Life – Page 2 – Writer, Author, Speaker

Micro-Memoir

I went to a micro-memoir workshop this last weekend at the Southern California Writers Conference. What is a micro or flash-memoir? Short lives? No, Judy Reeves, author and memoirist actually says that mini-memoirs can be anything from sentences to short paragraphs, and combined into works of various sizes from small books to larger works, usually with a theme. So, I didn't even know it was a genre. It is! There are tons of people who write and publish micro memoirs. Beth Ann Fennelly, for instance, published Heating & Cooling--52 Micro-Memoirs (Norton & Co. 2017). There are dozens of others. Who...

Choices,Death,Fear,Finishing,Life,Purpose,Rant,Truth

Excuses

Don’t make excuses.

Choices,Grateful,Happy,Joy,Life,Living

Possibility

I stand at the edge of possibility. It takes my breath away. Every single moment of every single day, we can choose to be the person we were meant to be. I think it's simple. Mostly, we have to get out of our own way. I'm reading The Art of Possibility for the third time. I am convinced that we must commit to being open to the universe, as the authors Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander state. We have to be prepared to receive; able to live in the present; willing to slide through our mistakes on our way to a...

Children,Choices,Grateful,Joy,Life,Love Yourself,Purpose,Wonder

Kindness

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="525"] Pexels.com[/caption] Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. ~ Plato Kindness. What is it? Is it a thing? No. It's an attitude. Or an aptitude. Kindness is something we have or we don't. But if we don't have it naturally, it's hopefully something we can learn. It can be one of those things you learn at home. Your mom and dad might have been kind. Or not. We have some much baggage from our families, don't we? I know I do. We take the good things and mistrust them. We take the...

Choices,Death,Grateful,Happy,Life,Time

Enough

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1880"] Photo by Willian Was on Pexels.com[/caption] I Wish You Enough I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright no matter how gray the day may appear.  I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun even more.  I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive and everlasting. I wish you enough pain so even the smallest of joys in life may appear bigger.  I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting. I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.  I wish you enough hellos to get you...

About Me,Chances,Life,Lucky

New York Is

[caption id="attachment_777" align="aligncenter" width="1880"] Photo by Fancycrave.com on Pexels.com[/caption] New York is: A state A city A harbor A county A cheesecake A cut of steak A baseball team A football team A hockey team A basketball team A stadium A newspaper A daily A magazine A book A song A historical novel A film A ship A typeface A TV star A pinball machine A state of mind But for me, New York is . . . The place where I was conceived but not born. Loved perhaps, but not kept. Transported from in utero To the left coast...

Aging,Chances,Children,Fear,Happy,Life,Living,Purpose,Time

Leave Room in Your Suitcase

[caption id="attachment_media-15" align="alignleft" width="401"] Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com[/caption] So, did you think this post was going to be about travel? Great. It is. But, it's not. Hopefully, we are all going somewhere. However, we are not always going on vacation. Or going out of town. Or going on a safari, per se. We are, however, traveling through life. We need to have our suitcase packed, our selves ready, open, and available to step, fly, jump, and fall forward into the next place. Our metaphorical bags should always be packed, as in why slow down to throw in a toothbrush...

Birth,Chances,Children,Life,Lucky

Life’s a Crapshoot

Did you watch it? The storybook Royal Wedding? What did you take from it? That there's no predicting life. No one would have thought a Hollywood starlet would marry an honest-to-goodness prince. Well, not in real life. In stories. In movies. On TV. But not for real. But it was. Real. Rolling the Dice Back in 2006, I was becoming increasingly aware of egg donors facilities. Yes. I was pretty amazed that people were picking characteristics they wanted for their children and were buying eggs that they thought would make little people with those traits. What's cool is that it doesn't work...

Life,Living,Love Yourself,Purpose

Purpose

Someone in the audience asked, "How do you know you're living your life's purpose?" Good question! How DO we know? Here were the answers from others in the room: "No other place I'd rather be." "I'm happy." "I'm in a state of flow." "It feels like I'm being me." The women's group in our neighborhood met to share business ideas and to talk about ourselves. Our SELVES. What do we fear? What do we seek? What do we need to feel like we are living our life's purpose? How do we say "no"? As in NO. How do we protect...

Children,Control,Death,Future,Life,Living,Time

Temporary

We just dropped off our twenty-year-old son at the airport. He is so, well, twenty. After raising two boys to manhood, I know that Kahlil Gibran was probably right: Our children are only on loan to us. I had heard it, but I didn’t have a clue of what that meant. When they were little, I fooled myself into thinking they were mine. But now I’m not so sure they ever were. Yes, they pretty much did what they were told—most of the time— because they didn’t know any better. However, those times didn’t last. And the boys often made...