-
Apple of My I…
ELAN Principle 9 is “Watch Your Language,” a deep well of subtopics which I’ll revisit in future blogs. Today is all about First Person. Literary works are expressed through the viewpoint of one or more characters. A story in first person is told through one character in their voice. It is “I lost my job…
-
Quote of the Week…
“Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” – Denis Waitley, 1933-
-
Funky Flunkdom…
Sometimes I feel like the dullest tack in the drawer, or the greenest member of the group. Such doubts are deeply internalized even though I don’t flounder at the bottom of the sea of smarts. I live on the curve and seek new growth activities, so multiple areas of interest chop given hours into bits…
-
Living on the Curve…
Lifelong Learning is number ten of the ELAN Principles, my personal roadmap to guide upward and forward movement. My dad instilled in me the desire to always be reaching for new skill, new information, new habits, new joys to be discovered. When he died at 95, there were some 1500 books stored on his e-reader,…
-
Quote of the Week…
“Forget about your life situation for a while and pay attention to your life.” Eckhart Tolle, “The Power of Now”
-
The Good in Goodbye…
Our daughter and her family are visiting from their home overseas and soon my sister will join in the happy reunion. The inevitability of goodbye pulls my human tendency toward sadness. Two things keep me from turning into a blubbering bag of tears when that time comes: knowing I will see them again and focusing…
-
Life is But a Blip…
Our time on this earthly plane is no more than a blip on the radar of the circle of life. That sounds so depressing, but is it? If one’s life is reduced to a mere speck in the time, space continuum, what does that mean? I think it means we have been given a great…
-
Quote of the Week…
“Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come.” Lois Lowry, 1937-
-
Seeking Beauty…
One of my favorite ELAN Principles is “Observe Your World.” It is a simple reminder to pay attention, but it goes deeper than that. It means to look for, notice and name goodness in your life. The more you notice, name and claim, the more the cycle of joy continues. There is a part of…
-
Green Is…
It’s storming – a good gulley washer and a welcome break to the heat wave which is the result of something called a heat dome. That sounds oppressive, like there is no escape, but I give thanks for the warmth and the greening up that it brings after summer showers. On blue sky days the…