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Category:

Balance

What’s On Your [Endless] List?

Before I could sit down to wish you all a serene and loving holiday season, I had to check things off my list. YOU are the priority, but my nagging mind reminded me that: The butternut squash would go bad if I didn't peel and cook it-- The gifts had to be shipped...

Don’t Judge Me!

My apartment is a mess. My kitchen renovation, delayed since July, is in its final stages, which means that there is currently a large plastic sheet dividing my living room from everything else. My brand new stove sits in the dining area. Pantry items and dishes...

When Are You All In?

How often will you do and do, yet remain unaware of how much you've accomplished? I'm fortunate to have another human being listen to me account for my actions twice a week. I prepare for our calls by adding to my ongoing list of Actions before we speak. But it's...

Art and Shame

As I'm stitching circles onto my recently commissioned art piece, my mind goes off in myriad directions, mostly unpleasant. I begin second-guessing each color decision I've made. Is the arrangement of light and dark attractive? Does the orange make it pop or create...

Affirming That Size Doesn’t Matter

I vividly remember a photo of NYTimes cooking columnist Mark Bittman making gorgeous food in his tiny NY kitchen. The image came back to me while feeling nostalgic for the drawers, cabinets and shelves of the large CT art studio I abandoned over 10 years ago....

All I Want to Do Is Sew

Don't get me wrong! I'm adhering to a quarantine regimen of coaching, writing, eating, sleeping and a bit of cleaning. But in between those activities, I choose not to go on social media, read, watch movies on Netflix, or leave my apartment. Which is fortunate,...

How Is Your Relationship with Time These Days?

My action partner started our call bemoaning time management. She's not a complainer, so I took note of her angst around the issue. I blurted out sympathetically, "Time management is a muscle, not a gift!" Only because she paused the conversation, and thanked me...

How Are Your Boundaries These Days?

I credit Wayne Dyer with the quote, "You get treated in life the way you teach others to treat you." He was my first guru starting in the early 80's. It was back then that I began to question my upbringing for the first time. I began to note how that upbringing...

What’s Your Dollhouse?

Katie Settel, a long-time client, called me this morning wanting to start a movement. She is passionate about helping children during this crisis. She's come up with the idea, the organization to sponsor it, and guidelines for contribution. She wanted my help...

I Missed a Day

I've been tracking each day of this quarantine with a list of to-do's in my master notebook. It's my way of maintaining sanity, some sense of normalcy and, dare I say, accomplishment. Yet, today when I went to record the tasks at hand, I saw that I had blanked on...

Weird Al Made My Day

When I concentrate on my personal progress, the difficulties over which I have no control will iron themselves out. That was a sentence in my daily reader yesterday that could not be more apropos for April 2020. I'm always reminded in the Serenity Prayer to accept...

Is It Okay to Be Okay?

I was encouraged this morning reading Madeleine Albright's Op-Ed piece in the Times, Resilience in the Face of Disaster, particularly Bill Clinton's quote, "the quiet miracle of a normal life." The more routinely I go about the day's tasks, the more normal I feel...

What’s Getting You/Me Through This Time?!

Have you let go of perfectionism recently? In light of the world crisis, I decided that it's okay if: My meditation posture isn't totally erect There's a morsel of almond butter stuck to the glass jar I'm recycling (don't yell at me!) I don't know how to keep zoom...

Laurie Klein Made My Day

"It's our job as creatives to put good stuff back into the world," Laurie Klein, my friend and creative guru, declared during our virtual zoom dinner this evening. Although we hadn't spoken in a few years, I received an invitation to and attended Laurie's "virtual...