365 Days of Gratitude

What I’m Grateful For: Integrity, or My Own Lack Thereof (part 3 of 2, yes I know….) Out of integrity: me. In the course of a rough few weeks, I was informed by a good, honest friend of mine that I was out of integrity with my team and myself. One of my longtime clients and a good friend of mine had asked for an upgrade for a new website. Without going into it, the long

  What I’m Grateful For: Integrity (part 2 of 2) Out of integrity: does this mean something that is missing a part that is integral or fundamental to its intended operation? Or something that is just missing something, period? It’s an interesting discussion. A truck that is missing its tailgate can still drive, so if that trucks purpose is to get you to work, it still has integrity in that regard. However, what if you need

  What I’m Grateful For: Integrity (part 1 of 2) A recent set of events has made me ponder the importance of integrity. There are two definitions of integrity. The first is the moral kind, where you talk about a person’s integrity in light of how closely they adhere to the “rules” or values that we consider to be correct: fidelity, honesty, someone you can trust not to try to seduce your partner or embezzle money

  What I’m Grateful For: Honesty I have been reading about honesty in teams and business culture, and looking at my own team and thinking about our dynamics as a group. One of the things that occurred to me was an interesting idea about the difference ways that trying to be honest, trying to be kind and helpful, and trying to wrestle with difficult conversations or issues, may all be experienced differently by different people.

What I’m Grateful For: Fall is Coming Each season holds its own particular joys, but after the last half-decade of continual summer wildfires, I find myself longing for fall more and more each day. The unbelievably deep blue skies, the crisp mornings and the welcome warmth of sunlight, the leaves turning and the chilly nights…. sweaters and boots and cozy blankets…. Oh hurray it’s coming soon! I really cannot wait, I’m so ready for

What I’m Grateful For: Rain Last night it rained. Not very much, but the first rain that we have had in a long, long time. There was enough rain that the smoke cleared out of the air, the dust settled and our ears rejoiced at the sound. Mind you, there was also lightning, thunder and several new fires started. But then to offset that, our evacuations were all lifted! It was a crazy, tumultuous and rather confusing

What I’m Grateful For: Digging Fireline  It was a hectic weekend – the fire that has been just over in another drainage is now creeping into ours. The good news is, it’s September now, not July – so the fall rains WILL come at some point, although truthfully it could still be a month. But even without them, the nights are cooler. Oh, but then the wind is more likely to blow too. Heck,

What I’m Grateful For: Sleep – and Insomnia (again) If you tally it all up…. we spend about a third of our lives asleep (or at least we are supposed to, if we get our ‘recommended’ eight hours a night!). That’s a lot of life, when you stop to think about it. Sleep didn’t come easy for me as a child. I had a strange, very high fever around the age of 5 and had several

This is one of those upside-down gratitudes – an exercise I try to undertake whenever I catch myself thinking how unhappy I am about something. This week, it’s smoky. Really smoky. From wildfires – lots of them. Like most of the west, Washington State seems to be on fire this summer, especially after a spate of dry lightning started 20-some fires yesterday morning. Then later yesterday afternoon, a hay baler caught fire (rumor

What I’m Grateful For: The Carrot AND the Stick I was reading a little bit on “flow” the other day – you know, that recently popular buzz-word that means the state where you kind of lose yourself and you are incredibly productive and massively engaged and the rest of the world kind of floats away. It’s a state I love but it’s not easy to just replicate any old time you want to, which