Normally, this is a once-a-day gratitude practice for the week of Thanksgiving, but November was hard ( Read more... )

“Affirmation” by Assata Shakur ( Read more... )

In March, I nominally took over a team of an unspecified number of people. The number was unspecified because it was unknown! So one of my first tasks was to figure out, based on organization and role, how many people were in what would ultimately become my team ( Read more... )

Here's a thing that's been happening more and more to me at work, that makes me feel appreciated and valued ( Read more... )

Wild by Tony Hoagland ( Read more... )

CNN recently aired some coverage of the verdicts against the Steubenville rapists that was all, "boo hoo, these poor boys' lives are ruined." I won't link to the video, but here's a link to The Raw Story's critique of it. The critique is right on, and I am utterly amazed and disgusted at the CNN coverage. I largely avoid mainstream media, because, ( Read more... )

After five months of active looking, and a total of three offers on various houses, amber_phoenix, longueur, and I finally bought a house yesterday. I'm alternately elated and weirdly blase about it. There's something about the process having taken so long that makes it a little hard to wrap my head around it being real ( Read more... )

I keep wanting to post stuff here, but it basically can all be summed up with: My new job continues to be ridiculously great and they love me and it's all hearts and flowers and bluebirds and the goddamn beer fridge that I have instituted. People who work for other departments know who I am and want to know how they can get me on their side. It is ( Read more... )

Today, I'm thankful for having and exercising choices in difficult times. I have discovered time and again how much a sense of choice, even if I never exercise it, makes the difficult times and things in my life easier. When I give myself permission to take the easy way out if I really, really want to, most of the time, the mere sense that I have ( Read more... )

Earlier in the fall, vito_excalibur posted chain of foolishness, about, essentially, the difference between preparation and willpower, and how people can set themselves up to succeed or fail in life choices, really before the apparent point of choice arrives, because the actual point of choice was way back in a sequence of events. Vito refers to this excellent ( Read more... )