🌍🌏🌎🌍🌏🌎🌍🌏🌎🌍🌏🌎🌍 And while I did manage to get out and about during my 20's, it all fell apart when I bought a house and had a couple of kids. 🏡 My partner wasn't a huge traveler, and let's just say we didn't have an income that would support...

Hey Reader! My front yard has a bit of a slope, which means that the soil drifts slowly downward until it slides over the curb into the street. So several years ago I started to build this tiny fence made of wine bottles. It's just high enough to keep the yard from migrating to the street, and I think it looks pretty good. A work in progress which hasn't progressed very quickly. The challenge with this project is that there's a fairly brief window in which to work on it. When the nearly daily...

Hey Reader! 50% of parenting is repetition. True? Feels true. It’s one of the many aspects of raising littles no one tells you about. You will repeat yourself constantly. It’s how we learn, so it kind of makes sense, but that’s cold comfort when you’re telling your child for the ten millionth time to put their dishes into the dishwasher. Or to brush their teeth before bed. Or to leave sticks outside. That last one may not apply to all parents, but my kids were big fans of bringing the outside...

Hey Reader! Comparison is the thief of joy. And yet it’s often hard to resist. Yesterday I read an email from someone I don’t know very well - a business acquaintance - and it made me feel like a straight-up loser who has done nothing in the past 25 years but read celebrity gossip and complain about the weather. My own fault; I went looking for reasons to feel inferior and so of course I found them. She’s done a bunch of interesting things, and has apparently done them all annoyingly well....