My husband and I just moved into a new house. Actually, it’s a very old house, built in 1880.

Accordingly, it’s small by modern standards, just under 900 square feet. But it doesn’t feel small. It feels just right.

I’ve lived in places that felt too small. And the logical solution was to move somewhere bigger. But what I now see, after spending some time living miserably in an enormous house, is that bigger isn’t necessarily better. It is more useful to identify and address specific challenges.

Read More

One of my employees has been out sick with the coronavirus for six weeks, entirely unable to work during that time.

I’m happy to report that she’s feeling a bit better — she isn’t having breathing problems now — but her energy and focus are still a long way from allowing her to return at one hundred percent.

So in the meantime, I’ve been spending a few hours each day doing her job. And that’s been pretty satisfying, because I already know how to do her job. I feel productive, industrious, and competent, checking things off the list and watching stuff happen.

Read More

I am a lightweight when it comes to caffeine.

My friends joke about how I get totally wired off of just a few sips of a cup of coffee. My cup is still sitting there, the liquid only an inch from the top, and I’m reorganizing the closet while having ten new business ideas — after writing fifty emails and two articles. And even if the consumption was in the morning, I might not sleep until the wee hours. Consequently, I limited caffeine to just once a week or so.

And then the pandemic happened, and I started drinking coffee almost every day. Not much, but enough to make existence seem a little less bleak. It wasn’t a magic productivity drug anymore — it was a survival mechanism.

Read More

I started rowing due to peer pressure.

The only people I knew in my new city were rowers, so I took up rowing. That was fine with me — I love early mornings, being on the water, and working as part of a team.

I didn’t love rowing, though. Not at first. It was confusing, physically demanding, and even a little bit painful (blisters upon blisters). And if I messed up particularly badly, I might unwittingly toss a half dozen people into the sea.

Read More

When my siblings and I were little, my parents didn’t have special “kid dishes.” They served us scrambled eggs on bread plates.

Sometimes, the bread plates would run out, and they’d serve scrambled eggs on a saucer. Like all annoying kids, we might complain about it once we ate enough eggs to discover the indentation where the teacup was supposed to go.

My dad, undaunted, tricked us into believing we had won something special. He had a special song, like a fanfare: “The secret ring! You’ve found the secret ring!” Mollified or perhaps even pleased, the secret-ring-haver would would go back to eating their eggs.

Read More