I lack self-confidence in many arenas. Put me at a party where I don’t know anyone, and I do my best to look invisible. I’ve had a few jobs where I had to act the part of a salesperson, and I have found that I rarely have the hutzpah one needs to repeatedly ask for […]
January 3, 2026
Happy New Year everyone! First and foremost, I hope that 2026 brings you all joy, meaning, good health, and a heck of a lot of fun. For my swimming, golf, and pickleball friends, I hope the year brings personal records, a new age group, consistent workouts, long straight drives, a few lucky breaks, around the […]
December 24, 2025
My brother Pat is an artist – I’ve written about him before. One of the coolest and most spectacular pieces that he creates is his seasonal studies. He takes a subject – it could be Colorado aspen trees or Arkansas cypress trees or something else simple and yet majestic, and then creates four separate paintings, […]
November 9, 2025
Two Mondays ago, Jill and I channeled one of the great movie lines of all time — from Risky Business. (I’ll substitute “heck” for the original.) Both Jill and I like routines. I find that when I’m in my regular routines, I eat more healthily, I exercise hard and regularly, I sleep a little better than I […]
June 30, 2022
I have loved not working. Transitioning from a 60 to 80-hour work week to a 0-hour work week was easier than I ever imagined. I have rested, lost weight and become healthier overall, organized my life, increased my time spent on hobbies I love, and avoided being such a pain that my wife wanted me […]
March 12, 2023
I turn 61 years old this week. Hopefully, I am both older and wiser. I recently heard wisdom described as lessons you have learned in your life once you shed the associated emotion. I like that. A friend shared an article that Jon Gordon wrote when he turned 52, in which he shared 52 lessons […]
April 25, 2020
It may have been the most thoughtless senior prank I ever experienced. As a former high school principal, I don’t love senior pranks. Usually, very little thought goes into them, and they end up being destructive, damaging, or time consuming. Occasionally though — and I mean very occasionally — a group of seniors pulls off […]
Admiral William H. McRaven
2017
Read: 2021
Education/Leadership, Non-Fiction, Reading Now
I’ll get to the title of the book later. This is written about the trials and travails of life. It’s about how life can kick you in the teeth, whether or not you deserve it. He writes about Naval SEAL training and the strength you need to get through that. SEAL training prepares our young […]
Read: 2022
Non-Fiction, Reading Now
Younger Next Year is a book I keep coming back to. I forget who first turned me on to it, but I read it in my mid-fifties, and it continues to inspire me. The bottom line is that at some point, sometime in our forties or fifties, our bodies want to get old and decay. […]
Johann Hari
2022
Read: 2023
Education/Leadership, Non-Fiction, Reading Now
My friend Jenn loaned me this book. That means I read it as a paperback, instead of Kindle-ing it. I read less than 10% of my books in hard copy. This was a perfect one to choose to be part of that 10%. This is a book about why we are distracted, and the forces […]
Marie Kondo
2011
Read: 2018
Education/Leadership, Non-Fiction, Reading Now
I was listening to an architect who specialized in building new schools talk about what classrooms should be. One of his pet peeves was all of the nonsensical and nonpurposeful clutter that occupies many classrooms. He thought that every classroom should contain only those items which are useful for teaching and learning or inspirational for […]
