You can reach your goals with the right plan.
It’s almost the end of the first quarter of 2021. How are those 2021 goals coming along? Hopefully, you made reasonable bite-sized goals that consider the weirdness of life during a pandemic. Ideally, you give yourself lots of grace and re-evaluate things as needed.
No matter how carefully you set goals and how seriously you take self-care, it is hard to change habits. March is definitely a time of struggle. Most of us can brute-force our way through changes for about six weeks, but eventually it isn’t sustainable.
How not to achieve a goal.
Once I set a goal to switch up the furniture in my…
My husband tormented me with these words for years
“As far as you know.”
It’s such a simple phrase. It doesn’t even seem toxic upon first looking at it.
I crawled into bed with my husband one summer night, and I realized I didn’t do the rounds of locking the doors and windows. “Hey Eric, did you happen to lock the doors and shut the windows?”
“As far as you know,” he said and rolled over to sleep.
This was not an unusual answer. Sighing, I got out of bed and checked the windows and doors. Some nights I found the doors locked, and other nights they weren’t. …
I learned a life lesson from a plant. Really.
When my husband, Eric, started his first ‘real job’ as a physician, he was gifted with a large plant for his office. He proudly showed me the 3-foot tall plant while giving me the tour of his new workplace.
It was an exciting time for us — we had moved across the country to follow his dream of being a small-town physician. Although I was still in culture shock moving from a big metro liberal city to a small town, I was determined to make this new adventure work.
For a while, it did. I couldn’t find a job in…
I’ve heard this advice in different forms for 20+ years. But now I’m taking it.
I was mindlessly scrolling Twitter one day and came across a tweet by Neil Gaiman (I think). I couldn’t find the tweet again, so I am paraphrasing here.
If you write a few hundred words a day, you will finish one book every year. Most people write one book every never, so you are doing great.
This advice hit me upside the head. I have a book I’ve been working on for over a year. I had a goal to finish by June 30. Then…
My ex conned me for years.
I was 19, and he was 18. We had just moved in together and felt extremely adult (spoiler alert: we weren’t). It was Sunday morning, and I was lying on the floor reading the paper while he made breakfast.
“Are you at the comics yet? Will you read me the comics?” he asked.
“Read you the comics? What are you talking about?”
“Describe what is happening in each panel and read me the dialogue.”
“Um… how about if I just set them aside for you?” …
Where is our network of mutuality?
“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
As the pandemic wears on, we are all coping as best we can. The federal government has abdicated any responsibility or assistance. We are left to do what we feel is right with little guidance or regulation from our state government. We are failing as a country.
Social media is full of memes defending one’s right to serve up a big helping of Covid to family…
Pick and choose from the menu of options
This week the media has been reminding us that this election, like most recent elections, won’t be settled on November 3. Of course, the dream is for there to be a clear winner and clear loser, the loser concedes gracefully, and a peaceful transfer of power occurs. But who am I kidding? We know that won’t happen.
Many of us are exhausted from this year, which has come on top of an unprecedented 4 years. So much is at stake with this election. But we all know that. …
Even if you are a procrastinator, you can still get your money.
At the beginning of the month, I got a letter from the IRS. I was not pleased, assuming I did something wrong when filing my taxes. But no, it was a letter telling me I hadn’t claimed my stimulus check because I hadn’t filed 2019 taxes.
Oops.
I vaguely remembered filing an extension in March because Coronavirus had begun to be A Thing, but then I just blanked out on the whole situation. Dealing with the pandemic, job changes, isolation, multiple exposure scares and testing, the political landscape, and the stress that the entire world is collectively experiencing has screwed…
Yes, it is difficult right now to get into your veterinarian.
Have you noticed your family veterinarian is crazy busy, and it seems impossible to get an appointment? It’s not just you; we in veterinary medicine have seen it too. Since the end of April, veterinary clinics have seen an uptick in visits for well-pet visits, urgent care, and emergencies.
This is more than the usual summertime spike, and it is nationwide, veterinary industry magazines report. Veterinary management websites are full of veterinarians and managers asking how other clinics manage the increase in business. …
Or, how to wreck morale and lose employees
I work in an essential business and have a toxic boss. I knew she was toxic before I took the job — it’s all over Glassdoor and Indeed. After she called to schedule an interview, I spoke to colleagues in my industry, and was told that she is a challenging employer. Other people who had worked for her used much less flattering descriptors. Apparently, she knows she is difficult as she offered above-average pay for the position. …
Audrey Zetta
Feminist, dirty liberal, thoughtful absurdist.
