I tripped and fell in the parking lot as I was going home from an event one evening last week. I didn’t break any bones or have any significant injuries, but as I hit the pavement I felt immediate pain in my left hand and wrist, and in both knees. It was mild enough that one of my first thoughts wasn’t about how badly I might be hurt, but about the fact that I probably tore a few holes in my favorite pair of dressy [...]
I did some analysis a few days ago on a project I’ve been working on, and was surprised at what I discovered. Actually, it would be more accurate to describe it as “a project I started almost a year ago that was going well, then got stalled and abandoned, and now feels like just another one of those projects I started but never finished.” Do you have any of those? The project was a personal challenge inspired by a friend of mine who decided on [...]
We had friends over for dinner last weekend, and our meal included cheesecake for dessert. It was from a recipe I’ve had for a long time, although I’ve never actually made it before. It was labor-intensive and time-consuming, with a lot of prep work required and some tricky steps along the way. There was one point at which things didn’t look the way they were supposed to, and I started worrying that instead of cheesecake, we’d be eating cheesecake soup for dessert. But it turned [...]
“The more we simplify, the easier life is.” That was the bottom line, literally, in an email I received from a friend recently. Her email was about an article she had just read that had to do with cleaning out our closets. The first thought that popped into my head was, “When did she see my closet and realize how badly I needed this advice?” For the record, she’s never been near my closet, and that’s not why she emailed the article to me. The [...]
I got a phone call a few days ago from a very close friend. The call came early in the morning, and the first thing she said, other than, “Did I wake you up?” was, “I have to tell you about the dream I just had.” I love phone calls from her that start like this. She has vivid dreams that often seem prophetic in nature, and are always profound and inspiring. In this one we – as well as several other friends – were [...]
I started wearing glasses when I was in fifth grade. I still remember squinting at the blackboard, even from my desk in the second row. The teacher’s writing on the board seemed lighter and “fuzzier” than it used to be, and was getting harder and harder for me to read. It was such a gradual change that I didn’t realize I was the one who was changing. A standard vision test at school alerted my teacher, then my parents, to the problem. A trip to [...]
I had a medical procedure done this week, one of those “preventive maintenance” tests that should be done every so often – in this case, every ten years – once we reach a certain age. Preparing for it required following a low-fiber diet for five days. I could eat plenty of white bread, rice, and potatoes, but no whole wheat products or high-fiber cereals. Canned fruits and cooked vegetables were okay, but fresh fruits and raw vegetables were not. This was very unsettling to me. [...]
Three things. There seems to be something magical about three things – at least when it comes to getting things done. Like many people, I make daily To-Do lists, and I have a love/hate relationship with them. They help me plan and organize my day, but they often seem like an albatross around my neck, weighing me down with too much to do, not enough time to do it, and the guilt and frustration of not getting everything on my list done by the end [...]
In an episode of a television show I enjoy, one of the main characters acknowledges that he seems to see the best in people even when nobody else can, and he speculates that this must be an asset in some lines of work, but may be a handicap in his. He’s a rookie cop, and the person he’s telling this to is his father, who is also the police commissioner of New York. Another television show has a character who sees the beauty in everything [...]