Carrying on Despite the Email Blitzkrieg

The house is quiet this morning.

The kids’ winter break started on December 21. I modified my schedule so that any work was more of the “clean up/set up/prepare/shallow dive” variety. Noise and festivities do not make for sustained writing.

It’s been a phenomenal break. We all exhaled, enjoyed, celebrated, and overindulged. I said yes (YES!) to things that, during the normal school year, usually get my hearty no. I worked through piles of magazines and books.

Play and rest. Until we hit today.  (more…)

2018 — Rise, Shine, and Toss the Uns

That’s the bracelet I wore every day I worked this past year. Every day. You can’t look at something every day and not have it sear into your soul, good bad or otherwise. I chose that word because 2017 was a shitshow and I could have chosen to splash around in a wading pool of my own tears, or I could rise.

I refocused and recommitted. I did the work. (I say that unapologetically because I was just completely blown away by Shondra Rhimes’s Year of Yes [more on that later] and we all should be bold if we’ve done the work. ) (more…)

Here Be the Mighty Yawp! or I’m Done. It’s Time to Start.

Both times I gave birth, I did not fall in love with my children right away. Maybe it was the drugs, or the hormones, or the exhaustion, or some form of shock, or some combination of those, but it took a while for my heart to catch up with my head. I wanted to be one of those mothers who cooed and snuggled and felt that some form of destiny had been fulfilled in one messy whoosh. But I was more “Oh. Babies. Cool. Can I hold them and sniff their heads?”  (more…)