"Just keep swimming," as the fish says. (You know what fish.) And here we are swimming from one year and into the next, and what a strange body of water it is. This week between Christmas and the New Year is a favorite week of mine. I teach, so I'm always off. But unlike other …
Category: resolution

Dear Llama
I went through files and files and files this last weekend in a crazed effort to organize my writing as if this will fix all my problems. Well, the problems remain, but I do now know that I have 124 short stories. Thank you, Story-a-Day! Or curse you as the case may be. The stories …
Casting for June
Many of us often love waiting for that magic date or hour to set sail on a new adventure or making whatever change brewing in our minds. But I'm not waiting for the full moon or the New Year or any of that. I designate this moment magical enough. For a variety of reasons (that …

More Room for Sunlight
I still have my little altars of objects and treasured things. We still have hundreds of books. No one is ever going to walk into this house and say, "Are you a minimalist?" I feel that's important to make clear before I again mention that most trendy of lifestyle phenomenon names Marie Kondo and confess …

The Will Power Beast
I don't really make resolutions. I set a few goals, but those are good any day of the year. One goal I managed to reach was to read 50 books in 2015. I succeeded in that in large part because of the Goodreads challenge counter. The Goodreads counter helped me in much the same way …

The New Year and Other Nonsense
I love the New Year. Do you? I don't party hard. I don't dress up in a sparkly dress or dance all night drinking champagne. The last couple of years, I have gone to a friend's house to have fun with a group of grownups and children. I like being able to take my son …