Category: Life & Living

My grandparents were famous for what they called putzing around the house. Considered slang, it’s often described as engaging in aimless recreation or frivolous time-wasting, but I can assure you it meant just the opposite for my grandparents – and me. Putzing around the house wasn’t about laziness at all for my grandparents. On the contrary, it was born from their inability to waste the time they were given. While I’m not saying that my grandparents didn’t enjoy mindless entertainment on occasion, if given the choice they were often putzing around the house whether outside picking weeds from their garden beds, organizing the garage or closets, making a few batches of eggplant parmesan to bring to family and friends, or a host of other random tasks which brought a sense…

“Change is not popular; we are creatures of habit as human beings. ‘I want it to be the way it was.’ But if you continue the way it was there will be no ‘is.’” - Robin Williams  How often do you simply make a decision based more out of habit than logic without giving it a second thought? More out of comfort and security than necessity?  Yes, humans are certainly creatures of habit and I recently rediscovered that reality when I found myself facing an unexpected situation.  Since my wife and I married almost twenty years ago, we’ve always been a two-car household, which statistically agrees with American families today and was completely sensible given our differing work locations, which made carpooling impossible. Regardless of the geographical limitations, there is…

There are souls many of us have been blessed to share time with here on Earth. Their presence will never be filled again; their void will always feel apparent; their memory we’ll use to judge all other occasions. Sadly, after these souls left this earthly place, nothing feels quite the same anymore. Holidays and birthdays still come and go with the same regularity, only now they no longer have the same magic. We try to recapture some of it by recreating traditions, recipes, even looking at old pictures, but by the end, we’re reminded of their absence and grieve once again. I realize that not everyone struggles with this sense of loss. Perhaps some are better able to compartmentalize their feelings and find ways to keep moving forward. Though I…

The word “facade” is defined as “a false, superficial or artificial appearance or effect”. While often used to describe a building’s exterior, it’s also used to define people’s obsessive desire to create, and sadly, support a myth about their life. We use heavy cosmetics, altering surgeries, hair dye, fad diets and clothing to help conceal from the world our real earthly age. We burden ourselves with credit card debt, auto loans and home loans with the misguided notion that material possessions will convey to others that we’re wealthier and more successful than we really are. We exude an air of over confidence, dominance and conceit at home and at work in an attempt to hide the demons of insecurity which plague our everyday life. Where’s the danger in all this…

“But here’s the deal, sweet stranger. You deserve to be the protagonist of your own wonderful, bizarre, terrifying little life. If you decide you are enough, you are enough. You don’t need to wait for some grand external validation of your worth before you offer your kindest heart to yourself.” – Kathy Brown Life is a never ending stream of challenges and discoveries. Our society runs rampant with judgmental and envious eyes just waiting for the opportunity to criticize who we are and what we do from one day to the next. But oftentimes the biggest offender behind those judgmental eyes, which so often look to criticize us, are none other than our own. You are enough. Three simple little words with such immense power - only if we’re brave…