I’m slowly losing the ability to be 100 percent here.

Or 100 percent there.

Too used to being in multiple places at the same time.

For example, typing an email while on the phone with my partner. Watching a movie and answering a text from friends at the same time.

I have been thinking about edges lately.

Lines we cross when we are ready.

Thresholds.

It’s usually easy to tell if we’re on one side of that threshold versus the other. In these moments, we are in a pre-contemplative or contemplative state around something.

Painting?

Photography?

Woodworking?

Or perhaps you step into your creativity in another way.

As human beings, we are gemstones with many facets. 

We are complex, intricate entities. 

I heard this idea from relationship coach Faith Fuller on a podcast recently.

I saw someone at an event recently who had an unusual canvas rucksack. 

The bag had patches stitched on it from all over the world.

And the patches were from unique destinations like Mozambique and Tasmania and Nicaragua, not just the usual France and Italy.

I just came back from a lovely trip to California. 

It’s where I’m from.

It’s where generations of my family are from.

We just sold one of our cars.

My red Jellybean.

Yes, that’s what we called her. 

My partner Dana decided to get an electric truck, and the car he was driving was newer than mine, so we decided to sell mine.

I went to an immersive art museum in Florida with my son this past weekend.

We needed some fun things to do, and perhaps a little pick-me-up based on the news lately.

My yoga instructor offered us a choice. 

“I have two possible classes,” she said. “One is easy peasy and the other will build strength. What do you all feel like?”

The group froze. Two choices! We looked at each other. We were silent.

We thought the game had its rules, but apparently, conditions have changed.

It appears that all bets are off.

We thought we agreed upon how things are done in the U.S., but a radically different kind of decision-making is here.

I continue to work on one big thing.

That is: Not getting worked up. 

As in, not letting myself get too irritated by things happening around me. In particular, I’m working with those moments when someone or something violates one of my values and I get upset or shut down. 

Juniper forward.

That’s how they described the particular gin. 

We were at St. Augustine Distillery, which makes fine craft spirits inside the walls of a former power and ice plant built in 1907. The FP&L Ice Plant was the first to make commercially produced ice in Florida.

I have a new favorite IPA. 

It is called State Machine. 

It comes Spyglass Brewing Company in New Hampshire. 

I just polished a family heirloom.

It’s a round crystal cut jar with a sterling silver lid—to hold candy, perhaps?

I have had it since my mother passed away 17 years ago. She had it since her mother passed away before that. And before that, her mother.

I’m working on letting go of the need to be right.

Darn it.

Right just sometimes feels so good!

The world is as I think it is. 

I have a picture in my mind of how things are, and that picture is proven true.

Some of the things I get stuck on being right? 

I had a ridiculous week of travel just before the holidays.

In eight days, I facilitated meetings in six different cities: Newark, Nashville, Charlotte, Denver, Burlington, and back to Newark.

In total, it included eight half-day retreats and trips in and out of Boston, all in one week.

Some people hate New Year’s resolutions.

I don’t get it.

I love marking significant transitions, whether they are birthdays, graduations, holidays, or calendar turns.

I led a few strategic planning workshops just before the holidays.

When preparing for one of them, I asked my co-facilitator to lead an opening activity. She asked the small groups to discuss, “What was the best Christmas gift you ever received”?

How prepared is your heart for whatever might happen next?

Psychologist and author Tara Brach says that we must prepare our heart for anything and everything. In other words, we must learn how to access stillness and evenness of mind regardless of the situation we face.

Can you hear that? 

It’s a blissful sound.

Silence. 

I used to be super uncomfortable with quiet—especially in groups. I thought silence was awkward. And that somebody needed to fill it.