I like having a page on this blog to explicitly introduce myself, even though you can get a sense of who I am from reading the various posts and browsing the archives. I call myself an Unrepentant Generalist, because I am interested in many different areas and decided not to limit myself to just one […]
Category: journal
2017 Year in Review
Let’s call this the Year of New Beginnings. I went into 2017 with two priorities: 1) to deepen my relationship 2) to deepen my practice of coaching Those priorities helped me stay focused on what was important to me in 2017, despite many competing obligations. 1) I met Tanya in November 2016, and we clicked […]
Flip your default
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to fly away for a long weekend on a day’s notice (e.g. booking a cheap flight on Thursday to leave Friday morning). My immediate reaction was “I can’t do that! I have all these things I have to do! That’s crazy! It’s irresponsible!” So I decided not […]
Overlap!
I’ve mentioned Overlap several times in this blog over the last five years, and I’ve always meant to do a more in-depth post about it, and it’s finally time to do that. The occasion of this post is that I attended my fifth Overlap retreat over Memorial Day weekend, and not only did I attend, […]
2016 Year in Review
After I pushed my limits physically and mentally last year, this year was a much quieter year – let’s call it the Year of Recovery. The big event for me personally in 2016 was that I had a traumatic bike crash on May 3rd. I was on a morning ride with some faster guys, and […]
Turning the page
I haven’t posted since the US election, as it didn’t feel right to engage with the abstract self-design questions I’ve been pondering without acknowledging the change in the world that I live in. Trump’s election was a shock to me. I saw the possibility (even 538’s models had him at a 1-in-3 chance on election […]
Camp Calm and meditation
I’ve been curious about meditation for years, but could never find a way to get started. It seemed both too easy (“I just sit there?”) and too intimidating (“empty my mind? become one with the universe?”). Earlier this year, my therapist recommended meditation to help address a challenge I was facing. I tried the Headspace […]
Being generous
Following up on my post on practicing gratitude, another practice I’ve been working on is being generous, both to others and to myself. Like with gratitude, part of the reason I want to work on this practice is to change how I see the world. When we are confronted with somebody who is arguing with […]
Practicing gratitude
Continuing along the line of this self-improvement post and inspired by reading Brene Brown’s books, I’ve been thinking a lot about the practice of gratitude recently. Brown points out that gratitude is not an attitude, but a behavior that we have to practice on a regular basis. Gratitude is the act of taking the time […]
Reflecting on the Talia Jane brouhaha
I’m summarizing my comments from various social media threads on Talia Jane’s letter to the Yelp CEO and the responses like this one, and reposting them here for later findability. I have complicated feelings about this letter, given that I have been that ranting employee – not doing it publicly (even back when my blog […]
