A few months ago I read a book called The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande. It’s mostly about how doctors and pilots use checklists in their daily work to make things safer and to know what to do when things don’t go according to plan. I expected it to be more instructional, about how you […]
What I Learned on My Summer Vacation
I took rather more of a break from blogging over the summer than I meant to. I definitely wanted things to slow down — needed to, after five months of hard production — but I didn’t expect to go down from an average of 11 posts a week to one and a half posts a […]
Monthly Goals: Take it All in
It’s been a while since I talked about, or really even thought about, my One Little Word for the year, which is clear. Halfway through the year I hoped I’d have clarity about my work, clearer spaces in my home and clear systems in my work. I do have a little more clarity in my […]
What I Really Want to Do This Summer
Today is considered the official start of summer, the state of mind if not the season. It also marks — I know because I’ve been keeping track of such things — the 151st day of the year. One hundred and fifty-one days, incidentally, that I have posted at least daily on this site. That’s a […]
The Persistence of Memory
I’m not going to get all “Glory Days” on you, but the more I think about it, 1996 was the year when everything happened. My senior year in high school was also the year I started dating my husband. My grandmother and one of my favorite teachers died. There was the pain of not being […]
Monthly Goals: Having a Plan
So, January, on the whole, did not go quite as planned. I was doing fine with my office cleaning for a lot of the month, and while I don’t think it’s possible for me to have a clean desk every day (too many projects!) I was at least trying to clean up at the end […]
I Don’t Care How Many Days Until Christmas
It started before Halloween. Memes were popping up on Facebook saying so many days until Thanksgiving, this many weeks until Christmas, that many days before Black Friday or New Year’s or whatever. I even saw one in early fall talking about how many days it was until summer! Stop it. Please. I don’t care how […]