I recently had a conversation with a friend I hadn’t spoken to in years. I’ve always loved talking with this particular friend, but this time she was more somber when the conversation ended. My friend was working herself to exhaustion – she couldn’t sleep, was losing more weight than she could afford to, and was…
It’s safe to say that most of us have experienced a higher-than-average level of boredom in the last 12 months. Nothing like having everything closed and being forced to stay at home to make you wonder what exactly to do with your time. For many of us, the answer was to complain about it. I’ve…
And here we are. It’s 2021, and the longest year in living memory is finally behind us. Time to celebrate and get back to normal, right? Except that there really is no getting back to normal, is there? Both personally and professionally, you’ve experienced too many changes for too long to just hit ‘reset’ and…
We made it! We are at the end of the longest, most annoying year any of us has experienced. I think it’s safe to say 2020 has been thoroughly exhausting – and in case you don’t agree, I recommend keeping your thoughts to yourself if you want to keep any of your friends. And yet,…
Sometimes I spend ten minutes trying to decide which pair of pants I should wear. My wife has been known to agonize for weeks about what theme to choose for our children’s birthday parties. And my brother once spent two years debating which couch to buy for his living room. None of these are life-altering…
Last month I wrote an article about what to do when you have nothing to do. It was designed for individuals who were starting to get tired of walks around the neighborhood and board games and all the things we’ve spent five months doing waaaaay more of than usual. It was a great article, possibly…
The pandemic has brought a grand reckoning to almost every element of our lives, but the one I’d like to focus on here is how it has forced us to figure out what to do when we might feel there is nothing to do. In fact, if you can ignore for a moment the various…
Recently I re-did one of my bathrooms. Our home was built in 1990 but somehow decorated in 1970, and after a couple years of staring at that disco-inspired atrocity I was compelled to make it right. So I ripped everything out, including the walls, and rebuilt it. Gone are the flaking brass finishing, the perfectly-maintained-yet-suuuuuper-tacky…
It’s the end of the year again, which means that once again everybody is going to at least think about making some major life changes. Eat right, exercise, stop smoking, read more, finally buy that walrus you’ve been talking about getting for five years – I don’t know what your particular resolutions are going to…
A couple weeks ago I delivering the opening keynote at an agricultural conference. For those of who don’t know, theirs is an industry currently facing significant challenges. A combination of unusually uncooperative weather and unprecedented policy decisions have simultaneously depressed crop supply and prices. Farming is a difficult business, and farmers today are having a…