On the Bright Side

The old adage about one door closing and another opening proved true. After my rejection from graduate school, I started looking in other directions for ways to continue my quest for growth. I stumbled upon a fellowship opportunity to study at Oxford this summer in England and **spoiler alert ** I got it! My inner critic reached for her bull horn, but changed gears and merely whispered instead, maybe just don’t announce this pipe dream... let the chips fall where they may, but GO FOR IT! I have to say I’ve become pretty adept at redirecting the negative talk. Go for it was about to be followed up by you probably won’t get it anyway and, like a New Age Ninja, I swiftly cut that thought off at the pass. The funny thing was how I did it. I’d been sitting at the park with my dog. It’s become a favorite meditation practice for me, practice being the operative word because stopping the inner chatter in this head is like herding cats. The battle between my positive side and my negative s...

As I gently guided the hour-hand around the large clock in my living room, literally removing an hour from my life, it struck in a more visceral way than it usually does. Maybe it was because the clock whose hand (more like arm) I was moving was so gigantic that the act of fast-forwarding through an hour of my morning seemed larger than life, but in the act of being a mechanism of time, I was really tuned into what I was doing. I went into the usual rote dialogue in my head that tells me to regret that I am losing an hour of sleep, an hour to run an errand, an hour to do whatever, when my little dog gave me one of those adorable sideways head tilts that wonders, whatchya doin’? So I explained to her (in that syrupy sweet voice that such a head tilt always elicits) that “we” were losing an hour, and our whole day was going to be shorter now. And then it occurred to me, no one should be more exited for Daylight Savings time than my dog. I had forgotten that we have a tradition during ...