Stories

This week, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it takes to keep going when it feels like you’ve been going and going and going and the goal is STILL not happening. STILL just out of reach. So first, all the nice sayings and quotes in the world will not help a lot when you reach this point. You’re no longer at a place where you are “inspire-able”, at least not apart […]

In-Between Week:  Christmas just passed, the new year just around the corner. I have been spending these long nights and short days ruminating about life, meaning, the effort we put into work and play. I’ve been playing with ideas and thoughts about what’s been working, what hasn’t, and what we have to offer in service to the world. One of the themes that keeps coming back to me is joy. Joy is […]

In my early 20’s, I moved to the Big Island of Hawaii. Like many people my age, living in paradise seemed like a fabulous idea that was a little less perfect when one is poor, naive and young. Especially the poor part. I had gone to Hawaii thinking I would become a massage therapist, a great idea (theoretically) for a single mom with a degree in Anthropology looking for a career that […]

Story: Feedback! This isn’t QUITE a story, but I got some fantastic feedback from last week’s words and I wanted to share it with you. One of my readers emailed me back feeling a bit upset that I was “fat-shaming” in my reference to the “corn-fed” young man who whisked Bethany away to Missouri. Here’s what I wrote back to the reader: Thank you so much for your feedback! The guy that […]

52 weeks of gratitude complete! When I started this weekly email, it felt so daunting and a little scary. I was worried about a year-long commitment. What if I got sick? Or tired? Or didn’t feel grateful? Could I really pull this off? But it turns out that it was fine. In fact, it was better than fine. The 52 weeks of gratitude added a dose of happiness to my life. And […]

Story: Once upon a time I decided to open a cyber cafe. I had a vague idea that I could turn my expensive coffee habit into a money-making venture. I found a guy online who was selling all his old cafe equipment. I borrowed a big truck and drove three hours one way to pick up all his equipment: bistro tables, chairs, dishes, espresso machine, a couple three-bay stainless steel sinks. Basically […]

What I’m Grateful For: Life “The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always […]

What I’m Grateful For: Words This is the 50th week of my emails. Just a few more and it will be a year. Time is a funny thing. It seems like this past year went really quickly, but it feels like these weekly emails anchored the entire year firmly and resoundingly in place and made it feel much longer (in a good way.) Unlike a diary or a journal of what happened, these […]

What I’m Grateful For: Dogs My daughter’s good friend and neighbor owns 15 dogs. She is sixteen years old, and she is a dog musher. Last year she and her team ran (and finished) the Junior Iditarod. My daughter loves going down the hill to help with the dogs – feeding, exercising, brushing, cleaning pens, hanging out. It’s her favorite thing to do when she’s done with her chores and work around the […]

I love grey weekdays…. especially in the fall, even better if it’s raining just a little. These days, I’m happy as a clam to put on a nice fuzzy sweater and my leggings and head to work. It’s so much better than those glorious, shockingly beautiful fall color days – when you know there’s only a small handful left before winter sets in, and you DO NOT want to spend all that […]

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 […]

  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 […]

  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 […]

  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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

What I’m Grateful For: What Goes Down, Goes Back Up So I’m no longer a “spring chicken” – which is a nice way of saying I’m kinda old. I don’t FEEL old, not one bit. But I am noticing a few things that are markedly different now from my “younger days.” Yeah, there’s the bits and bobs that are not quite as perky or bouncy or resilient. There’s my darn trick knee, a […]

What I’m Grateful For: Horses (aka, “Hard Work”) Right now I’m sitting in my car, on my laptop, hooked up to my hotspot, writing this while I watch my youngest warming up her new horse, Theo (short for Prometheus – yes, she IS her mother’s daughter.) It’s hot and dusty but the sun just sank beneath the ridge and a slightly cooler breeze is just now rolling off the dry hillside. In short, […]

What I’m Grateful For: The Grind Some days are harder than others to feel grateful. Today is like that for me. Everything feels like a grind – from leadership to client communication, to parenting, to taking care of home and hearth. It doesn’t feel good, I don’t feel inspired and nothing holds much appeal. This is the grind. It’s where you put your head down and do what you said you’d do regardless […]

Last week’s post on solitude got a lot of response… ironically, as I wrote about solitude I heard back from so many people that I felt very connected! Which made me think about how grateful I am to be connected to so many amazing people. I also deeply appreciate the way that technology allows us to be more connected across greater distances. I know that technology has also made it easier for […]

What I’m Grateful For: Solitude I’m not an extrovert, but if you met me, you’d probably think I was. I’m not shy in the least and I’m a good conversationalist and it’s pretty easy for me to get others to open up and share. But what I love most is solitude… I love the vast emptiness of the room when I’m the only one in it (ok, me and the dog, possibly the […]

What I’m Grateful For: Sisters This morning I had a call from my sister (my only sibling). We had a rambling conversation that managed to cover everything from global warming, the future of our planet, social leveling tools in modern society, and odd fragments from our childhood that only the two of us would recognize. We have not always gotten along. In fact, there are many periods in our history that we were […]

What I’m Grateful For: Food (Part 1 of 3) Part 1: Fasting As I write this, I’m simmering a batch of bone broth (made from bones from my sister’s grass fed lambs and my dad’s turnip-fed pigs). I’m taking a day off of eating (fasting) but am sipping bone broth throughout the day. I have been thinking a lot of about food the last year – what we eat, why we eat […]

What I’m Grateful For: Editing The process of editing your work (or someone else’s) is a critical and necessary part of creating a finished product. It’s also a task I dread and procrastinate on before I start, but one I absolutely love and have a hard time making myself take a break from once I begin. Why is this so? I don’t have a definitive answer, but a few possibilities come to mind. […]

What I’m Grateful For: Yardwork There’s nothing more fun than getting out in the yard, especially in spring, and launching into the process of getting everything raked, clipped, pruned, mowed and tilled. It’s not work at all – it feels like the best kind of play, enjoying the fresh air, the dog bouncing around like Tigger, birds at all the feeders – it’s funny that the word for it calls it “work!” […]

What I’m Grateful For: Books Books. They are straight-up, always,100% something I’m perpetually grateful for. I have loved books as long as I can remember, having been a rather awkward, clumsy child with large glasses and an argumentative attitude. Books were my constant companions and they never failed me. Adventures, fantasy, learning, exploration, magic, history, science fiction – I read it all. Today, I still love reading. Books are quiet, constant companions. I […]