A Pearl in the Storm

I just finished reading the book “A Pearl in the Storm.” It’s a memoir by Tori Murden McClure about how she challenged her internal war against helplessness by putting herself in the hands of the volatile Atlantic Ocean, by herself, in a rowboat. It was a physical, mental and emotional challenge larger than anything [...]

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Going Car Light

Ideas…easy. Changing habits…not so much. Two weeks ago I said I’d track my trips in an effort to reduce car driving. I proceeded to rush on through life without changing or tracking anything, until today. Today, I looked back over five days and wrote down the trips I made. Turns out, I was in the [...]

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Losing A Yard, Gaining A Plot

In our marriage we’ve had at least seven different yards. Seemed like the thing to do when raising children. With every new move, we made room first for a swing set, then a trampoline, later we added a hot tub which we loved and we always had a firepit to roast marshmellows and unwind on [...]

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How Much Can I Lose?

“It’s not about stuff,” she said through tears. “He never talked about stuff in the end.”
I ran into an old friend at a conference last week . Sadly, she experienced the death of her husband since I’d moved away. Yet she is strong and is finding her way through a darkness nobody wants to navigate. [...]

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Going Carless?

I visited a friend in Portland, Oregon, after a conference last week and was impressed that she and her husband have decided to go carless. They only have one car. She bikes a few miles to her work everyday and he works from home. She has found a local grocery store who delivers for $10…way [...]

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Are We Screw Ups?

“Are we (screw) ups?” Right away in the movie Away We Go, Virginia asks this of her boyfriend, Burt, while they’re sitting in a shack of a house.  She’s anticipating their first child and feels the raw emotions that come with stepping into it.
“What do you mean?” he asks?
“I mean, we’re 34 and we don’t [...]

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Celebrating 26 Years

Yesterday was our 26th wedding anniversary. Sometimes birthdays, holidays, anniversaries and the like pass without much thought. Last year, we were a couple of weeks away from the biggest move of our life when our 25th rolled around. Even though it’s supposed to be a milestone anniversary, we barely took note in the daze of [...]

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Moving On By Letting Go

It surprises me how much time, energy and courage it takes to transition to a new stage of life. Seems like once you are done raising children you should just be able to start traveling or whatever you envision for your newfound “freedom.” Yet, we’ve recently spent many weeks talking about what our second half [...]

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Southern Toughness: It’s NOT the heat

After being a mid-westerner all my life, I was sure it would be next to easy street moving south in terms of the weather. The locals all warned me about the super hot and humid summers. We moved last July so I am fully aware of the North Carolina heat, but it wasn’t much of [...]

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Going Native

I’ve recently discovered some signs that I may finally be going native. I no longer stand at the copy machine trying to rid my head of the code from my old job and remember the new one. I no longer have to interrupt someone every 30 minutes to find out where something is. Where are [...]

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