Follow your bliss … and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be Joseph Campbell As a high school senior, the Joseph Campbell quote about following your bliss spoke to me. I couldn’t now say where this instinct originated; what about my first 18 years suggested that my bliss would lead …
Disclaimer: I’m a bit of a Jen Louden #fangirl. It’s possible I’d like to be her new BFF… but I promise, that aspiration is a result of reading her book, and not the reason I’m about to gush about it. In tackling an important but challenging topic, Jen Louden brings a tricky balance of hard-won …
This morning, I was driving over to my local drive-thru to get a little something to eat. It was a foggy morning in Monteagle — not at all unusual up here in our mountain hamlet. At one point, I was approaching a popular intersection and a pickup truck was looking like he was going to …
A moment of self-awareness demands that I admit that I have a problem saying ‘no’ to good ideas. If there’s something that my time/effort/attention could make better for the world or another person (or lots of people), I’m apt to knee-jerk commit to the project with little reflection on whether, realistically, I have the time …
I’m delighted to share my annual review of my favorite books I read last year. Thanks to my full embrace of Goodreads, I know a few things about my reading last year: 119 books, 30,313 pages, averaging 254 pages per book. If you want to go back in time and see what I loved in …
As I mentioned in a blog post over the weekend, I’ve been recently getting more regular missives from the president of the Liz Norell Haters Club (sometimes also known as Fakey McFakerston or “Bob Vila,” his chosen alias). I effectively shut down comments on my blog posts because I was tired of dude’s cowardly attempts …
When I first started this newest iteration of liznorell.com and started blogging right here on this site, I was pretty excited about the ability to have conversations on the page. Because I actively don’t want fame — I dread it, in fact — I never anticipated that the comments on my blog would become hotbeds …
In Atlanta for an Enneagram workshop on the instincts (sidebar: FASCINATING STUFF), I took myself to Mirko Pasta for dinner tonight. As is often the case when I eat alone, I pulled out some reading material — first, some student response papers that need feedback, then (once my food arrived) a novel on my Kindle …
A friend recently shared this article on Facebook: Every woman has an ‘I Don’t’ list. And it’s about time we shared them. TL;DR? Women today feel the need to appear to be doing ALL. THE. THINGS. … even as we inwardly feel certain we’re not enough, because we aren’t squeezing productivity out of every single …
I’m leaving later today to attend a week-long writing retreat with Jen Louden (in Taos, New Mexico, squee!) Writing that sentence immediately sparks fear, anxiety, and excitement in me … a flutter just below my sternum that is probably the reason I haven’t slept more than about six hours a night (WAY TOO LITTLE for …
