My bride laughs at the way I pronounce "experiment". Apparently I say /ikˈspirˌmənt/ or something not too far from that. Vestiges of a southern father? No clue. And given the way I pepper my language and life with references to this word, I afford my loving-but-laughing partner plenty of chuckling. It's made me a bit self-conscious when I say the word, but doing it is another thing altogether. My ...
Midlife Blog
Wo/ander
Today I am a velo flâneur. [pullquote]A bicycle flâneur yielding to the siren call of knotted byways. Wonderful. Wanderful.[/pullquote] Instead of hustling up a mountain on two wheels, one of my favorite exercise routines in Santa Fe, I decide to wo/ander. To wonder about the spiderweb of (mostly dirt and gravel) roads near my home, unfamiliar roads, many of which I've never walked or ridden or ...
Your Goldfish Attention Span Just Got Shorter
Feeling flighty? Wondering why? Your attention span is shorter than a goldfish! The average attention span for the notoriously ill-focused goldfish is nine seconds, but according to a new studyfrom Microsoft Corp., people now generally lose concentration after eight seconds, highlighting the affects of an increasingly digitalized lifestyle on the brain. Researchers in Canada surveyed 2,000 ...
Midlife Monologue
I'm curious about your midlife monologue. Everyone's middle age is different. Some don't experience any transition at all (or so they insist), while others wrestle creatively/productively/disastrously/etc. with middle ages's inevitable shifts and changes. What's your midlife experience? Leap, pivot, or crisis? Positive transition or turmoil? Tiny tweaks or ...
Equinox
Welcome to autumn. This post marks — as close as technology permits — the precise moment that summer ends and autumn begins. The fall equinox 2016. That precision, like a celestial click between one reality and another is an enticing metaphor in many respects. It offers a sort of predictability and certainty that appeals to our innate yearning for order. And yet, I wonder, how much of that ...
What Do You Think of Doodling?
The October 2016 edition of mindful published highlights from a reader survey about boredom. In general, the piece supports the bias that boredom may not be such a bad thing after all… Maybe not. Then again, I'm pretty certain I've never been bored. Really! One of the questions included was, "What do you think of doodling?" My opinion about doodling (and my somewhat ample/unorthodox definition ...