** With apologies to Harry Potter fans for butchering the line. I spend about six hours a week staring at a video feed of myself whilst holding virtual office hours (which I call drop-in student hours, because not everyone knows what “office hours” means). During that time, I typically have very few students actually swing …
At 6:34 pm (central) on Friday, September 18, my cell phone pinged to alert me to an incoming text message. I glanced at the screen. My pulse accelerated rapidly at the two words that appeared under the name of a former student–one with whom I traveled to Washington, DC, last May for a two-week learning …
I recently blogged about a variety of things clustered around emotion at work — psychological safety, leadership in challenging times, etc. — and did so in a vague-ish way, because I’m painfully aware that I’m not in a position to speak freely about some of the trickier aspects of my work life. You can deduce …
I’ve wanted to write this blog post for a long time. Maybe as long as a year — maybe more. But when I read the book No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work, by Liz Fosslien & Mollie West Duffy, I knew it was time. But any time you want to …
Follow your bliss … and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be Joseph Campbell As a high school senior, the Joseph Campbell quote about following your bliss spoke to me. I couldn’t now say where this instinct originated; what about my first 18 years suggested that my bliss would lead …
Disclaimer: I’m a bit of a Jen Louden #fangirl. It’s possible I’d like to be her new BFF… but I promise, that aspiration is a result of reading her book, and not the reason I’m about to gush about it. In tackling an important but challenging topic, Jen Louden brings a tricky balance of hard-won …
This morning, I was driving over to my local drive-thru to get a little something to eat. It was a foggy morning in Monteagle — not at all unusual up here in our mountain hamlet. At one point, I was approaching a popular intersection and a pickup truck was looking like he was going to …
A moment of self-awareness demands that I admit that I have a problem saying ‘no’ to good ideas. If there’s something that my time/effort/attention could make better for the world or another person (or lots of people), I’m apt to knee-jerk commit to the project with little reflection on whether, realistically, I have the time …
I’m delighted to share my annual review of my favorite books I read last year. Thanks to my full embrace of Goodreads, I know a few things about my reading last year: 119 books, 30,313 pages, averaging 254 pages per book. If you want to go back in time and see what I loved in …
As I mentioned in a blog post over the weekend, I’ve been recently getting more regular missives from the president of the Liz Norell Haters Club (sometimes also known as Fakey McFakerston or “Bob Vila,” his chosen alias). I effectively shut down comments on my blog posts because I was tired of dude’s cowardly attempts …
