I am not a good curator. When I think of curator, I think of a musty dusty museum and someone who likes to type little cards that go next to a fragment of bone: Fibia (fragment). Wooly Mammoth. 10,000 b.c. They don’t spend their time or energy finding out that the mammoth’s name was Joe, or that he had a mate and sired about 15 baby wooly mammoths, or that he broke his left ankle during a stampede and walked with a limp which is why the lion got him and ate him and he ended up in the museum. […]

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Seth Godin posted recently that experiments are only experiments if you’re intentional about learning something.  If you don’t approach it this way, it’s not an experiment.  It’s a failure. You can still learn from failure, sure.  But you’ll learn faster from an experiment.  So….. With this in mind, I just wrapped up a 4-week experiment where I edited and re-posted daily excerpts from when we were in Ukraine adopting Masha five years ago. I learned: Weekends suck for blog traffic. More frequent posts do not equal increased subscriptions. Very few readers left comments. People emailed me that they loved the adoption story posts […]

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As part of the 15 Habits Of Great Writers Challenge, I’ve was dared last week to been to practice in public–to post something here like nothing I’ve ever posted before. Now, Jeff has dared us to “Start Ugly.” This means that I need to confess something to you.  What you normally see here?  That’s not how it starts.  Thoughts don’t typically come pouring out of me like a beautiful flowing river (nor do they end up looking like that, either).  They look a lot more like a Class 6 rapids.  Messy.  Doubling back on themselves.  Lots of rocks. Then I edit. […]

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Work has picked up lately.  More specifically, travel for work has picked up lately. When I’m not on the road, I work from an office in my house.  In my yoga pants. Travel means putting on big-girl clothes like the rest of you do every day.  Makeup.  Shoes. I have to look like a real live human being.  And sit in conference rooms and draw on whiteboards and lead conversations and make decisions.  That takes a lot of effort, and to be honest, some days I wonder if it’s worth it. I wonder why. Last February, I was honored to […]

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Last week I went to the office. This required dressing up in more than just a pair of yoga pants and fuzzy slippers. Looking like a human being.  Sitting in a room for three solid days with other people that I told to show up and look and act like human beings, all together. For an ultra-introvert…that’s hell.  On earth. (side note:  why can’t our office be someplace that’s located at the intersection of hell and atlantis, otherwise known as Florida?  I did not know that air could be both wet and on fire at the same time.) Furthermore, I suck […]

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