Write with TLC

As my birthday approaches, I'm thinking about life and death. I'm thinking about love and loss. I'm thinking about memories made and memories to be made. These thoughts aren't new, but they especially poignant right now. I've never minded growing older. I'm one of those people who falls in the "better than the alternative" camp for sure. You either grow older or you die. It's as simple as that. Given the two choices, bring on the aging even with all its challenges. Life isn't perfect, but it's good. I can honestly say that. I spend much of my time focused on work that brings me joy. I'm sheltered, fed, healthy, and happy. Yet, I know that could all end with a few wrong decisions or some event beyond my control. Last week a high school classmate died only a few days after his birthday. He was my age. I felt a strange sense of loss at reading about his death. I hadn't seen him in a really long time, and we no longer had anythi...

Several years ago I embarked on a year long effort to bring more positivity into my life by focusing on gratitude . As part of this I meditated every morning on gratitude, posted daily, unique gratitude statements on Facebook, and made a gratitude list in my gratitude journal each evening. I thought this would be an enlightening, inspiring uplifting journey, and for the most part it was. So much so I have continued to do parts of the practice I put in place then. There came a point though when practicing gratitude exposed things that weren't working as well in my life as I'd thought, or at least wanted to believe. I shrugged it off at first and focused on the things that inspired gratitude. But, the more I focused on gratitude, the more I became aware of my tendency to ignore the negative things in my life. It was easier. It felt better. However, ignoring them didn't put me on a path to finding solutions. Even as I started to see some of the past events in my life thr...

Sometimes it's good to take a break, even from the things we love. I've always loved to read. Books have always felt like friends to me. They took me places I never imagined possible while at the same time teaching me how to live life differently. I wanted to share the wonder I found reading books with others, so I started reviewing books. Initially I loved writing reviews. I got excited about reviewing books written by authors I loved and one's I met through myriad author events. At first I wrote reviews when I finished a book and didn't worry about keeping a schedule. It worked okay but wasn't a good way to keep viewers. So I started reading multiple books at a time, so I could have a weekly regular post. At first this was exhilarating. Reading with the purpose to review books made reading feel more purposeful. Then something happened. Somewhere along the way writing reviews started to feel like more like a chore than a pleasure. The feeling crept up on ...

This excerpt from the poem,  Dreams , by Langston Hughes hangs on my office wall. Poets play with perception when they write poetry making reading poetry another play in perception. When we read poetry we bring our own life experiences into play affecting our perception of the world around us. Poetry can shine a light on the world we inhabit in language that is sometimes more palatable than either fiction or nonfiction. Poetry can tease our hearts and minds with possible meanings and interpretations. Poetry can use imagery and emotion to effectively push readers to think about life from a different perspective. Many people have told me they don't read poetry because they don't understand poetry. I struggled to understand this until I started reading some of the "classic" poetry I'd avoided since college. Then I remembered how I used to think poetry was something I couldn't understand, and I got it. It changed the way I engaged with people who don...