I did it. Today, I passed my EMT Class. For the last 6 months I have spent 250 hours learning to be a certified EMT. Today, I am excited, I am relieved, and I am so tired because I haven’t slept or exercised properly since August. So all I have for you this morning is the simple reminder to celebrate.

It was just after halftime when my coach looked at me with the question - should we change our strategy? The score was 2-0 and her unique method of keeping our entire team on our half of the soccer field was surprisingly working. As the captain, I shook my head no. It was tempting to go back to playing in a more normal fashion. She felt the urge, I felt it too, but being abnormal was exactly what was keeping us ahead. Up against Goliath - the team that had won nearly every year - we shouldn't have been winning, but we were.   

In the late 1800s, Delhi India was overrun by cobras. The British Government, that ruled at the time, decided to solve this problem by offering a bounty for them. Seems like a great idea right? We have too many cobras so let's pay people to catch them. Unfortunately, this well-intended decision was exploited…

I've been writing for the last hour, and I still have yet to finish a Sunday Starter. I tried picking up some old posts that I began a while ago: one was about the Cobra Effect, another about being an underdog, a third about being left-handed, and a forth titled Puffins. I worked on each one for a little bit until I hit writers block, in which then I moved on to the next topic hoping it would be different. It was not different. I've now made my way through four ideas and instead of being finished I am staring at them lined up in my OneNote with a "(Needs work)" next to each title. That's what I write when my idea is almost finished but not quite there. As I stared at it just now, I felt very tired. They all needed work and I didn’t' feel like I had any more work to give.

It’s May 1, 1820 and you’re in Brooklyn. Several boxes are in your hands as you prepare to move to your new apartment. Now just mentioning that may already bring a wave of anxiety; anyone that has ever moved knows the stress that comes with Moving Day. Now imagine all the stress of your family moving, and multiply it by everyone in Brooklyn.

As you embark on a New Year and think about the "new you" that you want to be, remember that goals aren't about changing who you are; goals are about finding who you are and that process begins on day one. When you set your eyes on a target, and start making a plan for how to reach it, you should be thinking about two things: rituals and habits.  

"Spotify Wrapped" is likely something many of you have heard of. For those that haven't, all you need to know is that Spotify is an app that allows you to stream music from any artist. This is not like the illegal downloads of the early 2000s, but rather something the artists all agree to. Every year this app comes out with a summary of the top artists and songs you’ve listened to. Introduced in 2016, Spotify Wrapped has quickly grown to…

So what are you up to this Christmas Eve morning? If you're like me, you're not even reading this because you are out shopping for Christmas presents. Yes, I waited until Christmas Eve to even start my shopping. To all that know me, you'd probably be surprised by this. Usually my Christmas presents would have been bought and wrapped weeks ago, waiting under the tree with a hand-crafted bow. But not this year…

When you get frustrated sitting in traffic to see your family…When you roll your eyes at something a loved one said…When you are annoyed at the crowded shopping mall getting your last minute gifts for the people in your life…When those things happen, remember this…Remember there are families all over the world wishing more than anything they could have just one more year doing all those things…

The day after Thanksgiving, around 11am, a man sat on his back porch and heard someone calling for help. I imagine he must have strained a bit, questioning himself -  was that the wind? Kids playing? Is someone in trouble? He must have gotten up and quickly made his way through several backyards toward the cries. As he approached the scene and took in the ladder on the ground, dented gutter, leaves scattered, and blood dripping from the head, the stranger-from-the-backyard immediately called 911.

Last year, on December 21, 2022, I started a post called Feels Like Christmas. I wrote it after we had gone into Brooklyn to see our friend Jason Loughlin and his band play at a bar called Skinny Dennis. He usually plays instrumental western but every year, just before Christmas, they cover The Venture Christmas Album. If you want a nice instrumental rock album to have on while you enjoy Christmas festivities, it’s a great one. Part wanting to support our friend, part wanting to experience a little Christmas fun, we made the trek into Brooklyn…

Here is your every-once-in-awhile reminder that while I believe setting goals and sticking to commitments is important, I also believe that sometimes we need to put something else first…

I recently rewatched my favorite childhood movie - 101 Dalmatians. When I was a kid, I was obsessed and so for Christmas one year my loving grandparents bought me a stuffed Dalmatian toy. I have a vivid memory of opening it up and complaining because it wasn't the right one; they got me Patch when apparently I wanted Lucky. I mean there were 101 different options for crying out loud… and I was upset because they didn't pick my favorite? And all parents know I probably had only decided Lucky was my favorite that morning. What a spoiled brat I was.

For those of you alive in the 1970s, you may remember the Ford Pinto. Debuted in 1970, this small car was cheap to buy and the first of its kind from the Ford Motor Company. It appeared to be successful by all reports until about 1972 when the deaths started piling up. Upon investigation it appeared that the car was prone to catching fire when hit from behind, even in low-speed crashes. What’s very disturbing is that this wasn’t something accidental that occurred; Ford failed numerous safety inspections and knew that the car was likely to catch fire.

My bed is covered with probably-way-too-many-pillows, and so every night we take the pillows off, stack them in a corner somewhere, and then in the morning put them back on. This week when I was putting them back and taking pillows from the stack that my husband had made the night before, I realized that we both had a different process for such a simple thing. If you do this at home, think about it for a minute (I promise I have a point to all this). How do you stack the pillows? The way I see it, there are three options…

As soon as it was pointed out to me it was like all the adrenaline left my body. I had been on cloud 9, selling lots of books and having great conversations with so many people, then in an instant I felt foolish. I couldn’t believe I let a typo slip through.

We are taught that being brave means facing our fear. A brave person will step up and do something they don’t want to do; they push through the scary and get to the other side. We learn this young and carry it into adulthood. This is true. Being brave is being afraid of something and doing it anyway. The thing is, sometimes we’re not honest with what we’re afraid of…

45 minutes. That’s how long I waited at the table by myself. The first hour of my first book festival was pretty painful. I sat there smiling, wondering if I would spend the next four hours talking to myself. As I sat there I thought about how my presence here was teaching me something…

This weekend is my anniversary, and this morning I ate breakfast alone. When I got out of bed Andrew was gone and I ordered room service for one. Now if I were to stop the story there, you might assume we had some sort of fight. When I was younger, I probably would have thought the same…

A few years ago I started to dislike the word weird. It's one I used to say anytime something was new or I didn't understand it - that's weird. Somewhere along the way, I realized how hurtful of a habit this was. Just because something was unusual to me, did not mean it was unusual in general. My lack of…