TL;DR: too many goals = not much progress. Identify a lead goal. You want to launch that business. You want to run a marathon. You want to give a Ted Talk. You want to learn French. And go to France. And travel more! All good goals. Here’s the deal: if you have multiple high-priority goals, you actually have zero. When we spread our energy across lots of life-changing ambitions, overwhelm sets in. We don’t know where to start, so we burn energy and time thinking about starti

TLDR: Some of my hardest seasons were full of no’s, and they’re the reason the good stuff could emerge. What do you feel when you’re told no? Failure? Rejection? An ending?   What if we thought about no a little differently? Not as something harsh or final, but as refinement. As clarity. As a path to yes. Every no brings something into sharper focus, even when it’s uncomfortable. Even when it’s not what we hoped for.   No removes noise. No creates edges. No makes space for de

TLDR: Create space to slow down; clarity before action.   The end of the year has a way of turning the volume up on everything.   More parties. More late nights and full calendars. More consumption.   When the world revs up, we have to make an effort to slow down. To make space.   As I’ve been preparing for a small group focused on reflection before the new year, I considered joy. What brings you joy? What excites you when you look at your day, your week, your month?   And in

There’s this whisper so many of us hear when we’re in transition.  You’ve never done this. How are you going to do this? Are you sure this is going to work? Maybe this was a mistake. New job? Starting over.  New relationship? Starting over.  New dream? Definitely starting over. But the truth is, you’re never starting from scratch. You’re starting from experience. Every misstep, success, and late-night “what now?”  is data you get to use this time around. You’re  not new; the

We’re wrapping up Spooky Season after four weeks of brilliant, fascinating guests, and this final conversation feels like the perfect way to end the series. This week's guest on Wait — What Do You Do Again? , is Dr. Mikki Brock. Mikki teaches and speaks widely on topics including demonology, witchcraft, and British history, and her research centers on questions of religious belief, gender, and identity in early modern Scotland. Calvinist Scotland was a world where witch tria

Every now and then, a guest says something that stays with me long after the recording. This week, it was Dr. Cailín Murray , an anthropologist at Ball State University who studies the intersection of folklore, belief, and the stories we tell about what haunts us.   “It’s not whether you believe in ghosts or not. We’re all made up of ghosts because we carry their DNA.”   Isn’t that great?!   So maybe, we’re all a little haunted, too.   Not by rattling chains or flickering lig

Shirley Jackson’s brilliant literature, monsters, and your scary neighbor. October invites us to play with fear. We pull the blanket to our chin or peek between our fingers, safely terrified by ghosts, vampires, and the things that go bump in the night. I’ve been thinking a lot about monsters and what they speak to in our larger society. But lately I've been thinking about the monsters hiding in shadows, but those just outside our front door. Because real horror rarely announ

Darkness falls across the land / The midnight hour is close at hand / Creatures crawl in search of blood / To terrorize y'alls...

The word empathy has been having a real moment recently, but it’s worth pausing on what it  means and how it’s different from sympathy. I...

Curiosity and the work of meeting each other across universes of our own making. When my kids were little, we loved Thomas the Train. One...

There is a house in my neighborhood that has been sitting in disrepair for years. Apparently, the woman who owned it had a son who died...

This summer, I (guiltily) watched And Just Like That and The Summer I Turned Pretty. Both shows are messy, nostalgic, occasionally...

Last night I made an amazing corn and tomato salad and afterward, sat outside looking at stars, night-blooming jasmine thick in the air....

One of my favorite must-watch shows as a kid was Star Trek: The Next Generation.  I loved the adventure of meeting new people across the...

I struggled to know what to write given the weight of this week. The militarization of our own cities, from police in LA to troops in...

I grew up in a place where summer buzzed. Quite literally, there was a constant hum of cicadas and crickets and frogs and bees. Where the...

I’ve had an earworm from Hamilton in my head while writing this. Let me tell you what I wish I'd known / When I was young and dreamed of...

What happens when we stop mistaking the loop for the truth? There’s a Stereolab album I used to love called Dots and Loops . It floated...

If you’re open to it, I’d like to start with a reflection: Close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths. Connect to stillness. When you’re...

One year ago, I started this podcast after spending a long time noodling on it. I’ve spent over 20 years of my professional life meeting...