foggy morning in Monteagle

Feeling foggy

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 bottle of poison sits alone

Whose opinions of me matter?

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 …

a book with magical stars

My favorite reads in 2019

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 …

Judgy cat sits in judgment of you.

Never, ever read the comments

When I first started this newest iteration of liznorell.com and started blogging right here on this site, I was pretty excited about the ability to have conversations on the page. Because I actively don’t want fame — I dread it, in fact — I never anticipated that the comments on my blog would become hotbeds …

Just say no!

My ‘I don’t’ list.

A friend recently shared this article on Facebook: Every woman has an ‘I Don’t’ list. And it’s about time we shared them. TL;DR? Women today feel the need to appear to be doing ALL. THE. THINGS. … even as we inwardly feel certain we’re not enough, because we aren’t squeezing productivity out of every single …

pages of a book

Going to battle with Resistance

I’m leaving later today to attend a week-long writing retreat with Jen Louden (in Taos, New Mexico, squee!) Writing that sentence immediately sparks fear, anxiety, and excitement in me … a flutter just below my sternum that is probably the reason I haven’t slept more than about six hours a night (WAY TOO LITTLE for …