In your ideal future, what are you doing? Is anyone else there? I like to dream about a better year ahead, so the word that I’ve chosen for 2023 is simply “Dreams.” Not only do I want to see lifelong dreams unfold, but I literally want to get more sleep. More dreams. Over the past
Open. That’s not only my word for this new year, I think that’s my word for this new decade. For the past several years, I’ve chosen a word at the start of each new year. It’s not a New Year’s Resolution. It’s more of a reflection, a word to put things into perspective. This year,
How was your year in 2018? Was it refreshing? Disappointing? Incredibly busy? No matter how it was, you can make 2019 a great year. We can’t control all of our circumstances. There are storms of life that will continue to head our way. However, we can choose how to view those storms―and how to respond
Happy First Day of Summer! Are you looking forward to the months ahead? When I enter into a new season, sometimes I feel a combination of joy and hesitation. Summer is often uncomfortably hot. It’s relieving to be done with the cold, exciting to have more outdoor activities to look forward to, but also frustrating
I was so excited to cross the border into Canada. I hadn’t been there since I was fourteen, and I’d built up this trip so much in my mind that I’d started calling it our “2017 international adventure”–even though all we were doing was crossing the border and staying in Canada for one night. At
Tony and I wondered if our road trip was going to be a disaster. At the beginning of March, we drove our three-month-old daughter to a city that was over four hundred miles away. After driving for only an hour, we had to stop for forty-five minutes because the baby needed to be fed and
I wouldn’t consider The Hunger Games movies to be particularly calming, but as we explored the area where the movies were filmed, I felt very relaxed. A week before we drove up there, I wouldn’t have guessed that we would be spending Memorial Day weekend in the mountains of North Carolina. While I find mountains
Choosing a hotel is one of my favorite things about planning a trip. I’ve stayed at quite a variety of places: youth hostels, fancy hotels, motels with bedbugs, beach hotels, Disney resorts, and charming bed-and-breakfasts. I have yet to experience anything quite like the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, California, though. It looks like
I rarely commit to new projects, because my free time is limited, but last week I was inspired to start an art journal. I work at a treatment center (as a mental health counselor and an art therapist), and one of the activities that I’ve encouraged my clients to do is to keep an art
Our first cruise stop was in Roatan, a beautiful island in Honduras. We planned to walk around the town and visit the beach, but we didn’t know that the most interesting moments of the day would involve meeting the locals. Right after we got off the boat, a sixteen-year-old boy started following us around. He
