I once facilitated a group for people recovering from severe mental illnesses. We met once a week and they talked about how things were going for them. They tried to support each other. One day a member of the group came in and said his landlord was going to evict him if he failed to clean his apartment. Landlords can do that if the apartment is really bad. We knew that just talking about it and offering moral support was not going to help him much; so, the next week, we all went to his place to help him clean. In the end, he got to keep his apartment and I got a story about letting go. Continue reading →

My new novel, Who Killed the Lisping Barista of the Epiphany Café?, is available now in Kindle. It’s a murder mystery investigating the mysteries of life.

I have a limited number of free copies I can send to readers who would write a review before it comes out in paperback. Please give me your email address if you are interested.

I’d like to interrupt whatever else you might be doing to remind you to check your dashboard; you’ll find there almost all the information you need to keep things running smoothly.

No, I don’t mean the dashboard in your car, although you should be checking that regularly, as well. I mean your body’s dashboard. You can see it when you look within. Continue reading →

You learn a lot quicker from negative experiences than you do from positive ones. The stick is more damaging than the carrot is enticing. There’s a good reason for that. If you get whacked hard enough by the stick, it won’t matter how many carrots you have. But the result is that you will continuously look for bad news, zero in on the negativity, and lose sight of the big picture. You take for granted all the blessings you have, are ignorant of your resources, and blind to grace. Continue reading →

I used to live in a cabin, so I should be an expert on cabin fever.

At age nineteen, I emigrated to western New York to live on a remote piece of land, a quarter mile from the nearest neighbor and built that cabin. They didn’t plow my dirt road, so I’d be snowed in for weeks at a time, which was just as well, for the rattletrap vehicle I drove was broken down as often as it was operable. A trip to town was as special as a vacation in Paris. It took years before I realized and could admit that I really didn’t like living in the country, and would much rather be in the city, or at least as much of a city as Rochester, NY, where I am now, can claim to be. Continue reading →

If you are looking for joy, it pays to know what you’re looking for, how it’s different from feelings that resemble it, and where to find it. Continue reading →