Why Something Makes You Happy
The Generational Cycle I’m Breaking Without Losing My Fire
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.” ~Carl Jung
“You’re just like your mother.” I came across those words in a post recently, followed by a response that made me pause: “Actually, I’m my mother’s revenge. I’m the voice she didn’t have and the boundary she couldn’t set.”
It stayed with me, not because I felt any desire for revenge against anyone, but because something was resonating. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why, so I went back to something I had written five years ago.
In 2021, Tiny
When Drinking Stopped Being Fun and Why I Quit
I stopped drinking ten months ago. It’s the longest I’ve ever gone. I’ve been thinking a lot about what finally made me stop because the truth is, I loved drinking. I really did.
Drinking was such a big part of my life. It was part of growing up, part of my Irish culture, part of friendships, celebrations, dinners, weddings, birthdays. It was just what we did. I started drinking when I was probably thirteen or fourteen, so I don’t really know much of my life without it.
And for a long time, I genuinely enjoyed it.
But eventually the pain …
The Excuses We Make to Avoid Being Vulnerable
“Vulnerability minus boundaries is not vulnerability.” ~Brené Brown
It’s ten at night, and I’m sprawled on the couch at the end of a long day, messaging an old friend from grad school. My wife is already in the slow process of heading to bed, the kids are asleep, and the house is quiet enough for a conversation to feel easy.
This isn’t something that happens often, but it isn’t unusual either.
The beginning is fun, like it always is. What’s going on with my family, how work is treating me, how life is in general. Then the same from her …
How My Life Got Better When I Stopped Trying to Be Normal
For most of my life, I had a second full-time job. Nobody hired me for it. Nobody paid me. But it ate more hours than anything else I did. The job was pretending to be normal.
I am autistic. Growing up, I didn’t always have that word for it, but I knew one thing for sure: I was different, and different was not safe.
Kids let me know early. I got teased and picked on, and more than once someone looked at me like I was a science experiment and asked if I was from another planet.
So I did …
When You Think You Know Yourself, but You’re Wrong
I know myself pretty well by now.
I’ve had seven decades to work on the case, and I’m not exactly known for leaving a question alone.
I know what matters to me. What gives me energy. What drains it. What I want more of. And what I have absolutely no intention of putting up with again.
At seventy, I’ve accumulated a fair amount of information.
Preferences. Patterns. Opinions. A fairly detailed operating manual.
After more than two decades as an executive coach, I’m also pretty good at helping other people figure these things out.
I could probably create a beautifully …
