In the writing community it is a shared sentiment that every first draft is embarrassing. No one wants people to ever see their first draft because we all know that it is a painful, yet incredibly important, part of the writing process. When we embrace the idea of the first draft as writers, it allows us to get past perfectionism and just put thoughts to paper.

This week I pulled up to my house after 30 hours of driving and 42 days away from home. When we pulled up, we kept our car outside the garage and loaded everything in. We took off the roof box and rails and put them inside as well. The next day we had the car cleaned and it looks beautiful inside and out. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same about my house.

This week I spoke to a group of entrepreneurs and the particular talk I did - Making your Map: Navigating the journey from concept to launch - was my first time giving it. When this happened my insecurities usually run high and so when I ended I was of course hoping it would be to a standing ovation. Well, not really, it was a smaller room and while every seat was full and people were standing in the back, it wasn't as a standing ovation kind of room. But still, I hoped people would follow me on social media, come up to me after the session, buy my book, and tell me how much their words helped them. These are things I always hope for, and it makes me feel so good when some of them happen, but this week someone else's words made me flip the script. This week instead of hoping for people to do that for me, I asked myself this question: when was the last time you did that for someone else?

When I was growing up, my mother's childhood best friend and her husband were like aunt and uncle to us. We spent every Christmas together along with other visits throughout the year. You can imagine then, when I was in 9th grade and we got word that he had suddenly died, it was devastating.

This week I watched Andrew learn how to snowboard for the first time. He took a few lessons at Hoedown Hill - a small learning hill near our air BNB in Windsor - and then we took on Vail Mountain. I am impressed, not by how quickly Andrew picked up snowboarding, but by his willingness to even try. There are many people who reach a certain age and they become set in their ways; they embrace an “old dogs can’t learn new tricks” attitude and then that’s it, they stop learning, they stop changing, and they stop growing.

Dear mindless scrolling,

I am writing to you today because you have become a big part of my life. Every day you have been with me, by my side, ready anytime I needed you. Any moment when I wasn’t sure what to do next, there you were. You have been a steadfast companion, but I’ve come to realize that you are not the companion I want….

This morning, I ran a 4-mile race in Colorado snow. The race started with just some light flurries and then about halfway through the snow really started to come down; serendipitously that’s when the song “one foot” by Walk the Moon came on my playlist. It was the perfect reminder that the best way to make progress is to just focus on putting one foot in front of the other; this is especially true in the middle of a snowstorm running on an ice-covered path.

Many of you that follow me on social media have been keeping up with my road trip. As we’ve been making our way across the states this week from Jersey to Colorado, we’ve found a variety of ways to keep ourselves entertained. The less exciting being working (benefits of work from anywhere!) and the more exciting being interesting podcasts. One that made the list this week was the Beanie Babies episode of The Dollop. This is a saga that I lived as a child of the 90s, owning dozens of beanie babies myself, but I didn’t realize how much of the chaos I was not exposed to as child. What created the Beanie Babies boom was not the children, but rather the adult collectors that became obsessed with owning every bean-filled animal…

Whenever I am out exercising, it is impossible to not compare myself to the people that pass me by. Just now, I finished a good run. I sprinted to the end of the road and as I rounded the corner I slowed down to a very satisfying walk. I took deep breaths and felt very proud of myself for getting out and exercising on this cold winter day. Then, just a moment later, another runner approached me.

The only way to really grow in life, is to push yourself to the point where you make a mistake. The point when you’re so tired you slow down. When it’s too hard, so you give up. When you get embarrassed because you did it wrong. When you’re frustrated because you have to do it again. If you are getting it right every time, then you are not doing your best. Your best should be a point where you are growing and pushing beyond yourself and it’s impossible to do that without making mistakes.

I walk by the same line of trees several times a week. It was just an empty patch of dirt until a few years ago, when the owners planted a long row of 2 ft. tall arborvitae. I remember laughing at how tiny they were and how long it would take for them to provide the screening the owners were hoping for. As time went by, the trees grew. Of course, I didn't really notice the growth at first as I was focused on the two trees that didn’t make it…

If I were to ask you what a plant needs to survive - what might you say? Water… Sun… Dirt… Nutrients… Imagine what a plant looks like right now. I bet an image of something sitting in a pot, or in the ground, comes to mind. This is likely because most plants, while they may look different in nature, are roughly the same. They need soil. They need water. They need Sun. This is also the image we are given when we are very young: potted plant, maybe with a flower growing out of it. For those of you that have a green thumb, you may already be disagreeing with me, which is good because you know that all plants don't actually need dirt. While most plants can also grow in a hydroponics system, a system designed to replace the soil with nutrient-supplied water, there are some plants that don't need the system at all.

Exactly two hundred and one weeks ago, I started a weekly email called the Sunday Starter. The first post was called How to Start When Starting is Hard. I find myself thinking about it in this first post of 2025, three and a half years later, because I am thinking about creating an audio version of these posts. I have been thinking about it for a while, but like any new thing that we want to start, it feels daunting. How do I know this is the right move? How can I be sure that it will be worth the effort The image of the Roman god Janus I think is very fitting when it comes to setting goals…

Today, is my 200th Sunday Starter. That’s 3.5 years of consistently sending something out on Sunday mornings. Now, if you’ve been reading this entire time, then you know that some weeks were better than others. Some weeks, I was barely crawling (Crawling). Some weeks, I took breaks (Rest) or ran reruns (Vacation Mode). And some weeks, I wrote something I was very proud of (The History of Pink). I love that the 200th happens to coincide with the New Year. It is a time when many people are setting resolutions and the reason most people don’t follow through on those resolutions is because they forget to factor in consistency.

One of the many benefits of owning my own business is that I have the flexibility to say yes to things that I wouldn't have been able to say yes to in the past. This morning, for example, I got to choose not to work so I could decorate cookies with my nephews. After a few hours, just before nap time, I put on my bright red coat and started putting on my shoes. Why are you leaving? One of them asked…

Lately, when people ask me that common question strangers ask, so what do you do? I’ve been trying to shift my mindset from saying what I did/do I work with change management in IT product migrations, to what I do/want to be doing more of, which is I am an author and speaker. The reason I am intentionally trying to make this mental shift is because I know the importance of Identity when it comes to achieving our goals.

You know those little libraries some people put outside their homes? Well, the last time I was in upstate New York at the family home in Hannawa Falls, I put my book into two different libraries. When I was up last week for our third annual trip for Thanksgiving, I was excited to check them to see if someone had taken it.

You’re walking down the sidewalk on a very hot sunny New Jersey day. This was the only time for you to get a workout and so you went, but you can feel the sweat dripping down your face. As you walk down the path, you see a large branch blocking the way. It’s big enough that you can’t step over it but small enough that you could move it aside for future pedestrians. My question for today is, would you move it?

When I went to post my Sunday Starter for this week, which was on an entirely different topic, I remembered that in the USA it was the week of Thanksgiving. Since I was feeling particularly thankful for all the amazing things this year has brought me, I decided to delay my other post a week so I could write about it. Before I began, I wanted to see what I had already written on the topic; with this week's post being #195 (cannot believe it's been that many!) I went to my website and used the search to make it easier. I searched for words like Thankful, Grateful, and Gratitude which surfaced many posts, but nothing I found was fully themed around the topic. Great! I thought, I'll write about Thankfulness and Gratitude. My mind was focused on my new business and how great everything had been going. So many things to be thankful for. Before I start though, let me see if anything comes up for Thanksgiving…. The first search result was last year's Thanksgiving post, Won't you be my neighbor? When I re-read it, I immediately started crying.

In SCRUM project management methodology, there is something known as the Definition of Done (DOD). The purpose is to align the entire team and the stakeholders with their vision of success. Without the DOD it is all too easy for one person to think they have reached the end, when others think there is still work to be done. When you have budgets, timelines, and resources to work with, this can have drastic impacts to a project. Defining done makes it clear what success looks like. In our lives we might not always have a specific goal or project that ever reaches a done state, but we do have expectations for ourselves on what success looks like. Recently, I realized that my definition had been drastically off.