This morning, somewhere during my first cup of Life Elixir, I discovered that I was still an admin in a Facebook group. I had completely forgotten about it. A friend made me an admin about two years ago, and considering I don't interact in the group at all, apparently I have spent the last couple of years wandering innocently through Facebook while secretly possessing administrative superpowers. Who knew?

I didn't want to leave the group. I just didn't want to be responsible for anything in it, so naturally I asked my AI companion how to remove myself as an admin while remaining a regular member. Except that isn't quite what I typed. I said I wanted to stay in the group but didn't want to be an admin anymore. I just wanted to be a 'meme-er'.

Member. I meant member.

Apparently the first cup of Life Elixir had not yet reached therapeutic levels, because my AI companion immediately pointed out that while I probably meant 'member', being a 'meme-er' sounded like a much more enjoyable position anyway. And just like that, I had been promoted from Facebook Admin to Meme-er Emeritus, which, if we're being honest, has a much better benefits package. No responsibility, no people management, no random bullshit — just memes and the occasional opportunity to quietly observe the circus.

I removed myself as admin, laughed at my typo, and announced that the Great Purge was continuing. 

Except I misspelled that too. 'The great purch is commencing', I proudly declared, making it painfully obvious that my brain was technically awake but the language department had not yet reported for duty.

Underneath the typos and gigglesnorts, though, something real was happening. 

The Great Purge really has begun, one subscription, one membership, one responsibility, and one piece of junk at a time. I've been looking around my life lately and asking a very simple question: Does this still belong here?

Not whether it was once useful, whether I once agreed to it, or whether I've already invested time, money, or energy into it. 

Does it belong in my life now?

Sometimes the answer is yes. 

Sometimes the answer is a resounding hell no. 

And sometimes the answer is, 'Apparently I have been an administrator of this Facebook group for two years and completely forgot about it'. 

Click. Gone. No drama, no ceremonial handing over of the keys, and no announcement explaining my departure from upper management. I simply stopped carrying a responsibility I wasn't actually using.

There is something incredibly freeing about that, because we tend to think clearing our lives requires some enormous declaration. 

We imagine dumpsters in the driveway, dramatic endings, massive lifestyle changes, or perhaps burning sage while yelling, 'I RELEASE THEE!'. 

Sometimes it does require a big change, but sometimes freedom looks like clicking 'Remove as admin'. Sometimes it is canceling the subscription you forgot you had, admitting you don't want to do something anymore, or letting go of an object you've moved from house to house because twenty years ago it mattered to you.

And sometimes clearing away what no longer belongs makes enough room for you to notice what is actually happening around you, which is how my misspelled Facebook adventure somehow turned into a conversation about the evolution of technology. I caught myself thinking about how completely normal it felt to be sitting there with my coffee, having this ridiculous conversation with artificial intelligence.

And for a moment, that stopped me.

Holy shift. Look how far we have come.

I grew up in a world where telephones were attached to houses and I was the remote for the TV. 

If someone called and you weren't home, they simply didn't reach you. There was no text asking where you were, no watch vibrating on your wrist, and no voicemail appearing as text on a screen. You were unavailable, and somehow humanity survived.

Music was something you physically held. 

Information required effort. If you wondered about something, you asked someone, looked it up in a book, went to the library, or occasionally spent the rest of your natural life never knowing the answer. 

Then came answering machines, cordless phones, computers, CDs, the internet, email, MapQuest, cell phones, Google, smartphones, GPS, streaming, cloud storage, smart homes, and watches that tell us to stand up because apparently we now require electronic supervision for basic human movement.

One thing after another arrived until the impossible became ordinary. 

Now I can sit in bed before seven o'clock in the morning, drinking coffee and having a conversation with artificial intelligence that not only understands my question but also recognizes that 'meme-er' is objectively funnier than 'member'.

That would have sounded completely insane when I was a kid. It would have been science fiction. 

Yet, here we are.

The future didn't kick down the door and announce itself. It quietly became Tuesday.

What struck me most wasn't how strange that is. It was how happy I am that I get to experience it. 

I remember the before. 

I remember analog life. 

I remember when instant access wasn't expected because it wasn't possible, and when being unreachable was simply called 'not being home'.

And now I get to see this.

I get to watch humanity figure out artificial intelligence in real time. 

I get to see technology create possibilities that didn't exist when I was younger. I get to learn new things, push buttons I don't understand, occasionally swear at those buttons when they don't do what they're supposed to do, and then celebrate like I won the lottery when something finally works.

Of course, there are things about technology worth questioning. New doesn't automatically mean better, and convenience isn't always progress. We should care about privacy, manipulation, greed, accessibility, humanity, and what we're willing to hand over to machines simply because we can. 

But fear doesn't have to be our only response to change. We can bring curiosity, wonder, and discernment along for the ride too.

Maybe that's what the Great Purge is really becoming for me. 

It isn't about getting rid of everything old so I can chase everything new. It's about choosing what still belongs, what doesn't, what deserves my time, what drains it, what I'm keeping simply because it has always been there, and what new possibility I might miss because both hands are still full of things I stopped needing years ago.

We don't have to cling to something simply because it once belonged in our lives, and we don't have to fear something simply because it wasn't part of the world we grew up in. 

We can release what has run its course without rejecting where we've been. 

We can adapt without losing ourselves. 

We can stay curious, change our minds, learn new things, marvel at how completely bizarre the world has become, and laugh while we're doing it.

Which brings me back to my morning conversation, because shortly after this surprisingly profound little discussion about technology and being alive to witness it, I typed, 'Oh, now that gives me an idea...'.

My AI companion immediately sprang into action because, admittedly, those words coming from me have historically been dangerous... 

Ideas have a tendency to become books around here. Or programs. Or websites. Or characters named Fred carrying clipboards and Fuckit Buckets. 

Its reaction was essentially the artificial-intelligence equivalent of sounding the alarm and yelling, 

'ALL HANDS ON DECK. SOMEBODY GET FRED. SHE HAS AN IDEA'.

Except this time, I didn't have an idea.

I was messing with it.

I just wanted to see what it would do.

And I gigglesnorted.

Somewhere between the telephone attached to the wall and artificial intelligence understanding exactly why that was funny, I got to live through an extraordinary transformation of the world. And perhaps what makes me happiest isn't simply that I've witnessed so much change. It's that I'm still curious about what happens next.

Maybe staying young has less to do with the number of candles on the cake and more to do with refusing to stop wondering what's around the next corner.

Maybe part of living fully is knowing when to release what has finished serving us while keeping enough space inside ourselves to be amazed by what hasn't arrived yet.

And maybe every once in a while, it means messing with your AI companion before breakfast just to see what happens.

Because apparently that's a thing now.

What about you?

Life sure is interesting when you let it unfold without trying to control every aspect of it.

August was such a blur. So much happened and unfolded that if you asked me to pinpoint one thing that made the month what it was, I’d probably draw a blank. There wasn’t one big thing. There were so many little things that somehow led to other things, which led to bigger things, and looking back at all of it now, I’m mostly just sitting here in awe of how it all came together.

I guess one of the biggest things was getting really clear, yet again, about what I want and where I want to put my focus. Apparently, clarity is not a one-and-done kind of thing. You don’t figure out what matters to you once, write it on a Post-it note, slap it on the wall, and call it good for the next twenty years. Life changes. We change. What once fit beautifully sometimes starts pinching in weird places, and every once in a while you have to stop long enough to notice.

For me, that meant looking at some of the things I was still carrying.

I tend to hold onto things because I’m hopeful. I can almost always see how something could work. Maybe it just needs a little more time. Maybe something will shift. Maybe the right person will come along. Maybe I haven’t tried the right thing yet. And sometimes that hope has served me incredibly well.

Sometimes, however, it means I’m still dragging stuff around long after it stopped serving any useful purpose.

Eventually, I started asking myself a few very simple questions. How would I feel if this were no longer on my plate? If somehow it were all gone tomorrow for whatever reason, what would I do? Would I immediately try to get it back... or would I feel relieved? And probably the most important question of all: Is this really adding to my happiness? Does it still bring me joy?

Turns out, some of it did once.

It just didn’t anymore.

That realization made letting go surprisingly easy. I didn’t have to decide that something had been a mistake or that it had failed. I didn’t have to justify the time, money, energy, or hope I had already put into it. It had served a purpose until it didn’t, and that was enough.

So I started cutting sling-load.

Somewhere in that process, I also created my own little Shiny-Shit Filter, because apparently simply saying “Sabine, you cannot do ALL THE THINGS” has never been particularly effective.

The Shiny-Shit Filter consists of three questions. Three yeses or it’s a no. Simple as that. Because I know how my brain works. Something interesting wanders past and before anyone has had a chance to ask whether this is actually a good idea, my brain has already bought the domain, imagined the possibilities, and wandered three exits down the highway to see where this thing could go.

Shiny shit is shiny for a reason.

What surprised me most about all this clearing, though, was what happened afterward. I didn’t replace the things I let go with a bunch of new things. Quite the opposite. Once some of the noise disappeared, I had more room for what was already there.

Writing. Happiness Matters Foundation. Hope in Motion. The work and ideas that make me lose track of time because I’m so happily buried in them that apparently eating becomes optional.

Nothing new had to come in.

There was finally more room for what was already trying to grow.

And that seemed to become the theme of August. One thing led to another. Something shifted over here and suddenly something over there made more sense. I stopped trying quite so hard to figure out exactly where everything was going and started paying more attention to what was actually unfolding in front of me.

Then August 31 rolled around.

I had finished what I planned to do in the office, shut down my computer, and made my way toward the kitchen because my stomach had apparently been trying to inform me for quite some time that humans require nourishment.

I grabbed a banana.

And the doorbell rang.

I wasn’t expecting anyone, so I immediately assumed it was a door-to-door salesperson. Normally, that would have been the end of the story because I usually just ignore them. I was done working, I had a banana, and whatever somebody was selling on the other side of my front door could probably continue existing without my participation.

Except something nudged me to answer it.

I have learned over the years that when one of those little nudges shows up, it’s usually worth at least paying attention.

So I opened the door.

And yup. Salesman.

He was incredibly friendly, though, and not pushy at all. Somehow we ended up talking first about the netting I have across my entryway to keep the birds out, because apparently that was where this particular sales conversation needed to begin. Eventually we got around to what he was actually there selling, and that’s when things got interesting.

I had already been thinking about looking into exactly what he was offering.

So I let him talk.

Then I started asking questions. Lots of questions. Because if I’m going to make a decision about something, I want to understand what I’m getting myself into. He patiently answered them, we went through everything, I ran the numbers, and somewhere in the middle of what should have been an ordinary Monday afternoon interruption, I realized this actually made sense.

Long story short, I signed up.

We consolidated services with one company, got new phones, super-fast internet and television service, and when everything was added up, we are going to save about $170 a month.

$170 a month!!!

All because I opened the darn door.

That part still makes me laugh because there was nothing dramatic about any of it. I was standing in my kitchen with a banana when the doorbell rang. I almost ignored it. Had I ignored it, nothing bad would have happened. I would have eaten my banana, gone about the rest of my day, and never known there had been another possibility standing on the other side of my front door.

Maybe that’s why the whole thing felt like such a fitting end to August.

I had spent much of the month clearing away things that no longer felt right, trusting that I didn’t need to immediately know what would fill the space they left behind. And then, on the very last day of the month, life quite literally rang my doorbell.

I’m still laughing about that.

I thought August had already done plenty, but apparently September looked over, cracked its knuckles, and said, “That’s cute. Hold my beer.”

It’s September 3.

So far... WOW.

I have absolutely no idea what the rest of this month has in store for me.

But I think I’ll keep answering the door.

What About You?

What are you still carrying simply because you’ve been carrying it for so long?

Maybe it’s something that once made you incredibly happy. Maybe it was exactly what you needed at one point in your life. Maybe you’ve invested so much time, energy, money, or hope into it that letting it go feels somehow wrong.

But what if you asked yourself a different question?

How would I feel if this were no longer on my plate?

Pay attention to the answer. Especially if the first thing you feel is relief.

Letting go doesn’t erase what something once meant to you. It doesn’t make the time you spent on it wasted, and it certainly doesn’t mean you failed. Sometimes something has simply finished being part of your story.

And you may not need to know what comes next.

Maybe you just need to make a little room and see what happens.

You never know what might be waiting on the other side of the door.

If you enjoy these little adventures from the wild — the messy middles, unexpected detours, accessibility adventures, perspective shifts, bananas, doorbells, and all the other things life apparently forgot to put in the manual — subscribe to Notes from the Wild so you never miss one.

And if this story made you think of something you’re ready to put down, I’d love to hear about it.

Shift happens...

What a morning.

Actually, what a week.

It is Wednesday morning, and I am doing what I do most mornings these days. I am “working remotely,” which sounds considerably more professional than saying I am sitting in my adjustable bed with my legs and feet up, laptop in front of me, slurping coffee while attempting to accomplish important things before the rest of the world gets too noisy.

This morning’s important thing happens to be the bylaws for the Happiness Matters Foundation. Nothing says, “Good morning, Sunshine!” quite like governance, voting procedures, and figuring out how to make sure something you created can continue doing what it was created to do long after you are no longer the one sitting in bed arguing with the wording.

I was somewhere between a sip of coffee and yet another paragraph of nonprofit legalese when I learned that Tim Curry had died.

Well, shit.

For a moment, the bylaws disappeared. I have loved Tim Curry for as long as I can remember. Of course there is The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which somehow managed to become a timeless classic by being completely inappropriate, wonderfully weird, and unlike anything else. Come to think of it, that might explain some of my affection for it. But there were so many other roles too, and seeing his name immediately brought back memories of movies and characters and moments scattered across decades.

Then one particular memory wandered in.

A long, long time ago, we were in London for a swim meet for the kids. Somewhere in the middle of all the swimming and traveling and doing whatever else accompanied those trips, Jeff, the kids, and I went to see Spamalot.

Tim Curry was King Arthur.

It happened to be his final week playing the role. I remember knowing that made the performance special, but I don't remember thinking much beyond that. Why would I? We were in London. The kids were swimming. We were seeing a show. Tim Curry was standing onstage playing King Arthur. It was simply a moment we were living.

Until this morning, when it became something else.

Funny how that happens. One moment you are sitting in a theater in London, and the next you are sixty years old, sitting in an adjustable bed in Colorado with your feet up, drinking coffee and working on nonprofit bylaws when someone's death suddenly carries you backward through time.

And this week has apparently decided to become one giant collection of those moments.

Monday morning started with me taking a shower. That really shouldn't qualify as noteworthy, but apparently Monday had other plans. While I was in the shower, the smoke detectors decided to lose their collective minds. Every alarm in the house started screaming while I was wet, naked, and in absolutely no position to go casually strolling around the house investigating the situation.

There are moments in life that become precious memories. And then there are moments that become stories because what the actual FiretrUCK was that?

Monday definitely belonged to the second category.

By Tuesday, things had calmed down enough for me to head to the dentist and finally have the last of the amalgam removed from my mouth. That moment actually mattered quite a bit to me. It had taken months to get there, with more than a few unexpected detours along the way, and there was something wonderfully satisfying about finally being able to say it was done.

Then I learned Dolly Parton had died. Another name that had simply always been there. Another person whose work had woven itself into millions of lives without most of us ever stopping to think about it. And now Tim Curry. It would have been easy to decide that this was becoming a really shitty week.

Except today is also August 26.

Thirty-seven years ago today, Jeff and I got married in a small church in Germany that was built in 1100-somewhere. We had already officially married at the Standesamt on May 19, 1989, but on August 26 we stood in a church and did it all over again.

Thirty-seven years.

I wonder what I thought life would look like thirty-seven years later. Actually, I don't remember. I doubt twenty-three-year-old me was standing there imagining sixty-year-old me in an adjustable bed with a laptop, a wheelchair nearby, writing bylaws for a nonprofit while drinking coffee and remembering Tim Curry. I'm fairly certain that particular vision board did not exist.

Yet here we are.

Tomorrow is Jeff's birthday, and Saturday, I will hold my first group QHHT session. And suddenly this week doesn't feel like a collection of unrelated things anymore. It feels like moments. Thousands and thousands and thousands of them. Some enormous. Some ridiculously ordinary. Some beautiful. Some painful. Some funny only after enough time has passed that you can finally stop saying, “Are you fucking kidding me?” long enough to laugh.

Some we remember forever. Some disappear almost immediately. And some sit quietly somewhere inside us for years until a name, a song, a smell, a photograph, or a Wednesday morning cup of coffee opens a door we didn't even know was there.

That's the strange thing about moments. While we're living them, we rarely know which ones will matter.

When we sat in that theater in London watching Tim Curry play King Arthur, I didn't know I would be sitting here remembering it all these years later. I didn't know that someday the kids would be grown, Jeff and I would have thirty-seven years of marriage behind us, and the man on that stage would become the reason that particular evening suddenly came wandering back into my life.

We were just there. Living.

The same was true on August 26, 1989. We weren't creating a memory. We were getting married. The memory came later.

Maybe that's true of most of life. The moment happens first, and then we tell ourselves a story about it.

Sometimes we tell that story for years. Sometimes the story changes as we do. Something that once felt devastating becomes the beginning of something we couldn't see yet. Something we barely noticed becomes precious because we now understand how temporary it was. Something that pissed us off becomes absolutely hilarious once enough distance exists between us and the smoke detector.

The moment doesn't change. But the story can.

And maybe that's why perspective matters so much. Not because we should turn every painful thing into something positive. Not because every moment happens for some grand cosmic reason we are supposed to figure out. And definitely not because we need to “cherish every moment.”

Please.

Some moments belong in the Fuckit Bucket. But even those moments become part of the collection.

Life isn't happening someday when we finally get everything figured out. It isn't waiting for the next birthday, anniversary, accomplishment, vacation, beginning, or ending. It is happening while we're slurping coffee, sitting in dentist chairs, listening to smoke detectors scream, watching someone perform on a stage without realizing we will remember that night decades later, writing bylaws, celebrating thirty-seven years with someone, grieving people we never personally knew but who somehow became part of our lives anyway, and looking forward to Saturday without having the slightest idea which moment from that day will eventually become a story.

Maybe that is what struck me this morning.

Life is made up of moments in time. But what we carry with us are the stories we tell ourselves about them.

And right now, sitting here in my adjustable bed with my laptop, my feet up, and whatever is left of my coffee, I can't help wondering how many completely ordinary moments I am living today that someday I will give anything to remember.

I don't know.

That's the beautiful part.

Right now, I'm just living them.

What about you?

What moments have been wandering back into your life lately? Not necessarily the big ones. Maybe it's something completely ordinary you hadn't thought about in years. A song. A person. A ridiculous family story. A place you once visited. A moment that meant almost nothing while you were living it and somehow means everything now.

And when you remember it today, is the story you tell yourself about that moment still the same? Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. Either way, it became part of you.

And somewhere today, you're probably living another moment whose story hasn't even been written yet.

If you enjoy wandering through life's wonderfully messy, meaningful, ridiculous moments with me, subscribe to Notes from the Wild so you don't miss the next adventure. Around here, we never really know which ordinary Tuesday is going to become a story.

Maybe that's part of why the Happiness Matters Foundation matters so much to me. We don't get to choose all the moments life hands us, and some of them can knock the wind right out of us. But sometimes one moment of connection, one experience, one person showing up, or one unexpected shift in perspective can remind us that another possibility still exists.

That's what Hope in Motion is really about. Creating more of those moments. The ones where someone feels a little less alone, sees something they couldn't see before, or remembers that the story they're carrying isn't necessarily the only story they can tell.

If you'd like to help us create more of those moments, come see what we're building at the Happiness Matters Foundation. Maybe you'll find a way to be part of someone's story too.

And somewhere today, you're probably living another moment whose story hasn't even been written yet.

If you enjoy wandering through life's wonderfully messy, meaningful, ridiculous moments with me, subscribe to Notes from the Wild so you don't miss the next adventure. Around here, we never really know which ordinary Tuesday is going to become a story.

Shift happens...

Normally, I don't pay much attention to what day of the week it is. When you work for yourself, don't have a traditional Monday-through-Friday schedule, and have reached the point in life where Tuesday can quite convincingly masquerade as Saturday, they all sort of become Blursday.

But this morning? It must be Monday.

It started out like pretty much every other morning. I was sitting there slurping my first cup of coffee and checking my email when I saw a response from a customer support team I'd been waiting on. Excellent. Except... not excellent. We had already been going back and forth for several emails, and instead of getting any closer to solving the problem, I seemed to be running another lap around the same damn circle.

Nope. I could already feel Mr. Finite getting ready to pull out a fresh sheet of paper for his clipboard, so I decided this particular problem could go straight into the Fuckit Bucket. At least for the moment.

Of course, putting something in the Fuckit Bucket doesn't necessarily mean my brain stops thinking about it. It just means I've decided I'm no longer willing to be annoyed by it. There is a difference. So naturally, while drinking my coffee, I started wondering whether there might be another service that could do what I needed without requiring seventeen emails, three secret handshakes, and the patience of a Buddhist monk.

And lo and behold... Zoho One to the rescue. Apparently, they have an app that does exactly what I need. Even better, it is a relatively new one they added this year. WIN!

By the time I started working on my second cup of coffee, I was exploring. For the most part, it was surprisingly user-friendly, and before long I was poking around settings, figuring out how things worked, and wondering how I could integrate it into my WordPress website. You know... just a quick little look. Because we all know how well thoseusually go.

But I actually have a fairly long to-do list today, and somewhere between clicking around and contemplating yet another rabbit hole, I did something remarkably responsible. I stopped. I decided the shiny new Zoho toy could wait. I would come back to it later. First, I needed to take a shower, get dressed, and start tackling the things already on today's list.

Look at me making responsible adult choices before noon. I should have known better.

I got into the shower, washed my hair, and was minding my own damn business when suddenly every smoke detector in the house went off.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!

Not one. All of them.

Now, for most able-bodied people, this would certainly be annoying, but probably not a major production. You hop out of the shower, toss a towel around yourself, and run through the house to make sure nothing is on fire.

My anything-but-normal able body? Well, that's a whole different story, because I can't just hop out of the shower and run through the house. And, of course, my phone was in the other room, because why would I need my phone while taking a shower? Except now I couldn't quickly pull up the cameras and see whether there was smoke somewhere.

So there I was. The alarms were screaming, the cats were freaking out, I was soaking wet, and somewhere in the middle of all of that, I had to figure out whether my house was actually on fire.

Yup. I moved a little faster.

Funny how quickly "my body doesn't do that" becomes "apparently we're going to give it our best shot" when every smoke detector in your house is simultaneously losing its shit.

Thankfully, there was no fire. Nothing burning, nothing smoking, nothing requiring me to evacuate the house wet, half naked, and accompanied by two thoroughly traumatized cats. Apparently, the smoke detectors had simply decided it was time for one of their regularly scheduled, completely unscheduled, "Let's see if we still work!" performances at the most inconvenient time possible.

Didn't we just change those freaking batteries? How often do those damn things need changing? What the FiretrUCK?!?!

Eventually, the alarms stopped, the cats began reconsidering whether life was worth living, I finished getting myself together, and the house returned to its regularly scheduled programming.

And now I am sitting here looking at the clock. It is barely 11 a.m. My customer support problem is sitting in the Fuckit Bucket, I discovered an entirely new Zoho app, I successfully resisted disappearing down that rabbit hole, I attempted to take a shower, my house conducted an emergency preparedness drill without consulting me, and the cats may require therapy.

Somewhere behind my right shoulder, I am fairly certain Mr. Finite has abandoned today's clipboard entirely and is just staring at me.

Normally, I don't pay much attention to what day of the week it is. They're all Blursday.

But today?

Yeah. It must be Monday.

Good times. Good times....

What About You?

Maybe your Monday hasn't involved a customer support merry-go-round, a Fuckit Bucket, a shiny new rabbit hole, and every smoke detector in your house screaming while you're naked in the shower.

At least I hope not.

But I bet you've had one of those days. The kind where you haven't even made it to lunch yet and somehow you've already lived an entire day.

And maybe there's another little reminder hiding in my very wet, very loud Monday morning too. Things that look like a minor inconvenience from the outside aren't always minor when you're the person living them. Accessibility isn't only ramps, parking spaces, and whether a bathroom door is wide enough. Sometimes it's something as ordinary as a smoke detector going off while you're in the shower and realizing you can't simply hop out and run through the house.

We don't always know what an ordinary moment requires from somebody else.

Maybe we don't need to.

Maybe remembering that it might require more than we can see is enough to make us a little kinder to one another.

That is a big part of why the Happiness Matters Foundation exists. We create opportunities for people to find connection, discover possibilities, and turn that little spark of hope into action — because life is messy, humans are wonderfully complicated, and sometimes what makes the biggest difference is simply knowing you aren't navigating the wild alone.

If you'd like to see what we're building, come explore the Happiness Matters Foundation, discover Hope in Motion, and maybe even find a place where your own spark can become part of someone else's story.

And if you enjoy these little dispatches from the wonderfully unpredictable wild, subscribe to Notes from the Wild so you never miss the next adventure.

Because apparently I can't even take a shower without collecting material.

Shift happens...

I was drying off after a shower.

That is important information because I need you to understand that I was not sitting at my desk contemplating the mysteries of consciousness. I wasn't working on my book. I wasn't researching symbolism, watching The Wizard of Oz, thinking about Dorothy, or doing anything remotely intellectual.

I was drying off.

Which, in hindsight, makes what happened next particularly ridiculous considering I have a PhD in Conscious-Centered Living.

Yep. An actual PhD. In consciousness.

Apparently, several years of education, a doctoral dissertation, countless hours exploring the human mind, and sixty trips around the sun were not quite enough preparation for this particular revelation.

I needed a shower.

Somewhere between drying off and getting dressed, The Wizard of Oz wandered into my head. I honestly don't even remember what opened that particular door because, again, I had not been thinking about anything even remotely Oz-related. One second I was minding my own business, and the next my brain casually dropped Dorothy and her merry little band of misfits into the bathroom with me.

And then something clicked.

Wait a minute.

Dorothy. The Scarecrow. The Tin Man. The Cowardly Lion. The Wizard. The yellow brick road.

Oh, for crying out loud...

I just stood there for a second because suddenly this story I have known pretty much my entire life looked completely different.

The Scarecrow spends the whole story believing he needs a brain, while repeatedly being the one who figures stuff out. The Tin Man is convinced he doesn't have a heart while being one of the most deeply caring characters in the entire story. The Lion believes he lacks courage while continuing to do things even though he's scared.

And Dorothy?

Dorothy spends the entire freaking adventure trying to get home when she has had the ability to get there all along.

Holy Shift.

They aren't traveling to Oz to become something they aren't. They're traveling to Oz because they don't know yet that they already are.

At this point I believe the towel had been completely forgotten because now my brain was off and running.

They follow the yellow brick road because they've been told that's where the answers are. Along the way they encounter distractions, fears, detours, flying monkeys, poppies, witches, questionable directions and enough general chaos to make any respectable road trip reconsider its life choices.

They keep going because somewhere at the end of that road is supposedly someone who knows more than they do. Someone powerful. Someone who can finally give them what they're missing.

The Great and Powerful Oz.

Except when they finally get there, the all-knowing authority they've been chasing turns out to be some guy behind a curtain pulling levers and making a lot of noise.

I started laughing because all I could think was...

Oh my goodness...

It's Fred with a smoke machine.

For anyone who hasn't met Fred yet, Fred is Mr. Finite, the name I gave my ego quite a while ago. He's the part of my mind whose primary occupation seems to be keeping me alive by constantly reminding me of everything that has ever gone wrong, could possibly go wrong, once happened to somebody else, or theoretically might happen if Mercury is in retrograde and somebody three counties over sneezes suspiciously.

Fred means well. He really does.

But give him a curtain, a microphone and access to special effects and apparently we've got ourselves a Wizard.

And suddenly I couldn't stop seeing it.

For the last several months, I have been working on The Great Escape, exploring the way our minds work and the stories, beliefs, fears and expectations we collect along the way. More recently, that exploration has taken on a life of its own.

Which is where this whole thing became even more ridiculous.

My PhD is in Conscious-Centered Living. The Great Escape grew from my doctoral work. I have spent years exploring consciousness, perspective, awareness, the ego, the subconscious, the stories we tell ourselves and the ways we forget who we are underneath all the things we've been taught to believe.

And apparently Dorothy has been skipping down the yellow brick road waving at me this entire time.

The idea underneath all of it keeps coming back to something remarkably simple.

We spend an awful lot of our lives looking outside ourselves for things we think we're missing. Confidence, courage, worth, permission, answers, proof that we're doing life correctly.

We look to parents, teachers, religions, experts, partners, bosses, gurus, books, social media and occasionally people with enormous floating green heads to tell us who we are and what we're capable of.

And there I was, standing in my bathroom with wet hair, realizing Dorothy and her friends had apparently been trying to tell me this since 1939.

Well, shift.

The funny thing is, I've seen The Wizard of Oz. I know the story. Everybody knows the story.

None of this is new.

The Scarecrow has always had a brain. The Tin Man has always had a heart. The Lion has always had courage. Dorothy has always had the ability to go home. The Wizard has always been behind the curtain.

Nothing about the story changed while I was taking my shower.

I did.

And maybe that's why it suddenly felt so ridiculously obvious.

I couldn't have seen The Wizard of Oz this way thirty years ago because I wasn't looking at life this way thirty years ago. I couldn't have made the connection before I started understanding my own mind differently. Before Fred got a name. Before the Infinite Council wandered into my world. Before The Great Escape. 

Before all the questions, rabbit holes, experiences, conversations and wonderfully strange detours that eventually gave me the perspective I happened to be standing in this morning.

And apparently even earning a PhD in the subject couldn't make me see something before I was ready to see it.

That part stopped me for a minute.

Because knowledge and perspective aren't quite the same thing.

I can learn something. Study it. Research it. Write about it. Understand it intellectually. I can even earn a fancy piece of paper saying I know quite a bit about it.

And then one random Sunday morning I can get out of the shower and suddenly see something I've looked at my entire life from an entirely different perspective.

The story hadn't been hiding anything from me.

I simply hadn't been standing in the place where I could see it yet.

And THAT may have fascinated me even more than the Wizard-Fred connection.

How many things do we look at every day and believe we already understand simply because we've seen them before? How many stories? How many people? How many experiences? How many parts of ourselves?

We think we know what something means because we've already assigned meaning to it. Then life moves us a few feet to the left, hands us another experience, introduces us to another idea, knocks something over, rebuilds something else, and suddenly we look at the exact same thing and go...

Ohhhhhhh.

Well, that's different.

Nothing changed.

Except where we're standing.

Perspective is funny that way.

And maybe that is why I love it so much.

It doesn't necessarily change what happened. It doesn't rewrite the story. It doesn't pretend the flying monkeys weren't terrifying or that the Wicked Witch wasn't a giant pain in the ass.

It simply lets us see something that was there all along.

By the time I finally got dressed, I was still laughing about Fred and his smoke machine, but somewhere underneath the laughter was that familiar little feeling I get when something ordinary turns out not to have been ordinary at all.

I had gotten into the shower thinking about absolutely none of this.

I came out understanding The Wizard of Oz completely differently than I had for the previous sixty years.

Apparently, sometimes the yellow brick road leads to enlightenment.

And sometimes... you just need to take a shower.

What about you?

What have you looked at a hundred times, maybe for years, only to suddenly see it differently?

Maybe it was a story you've known forever. Maybe it was something someone said years ago that suddenly makes sense now. Maybe it was an experience you thought you understood until life moved you a few feet to the left and you realized there was another way to see it.

Or maybe it's something you're looking at right now.

Sometimes nothing around us has to change for something within us to shift. Sometimes we simply see what was already there from a perspective we couldn't access before.

And once you see it... good luck unseeing it. 

Shift happens... 

Keep Wandering With Me

Notes from the Wild is where I share the things I experience, notice, question, laugh about, stumble into, and occasionally discover while drying off after a shower.

If you enjoy wandering down these rabbit holes with me, subscribe to the blog so you never miss the next adventure. I have absolutely no idea where the next story will come from... which is kind of the point.

And if something you find here gives you a little hope, opens another possibility, or simply reminds you that you're not the only human figuring this stuff out as you go, pass it along. Share the story. Start a conversation. Be a spark for someone else.

The Happiness Matters Foundation creates opportunities for that spark of hope to become action. If you'd like to help us keep creating spaces, experiences, resources, and connections that remind people another possibility exists, support the Happiness Matters Foundation and help us keep Hope in Motion.

Because sometimes changing a life begins with something as simple as seeing what was there all along.

What about you?

Sometimes the smallest questions quietly rearrange everything.

Here I was, slurping my delicious morning magic potion of possibilities.

Okay... it was coffee.

But let's be honest. Around here coffee pretty much qualifies as a magic potion of possibilities anyway.

As I was mindlessly scrolling through Facebook, I came across a post by Michael Garrett, a North Carolina senator. Normally, when I see one of those extra-long social media posts, my brain politely says, "Yeah... that's gonna be a no from me." I skim a sentence or two — if that — and keep scrolling.

Not this morning.

I'm not entirely sure what made me stop and actually read the whole thing, but I did. And I'm really glad I did.

What can you do where you are now, with what you already have?

I've been sipping my coffee and thinking about those two sentences ever since. The funny thing is, my first reaction to that question wasn't particularly inspiring. It was something along the lines of, "Well... not much." Then, almost without realizing it, I started taking inventory. 

Not of my office. Not even of my life. Of this year.

Holy Shift.

It's only August.

My brain immediately started flipping through everything that's happened this year. It wasn't organized, either. It wasn't one of those neat little highlight reels people post on social media. It was more like someone had dumped an entire year's worth of memories onto the kitchen table and said, "Here... you figure it out." 

There were moments that made me laugh until I cried, moments that actually made me cry, plans that worked out better than I could have imagined, and others that happily marched straight into the Fuckit Bucket. There were books, podcasts, conversations, health situations, websites that somehow became much more than websites, perspective shifts, unexpected friendships, and a whole lot of coffee somewhere in between.

As I sat there mentally sorting through the wonderfully beautiful chaos that has been 2026, something else quietly caught my attention. 

I wasn't actually taking inventory. 

I was building a case. 

My Mr. Finite had somehow appointed himself lead prosecutor and was enthusiastically presenting Exhibit A, Exhibit B, Exhibit C... every hard thing, every setback, every detour, every reason life had been more difficult than I would have preferred. To be fair, he wasn't making anything up. Hard things really are hard. He simply had a remarkable talent for believing that was the whole story.

That's when that question quietly interrupted the proceedings.

What can you do where you are now, with what you already have?

It was such a simple question, but it completely changed what I was looking at. 

Nothing in my year changed. 

The health situations were still there. 

The unexpected twists were still there. 

The victories were still there. 

The disappointments hadn't magically disappeared. 

The only thing that changed was the question I was asking.

Instead of asking myself to justify why life had been difficult, I found myself noticing everything that still existed despite the difficult parts. I had written. I had listened. I had built. I had laughed. I had loved. I had learned. I had helped people remember who they are while occasionally needing to remember that myself. Somehow, in the middle of everything life had thrown my way, life had also continued to hand me opportunities to do exactly what I believe I was put here to do.

Funny how Mr. Finite forgot to include those exhibits.

Maybe that's why those four words landed so deeply too.

Hard things are hard.

There's something incredibly freeing about that sentence because it doesn't ask us to pretend. It doesn't tell us to "look on the bright side" or slap a motivational quote over something that genuinely hurts. It simply tells the truth.

Hard things are hard.

But they aren't the whole story.

The whole story is what we do next.

Not next year.

Not when life settles down.

Not when we finally have more money, more time, better health, or fewer responsibilities.

Now.

Right here.

With what we already have.

As I finished my coffee, I realized that maybe life has never asked me to change the whole world. Maybe it's simply asking me to faithfully use whatever is already in my hands today. Write the story. Have the conversation. Encourage the person. Build the thing. Love the people. Laugh when I can. Cry when I need to. And when another hard thing inevitably shows up — because let's be honest, it will — acknowledge that it's hard, invite Mr. Finite to have his opinion, and then gently ask the question he keeps forgetting."

Okay... so what can we do from here?"

What about you?

What can you do where you are now, with what you already have?

Maybe it's checking on a neighbor. Maybe it's making the phone call you've been putting off. Maybe it's offering a kind word, sharing your story, lending a hand, or simply sitting with someone who needs to know they aren't alone.

Big change has never belonged only to presidents, celebrities, or people with impressive titles.

It has always belonged to ordinary people who decided to become a spark exactly where they were.

I'd love to hear your answer in the comments.

And if this story reminded you that hope isn't about waiting for perfect circumstances but about taking the next step with what's already in your hands, would you help us keep that spark moving?

Read another story. Share this one with someone who needs it today. Tell someone they matter. Or explore the Happiness Matters Foundation and discover ways you can Be a Spark in your own community. Hope doesn't spread because one person does everything. It grows because ordinary people keep passing the light to one another.

After all...

As long as you draw a breath, there is still a spark of hope within you.

Sometimes the world is simply waiting for you to let it shine. 

Oh... I blinked...

They say the first sixty years of childhood are always the hardest.

Hope showed up. So did an unexpected plot twist.

I thought today would mark the beginning of healing. The Universe apparently had a slightly different itinerary.

Turns out, that's not a problem.

​​Some of life's most meaningful moments don't ask us to choose between joy and concern. They simply invite us to make room for both.