Meanderings & Musings

It has been a whirlwind.  I don’t know where to begin.   On the worst days, it felt like people expected the impossible: answers when there were none, energy when we had none, and then when we were at our very lowest, flawless grace in the face of criticism.  Things changed so incredibly rapidly that it felt like we were always trying to catch up: there was always more information to communicate, another video update to shoot, another long text to be sent to the team, another Zoom meeting that should happen.  We keenly felt our physical, mental, and emotional limitations (and our lack of years of leadership experience).  Trying to intentionally pick and choose to focus on certain aspects of the situation meant knowingly dropping other balls that seemed almost equally critical.  (The emotional weight of that alone was pretty taxing.)   And then there was the aftermath of not having had that conversation, writing that email, looping that person...

(I realize that if you're feeling incredibly taxed and overwhelmed in this current season, you may not have the capacity to hear this or may simply write me off as idealistic.  Yet I'm still hoping that you might consider these concepts with an open mind and glean some tangible and helpful truth.) I went on an 8-mile run last week.  (A personal distance record.) And I felt great!  No stopping, no walking, just running.  For 8 blessed miles. To be clear, I've never been a runner (or athletic at all).  I've started many times to attempt to run consistently, but I always quit due to various factors like bilateral stress fractures, shin splints, and knee pain/instability.  Nearly two years ago, d etermined to fight my rising weight and cholesterol levels, I began to run again twice weekly, feeling resigned that the constant sharp and burning shin pain was inevitable. That all changed this spring when I started running with an audio coach.   Coach Ben...

Musings on the “secrets” to living a rich and happy life. The small stuff of life is underrated; the big stuff is sensationalized.  What actually makes up the fabric of our lives?  The “normal”, the everyday, the routine.  Do you want to have an amazing life?  Transform your ordinary into extraordinary!   We put emphasis on big goals and commitments.  But which is truly more difficult, signing up for that marathon, or getting up early every morning to train?  Or maybe we make a huge savings goal because we want to be able to buy a house or a car, but we keep up our habits of picking up a daily coffee or breakfast sandwich.  In both cases, the former is a one-time commitment, and the latter seems smaller and less significant, but is a commitment that has to be renewed every day (so it appears easy, but is much, much harder because it mandates consistency).   It feels natural to overlook the small details.  They’re small, so they...