A wise friend recently told me he feels gratitude is the key to success in life. I already knew that genuinely feeling grateful does a lot for one’s health and happiness. But as I thought about it, I realized how effective a focus on gratitude could be for making alliances, working with people, recognizing opportunities, […] Read More

It’s hard to do the right thing when someone is pressing you to do it. At least I, immaturely, find that so. So congratulations are due today to two organizations: 1. The world’s largest tissue-maker Kimberly-Clark2. Environmental organization Greenpeace (as well as other eco-activists) Kimberly-Clark, after almost five years of urging from Greenpeace, will no […] Read More

The feeling of running behind is one that I find hard to shake. Here, from The Daily Om, is a good way to think of it. Important, because nothing is actually gained from going around feeling pressed. The hurried state of mind makes me clumsy and leads me to try too hard and actually slows […] Read More

“Creativeness is correlated with the ability to withstand the lack of structure, the lack of future, the lack of predictability, of control, the tolerance for ambiguity, for planlessness.” Maslow on Management, Abraham Maslow In about my second year of freelancing (1973), I would walk from my parking place to my office in the mornings, often […] Read More

Those unnerving little ads that show up at the top of email somehow always seem to know what I’m interested in. I don’t know the technology by which they read over my shoulder, but yesterday I was actually enticed into clicking on one. The phrase that caught my eye was: Radical Writing. How could anyone […] Read More

A long-time biker bar (Hogs not ten-speeds) is on my route between home and office. I’ve never stopped there, though it has often crossed my mind. Recently a sign went up outside the place that I thought pretty bold, and delightful as well. The sign: “It’s A Boy.” And the little marquee was festooned with […] Read More

My hairdresser, like me, has a touch of obsessive-compulsive disorder. So we tend to compare notes on meds and how we’re doing. Once she noted that we’d gone a whole haircut without touching the subject, and didn’t that speak well of how we were both doing. Today: haircut at 11:15. Forty-five minutes from now. I’m […] Read More

Yesterday I was finishing an edit on a nonfiction book proposal from my three months in Varanasi, India. (I was there doing research for my novel, Sister India.) In the proposal is a scene from the first time I visited “the burning place,” the riverbank pyres where corpses are burned and ashes placed in the […] Read More

Foreign accents filter through the door from the office next to mine. My friend and colleague Carrie is taking part in a conference call/meeting. I think she’s talking with Australians about some joint arts project. I like hearing this murmur from the other side of the world. It reminds me that the world is large […] Read More

Follow an interest with passion and energy and it becomes very particular. Not just interest in dogs, but deepening interest in particular breeds or particular aspects of dog training or some such. Husband Bob is fascinated by big exotic breeds. Here’s a Boerboel (a South African mastiff type) that we drove several hours to meet, […] Read More