The thing about a calling is that it’s really easy to ignore. There are people that go their whole lives without hearing it, despite how loud it can call. I remember the urge, when I was three, to tell people how to do things. Perhaps it was a bit bossy, but the fact that I’m now an educator isn’t surprising in retrospect. And the fact that even before I was an educator, teaching was the part of my consulting job I connected to the most.

I thought I was getting sick over the last couple of days. My throat got really raw, and I felt the discomfort starting to move around from my throat to my nose. I have a business trip coming up that requires public speaking so I needed to act fast. There are many who say that there is no way to shorten the duration of a cold or to lessen the symptoms.

I’ve long felt that music has had a profound effect on who I am. It’s not so much the type of music I listen to, but that I listen to it so intently. I’ve learned to love so many different kinds of music. In my 20’s, they were almost like phases. I went through an ambient music phase, an opera phase, a classical phase, an experimental phase… But I’ve always wondered what long term effect all this music has had on my brain.

It’s no secret that I love our house. I’ve loved it from the moment I walked in during the open house. I love the way it looks. Regal and sturdy on the outside, sun streaming through the big living room window, hardwood floors that get painted so perfectly by the 3pm light. The way that the living room feels so endless and the downstairs den feels like a cozy spaceship.

Choose your words carefully. Poets do it. Advertisers do it. Because certain combinations of words touch images, memories, and triggers in people’s minds. But sometimes in conversation, it’s harder to choose words. Thinking before you speak only goes so far, because a conversation is an act of improvisation and therefore can’t consist of well-chosen words 100% of the time. Yet, words are important. There’s a clear difference between the meanings of obfuscate (render unclear or unintelligible) and block (make movement difficult or impossible), yet they are sometimes used interchangeably.