What Do I Need to Know Right Now? What Else is Possible?

Photo of a young child seated and looking at a book, photographed from behind through the bars of a baby gate.

As I write this, my household is once again in quarantine because my son was exposed to COVID at daycare. When I got the news on Friday, a sense of dread came over me as I anticipated what the coming week would look like, working from home with a one year old and a three year old.

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What I’ve Been Up To Lately

Black and white cropped photo of the author holding her toddler son with her husband standing behind her
Photo by Jessica Scheuer

You may have noticed a decrease in the frequency of my posts this spring and summer. It’s been an unsettling few months for all of us. I’ve been more inclined to turn inward, and this season has felt like one for listening rather than talking.

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What Fitness Looks Like for Me Right Now

Fitness equipment - sneakers and a yoga mat

This time of year makes me want to slow down. The shorter days and cooler temperatures prompt me to stay in bed as long as possible in the morning and lounge around the house at night, curling up with a good book or going to sleep early. My circadian rhythms mimic the daylight.

After a hectic October, November feels like a deep breath. The grass and weeds have stopped growing for a while, the evenings are dark, and the holiday season isn’t yet in full swing. My workload and other commitments have eased up a bit. Summer is over, winter is coming, and my instinct is to hibernate.

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The Best Career (and Life) Advice I’ve Read in a While

Relief statue of a human face in the woods

I opened up Jean Chatzky’s weekly HerMoney newsletter yesterday to see an article called “6 Things You’re Unintentionally Doing (Or Saying) In the Workplace That Could be Holding You Back in Your Career.” Career advice articles abound on the internet, and when I clicked on the article, I figured it would probably contain the same kind of trite advice I’ve read over and over again. To my surprise, though, the first tip really resonated with me, and it’s not one I recall seeing in a workplace advice piece before: Read more

What Messages Do You Need to Hear Right Now?

A cliff along the ocean in Northern Ireland

“You are never alone or helpless. The force that guides the the stars guides you too.”  –Shrii Shrii Anandamurt, quoted in You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero

I had a small epiphany recently. For months, my son had been saying something that sounded like “dapadee.” I had no idea what it meant. I felt certain he wasn’t just babbling nonsense syllables, though, because he would say it over and over again. Dapadee! Dapadee! Dapadee dapadeeeeee… What the heck is dapadee? I thought. My husband speculated that maybe he was trying to say “patootie,” which we sometimes call him. We went with that theory for a while because we had no other ideas. For probably three months or so, along with the many other words he was learning, he kept repeating, Dapadee!

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