I have nothing against fame and fortune, getting the big promotion or snagging a book deal for the magnum opus you’ve been writing for the past five years. At one point in our lives, many of us have probably aspired to at least one of these goals and thought they were a key to our happiness. Some still think they are.

But when pushed a little, most people will agree that what we really want is to live a long, happy and healthy life. The book deal is the icing on the cake.

So we eat healthy foods, drink moderately…

I am a sucker for freebies. So when an email popped into my inbox offering a free 40-day mindfulness meditation training program, I was interested and five minutes later I signed up.

Better still, the training was offered by Tara Brach, Ph.D and Jack Kornfield, two internationally renowned mindfulness meditation teachers and practitioners, and it was only 10 minutes a day.

I took them up on the offer, one that you can take up too at the end of this article.

You might identify with this

Let me take a step back and explain where I started. Like many, I have spent my life rushing…

Much of my life has changed or been canceled this past year. Exercise class, handshakes, the casual kiss on both cheeks that is part of every greeting where I live, in-person meetings, and my list goes on.

But unless I missed the memo, Valentine’s Day isn’t cancelled. Of course, it’s not obvious how to celebrate in the middle of a pandemic. Our usual celebration at our favourite restaurant is not possible. …

Does blog writing sometimes feel like running on a hamster wheel? Perhaps it’s time to step down, have a look around and re-evaluate. Maybe you are caught up in the extreme blogging phenomenon?

Extreme blogging — you probably never heard of it — is a term I made up. But it’s a good description of a phenomenon that exists because blogging is the fastest growing genre of writing with more than 7 million blog posts published each day.

Extreme blogging means cranking out content each day, ignoring that you really have nothing new to say. Or it means writing multiple…

Roses for Valentine’s Day are lovely, but they die. Chocolates are delicious, but they get eaten. Texting your partner to say I ❤ U is nice, but you can do better. A candlelit dinner in your favourite restaurant is romantic, but probably not wise or even possible during a pandemic. It may be time to bring what is in your heart to a whole new level with a handwritten love letter.

A love letter is an enduring testament to your feelings and you don’t have to be a poet or a talented writer to say how you feel. The simplest…

Shit happened. That is all I can say about 2020. It was quite a year, right?

I won’t remember 2020 with fondness. Google “worst year ever” and you will get some interesting results. This year will leave a legacy of badness that will place it squarely among past and future worst years ever. It ends with no man, woman or child untouched. It has put us all through the wringer.

But this strange and dark year ends with a gift. There is joy in my heart when I think of what got me through — acts of human kindness, stories…

When we publish on an open platform like Medium, WordPress, Substack, or LinkedIn, most of us don’t have the luxury of having our work professionally edited or proofread. Spell check and grammar apps are excellent tools, but they will only take you so far. The tedious task of proofreading inevitably falls to the writer.

As a reader, I rarely continue to read past typos and errors in a text. Everyday Medium publication editors receive hundreds of stories for consideration and will likely pass if there are typos, grammar mistakes and formatting errors.

I edited and proofread throughout my career in…

I don’t have a childhood memory that doesn’t include the fragrant aroma of my mother’s home-cooked meals. Our family of five sat down for dinner at a small kitchen table every night, precisely at six, when my father came home from work. My Polish mother prepared dinner, and maybe it is just nostalgia, but they were all delicious.

The meal always started with homemade soup — krupnik a barley soup with diced potatoes, carrots and meat — chicken broth simmered on the stove for several hours with kluski made from cornmeal and egg— clear beet soup called barszcz with an…