So I have a confession to make but don’t tell anyone. I am in the last week of my 49th year on this planet. Yup, I will turn the BIG 50 in May! I remember when my mom turned 50. The neighbors had a little get together for her and someone announced her age. She was mortified. When I was in my 30’s I always joked with my friend’s daughter that  I was still a teenager. Then I bought a house and she came to me with a sly smile and said “You can’t be a teenager”. When I asked why she laughed and said “teenager’s don’t buy their own houses”.

Continue reading “The BIG 50”

I was spending a few minutes on Facebook recently and a friend had posted something about a cardinal spending a lot of time in his yard. He felt it was a visit from his mother who had passed away several months ago. I had never heard of this before so I did what any curious person would do, I promptly forgot about it and went about my day.

Continue reading “Cardinal Companions”

Get Happy!

My sister (child#1, daughter #1) commented to me the other day that my blog was starting to sound like a self-help book. I took this as a compliment! I used to scorn self-help books, thinking they were just for people who, well needed help. Then I hit a point in my life where I needed help and I turned to the library and a whole shelf of books that offered help. I wanted a change in my life but I didn’t know what to change or how to change, or how I would handle change.

I lot of books offered the same type of advice that sounded a bit like this. Figure out what makes you happy and do more of that. Pretty basic, simple advice that certainly doesn’t sound like rocket science but it pretty powerful all the same. A lot of these books also say follow your passion but I didn’t know what I was passionate about. So I focused on what made me happy. Continue reading “Do What Makes You Happy”

Excusitis

We all have really awesome, amazing days where everything goes according to plan. We check off all of the important items on our to do list, we make the phone calls we have been putting off, we remember it is our turn to cook dinner. We all also have those days where everything we touch seems to break, everything we say seems to hurt feelings, everything we do seems to go wrong. We are all human and this is just part of the human experience.

I have met people throughout my life who take personal responsibility only on those days that go well. They accept credit for the success, they proudly smile and nod their heads at the acknowledgment of a job well done.  However when it comes to taking responsibility for those bad days where everything goes wrong, they are nowhere to be found. They have excusitis. “It is not my fault”, I’m not the one you are looking for”, “I wasn’t here”, “blame so and so”, “I did my  part”.    I first came across the term “excusitis” in a book called The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz. Don’t you think it is a great word? Continue reading “No Excuses”

Simple Pleasures Rock!

My life used to be much more complicated than it is now. I used to commute 40 miles to work on congested Massachusetts highways, spending up to 1 ½ hours in the car each way. That is 15 hours per week sitting in the car. I had a stressful job, working on average 45 hours per week for a company that always seemed to be putting out fires instead of accomplishing anything. I had to travel an hour to visit my close friends and 7 hours to spend time with my family. Life was tough. Continue reading “Simple Pleasures”