Because I’m not silly enough, and there’s not enough going on in the month of November, I decided I would give NANOWRIMO a try again this year. For those who don’t know that particular acronym, it stands for National Novel Writing Month and the idea is to draft the first 50,000 words of a novel…

My early Halloweens were in Oklahoma City. That meant that about half of the time, we had to wear coats over our costumes because it was so cold. But those Halloweens took place so long ago that one of the best places to go was down the street from our house because the woman who…

What’s in your filing cabinet? Or perhaps saved to your hard drive or Cloud storage? Are the drawers or folders filled with wonders that you return to daily? Or are they cluttered with junk you don’t even remember finding interesting or useful? I have to admit, I still like paper for many things and a…

Once upon a time… Magic words because they signal the beginning of something special – a story is about to be told. According to Wikipedia this phrase has been used in some form since at least 1380 and was the traditional opening for “oral narratives” by 1600. Wikipedia lists equivalents in about 60 languages (Habia…

When did you find your career? Did you know what you wanted to do from a young age or are you still trying to discover the answer to the perennial question of what to do with this life of ours? I spent all of college not knowing the answer to what came next. When I…

This past weekend, I spent three full days with a group of writers at a retreat. We wrote in the morning, had a class in the afternoon and a couple of author chats over lunch. It was great fun! As I drove home Monday thinking about this weekend and the newsletter, I began to wonder…

A few years ago, when I was still at UT Austin, I joined several campus deans for an interview over lunch. We were meeting with a candidate for the position of Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. This particular candidate was in an unusual position in that she also knew the person who had…

I’ve always been a fan of sports. I’m a great spectator though, not a participant. When my dad coached little league, I learned how to keep score with all the stats. I grew up watching OU (University of Oklahoma) football. In college, I could go to OU games, but, even better, I could attend world-class,…

The technical definition for the change of seasons is at the time of a solstice (when the sun appears to reach either it’s highest or lowest point in the sky) or an equinox (when the Sun crosses the earth’s equator appearing directly above the equator). So using those technical definitions it’s still summer in the…

Memorial Day weekend, Labor Day weekend – the bookends of summer. Recently I mentioned to a colleague that we started school after Labor Day when I was a kid in part because schools weren’t air conditioned. She was astonished. She was even more amazed when I told her we still had residence halls that didn’t…