This is my first post for the Your Turn Challenge. Every day for the next seven days, I will post here. Progress toward my goals: Marathon: On Track. I started week two of the Couch to 5K program this morning. I’ve managed to suck my son in; he ran with me this morning, and says […]
We spend our lives stuck in a single frame. You may not remember the old movie projectors, the ones that ran a strip of film in front of a bright light to project the moving image onto the screen. The little ones I watched in grade school in the 80s (that were twenty or so […]
I heard about this one on a podcast recently. Unfortunately, I can’t remember whose podcast or which episode–I listen to several episodes of a number of podcasts every day, and I’m not very good about taking notes–but the principle stuck with me. You may have heard of this principle already. It’s the cure to a […]
This is the article I started to write on Monday. But that article turned into something else, and I went with it (that’s the kind of thing you get to do when you aren’t writing for an editor). A few people seemed to like it. What I meant to write was more instructional, less abstract. […]
We spend most of our days waiting for someone else to choose us. We raise our hand and wait patiently for the teacher to call us. We apply to schools and wait to see which one wants us. We apply for credit so we can buy things we can’t afford without it. We send our […]
Our culture’s pursuit of comfort is nearly pathological. We sit on soft chairs in front of 60-inch TVs, snacks at hand to stave off the first hints of hunger. Our homes and cars are climate-controlled to our individual tastes. Compact fluorescent or LED lighting ensures every corner is brightly lit at night so we don’t […]
A few days ago, I saw a mock high school commencement speech that made me want to grind my teeth. The speaker, a well-known comedian, spent ten minutes or so belittling his audience, telling them, in essence, that most of them are pathetic losers who will never accomplish anything, never amount to anything. He talked […]
A few days ago, we talked about looking back. Of course, life can’t be all about what came before; if we’re not looking forward, it’s hard to get anywhere, and harder to know where we’re going. We wouldn’t take a road trip without an idea where we’re going. Why, then, do so many of us […]