Ride High in 2023

Posted January 5, 2023

Oh my, 2023 feels already rich with promise and delight, wouldn’t you agree? The New York Times has set us up with the 7-Day Happiness Challenge, and The Brain Revolution Podcast shared the Harvard Business Review article “Why Purpose–Not Passion– Should Guide Young Professionals.” Between the two I am feeling that January will be an avenue toward brighter days. Sure, those House Republicans are (currently 10 failed Speaker Votes in) trying to undermine the functions of government. But let’s face it, anyone who actually voted for Lauren Boebert or Marjorie Taylor Greene in the first place, so that they could remove the metal detectors from the Capital building before doing their job, is getting exactly what they wanted. Pure and Total Chaos with a capital C. Maybe it’s the high school teacher in me, but their strategy seems like a recipe for disaster propelled by their narcissistic bragging rights first and foremost. I teach thinking skills coupled with empathy for others that these privileged folks clearly skipped over in their education. So, until those paid public politicians actually stop giggling over their antics and get to work, I will continue to shut them out of my daily and instead feel all the love and gratitude from the core of my family and friends who really do care about me and my best interests. Good plan, right? I propose a conservatorship of your own heart.

Continue reading →

“Languishing” they call It

Posted April 29, 2021

Filed under Life

“It wasn’t burnout — we still had energy. It wasn’t depression — we didn’t feel hopeless. We just felt somewhat joyless and aimless. It turns out there’s a name for that: languishing.

Languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield. And it might be the dominant emotion of 2021.

As scientists and physicians work to treat and cure the physical symptoms of long-haul Covid, many people are struggling with the emotional long-haul of the pandemic. It hit some of us unprepared as the intense fear and grief of last year faded” (Grant).

Last week, everyone read The New York Times article, everyone nodded a yes, and I too thought, this is exactly what I am feeling after this past year. Before I read the piece, I had coined the sense as ‘mopey’. Just that downcast and defeated feeling after a hard year of cynicism and despair might leave you moping around your living room.

Continue reading →

resistance

Posted September 6, 2018

Filed under Writing

It was the early 1970’s. We were all angry. About the war and the draft, about gender inequity that stalled every woman’s career, about the gas lines due to the oil crisis in the middle east, about the crippling inflation, about having to wear ties or bras. We grew our hair long, listened to album length tracks, questioned those in authority, forced a resignation from a corrupt President, and sat out in student strikes all across this great nation. Resistance happened from family’s living room to the illustrious Senate chamber. My own father, who worked his way up from the floor boards of poverty now faced a mob every night at dinner with his teenagers questioning his authority, his decisions, his motives, even his tomorrow. Thankfully for us under his care he came to value our resistance. Not easily. It meant he had to listen. Temper his own self. See the big picture. Thankfully he too questioned. Sought truth. He read the newspapers, listened to other’s opinions, remembered history, and understood the value of debate. Where is that America? Where is the freedom of speech we wave about when we think it will benefit us? Anger we have, but can we let the voices ring?