In my moments of quiet reflection, I always ask myself the same few questions.
Am I improving? Are my choices and actions moving me closer to the person I want to be? Have I made progress over the past day/week/month/year?
These are often followed by questions of self-flagellation: Why did I say that? What was I thinking? Why did I make that decision?
For most of us, life is not like a sitcom. We don’t meet up with our friends every single day at Central Perk or MacLaren’s or Cheers, but we do have our spots that we prefer over all others. We may not go there all the time, but we feel most comfortable there. It is where we are in our element, where we invite everyone to join us. It is our home field, as it were.
Mine was Memphis Taproom.
So I was quite dismayed a few weeks ago when I read the news that it would be closing its doors for good.
I have been thinking about it for years.
I used to be a Twitter superuser, tweeting multiple times per day, interacting with both close friends and complete strangers, using it as a place to get both information and laughs, and everything in between.
In recent years, though, it stopped being fun. There are a multitude of reasons for that. The vitriol. The anger. The constant arguing over race, politics, and culture. The bad began outweighing the good.
I take a long walk nearly every single day.
It is one of the many reasons I was able to lose 40(ish) pounds, but I don’t do it only for the health benefits. I also do it for my mind. The walk allows me to get away from the spreadsheets and Zoom meetings, work on solving problems that seem unsolvable, and helps me generate ideas and breakthroughs, for both my personal and professional life. It helps my mental state as much as — if not more — than it helps my physical state.
Of course, there are side effects to everything and my daily stroll is no different.
I was recently listening to a podcast and the closing question was “What is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you?”
The guest had a great answer. Did I?
“For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, ‘It might have been.’”
— John Greenleaf Whittier
It was always just a dream.
“On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend’s life also, in our own, to the world.”
– Henry David Thoreau
Today would have been my best friend’s 40th birthday.
It should have been.
I used to be a bit of a beer snob, but even at my height I was never the snobbiest nor the most knowledgeable person around. I don’t brew my own beer. I don’t spend all of my money searching for that one special beer. And I don’t study the intricacies of it. It was mo re enjoyment than obsession.
But I do love a good beer and I know a decent amount about it, to the point that I know what I like and can have reasonably intelligent conversations about it, back when we used to gather around a table and have conversations.
The ceremony should serve as the base camp of a mountain, but far too many people treat it like the peak
I was dying to work for a Fortune 500 company.
The Passion of Christopher Pierznik 