• 2024 - Community - Doing Things Differently - Listening - Physical Space

    Learning to Fall

    Though I mentioned that I try VERY VERY hard not to schedule things in January (or after 5 pm), I acquiesced a few weeks ago for a beginner climbing class at the gym. Things to know before reading on: Sprained my left ankle last year (and it’s still hurting), I have zero arm or grip strength (I drop things all the time), I am definitely of a bigger body and I’m not good with heights. So why did I sign up for this class? Well, four reasons – I found myself with two other beginner climbers (we were all women)…

  • 2024 - Feelings - Listening - Physical Space - Winter - Winter Writing Sanctuary Prompted

    Clearing out and Taking up Space

    Thank you to Beth Kempton and the Winter Writing Sanctuary for this piece. January has me cleaning, organizing, settling things from the old year before I get into the new. (Because as far as I’m concerned, February and March actually start the New Year.)  And as the dust settles from December, I notice there is SO MUCH stuff. I get nervous with too much stuff around. It piles up and all of a sudden, I have to get rid of it. All of it. More than I probably should. It’s like a light switch goes off. And I “MUST DEEP…

  • 2024 - Community - Doing Things Differently - Listening - Winter

    January Soup

    For years, my Google calendar had a banner across all the weeks of January into February. It looked something like this: DON’T SCHEDULE ANYTHING. DON’T DO IT! I KNOW YOU THINK IT WILL BE OKAY BUT IT WON’T! JUST DON’T SCHEDULE ANYTHING – YOU ARE GOING TO BE MISERABLE. I saw it a lot. I saw it every time I added something to the calendar, reading that warning, feeling the sinking feeling in my gut but adding the event anyway. “Because I had to, because this is a singular opportunity, because I agreed to manage x,y,z and it just happened…

  • 2024 - Feelings - Food - Tea

    Maybe it’s not the right time…maybe there is nothing you have to do…

    I have become a tea person.  If you knew me a few years ago, I was NOT a tea person (or a coffee person or a drink person or any type of person that way.)  But I wanted to be a tea person. So bad. For some reason. I had so many (seemingly) failed attempts. I didn’t know why I kept trying. Why I wanted to have tea. For some reason I kept insisting on trying over and over, buying things, and donating them away.   I would take a break. Tell myself that this was crazy, silly. A waste of…