Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

So, at dinner last night, Carrie introduced me to this little crumb of life coach theory. She asked me what my three favorite things were to do when I was eight years old.

I looked at her like she had three heads and asked her how she expected me to remember such information at my age.

Of course, she hates it when I deflect her questions with another question in an effort to stall or just change the subject, but I hate having to think about myself in an introspective way.

However,...

While I was doing my five-minute break from work today, I pulled up YouTube and saw a video about feeling like you don’t belong by Marianne Cantwell

And it was all about her book, which came from her experience.

But her talk was about how some of us aren’t terribly good at fitting in and that’s okay.

As a writer, I’ve felt this.

And as a person, I’ve felt this.

I almost quit my MFA during the first residency at Vermont College of Fine Arts because I felt so much like I ...

I just found this exchange from a couple of years ago that happened when I was walking Sparty in town.Ìý

Random Woman on the Street (walking her dog with the perfect grooming): Hey, are you still a writer?

Me (trying to get my dog from humping her dog because her dog foolishly is not into my dog): Um � what?

Random Woman on the Street: I heard you had another job.

Me:

Woman: Not that writing is a job.

Me:

Woman: So do you?

Me:

Insert my Sparty dog still trying to assert dominance over her dog....

This week’s episode is called THE BEAUTY OF NOT FITTING IN. And one of the big aspects of understanding that is understand what it is to feel belonging.

According to , a counseling site from the UK.

“Belonging is defined asÌýfeelingÌýpart of a group, whether that is aÌý,Ìý, or aÌý.â€�

They quote psychologist Abraham Maslow, who worked on ³ó³Ü³¾²¹²ÔÌýÌýand created a ‘â€� models, saying that he “saw ‘Ìýand belonging’Ì� as s...

On BE BRAVE FRIDAYS, we share other people’s stories (unedited) to build a community of bravery and inspiration.

Please let us know if you want to share your story with us and we’ll read it here and post it on our social media and website.

This life is too short to not be brave. We can do this together.

This week’s Be Brave Story is from the wonderful Sheri Boggs!

Sheri, thank you so much for sharing your story with us.

You are so brave and so wonderful.

xo Shaun and Car...

On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog.

He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990sÌýor Captain Pontification.ÌýAnd no, we don’t always agree.

Today is a rarity. Usually, I am begging my brain for ideas to write about, but today, today I seem to have a plethora of ideas. Now my problem is which one to pick!

Since today is Carrie’s newest book’s birthday, I have decided to go wi...

When we want things that we don’t expect to get, it makes us feel pretty bad inside and it also keeps us from having positive progress towards our goals.

What happens when we make our expectations negative? Usually it isn’t good stuff. For me it often starts a big downward spiral. But people (like me) keep doing it all the time.

I’ll never find love.

I’ll never get published.

I’ll never make a difference.

Those expectations and fears can be come prophesy because they take up so...

There’s a lot of writing advice out there and some of it is amazing and some of it is bad, but the one piece that I’d like every single one of my writers to remember is this:

If you want to be a writer, you have to actually write.

You have to put pen to the page.

You have to put fingertips to the keyboard.

You have to put voice to the voicerecorder.

on lithub that feeds towards his book where he talked to 150 authors about writing. And the v...