How to Create When You’re Feeling Stuck (part one)
This week, I began designing the course Embracing the Muse: Transformative Processes for Enhancing a Creative Life, which I’m teaching on August 22nd in Port Townsend, Washington. I was in full research mode when a friend told me that she sometimes feels stuck in her creative work—we had a great conversation that left me thinking […]
Singing through the storms
Here we go again. A major US Supreme Court decision that threatens to decimate democracy gets made a few days before the Fourth of July—our US celebration of freedom and independence. I have no words. My stomach is roiling. Which helps neither me nor the world. I can’t turn to pundits or soothsayers for wisdom—the […]
How to Interview a Rock Star
By the time you read this, I will have interviewed my first rock star. Or, more accurately, a former rock star. Or a small-town record store owner, dad, and new resident in my semi-rural island community. Isaac Slade, former lead singer for the band, The Fray. I’m not exactly a Rolling Stone reporter, but I was […]
Celebrating the Magic of the Summer Solstice
The summer solstice is here with people celebrating around the globe. I’ve never paid much attention to it—except perhaps for a big yippee that summer has finally arrived. But this year might be different. I want to pay more attention to the day, (June 20, 2024), as a small way of honoring the great cycles of […]
Stumbling in the land of too-much-ness
While we’ve kept our national attention on Covid-19 and its variants, another pandemic has slipped into town: too-much-ness. You can see it in the faces of your friends when they look overwhelmed by life. You feel it when you look at your schedule and 1) want to go back to bed or 2) feel your […]
An Unlikely Path to Humility and Mindfulness
When I taught several groups of Japanese managers near Tokyo, one of the qualities I most admired was their humility and consideration of others. It felt like a refreshing change from the US cult of the individual—with its encouragement to “look out for number one” and “climb the ladder to the top”—no matter what the impact […]
Have you taken the AI challenge
(Hint: It helps to be human) The rapid advance of AI technology feels dizzying, exciting, and terrifying. New technology is outpacing our capacity to understand its consequences. Moral reasoning, unfortunately, cannot be rushed into production. Neither, alas, can human caring. Maybe it’s time to ask Alexa (Google’s AI assistant), “Alexa, how do we make the […]
A humble, life saving, brain easing tool
While preparing for my about-to-launch art show, a friend helping me (Thanks, Kymm!) created a checklist to guide my work. On it were little boxes with the many tasks before me. My first reaction was, “But, I know this. already.” Then, I realized she’d given me a great gift that would ease my mind as […]
Bringing all our parts to the table
We have “no bad parts,” at least according to Dr. Richard Schwartz, founder of the Internal Family Systems (IFS) approach to psychotherapy. By parts, he means aspects of our personality, some of which evolved to support us, in ways that may not serve us well in our current lives. He teaches that: “Our inner parts contain […]
Learning to see again
Even with the best of eyes, we often don’t see. I discovered this truth while cleaning my office—a historic event that was part of a cleaning blitzkrieg. Now that the pace of “have-to-dos” around my book has slowed, it was time to turn my eyes (with apologies) to the other aspects of life I’ve neglected. […]
