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Virtual Valentine to Mom

February 15, 2016 •

Mom wearing a suit that she had made

Mom and Dad

This Valen­tine Day’s week­end was a time to remem­ber Mom. My mem­o­ries were trig­gered by the sound of sewing shears cut­ting through fab­ric on the din­ing room table. I was cut­ting out pieces for a med­i­ta­tion cush­ion, using a fab­ric rem­nant from cur­tains Mom made us years ago.

Remembering Mom’s Craft Skills

My mother was a remark­ably tal­ented seam­stress and tai­lor. She loved the chal­lenge of visu­al­iz­ing and then exe­cut­ing com­plex sewing pat­terns, such as the French cou­turier design­ers’ pat­terns that she would buy from Vogue. Her friends admired her fash­ion flair and skill at cre­at­ing multi piece out­fits, like the suit shown here.

Look­ing back, it’s hard to believe that she made me a Chris­t­ian Dior suit with a cape, as my back-to-school out­fit for sec­ond grade. Except for its yel­low satin lin­ing, the suit was very aus­tere — com­pletely inap­pro­pri­ate for school­yard play — and prob­a­bly too severe for a child to wear to church. I had no fash­ion sense, but learned to adore the way the cape could soar like a bird’s wing or Super­man’s cloak. I’d pump the swings as high as they could go, or jump down from tree branches, just to make the cape bil­low and flash its bright yel­low lin­ing.

Meditation cushion

Remem­ber­ing Mom while cut­ting fab­ric for a zab­u­ton

Unlike the other moms we knew, our mother sewed pro­fes­sion­ally while rais­ing six chil­dren. Peo­ple would come to our house so she could tai­lor their suits (she did­n’t have her own car). Shortly after giv­ing birth to her sev­enth child, Mom re-entered the work­force and became a bank­ing pro­fes­sional. From then on her sewing down­shifted to a seri­ous hobby, reserved for spe­cial occa­sion out­fits.

Our child­hood mem­o­ries are steeped in images of her sewing, the sounds of the machine and the shears slic­ing through lay­ers of fab­ric. She may not have inter­acted with us as much as we would have liked, but we under­stood how ded­i­cated she was to her craft. She was pas­sion­ate about sewing, even though she never said so explic­itly. (She was more likely to ratio­nal­ize it as a money-sav­ing endeavor…)

We trea­sure the mem­o­ries of her gifted hand­i­work: the Easter out­fits, the new clothes for school, gowns for proms or wed­dings, and later, chris­ten­ing gowns for her grand­chil­dren. Sadly, there are few pho­tos of the cloth­ing she made for the peo­ple she loved.

Learning from Mom

Mom taught me to knit and sew when I was six. No doubt it was a tac­tic to dis­tract me while she tended the younger chil­dren, or worked on dead­line for some­one’s promised out­fit. No mat­ter her moti­va­tion, I’ve always been grate­ful for her lessons. Given parental anx­i­eties today, it’s hard to believe that she encour­aged me to use her sewing machine when I was just 6 years old…

For the first 30 years of my life I sewed or knit­ted almost every­thing I wore, from blue jeans to dresses and out­er­wear. I also made my brides­maids’ dresses.

From our New Eng­land homes, I had easy access to woolen mills; could buy fab­rics and yarns at out­let prices directly from the pro­duc­ers. Mom loved going on those fab­ric shop­ping expe­di­tions, dri­ving across rural New Hamp­shire in search of woolen mills.

It’s been a long time since I went on a fab­ric or fiber shop­ping adven­ture… It’s been way too long since I did any sewing.

Dusting Off Those Crafting Skills

Last week I tried to mend a gar­ment and dis­cov­ered my Pfaff sewing machine was in dire need of a tune-up, after sit­ting idle for years while I focused on a West Coast career. Luck­ily I found a great repair ser­vice for this vin­tage machine, and it was all tuned up and back home within two days.

To relearn my sewing skills, I’ve begun work on a med­i­ta­tion cush­ion using mate­ri­als on hand. It’s been an inter­est­ing expe­ri­ence, relearn­ing how to use this machine, how to rewind the bob­bin or select the right presser foot for the task, and how to exe­cute things I’ve long since for­got­ten, such as how to insert a zip­per for a pil­low cush­ion. It’s also caus­ing my fin­gers to move in unac­cus­tomed ways, to exe­cute pre­cise tasks like thread­ing a nee­dle — remind­ing me that my fin­gers aren’t as dex­ter­ous as they used to be.

Assembling a knitted sweater

Assem­bling a knit­ted sweater this week­end

I’ve noticed a change in the qual­ity of the writ­ten instruc­tions that accom­pany the sewing pat­terns. For exam­ple, my pat­tern says, “Insert the zip­per.” Pat­terns writ­ten years ago would have explained how… Luck­ily, I’ve got some old ref­er­ence guides that describe alter­na­tive meth­ods (e.g., for gar­ments ver­sus pil­lows), so I was able to insert the zip­per with­out hav­ing to rip it out and start over.

I’ve also resumed work on a knit­ting project I began a few months ago, com­mit­ted to fin­ish­ing it before win­ter’s end. As the photo shows, I’ve embarked on the trick­i­est part: seam­ing the pieces and attach­ing the sleeves to the body of the sweater. If all goes well, this project will be done this week.

Thanks, Mom, for shar­ing your love of sewing and knit­ting. They bring me joy — and remind me of you when­ever my hands are occu­pied with fiber crafts.

A Vintage Old Lady for Valentine’s Day

February 12, 2016 •

A vintage Pfaff 1171 sewing machine

A vin­tage Pfaff 1171 sewing machine

My 25-year-old Pfaff sewing machine is com­ing home from the tune-up shop this week­end. She needed repairs to her presser foot, and adjust­ments to ten­sion and stitch­ing pre­ci­sion. The repair­man also cleaned the mov­ing parts and removed the gunky oil and grease that had caused her to lock up.

These are the prob­lems that occur when a pre­ci­sion mechan­i­cal device is neglected for more than a decade. Now the repair­man says she’s run­ning “like brand new” [sic].

Mechanical versus Electronic?

I was lucky to buy this work­horse sewing machine, right at the tran­si­tion point when lead­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers were flirt­ing with early LCD screens and prim­i­tive soft­ware appli­ca­tions for high-end sewing machines.

Hav­ing spent my career in soft­ware and later at Apple, I was leery about the pit­falls of buy­ing an impor­tant house­hold appli­ance that was utterly depen­dent on early gen­er­a­tion soft­ware — and worse, soft­ware devel­oped by peo­ple who don’t under­stand what it takes to pro­duce (and main­tain) great soft­ware.

To put things in per­spec­tive: the Web had­n’t been invented, the Inter­net was used only by sci­en­tists and aca­d­e­mics, and few peo­ple had email addresses. The Mac had only been around for a few years, and Microsoft had not yet released Win­dows 3.o/3.1 — the ver­sions that cat­a­pulted them into the Big Time. Those were the early days of com­put­ers and soft­ware designed for ordi­nary peo­ple to use…

After exam­in­ing those early mod­els, I could see how poorly those indus­trial-era man­u­fac­tur­ers under­stood the require­ments of soft­ware capa­ble of delight­ing con­sumers for years to come. Unlike the 1990s prod­uct design­ers, my high tech career had taught me the impor­tance of:

  • A deep under­stand­ing of usabil­ity, and how must-haves ver­sus nice-to-haves will dif­fer across the var­i­ous seg­ments of peo­ple who use sewing machines
  • Use cases and require­ments rel­e­vant to spe­cific cat­e­gories of sewing: e.g., gar­ments ver­sus quilts ver­sus embroi­dery
  • Ease of soft­ware updates and bug fixes
  • Local­iza­tion of the user inter­face. As it is, the printed man­u­als are hard enough to use, because multi-lin­gual instruc­tions are inter­min­gled — rather than lan­guage-spe­cific sec­tions
  • Screen leg­i­bil­ity under the ambi­ent light­ing con­di­tions for home or pro­fes­sional sewing machine users

Despite my ini­tial inter­est in state-of-the-art elec­tronic machines, I opted for the tried-and-true mechan­i­cal approach, where the man­u­fac­tur­ers excelled. My 25-year-old machine relies on push but­ton con­trols, dials and levers to adjust set­tings. It has a “heavy duty build.” There’s no soft­ware to break, or con­troller boards to replace.

Buy­ing a mechan­i­cal sewing machine proves to have been a wise deci­sion for that time… When you scan Ebay, Craigslist or sewing enthu­si­ast blogs, you can see the lengths that some peo­ple go to in their quest to find a vin­tage mechan­i­cal sewing machine from Bern­ina or Pfaff… I feel lucky to have cho­sen as I did. I flinch at the prices charged for com­pa­ra­ble mod­els today.

While I’m attracted to some of the con­ve­nience fea­tures of today’s high end machines, it’s hard to ratio­nal­ize their high prices, just to match the func­tion­al­ity I have now… If I start sewing a lot, as I did in my teens and twen­ties, then a pre­mium sewing machine might make more sense. It’s hard to jus­tify now.

Thanks to an $89 tune-up, my Pfaff 1171 will run smoothly and sweetly once again. Bet­ter yet, I still have all the parts and acces­sories, all the nee­dles and bob­bins, plus a sewing cab­i­net with a (semi-func­tional) hydraulic lift. It’s a great set-up for my episodic use — peri­ods of intense projects fol­lowed by months (years?) of inac­tiv­ity. For what­ever rea­son, sewing is start­ing to appeal to me again.

New Projects

The green cover needs repair

The green cover needs repair

My hus­band hopes to repair the pro­tec­tive cov­ers for Frol­ic’s sails. It’s unlikely that this Pfaff has the horse­power for such a heavy-duty sewing project: sewing through mul­ti­ple lay­ers of can­vas. He focuses on how small the sail cov­ers are, and there­fore believes this project should be well within the capa­bil­i­ties of our vin­tage Pfaff. We’ll see what hap­pens.

But for now I can’t wait to start some eas­ier projects with Madame Pfaff, once that she’s back from her spa treat­ments tomor­row.

First up: a med­i­ta­tion cush­ion fea­tur­ing some vin­tage Thai silk, sewn from the rem­nants of fab­ric used for cur­tains in my hus­band’s child­hood home in Swarth­more.

Closing Thoughts

Happy Valen­tine’s Day to me, from Madame “Tip­per” Pfaff. A true old lady, with beauty and ele­gance that’s hard to match.

My sis­ter is lucky to have my moth­er’s Pfaff 1171. I just hope she knows where to get it tuned up when needed… (We live on oppo­site coasts.)

For Women Who Want to Reinvent Themselves

June 14, 2012 •

Not every­one is blessed with a tech-savvy father, as I am. In the past half hour he’s talked about his Face­book time­line, shar­ing pho­tos via Drop­box, and using social net­work­ing tech­nolo­gies as a means of help­ing oth­ers. The fact that my dad is over 85 makes his famil­iar­ity with these options even more impres­sive.

But what really struck me is his lov­ing con­cern for my sis­ter and her friends, and how they might go about rein­vent­ing them­selves pro­fes­sion­ally. He is con­cerned not just for my sister’s cir­cle of friends, but because he rec­og­nizes that their chal­lenges are shared by hun­dreds of thou­sands, if not mil­lions, of other Amer­i­can women.

These are women in the prime of their lives: expe­ri­enced, vibrant, ener­getic, full of ideas, with a pas­sion­ate desire to con­tribute to their fam­ily and com­mu­ni­ties — and woe­fully under- or unem­ployed. Where’s the JOBS Act for them?

They exited the work­force in order to spend the past 10 or 15 years rais­ing their fam­i­lies. Nowa­days their kids are increas­ingly inde­pen­dent (except for trans­port and access to cash or credit cards!) This cre­ates the pos­si­bil­ity for these stay-at-home moms to re-enter the work­force, to con­tribute their wis­dom and capa­bil­i­ties in exchange for some form of com­pen­sa­tion.

But there’s a big catch…

These women have time and energy to invest in the next chap­ter of their career, but they fail to con­nect with today’s employ­ers, so they can’t land jobs that stick. Sadly, their tech­ni­cal skills are years out of date… If they’re lucky enough to get a job inter­view, they may find them­selves 10–15 years older than the hir­ing man­agers, who prob­a­bly lack the will­ing­ness or time to invest in retrain­ing Boomer women for today’s require­ments.

Temp­ing is an option, albeit less than ideal, but they’re at a gen­er­a­tional dis­ad­van­tage com­pared to recent col­lege grad­u­ates and the “dig­i­tal natives” who pre­dom­i­nate in many temp agen­cies. They may not under­stand the rules of engage­ment when it comes to temp agen­cies and the con­tracts between agen­cies and their clients.

Seek­ing mean­ing and self-esteem (not to men­tion com­pan­ion­ship, a trim­mer fig­ure, or a daily dose of endor­phins), they flock to yoga, Pilates and Zumba classes…

My sis­ter tells sto­ries of how her friends try to help or advise each other, after class or in cof­fee shops. Dad won­ders if there’s an online com­mu­nity that would enable them to help each other more effec­tively. His take is that there’s lots of talk, but no fol­low-through (for lack of a pro­duc­tive struc­ture to their con­ver­sa­tions?)

When asked, I was­n’t able to name spe­cific online com­mu­ni­ties where women pro­vide con­struc­tive advice and men­tor­ing to those who want to re-enter the work­force after a multi-year absence… I also sus­pect, at least for this gen­er­a­tion of Boomer women, that social bonds and trust are crit­i­cal; few are likely to reach out to strangers for help when it comes to things that touch on self-esteem. For chal­lenges like this their rela­tion­ships would need to have a real-world ground­ing before being extended into a vir­tual com­mu­nity.

Women Helping Women, Like a Book Club

business-model-you-book

But I did have a prac­ti­cal idea that my sis­ter and her friends could do at very lit­tle cost. They could meet together once or twice a month, like a book club, and com­mit to work together on a jour­ney of self-dis­cov­ery with the aid of a book called Busi­ness Model You.

At each meet­ing they would work together or sep­a­rately through a set of career “rein­ven­tion exer­cises,” help­ing each other as sound­ing boards and cheer­lead­ers. Each ses­sion would focus on one aspect of their per­sonal value can­vas, as shown below (thanks to www​.Busi​ness​Mod​e​lYou​.com). Ide­ally, some­one would facil­i­tate each ses­sion.

Business-Model-You-canvas-concept

They could use the rec­om­mended activ­i­ties and check­lists in the best-sell­ing book, Busi­ness Model You, as a per­sonal roadmap.

At the end of the process, they are likely to end up with at least one career con­cepts that they could val­i­date.

Peo­ple who are seri­ous about explor­ing new career vis­tas and are will­ing to be intro­spec­tive should def­i­nitely buy the book.

Ddis­clo­sure: I was a con­tribut­ing co-author, along with hun­dreds of other insight­ful and tal­ented peo­ple around the world.

Do you know any­one who has worked with women in this sit­u­a­tion? I’m not talk­ing about pro­fes­sional life coaches, but women help­ing women to rein­vent them­selves…

Cultivating Silence, For Better Writing

January 17, 2012 •

“Silence is golden.” Or so we’ve heard for cen­turies; a prover­bial say­ing that’s con­sis­tent across cul­tures.

The ques­tion is, in an amped-up, caf­feine-fueled, texting/tweeting world of con­stant dis­trac­tions, is there a place for silence in busi­ness? That is, can a more beau­ti­fully silent space lead to bet­ter writ­ing?

Or is this a ques­tion whose answer varies by age, with time for silence or con­tem­pla­tion a con­cept that appeals more pow­er­fully to peo­ple over 40?

Do peo­ple write bet­ter, think more clearly, if they have the lux­ury of doing so in an envi­ron­ment that screens out noise and dis­trac­tions? Does focus lead to bet­ter writ­ing, con­tent that’s more likely to res­onate with oth­ers? Can a blank can­vas invoke more cre­ativ­ity?

It’s an inter­est­ing ques­tion, one that I think is best answered on an indi­vid­ual basis. It’s also pos­si­ble that indi­vid­ual pref­er­ences are more sit­u­a­tional, linked to time and place, or what you’re think­ing or writ­ing about. Or: who’s pay­ing for your time and why…

A writer’s haven

If you’d like to expe­ri­ence the impact of dis­trac­tion-free silence while writ­ing, there’s a min­i­mal­ist tool for Mac, PC and iPad users called “OmmWriter Dana.” It’s kind of a zen-like, Steve Jobs-inspired approach to the act of writ­ing. Its Barcelona-based cre­ators call it “a writer’s haven.”

OmmWriter Dana

The min­i­mal­ist ver­sion can be down­loaded for free to your Mac; a paid-ver­sion offers a broader selec­tion of color schemes and audio themes designed to cul­ti­vate focus, con­tem­pla­tion and enhance cre­ativ­ity.

I’m using the basic ver­sion of OmmWriter to draft this blog post. OmmWriter enables me write the basic post, hid­ing the rest of my Mac­in­tosh envi­ron­ment (includ­ing turn­ing off my sec­ondary dis­play where I nor­mally scan incom­ing emails, tweets, etc.)

To turn this draft into a blog, I copy my draft, and then paste it into Word­Press where I’ll add the appro­pri­ate HTML tags, cat­e­gory tags and so on. This sep­a­rates the writ­ing process from the markup process.

Whether this two-step approach enhances cre­ativ­ity is too soon to say defin­i­tively. What I do know is that the actual expe­ri­ence of writ­ing with OmmWriter is more delight­ful than when writ­ing a blog inside Word­Press, LiveWriter, NotePad or any of the usual word pro­cess­ing tools.

Try it your­self, and see how it helps your writ­ing.

Tangled Up in Green

April 21, 2011 •

Over cof­fee last week I was rem­i­nisc­ing with a friend who’s pas­sion­ate about music, par­tic­u­larly Bob Dylan and other artists from the folk-rock era. While sip­ping lattes, Dave told the story of what inspired Dylan’s song, Tan­gled Up in Blue — a recent foray into paint­ing. Appar­ently Dylan adapted a remark from his art teacher: that begin­ners often get “tan­gled up in the blue” sec­tion of their palette.

Dave was enchanted by a recent biog­ra­phy of Dylan, writ­ten by a his­to­rian and Dylan fan, result­ing in a fas­ci­nat­ing explo­ration of the polit­i­cal, social and cul­tural milieu that informed Dylan’s art. Some­how we kept return­ing to the “tan­gled up” phrase dur­ing our con­ver­sa­tion.

Since then the phrase, snatches of the song and images of blue have been rever­ber­at­ing in my head. A pleas­ing form of blues obses­sion…

And now the con­cept has mor­phed into “tan­gled up in green,” sparked the visual explo­sion of spring green every­where I look here in the Pacific North­west.

Green-Leaves-of-Spring

After a long grey and insanely rainy win­ter, this ver­dant fire is a feast for warmth-starved eyes.

What Story Does Your Face Tell?

June 23, 2010 •

My brother is writ­ing a book with his step­daugh­ter about their scar­ily par­al­lel sto­ries as can­cer fight­ers and sur­vivors. At the moment, they’re work­ing on author pho­tos for the book cover. This process has made me think about the sto­ries that faces tell, or hint at; the mes­sages that can be per­ceived sub­lim­i­nally when your photo appears in dif­fer­ent con­texts — like a book jacket, a Face­book page, etc. [Read more…]

Color Your World

May 24, 2010 •

Interview view of Seattle Yoga Arts' new studio

Col­orists, inte­rior design­ers and other experts know how to influ­ence moods and atti­tu­di­nal state by the col­ors that sur­round peo­ple at work, at home or at play. I was reminded of the power of color at yesterday’s Anusara yoga class.

Before class, we were all buzzing about the energy we feel in Seat­tle Yoga Arts’ new venue (shown above).

The stu­dio is vibrant, alive with heart-warm­ing hues: reds, oranges, pinks, mus­tard yel­lows, and pur­ple accents. The play­ful inte­rior offers a huge (and wel­come) con­trast to the orig­i­nal stu­dio a few blocks north. While this ener­giz­ing palette may not be opti­mal for inspir­ing med­i­ta­tion or con­tem­pla­tion, it fires our asanas. An appro­pri­ate choice for Anusara’s heart-cen­tered phi­los­o­phy.

As one color expert writes,

…Red sug­gests the very ebb and flow of life. It is the most vis­cer­ally alive hue, the sym­bolic color of the heart, strong-willed and express­ing strong emo­tions. It may com­mand us to stop but at the same time encour­ages move­ment. Phys­i­o­log­i­cally, red is a call to the adren­a­line glands to get the body and senses acti­vated.

—Leatrice Eise­man, Color: Mes­sages and Mean­ings

Dri­ving home, still pon­der­ing the impact of color, I recalled two starkly dif­fer­ent office envi­ron­ments from ear­lier in my career, back in my Sil­i­con Val­ley days.

Apple’s col­or­ful, care­fully designed office envi­ron­ments were a play­ful but ener­giz­ing con­trast to HP’s drab office spaces and linoleum floors. HP’s office always made me think of a house that was func­tional, but unloved. Although sep­a­rated by only 2 miles, they were oceans apart in terms of cor­po­rate cul­ture and design sen­si­bil­i­ties. Apple’s envi­ron­ment stim­u­lated my brain and inspired me to do my best; HP’s depressed me into a low-energy, dull and plod­ding state — one I couldn’t wait to leave.

The Sound of Her Voice

March 15, 2010 •

If you’re a yoga stu­dent who lives in an area blessed with lots of stu­dios and tal­ented teach­ers, you can be more dis­crim­i­nat­ing when choos­ing where to take classes or which teach­ers to fol­low. Now that I’m no longer a rank begin­ner, I’ve started to pay closer atten­tion to the fac­tors that cause me to pre­fer some teach­ers over oth­ers. And one of those fac­tors is, I con­fess, the sound of her voice.

yoga-class

Why the Voice Matters in Yoga

The sound of a teacher’s voice is an impor­tant aspect of a class: what she says and how she says it. It’s a mat­ter of per­sonal taste, but some voices are — to my ear at least— more pleas­ing than oth­ers. In any given class I spend a lot of time lis­ten­ing with either eyes closed or atten­tion focused else­where (the drishti gaze). When I’m not actively watch­ing the teacher, the sound of her voice helps me focus my prac­tice or iden­tify where a micro-adjust­ment might be required. What she says and how she says it can make all the dif­fer­ence between yoga-as-gym-activ­ity and yoga as some­thing more mean­ing­ful or uplift­ing.

Does the teacher’s voice direct your atten­tion to the key focal point(s) for your pose? Does it help you crys­tal­lize your inten­tion or improve your abil­ity to shift into your med­i­ta­tion space?

Yes, of course, the con­tent of what the teacher says and how she deliv­ers her instruc­tions are hugely impor­tant. That’s the start­ing point, the sine qua non. If the teacher’s instruc­tional style or her abil­ity to guide you is out of whack with your needs and capa­bil­i­ties, noth­ing else mat­ters: you need to find a teacher bet­ter suited to what you need to learn, or unlearn. Solve that prob­lem first.

Once you’ve found a set of tal­ented teach­ers whose instruc­tion style and yoga tra­di­tion match your pref­er­ences, then you can start to pay atten­tion to other fac­tors, like class size, the nature of the invo­ca­tions or read­ings, etc. The spir­i­tual con­tent (or lack thereof). The smell of the stu­dio. Its décor. The props on offer.

Ide­ally, I pre­fer classes that are small enough to offer semi-indi­vid­u­al­ized atten­tion on how to improve your pose, align­ment, action, drishti focal point — what­ever. But it’s rare to find a high qual­ity, uncrowded class. In this par­tic­u­lar urban area crowded classes are the norm, unless you’ve found a new teacher, a new stu­dio just devel­op­ing its fol­low­ing, or can take classes at unpop­u­lar hours.

In large or crowded classes, it can be dif­fi­cult to see the teacher when your mat is not up in the front, except for those moments when she stops the class to demon­strate a new or chal­leng­ing pose. In classes like this the voice mat­ters more than ever. It’s the car­rier for good instruc­tion.

Implications for Teachers

If you’re try­ing to attract more stu­dents, think about ways to offer a trial expe­ri­ence of your voice, the qual­ity of your instruc­tion. What about offer­ing some sam­ple pod­casts or an online video clip to show­case how you teach and inter­act with stu­dents? Pick a pose or two, find a will­ing stu­dent or two, and get someone’s help to record/video the instruc­tional moment.

Then look for appro­pri­ate places online where you can pub­lish or offer your sam­ple of how you teach your stu­dents. Face­book, YouTube, your studio’s web­site, iTunes, online yoga com­mu­ni­ties — you now have lots of rel­a­tively inex­pen­sive oppor­tu­ni­ties to show­case what makes you such an inspir­ing teacher. And if this is all tech­ni­cally beyond your skillset, per­haps you can barter some free classes in exchange for tech­ni­cal or pro­fes­sional help with your pod­cast or sam­ple video.

If you con­tribute to a blog, think about ways to offer a brief pod­cast or audio clip in which you share your voice, your val­ues, or what you’re all about as a teacher and yoga prac­ti­tioner.

Share your voice.

What Matters Now

January 6, 2010 •

Every now and then you come across a gem to share broadly with oth­ers: What Mat­ters Now, a com­pi­la­tion of great ideas by bril­liant thinkers and change agents. Agent provo­ca­teur Seth Godin has pro­duced this com­pi­la­tion and offers it as a free down­load­able ebook from his blog. He encour­ages like-minded folk who are sick and tired of the sta­tus quo to do like­wise.

Each of these big thinkers has offered up pearls of wis­dom from their life’s expe­ri­ence or their pro­fes­sional adven­tures — and some of their notions will res­onate for days after in your mind. It’s easy to con­sume: one big idea per page.

big-thinkers

For exam­ple, con­sider this gem [Read more…]

Following Through on New Year’s Resolutions

December 30, 2009 •

It’s that time of year again, time to review what worked (and what didn’t) in 2009, imag­ine new pos­si­bil­i­ties, dream, and set inten­tions for the com­ing year. I’ve been enjoy­ing the process of set­ting some action­able goals for 2010, while iden­ti­fy­ing some larger aspi­ra­tions that I’d like to trans­late into action.

To pre­pare my plan for 2010 I’ve been read­ing a bunch of books, mag­a­zines and online resources.

The chal­lenge, of course, is how to make sure you fol­low through on the New Year’s res­o­lu­tions, once past the early enthu­si­asm and first few weeks of good inten­tions… [Read more…]

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About This Blog

Reflec­tions on life, travel, books, and yoga. Think­ing out loud about the pur­suit of mind­ful­ness and well-being.

Learn­ing how to recover from the loss of a beloved spouse, and then to find a trans­for­ma­tive path for­ward.

About Me

Semi-retired marketing exec, transitioning from a career in high tech. Now "managed" by two Tonkinese cats. Missing travel and friends on the West Coast. Avid reader and foodie. Staying active with long walks, biking, kayaking and yoga.

Recent Posts

  • Wet Sand, Wet Boots, Birds
  • Living with Vintage Items
  • Slowing Down
  • Reflections on My Camino
  • Going Off the Beaten Track in France

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