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Even In This, There is Peace

Our electricity went out just before 1:00 this morning. When the alarm woke me from a light doze at 5:30 AM, power still hadn't been restored. I woke up sleep-deprived, grumpy, and thinking of everything no power meant for my morning: A workout in the dark with no Grace & Frankie to distract me from the fact I had voluntarily left my bed before dawn to torture myself with cardio. No daylight lamp to give me the wakeup (and mood) boost I desperately needed. A seriously cold shower after my workout. No tea (read: no caffeine) with breakfast. T.G.I.F.  On the bright side, I could still meditate. The thought of enjoying those few moments of undisturbed silence cheered me up quite a bit. As I settled in for my morning meditation, the power surges started. And they didn't stop. This caused our battery backups to beep incessantly. I grumbled. Then I smiled. To put it delicately, my morning had been shot all to hell. Nothing had gone according to plan. The routines I depend on for
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What If This IS a Test?

Many of us are now a full month into social distancing, and things are starting to get nasty on social media. As a financial professional, I've seen firsthand the fear of small business owners whose businesses have been deemed non-essential and ordered to temporarily close. I've helped some make the heartbreaking decision to furlough loyal, long-time employees in order to help ensure the survival of the company so those employees have a job to return to when this crisis has passed. And the business owners I work with are better off than most - most of them had a cash reserve going into this "intentional recession" - but even the ones with robust savings will feel the strain if their businesses remain closed for more than another month. The "help" promised by the government in the form of the PPPL and EIDL has fallen short. I'm concerned many small businesses that survive the initial crisis will ultimately close when they are unable to make their loan
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Fear is Unsustainable

I've often wondered how people in countries besieged by war or terrorism are able to live seemingly normal lives. They go to work, send their children to school, take the bus, go grocery shopping...just like we do. After this week, I think I finally understand. Look, I'm not going to go into a long lament about these "unprecedented times" or "weathering the current situation" or "navigating these rough waters." We've all heard enough of that to last a while. And that's my point. I realized yesterday that, for the most part, I've adapted to this new normal. My Facebook and Twitter feeds indicate many others have, too. We're starting to talk about things other than community spread and lockdowns. People are sharing pictures of their gardens and flowers and sunrises and sunsets. I'm not going to pretend I'm not scared, or that as a nation - hell, as a PLANET - we aren't all scared.  I'm also not
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Millions Die From Not Reading

I hope I haven't caused mass hysteria. I hope I haven't sent dozens of people scrambling to their nearest bookstore to purchase books and avoid certain death. Okay, that second one isn't entirely true. If you own a bookstore and notice a spike in sales, you're welcome. Seriously, though, I do  hope you read the headline for this article and clicked on it to find out what on earth I was writing about. (I'll know how many of you did when I check my view count.) With that little headline up there, I intended to spark enough interest to get people to open the article and read it. Why? Because I want to inform. I want to entertain. I want the ego boost I get when I see a high view count for an article. The media wants the same things I do. Ever since the invention of the newspaper, headlines have been written to spark interest. The more sensational the headline, the more likely people were to buy the paper. This meant the paper made money,
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Mercury is Retrograde, and There's Nothing I Can Do

Poor Mercury. It seems like every time there is a communication or technology foul-up, or whenever people are just acting weird, the planet closest to the sun is the prime suspect. If a quick check of the website  www.ismercuryinretrograde.com  yields a positive response, that cinches it. Mercury is responsible. And when Mercury is retrograde, there's nothing you can do but sit back and ride it out. Brief astrology (and astronomy) lesson: Whenever a planet goes retrograde (some say "in retrograde," but this is grammatically incorrect) it appears to move backward across the sky. All planets go retrograde from time to time. They aren't actually moving backward - it just looks like they are because of how their orbit around the sun looks to us here on Earth. Astrologically speaking, the planet Mercury is thought to control communication. In mythology, the god Mercury was a messenger (he was known as Hermes to the Greeks...and he was a trickster to boot.) T
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Keeping Everyone Happy

I used to be obsessed with keeping everyone happy. My thinking seemed logical: If everyone was happy, there would be harmony, and everyone's lives would be easier as a result. Including mine. This obsession continued for decades. I became something of a master at making [almost] everyone happy. As you might have guessed, I was the [almost]. There were times when I did successfully make everyone happy, there was harmony, and life was easy for everyone. The problem was, those times were very rare. Usually, I felt like I was holding a giant, knotted, sparking ball of livewires, playing the world's most sadistic game of Twister while I tried to keep the ends from touching and blowing up the whole thing. I can't tell you when enough became enough or when I finally understood the adage "If you try to please everyone, you please no one" was a truism and not a challenge. And I won't lie and say I have it all figured out now and never fall back into that
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What's So Wrong With Here?

Many years ago, I was working as a pharmacy technician in a small town in Oklahoma. I hadn't lived here long, and I still had dreams of moving west to Seattle or Portland or somewhere in Northern California. Basically, anywhere except Oklahoma. The pharmacist's son was also a relatively new transplant to Oklahoma. He wasn't a fan, either.  One afternoon, he and I were talking about how we couldn't wait to move "anywhere other than here." Our highschool-aged coworker overheard us and asked: "What's so wrong with here?" We were shocked. "Have you ever been anywhere else?" he asked. "No," she replied. "Well, I mean, I've been places on vacation, and that's fun, but it's always nice to come home. I like it here." She went to help a customer, and my friend and I just shook our heads. Our coworker was obviously too young to know any better. Or maybe she just didn't aspire to much. Eit
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