We’ve all heard the advice: Be fully present. But what does that look like when you’re talking to others? And when you’re approaching your best work?
Here’s a link with my thoughts on this fun topic. This is a quickie tip!
Sending you best wishes on a warm Virginia spring day.
If you’re trying to get a lot done and find you aren’t staying on track, it may be time to do a little less and focus a little more. In this video, I’ll share five of my favorite tips to help you get more done. If this is helpful, please like, share, and subscribe to my channel on YouTube!
Happy Spring!
We have a limited amount of time on this earth. When you go, what would you like to leave behind? And how would you like to be remembered?
Writing an Ideal Obituary for yourself helps you prioritize on a daily basis. If you’re faced with a task, favor, short-term goal, or long-term goal that doesn’t support your Ideal, what could you do instead that gets you closer to the life you want to live and the memories you want to leave behind?
If this video helps, please “like,” subscribe, and share on your social media. When we work together, we can help many. Thanks for watching!
Owning a lot of stuff can give you a temporary feeling of being happy. But when you start to collect a lot of belongings, the burden can feel overwhelming, says a person who moved three times during the Pandemic :). And, the more we own, the more we demand of the earth to support us.
In Braiding Sweetgrass, author Robin Wall Kimmerer muses on ways in which our relationship with the earth is reflected in our relationships with others. Being caring and conscientious with our natural environment gives us a feeling of belonging to the earth. She gives beautiful examples of how we have co-evolved with the earth – where we need the earth and the earth needs us.
Continue readingAs soon as I got bumped out of my cross-country trip (Thank you, Covid!), I started looking for a house to buy. I figured that the housing market would fall apart – which would have made sense with so many people losing their jobs. But as you may have heard, just the opposite happened. The housing market went crazy as everyone started to nest.
For months, I found nothing I liked that I could afford, but I kept searching until I found a gem – an 1880s house in Bath, ME that had been converted into law offices. The 10-room house was in serious need of renovation but it was in a beautiful location along the Kennebec River. With high ceilings and hardwood floors, this beautiful old house would convert nicely into two luxury apartments – one for me to live in, and one to rent out to help keep the monthly mortgage payments low.
My mom offered to go in with me on the deal, but I still needed a mortgage. And according to the mortgage broker, in order to get one, I had to have a job.
Continue readingWhen making a change feels overwhelming, trust that if you take one baby step in a new direction, other steps will follow. This is true when you’re considering a new habit. Decluttering your house. Changing jobs. Or moving across the country!
One step… you make a decision.
One step… you’re facing in a new direction.
One step… you’re a tiny bit closer to a goal.
What’s vital is that you choose each step with intent. What do you want to get done in the long run? And what’s one small step you can take today to get going?
It’s been almost a year since Covid bounced me off my writing path and I ended up back in Portland, Maine. It’s been an insightful year despite the restrictions of a pandemic. Before I left to travel and write, I got divorced, sold my house, and quit my job. So when I came back to Maine, I had no responsibilities and no agenda. What’s an organizer to do with no agenda?
I wrote – not the book I intended to write based on history and travel – but a book called Organizational Zen (which has the fun nickname of OZ!). OZ captures the essence of what I write about in this blog. How do you get to your best work? How do you stay calm amidst chaos? How do you remain joyful in the face of life’s many challenges and uncertainties?
I’m a planner, as you may know. I like to keep things organized and to get a lot done each day. This year, I decided to put aside a busy life and have just one thing on my list: write a sequel to my Gunny Malone novel. In order to clear my list, my plan was to travel and write-in-place. To be inspired by the places I was writing about including rounding Cape Horn on a ship. To write as I followed the trail west from Virginia to San Francisco. To write as I spent time in Alexandria, Virginia, Washington, DC, and Charleston, South Carolina. And to write while living for a month on the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland.
I had worked on my plans for about a year. I had an over-sized map on my wall with places I wanted to go, things I wanted to see, and people I was going to stay with. I got camping equipment and a new car for the journey, one I could sleep in if necessary. I quit my job. I sold my house. And I hit the road on February 26th. Continue reading
I love when you find and make time for high energy projects whether it’s work you’re paid for or work you choose to do on your own. And I deeply believe that when you get organized you do your best work because you’re choosing how to spend your brief time here on Earth.
The rubber is literally hitting the road for me as I write those words and begin a seven month journey to get the rough draft written for the sequel to Gunny Malone. This is high-energy, driven work that may make no sense to anyone but me. But I heard the call to head off on a Quest, so off I go. Today is Day #1 of the journey as I fly off to Chile, our base to head out on a Viking cruise around Cape Horn. When I get back, I’ll start a US cross-country trip from New York to Virginia, then west along the old Oregon trail ending up in San Francisco. Then I’ll spend time back on the east coast working on parts of the story in Charleston and Maine and wrap up with a month writing on the west coast of Ireland. These are all places where the sequel happens, but it starts in 1861. So I’ll also be time traveling! What does one efficiently pack for time travel? 🙂 Continue reading
Organizational Habits 