January 31, 2014

Up for a Bike Ride?

Intention. It's what this blog is all about. It's what I work at every day as a coach, supporting others in their own quest for it. It's the heart of a lovely little book I simply couldn't put down.

Notes from a Blue Bike tours Tsh Oxenreider's path toward intention. It is an endearing memoir of her pursuit of purposeful living in five areas: food, work, education, travel, and entertainment.

I wrote 161 words trying to define the idea of living with intention.  Tsh puts it more succinctly when she calls it "living life, instead of life living us."

January 22, 2014

Five Ways I Want to Be Like My Daddy

Every now and then, usually on a Monday, I peek out my back windows at home and see something that makes me smile broadly. My dad’s vehicle is parked under the pecan trees, and on his property the big barn doors are flung open. I know he’s out there building something, repairing something, or searching for something stored away in the barn. Most of the time, he’s doing one of those things for someone else. I know he enjoys working with his hands. But I think he also likes the quiet, the familiar calm in the orchard, the space for thought. Perhaps returning to the family land is as comforting to him as seeing him there is for me— a refreshing reminder that some things in this world, though they change like everything else, do so a little more slowly.

January 16, 2014

You Know Me

We’re in the car, traversing those same fifteen miles again. Past the window fly dispassionate pines and fields and family-owned businesses. From the pane, trying to appear just as detached, my own reflection looks back at me.
I say it again, for the hundredth time. “I just don’t feel like anyone knows me.”
My husband sighs, mutters sympathy.