View your surroundings with fresh eyes: resurrecting potential

Photo by Stefan Cosma on Unsplash.

Recently, we hosted our daughter for the weekend at our little cabin in the woods. To view the space through her eyes for the first time reminded me of the reasons my husband and I fell in love with the mountain retreat when we, too, first laid eyes on it. Yet it’s too easy to forget its potential when confronted with…[read more]

Looking ahead: a healthier future

Photo by Miguel A. Amutio on Unsplash.

During a recent hike, my husband and I descended roughly 500 feet into a canyon. And what goes down, must go up or vice versa. Since moving to the Mogollon Rim in…[read more]

Take ‘em or leave ‘em: managing deadlines and schedules

Photo by Eric Rothermel on Unsplash.

I’m all about deadlines and, consequently, schedules. While many of my deadlines are self-imposed, a few of my writing and/or editing projects are geared around due dates set by the publisher and/or client. Since transitioning to self-employment, I’ve found it a challenge to create a daily set schedule that…[read more]

After the leap: beginning a new journey

If you follow my weekly blog posts and receive my Always the Write Time emails, you’re privy to a fresh leap of faith my husband and I recently took. Rather than live with a retirement mentality, we prayerfully chose to retire “early”…[read more]

The big picture: sacrificing on the front end

Last Sunday morning, I woke up and declared aloud: “I’m not hiking today”—which was a pretty big deal, since anyone who knows me also knows a trek in the mountains provides me an opportunity to decompress, to recharge and to reconnect with my Maker on a deeper level. However, if past experience taught me anything, it required I consider the plans I hoped to accomplish before lights out that evening. In this particular case, it meant sacrifice on the front end to set myself up for success on the tail end. I spent roughly three hours (factoring in typical commute and trail choice) playing catch up: paperwork, goal setting and household chores. Plus, I prepared a hearty split pea soup for dinner. The pièce de résistance? A strong plan sketched out for the week, month and year ahead. And the bonus: enough time for a wild and crazy Trivial Pursuit game night.

What sacrifice have you made on the front end to realize a successful tail end?

7 truths on and off the trail

As I often do while hiking, I pray. I meditate. I search my soul and ask what it longs for most. I plot my goals or a story outline. While trekking through the desert this weekend, it’s as if life made a little more sense to me on and off the trail with these truths: 1) Danger is always possible: prepare for the unexpected and proceed with caution. 2) To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under the sun. 3) Remember where you came from: embrace your roots. 4) Keep your eyes open for love: it can show up in unlikely places. 5) Obstacles [aka mountains] are inevitable: it’s our choice whether to scale or avoid them. 6) If it’s meant to be, new growth finds a way. 7) When we think we’ve made it unscathed, another obstacle looms in our path: if it’s the same one, quit going around it and tackle it head on.

Which truth(s) can you relate to everyday life?

One way to stay on course

While hiking in the mountains this past weekend (and especially since my graceless fall—see ‘What *not* to do…’), I’m more attuned to the trail in front of me. With each step I take, my eyes scan the terrain a couple feet ahead for tripping hazards and/or wildlife. Focus, focus, focus! How often must you deliberately pull your attention back to a task at hand because your mind wanders to myriad items to be checked off your list? In my post, ‘Road rage…’, I talk about missing the forest for the trees; however, there is a right time and place, even beyond the trails, to keep our eyes and thoughts trained in front of us; e.g., relationships, creative projects, work tasks, fitness goals. It is wise to keep the big picture in mind, of course, yet lift our eyes at periodic intervals to scan our progress. But, in order to (safely) reach our destination, we should ultimately eliminate distractions that take us off course.

What’s your main focus?

Tick tock: time keeps on slippin’ slippin’ slippin’

 

Over the weekend I made another trip into the mountains. While breaking in my new trail shoes and greeting several hikers who also took advantage of the cooler desert morning dappled in cloud cover, I reflected on all the good in my life (which covered the majority of the two-hour loop). I thought, too, about how our lives mimic an hourglass that accumulates with sand over the years until, when full—let’s say at the mid-century mark—the hourglass is tipped and the sands begin to empty. In my post “Holy crap says it all,” my proverbial clock ticks at what feels like warp speed. A sense of urgency fuels my plans now yet, years ago, I didn’t think twice about wasting away my days engaging in meaningless pastimes. Although we can’t slow the sands of time, we can fill our given moments with pursuits of the heart that will remain long after the hourglass sands run dry.

How does your life reflect the emptying sands of time?

Image courtesy of Salvatore Vuono at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.