Jasper is a jail-break kind of dog that slips his leash or digs his way to freedom, however the opportunity may present itself. Pam is a 60-year-old “I’m-on-it” sort of woman who drops her bike on the sidewalk to chase down neighborhood dogs on the […]
Lately the going has been quite rough for everyone, but I happened upon something the other day on my walk that made the world still look pretty delightful. At 6 in the morning In downtown Bangor I found a friendly-looking, middle-aged fellow wrestling a stuffed […]
I went to work on Monday, March 16th. About 2 o’clock that afternoon my manager called to say it’s happening; pack up your laptop and go home. In the span of about a minute I became an instant remote employee along with many other people. […]
The ideal way to lose something is by choice – and if it’s by choice, then losing it is probably a very joyous thing, as in the case of holiday pounds or bad habits. But even when the loss is unwanted, it doesn’t mean something […]
There was one sad winter when even the sound of a siren would bring tears to my eyes just thinking about the tragic mission that emergency vehicle might be on. But that was also the winter I discovered The Office, the legendary sitcom series set […]
One of the hard moments in my life as a mother was when my distraught teenage daughter pleaded with me to fix one of life’s bad situations. “Mom, make it go away,” she pleaded. While I can no longer remember what was wrong, two things […]
Personality has always seemed a solid thing to me, as part of the original package as our genes. After all, who we are certainly couldn’t be developed as haphazardly as a bad habit we pick up. And yet as Lao Tzu maps it out, there […]
I read a memoir once about a high-level executive who lost her job, sending her into a downward spiral. Her recovery involved a lot of therapy and soul searching from which she learned a great deal about herself. As she went through the process of […]
I’ve been promising the steps of a self-leadership playbook for thousands upon thousands of words now, spanning across 7 long stories. In an act of unprecedented brevity, here they are in 4 numbers and 4 words: Anchor Identify Integrate Act Logically progressive. Beautifully efficient. And […]
I’ve walked under the branches of this tree on my walk for the last 12 years, but it wasn’t until just a few days before the new year that I noticed the loop in that low-hanging one. The way it took that sudden bend up […]
When my daughter was in high-school she worked at Bagel Central, an iconic establishment in downtown Bangor. Laid back and sunny with floor to ceiling windows and wire baskets of bagels; racks of Danish, rugelach, muffins and cookies; and glass cases of endless desserts, spinach […]
I thought I knew what being present meant, which boiled down to being in the here-and-now, paying full attention to whatever you are doing or whoever you are with, and doing so without judgment. Then I read an article about a man in his 30s […]
