I’ve done a little bit of traveling this year. *giggle* Actually, I’ve done a lot of traveling this year. Almost every time I go on a trip, I get texts from friends (and comments on photos that I post on social media) about how they wish they could pick up and go like I can. I get it. I was unable to do this until just a couple of years ago. I’m in this interesting season of life right now: I’m an empty nester and, for the first time in decades, unemployed except for some freelance writing I do on occasion. I’m able to keep appointments with myself to workout…
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Always Remember, Never Forget.
In 2012, I started a new personal tradition for the National Day of Remembrance. I had visited the National September 11 Memorial when I was in Manhattan for BlogHer ’12, and was extremely moved by the experience (massive understatement). It occurred to me that, rather than passively watch the televised tributes and read what the rest of the internet had to say about 9/11, each year I would involve myself by actively remembering and learning about a couple of the victims of that terrible day. Luke G. Nee worked in municipal bonds operations at Cantor Fitzgerald. He married his wife Irene on September 11, 1982 and they had a son,…
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What If We Just Don’t Ask “What If”?
Recently I visited an alma mater of mine. Sidenote: I just had to look up “alma mater” to make sure it means “a school I once attended” rather than “a school from which I graduated”. The fall after I completed high school I entered Tennessee Technological University as a freshman majoring in German and stayed there for six months. I loved my time at TTU, short-lived as it was. My visit a couple of weeks ago brought back all kinds of memories. I drove by Jobe Hall, which is where I lived on the third floor. I walked through the student union. I walked across the quad to the south…
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Home is Where the Heart is.
One of the scariest things about moving away from a long-time home is the idea of starting over again, from scratch. Finding the nearest grocery stores and other preferred shops, setting up new doctors and a dentist, figuring out if the area where you think you want to purchase a home is actually the area in which you think you’ll be happy long-term, and so many other details can be completely overwhelming. Multiply that frustration by three or four times if your long-time home also happens to be the city where you’re from originally and then multiply that by ten times if you’re a control freak who hates change. I…
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The Lazy Daze of Summer
This summer is…different for me. Here’s the thing: I operate on “high speed” most of the time. I have for years and years. The first part of the summer had me burning the candle at all the ends–we’re obviously not talking about a regular taper candle here–for a few key reasons: 1. We’ve been settling into a new house in a new-to-us-again town. 2. Listen To Your Mother season came and went, and due to #BlogHer17 being moved up by six weeks I didn’t have my normal month-long cushion of part-time rest before conference season got crazy. 3. Conference season was REALLY crazy. It was actually the craziest ever, for…