So what does someone like me do when I want a vacation? Go to an academic conference of course! But not one that has anything to do with work. That would be….work… So I’m going to the Slayage Conference in a little over a week and in preparation I’m reviewing Seasons 6,7 of Buffy and…
DetailsWhat if they made actual horror movies? Not the tactile, creature in the dark kind or the evil is coming to get you kind, but ones with real horror in them. Movies where we agreed to stop avoiding the truth and confronted it. Movies where we actively pursued our dreams without the Rocky music in…
DetailsSometimes I’m talking with a client and realize how inadequate language is as a tool for communication. I swear, interpretive dance may seem ludicrous, but it’s probably more effective than some conversations I get into. Because words are symbols and some people imbue them with one absolute meaning and assume that everyone else believes or…
DetailsEver leave a situation feeling unsatisfied, because everything seems ok and perfectly normal, but something in the back of your mind is nagging, like an itch you can’t scratch and you don’t know quite what it is? Something got missed. Something should have been said and wasn’t or something was said and the point didn’t…
DetailsSo many times when I speak with people about choosing themselves, living their best life, achieving their dreams, blah-de-blah-de-blah, I see the reaction “I don’t know how I’m going to squeeze that in with everything else I HAVE to do.” From there I try to determine if that’s just a knee jerk reaction because they…
DetailsLong term plans can help us achieve the most amazing results. While we really like the examples of overnight success, they rarely actually are. We’re just looking at the results of thousands of decisions that have accumulated into the underdog, look they done good, hero story. Excellence is rarely something that appears deus ex machina,…
DetailsBut what happens when it doesn’t? What happens when all the effort you put into making a plan, a really good plan, a lifetime plan, a plan that will get you from here to there, that will help you survive this/that/and the other slips out of sync with reality? That slippery reality that seems to…
DetailsI love spending time with my artist siblings for a great many reasons, one of which is the conversations about color. My brother-in-law talking about the colors in the fused glass portraits he’s doing, how to get flesh tones and shading right through double-digit firings, my sister talking about the colors she uses on her…
DetailsJust because you’re good at something doesn’t necessarily mean that’s a message for you to take that on as a career or a calling. People get confused because they are good at this thing or that and therefore pursue it but find it unfulfilling or even soul killing. What’s up with that? Or they are…
DetailsIf grief teaches us nothing else, it teaches us that words make things real. That’s why we don’t want to say that someone has died, that a relationship is over, that we’ve lost our favorite friend or pet or childhood toy. Because if we say it, then it’s true and life will start moving onwards…
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