Time Doesn’t Exist
Imagine the Earth devoid of human life, inhabited only by plants and animals. Would it still have a past and a future? Could we still speak of time in any meaningful way? The question “What time is it?” or “What’s the date today?” – if anybody were there to ask it – would be quite…
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2014 Reflections
I started drafting this post by writing, “This year didn’t go exactly as I’d planned.” Then, as I wrote, I realized just how far I’ve come. Wow. It may not have unfolded exactly according to my directive, with the outcomes I wanted, but it’s still been a miraculous, transformative year. Last December 31, I set…
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57 Simple Ways to Give
As a society, we’ve kind of lost the thread about what “giving” means. Our culture is so oriented around stuff that we’ve forgotten what it means to truly give from the heart. Giving Tuesday is an antidote to all the big holiday sales, a day to give back to the community. Or, to paraphrase Gandhi, to be…
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Lessons I’ve Learned from the Weather
The Pacific Northwest is known for being rainy and grey in the winter. In Vancouver and Seattle, clouds can settle in among skyscrapers, creating the sensation of a neverending (and very damp) night. Where I live, though, is a unique geographical space. First, it’s an island, so weather patterns tend to shift quickly anyway. The…
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How Loneliness Can Show Us Where We Need to Heal
When my only close friend moved away, I realized that I had to learn to give myself all the things I’d wanted from that person.
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I Offer Perspective, Not Promises
This is what I wrote in my Notes app the other day: “It goes against my core values to tell anyone how they feel, what they need, how reading/viewing something will make them feel, what they’re doing wrong, what they have to do, what’s wrong with them, who’s “better” than them, what they should think,…
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The Substantial (and Surprising) Benefits of Unplugging from Media
I worked in entertainment from the time I was 22 until I was 39, and then again for six months or so, a few years later. I was a theatrical stage manager, an entertainment columnist before “blogging” was a word; I was a film critic and TV producer, a stand-up comic and a comedy writer.…
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The Joy of Having New Jeans (for the First time in Two Years)
Today I bought a pair of jeans.
For most people, this wouldn’t be news.
I’m ecstatic. This is the first pair of pants I’ve been able to buy in three years. All summer, I’ve been wearing the same pair of light capris (purchased with a gift card from my sister) and occasionally, overalls that are two years past expiry.
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Listening to The Body’s Wisdom (Migraine Edition)
I haven’t yet written about migraine, but the short version is that things happen in my brain when the weather changes. Barometric shifts, and also when other things (things I don’t know how to measure) change; I’m guessing it has something to do with the electromagnetic energy in the air, or how the air particles…
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Expressing Gratitude in Real Time (All Day)
Saying thank you throughout the day reminds me of an Eckhart Tolle quote: Whatever happens in a given moment, “welcome it as if you had chosen it.” Each moment is a gift. Each moment does bring us what we need (even if it doesn’t feel like it at the time). So this is a way of acknowledging that.
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How to Practice Appreciation to Improve Mental Health
“In my own worst seasons I’ve come back from my colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window. And then another: my daughter in a yellow dress. And another: the perfect outline of a full,…
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What Does it Mean to Live Deliberately?
Thoreau had his definition, but this is the 21st century, and I’m not chopping wood for a cabin in the woods (though that actually sounds lovely…). Here’s what living deliberately means to me:
It means prioritizing inner peace, and building that priority time into my day or week, so that the action I do take comes from a place of calmness.
It means being aware of my actions, instead of acting automatically or reacting blindly. It means being aware of what I feed my body, mind and spirit.
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My “Bliss Episode”: Experiencing the Rapture of Being Alive
Update: This experience didn’t happen to me; it happened from or through (the) me. I’m leaving the language of the post, though, because that’s where I was at the time. I’ve added some subheads for SEO.
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Before (I Have Known Pain)
Mine was not a transient depression or anxiety disorder. Over the course of 22 years, my brain was given more than a dozen labels, including soft bipolar, borderline and PTSD – my last psychiatrist finally summed it up as a “rip-roaring mood disorder.” I was “hard-wired” for depression and anxiety because of my family. We had a genetic serotonin deficiency going back three generations on both sides, I’d tell people. And maybe we did. Or maybe we just thought too much.
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Everyone Has a Story. See the Human.
One thing that being a writer teaches you: Everyone has a backstory. Everyone is on their own Hero’s Journey. You are the protagonist of your story, but you’re a supporting-to-background character in others’. Understand, as Buddhists say, that everyone you meet is struggling with something you’ll never know about, and everyone is doing the very…
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The Law of Increasing Flow: Do More By Doing Less
We’re all familiar with the law of diminishing returns: After a certain amount of time, the effort expended on a task yields fewer and fewer results. This is as true of creative work as it is of physical labor. And if you keep pushing, eventually both brain and body collapse. I have a fair amount…
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Living The Mess, or The Backstory of This Blog
Most people arrange their lives trying to avoid loneliness, financial hardship and uncertainty. To do this, they stay busy, seeking happiness in the next promotion, the next job, the next relationship or dream house, or when they have “enough” in the retirement fund. This endless search for external happiness serves as a shield to protect them from life’s existential questions.
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Welcome to My Journey in Progress
One of the biggest reasons I haven’t started this blog before (even though some pieces have been written for nearly two years) is that I’m not “there” yet. Wherever “there” is. I’m still in the midst of the “mess,” still learning and growing, sometimes struggling and occasionally having crises of faith. While most of the labels that were once put on my brain are no longer relevant, I’m not always happy and sunny.
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