Nudges from Nature

In the decades that I've been calling myself a writer, I noticed a peculiar thing: the stories I told out loud would often not get written down. The more I talked about an idea, the less likely it would turn into words on a page. Even calling myself a “writer”, which seems to be rule #1 in all the writing advice books and columns, did not make me a better writer. It did not help me produce more work, better work, sell anything, or increase any real measure of success. Sobriety has been a parallel experience. The less I talk about it, the easier it seems to be to stay the course.  NOTE: As I mentioned in my first article about this , I’m not an alcoholic, so this perspective may be completely irrelevant to you if you are. Sharing seems to be a crucial component of the AA program. I’m explicitly and only sharing my personal experience at the moment in time. I've told precisely one person about my experiment, about my curiosity that 2024 might be a year without alcohol for me. And

Although I hadn’t been drinking for about three weeks, I consider that third weekend the true start of my experiment with a year of sobriety. It's when I faced my first test. The invitation was appealing and strong. A long-time friend was coming into town. He rented a cabin up in the mountains a short drive away. He had tickets to a local concert venue, one of my favorite places to see live music. From the outside looking in, it was in many ways an ideal invitation. Close by. Music in the redwoods. A cabin to crash at.  I was ambivalent. This was a drinking buddy. We didn’t do things together sober. Backyard BBQ, live music, dinner out, golf. It always centered around alcohol. The ambivalence was another signal that my relationship to alcohol is changing. I was listening to some celebrity testimonial about his struggles with alcohol and he countered a stereotype about the challenges of staying sober. He commented that it wasn’t the bad times - the quintessential idea of looking for

I didn’t consciously set out to stop drinking. There were no New Year’s Resolutions, no proclamations, no explicit commitments to sobriety. There was just a slow gurgling up of fatigue, nausea, and distaste that emerged as the 2023 Holiday Season came to an end. Not explicitly to the idea of alcohol, but to life in general. It started by accident. It was the day after Christmas and I had been managing a mostly terrible mood since Thanksgiving. Family obligations, financial stresses, waning client interest. It all came to a head on December 26th. I didn’t want to drink that day. I wanted to stay home and rest and watch my three kids play with their Christmas presents. Play some board games. Try out the new video gaming console. But we have a tradition – a fairly new tradition that is a compromise in and of itself – that this year felt particularly like just another obligation to meet. So, we all put on some nicer clothes, loaded into the car, and headed about an hour away to spend the

I'm not sure what exactly led me to create my own sourdough starter. It was on an ideal Spring day -- one of those first days in Spring that is noticeably warmer than the ones preceding it and clearly indicates Winter is now definitely behind us. I opened the window above the sink in the kitchen and I saw dandelion, cottonwood, and various grass seedlings floating on the gentle breeze finding its way through the field behind my home. I was immediately taken back to a memory of years earlier where I learned that sourdough was a product of the wild yeasts and airborne microorganisms that occurred everywhere. The combination of those invisible fauna near the San Francisco Bay were particularly unique, the legend goes, and contributed to the region's world famous sourdough bread. All you needed to do, was combine some water and flour, and sit it near an open window. Give it a few days and when bubbles formed, a whole world of potential combinations and artistry would open up to you

"The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. " - Kahlil Gibran I wrote recently about the feeling of emptiness . By the end of the blog post I acknowledged an understanding that this state of being would be temporary.  And here I am just a week or so later feeling filled, or more accurately, flowing. One thing that a meditation practice can make you intimately aware of is that things are always changing. Everything rises and falls away. One of the healthiest and helpful insights to be gained is that this is true of thoughts and feelings. Knowing this liberates you from their apparent stranglehold on you as you go about your daily life. It occurs to me that being empty or being filled is, in a way, impossible. They imply a steady state. A destination. A place of arrival. This is an illusion. A false perception that is perhaps not easy to shake. Yet, as I emerged from the feeling of emptiness, and felt a feeling of being filled -- filled with sa

Will I always feel this way? So empty, so estranged? -Ray LaMontagne, "Empty" I went to a big surprise party last week and the room was filled with family and friends I've known all my life. I hadn't seen many of them in quite a long time.  My favorite people were in the room. All of my immediate family. It should have been a joyous occasion for me. For all. I think, and hope, that for some it was. But my experience was nothing that the warm room might imply. I was very much felt wanting. I felt disconnected. I wasn't sure what to talk about. I didn't feel as if I had anything to share. I wasn't curious about what everyone else had been up to. There was lots of good food and plenty of beer and wine. I wanted none of it. I also couldn't shake the notion that there were people missing from the room. Friends I used to call family that I've fallen out of touch with. And, of course, relatives that have passed. I don't know exactly how to remedy this

A while back my daughter came home from school announcing that she had joined the high school water polo team. Not wanted to join, or intending to try out, but joined. She was on the team. My other daughter came home some days later with an iced coffee for me that she carried home while riding her bike. My son came home last week and announced at 3:30 pm that he was going to try out for the basketball team. Tryouts were at 5 pm. In each of these instances, I was surprised. And delighted. If you're in marketing, especially high tech marketing, you're familiar with the concept, which rose to prominence in the early 2000s as consumer tech companies, especially perhaps Apple, increasingly focused on delivering exceptional customer experiences to differentiate themselves from the competition. But the concept has been in place commercially since at least medieval times with the "baker's dozen" practice of including a 13th item. It generated trust and loyalty. Creole and