Teddy–AKA Mr. Terrffic

Much to my surprise, I am coming up on the end of my first semester as an aspiring therapeutic riding instructor. I am by no means done with my apprenticeship, but I wasn’t sure I’d make it this far. I’m pausing to reflect and take stock. What have I learned these past few months? Where were my expectations upended, what do I need to focus on going forward to be the best I can at this new undertaking?

My first revelation is that the required lesson plan can be a huge distraction from learning if I allow it to be–and I have. Example: I put together a spiffy little exercise about adjusting the horse’s pace within a gait. Can the rider ask for a faster walk without breaking into the trot? A slower trot without cuing the walk? Very important skill for tuning up communication between horse and rider, ensuring reins are the proper length, and giving the student tools for maintaining safe distances when riding in a group. How wonderfully functioaln this objective is. One might even say elegant, might one not?

The lesson went along safely and the student seemed to enjoy the time in the saddle. The supervising instructor had to gently point out, though, that the student wanted to use the hour to do more independent riding, and thus the rider was without a horse leader for much of the lesson. The plain evidence right before my very eyes was… my rider was having trouble steering.

But there I was blathering away about exhaling to achieve a downward transition, and congratulating myself on keeping the lesson on track time-wise, while Mr. Very Smart Pony (Teddy) was blowing off his rider’s attempts to keep him from the middle of the arena (the universal rest stop location known to all school horses from time immemorial). Steering is kinda right up there with whoa and go in terms of basic abilities, and rather than focus on that gap in the student’s skill set, I remained determined to execute my brilliant lesson plan.

Note to self: Be more nimble Grace–adjust your pace within the teaching gaits--and pay attention to the student rather than to prioritizing the syllabus.

The other lesson I’m taking away from round one (so far) is that joy is central to the learning experience. Compulsory education ignores this truth at its peril, but the extra curriculars know it well. Nobody has to learn to play the tuba. No nine year old is required by state law to schlep out to the horse barn in the pouring down rain to work on the posting trot. Both are difficult undertakings full of set backs, frustrations, and plateaus.

The first goal of all my lessons–after safety, safety, and safety–must be providing a positive experience at the barn. If you want to improve every single measure of success at a struggling school, introduce an instrumental music program. Even the students not involved in the program will have better attendance, better grades, and fewer disciplinary incidents. My theory behind that miracle is that music teachers (art teachers, drama teachers…) know that joy must be on the syllabus, and the world has more tuba virtuosos (and high school graduates generally), and happier school cafeterias because of it.

So in addition to my spiffy, one might even say elegant, lesson plans, I will be bringing my sense of humor, my smiles, my corny jokes, and my love for all things equine to the barn. At Teddy’s suggestion, I also ordered some kazoos.

What teachers do you recall with the most respect and gratitude? What was their superpower?

PS: The audio version of Worth More Than Rubies is now available from the web store!

We finally had a hard frost, and I got to thinking about why that made me happy. What about this time of year, which most people consider dreary and chilly, gives me a predictable sense of well being?

I had to think about that, and my cogitations yielded some possibilities. First, late autumn is when the world goes quiet. The lawnmowers and weed whackers are put away. The jacked up pick-up trucks still go by with their music thumping, but their windows are closed and so, much of the time, are mine. Then too, there’s simply less traffic. More darkness means more staying home, apparently.

Another quality I enjoy about this time of year is that when the sun shines, the daylight is brighter but not hotter. I love big trees and live among them, but once the leaves fall, sunshine comes barreling down from the heavens unimpeded, and my house is actually cheerier for the trees going naked.

Then too, bye-bye bugs! And the hot tea becomes more of a special treat. If we’re having hard frost, climate change hasn’t yet ruined everything. There’s hope!

This season is also when I plant bulbs, and that is my favorite kind of gardening. Toss ’em in, wait a few months. Admire results. No watering or weeding, no waging war against the Japanese beetles or the deer. Just plant, wait, pretty. When I go out to weed the blueberry patch for the umpteenth time (because tenacious weeds came in with the big load of mulch, of course), I’m always a little resentful. All that work for a few cups of berries?! Not so with the bulbs.

I like that we get a procession of holidays, from Veteran’s Day onward through February, and I think that has all kinds of benefits. I no longer commute, but a holiday still means a day when I won’t be bothered by work emails, Zoom meetings, work texts (I despise texting, for the most part), or other interruptions. Holidays can be the best writing days, and I treasure those whenever they come.

So I like this bleak, dreary, chilly time of year quite well. My dad was no fan of cold weather whatsoever, to the point that he retired early to San Diego, and there he did stay until his earthly span was concluded some forty-two years later. Dad, who was rail thin, once told me that he loved getting into a closed-up car that had been sitting in the sun, because only then did he finally feel warm. He was serious.

And I am seriously enthralled with this time of year. I perk up, I nest, I write. I feel calmer and more at peace. I would miss the changing seasons, but I always rejoice when the first frost hits.

What is making you rejoice at this otherwise dreary time of year?

I have fallen into a pattern of wasting Saturday mornings, and that feels both good and necessary. My schedule has more structure in recent months, in part because I’m pursuing an equestrian teaching credential, and in part because I’m keeping both a romance series and a mystery series moving forward.

I’m for the most part pleased with my life, grateful for my many privileges, and enjoying my challenges, but… I get overwhelmed. Life intrudes on my plans. Health care makes demands (muttering in the direction of the peridontist’s office), the house must be at least minimally maintained. I over-schedule myself, and then come some gratuitous nights of bad sleep or some pet-upheaval.

A couple days ago, I made myself my usual “banquet” tea to the start the morning: Local honey, heavy cream, and… geez my first cup of the day tasted really weak, and then I realized I’d forgotten to put in the, um, tea bags. Twice this week, I grabbed a tube of toothpaste from beside the sink only to realize a moment later that I’d just squoze moisturizer onto my toothbrush. (The moisturize now resides on a shelf across the bathroom from the sink.)  I buzzed over to Virginia for one of my monthly Fried Pickle summits with friend Graham only to realize I’d gotten the venue, time, and day of the week correct, but the date wrong.

When I start hydroplaning like this, it’s tempting to lecture myself: “Grace, you must focus. Make some lists, my dear. Get organized. Look for efficiencies! Books do not write themselves, the trash will not levitate out the door.”

But Sister Scholastica Grace (who sounds  a lot like the Sisters of Saint Joseph who taught at Our Lady of Victory school) is off the mark on this one. Right now, for whatever reason, I am like the kid who is getting good-enough grades and who generally does her chores without much (loud) complaining. What I need now is to watch cartoons for a few hours. I will get to my weekend chores, I will take out the trash, but to re-connect with myself, and to rest the weary parts of me, I need a Saturday morning where I play a dozen games of Solitaire BEFORE I try to be productive.

I need to collect the last of the dahlias, to let a day go by when I schedule nothing, control nothing, and–be strong, Grace Ann–accomplish nothing. Why is this so hard? Yes, some anxiety and negative emotions might bubble up if I reduce my RPMs, but so will some consolations, silver linings, and new perspectives. I might figure out why the Earl of Dunhaven won’t declare himself to the woman he has long adored.

Or I might let just one day slip through my fingers. I do fear that one slack day will turn into a  hundred, but never before in all my born days has that happened. The probability of banana-peeling my way into an abyss now is not great.

So I will be figuratively watching cartoons this Saturday, wandering around in the yard, dipping into Dick Francis in the afternoon (oh, the decadence), and getting absolutely nothing done.

Does anybody else reply to the inner nuns with this strategy? They mean well, those nuns, but truly, I need time to pick me some yard flowers.

PS: Lord Julian’s holiday mystery, A Gentleman Under the Mistletoe, is now available from the usual suspects and the web store. It’s a little early for Yuletide tales, but never too soon for a fun whodunit!

When I am queen, the US campaign cycle will be shortened to 60 days, period. Our British friends manage to get all contrary and polarized with campaigns conducted in 25 working days (you read that right). They have snarky town halls, divisive memes, public mud-slinging with all the trimmings, and seem mostly content with how their abbreviated campaign window works.

The Brits even require equal coverage of opposing candidates on commercial media without any sign of this resulting in the end of the world (we used to have the same requirement, quaintly referred to as the Fairness Doctrine). If you want to read more about the UK alternatives to spending billions on campaign ads, this article is a little dated, but offers a good summary.

I am weary of politics, anxious about the election, and ashamed of what we’ve allowed our political rhetoric to do to our sense of neighborliness and community. I am not queen of a big enough world to do much about all that, but I am the queen of me.

In that capacity, I have issued a few royal proclamations recently. The first of which says that after listing my five specific gratitudes at the end of the day, I get to listen to three songs. Music is about the best tonic for preserving neuroplasticity, aced out only by the combination of music and dance. Music can elevate mood, reduce blood pressure, reduce heart rate, and boost memory, for starts.  So I’m signing off with the good stuff–Huey Lewis, Dave Brubeck, Creedence, the Pointer Sisters, Vivaldi, Phil Collins, and one of my favorites, Rostropovich conducting the NSO in The Stars and Stripes Forever in Moscow. (Or if guitar is more your thing, this version by acoustic soloist Doug Smith is jaw-dropping.)

I am donating to a charity of my choice (different ones), every day in November. Not a lot, but enough to remind me that I’m not powerless. Compared to a lot of people on this earth, I DO live like a queen. Twenty bucks can buy fifteen pounds of rice, which cooks up to nearly a hundred servings. Thanks to my readers, I have that to donate, and really, much of the benefit of generosity lands on the giver rather than receiver.

I am planting my Holland bulbs. They are the easiest of yard flowers. No weeding, no watering, no fertilizing even (the first couple years). I put in a bag of daffodils and it reminds me, “Spring will arrive, flowers will bloom.” I also like the idea that anybody who drives by my house next March will get to see some cheery blooms, and of course, gardening is good for both physical health and mood.

So I’m doing what I know to do (in addition to binging the books of the late Dick Francis), and I think it’s helping me be less fretful and unsteady. I am not changing the course of the universe, but I am putting aside the doom-scrolling for small actions that have meaning for me and keep me focused on the good and the constructive, of which there is much in this life.

How do you batten down the hatches when the winds of worry threaten to blow your house down?

A writer friend who likes to think in archetypes (Mentor, Jester, Warrior, Orphan…) once told me I have a lot of Destroyer energy. This comment was offered as neither insult nor compliment, but simply as an assessment.

I can see that shoe fitting me. I feel satisfied rather than bereft when the junk crew makes all the cardboard and crap in the summer kitchen disappear. I was (in part) a good fit with foster care law because my perspective was often, “What’s holding this family back? How do we get rid of that obstacle?” A more nurturing mindset applied to the same situation might have asked, “What’s holding this family back? How do we build strengths so they can better manage that obstacle?”

Nah me. Erase the problem, obliterate it, render it null and void. Both approaches can result in greater familial strength, but I was prone to looking for what was blocking the critical path, and making it Go Away.

From a writing perspective, the black moment is the point in the story when the identity a protagonist cherished on page one (successful sculptor, happy spinster, brilliant sleuth) lies in ruins at their exhausted, bruised feet. This plot element is necessary so that an even worthier dream and identity can be born in the final pages of the story, and confirm the reader’s hope that the future will be rosy. A good writer has to have a talent for building and destroying fictional dreams.

But my propensity for firing the figurative photon torpedo has a down side. I am prone to looking for what is wrong, what is in the way of my idea of progress, what is holding back a better reality. I get pig-headed notions and won’t give them up. Sometimes, that junk in the summer kitchen is evidence of a pandemic survived. It needs to sit out there in all its reassuring ugliness for a long time before its job is done.

Sometimes, for example, a rule is in fact, not based on evidence or science or even much common sense (see previous foghorning about SMART goals), but having a rule means we can dispense with further debate about whether to drive on this side of the road or that. But there I am, maundering on about most people being right-handed, and dominant eyes, and back when we drove carriages… While traffic whizzes by relatively safely, despite my logical conclusion that we’ve devised a stupid rule about how we drive.

Photon torpedo in hand, I look for places where destruction might be part of a solution, because I have found a tool I use well–not because destruction of the whole blooming summer kitchen will solve anything.

My challenge is to know when to fire away, and when to view the situation from a different perspective–when to modify my handy definition of a problem, and when to put down my weapons of choice, and let the facts of my story suggest an even worthier possibility, however strange or alarming I might find the idea initially. This perspective-shifting is hard, and other people usually have to help me do it.

Do you tend to fall back on archetypical coping strategies? To rely on go-to tactics that have down sides? Maybe you’ve found people whose default approaches complement yours, or you’ve learned to shift your own perspective before taking action?

I’ve sent out a bunch of ARC files for A Gentleman Under the Mistletoe. I can part with a few more, if you’ll let me know what device you prefer to read on, and drop me a line at graceburrowes@yahoo.com.

I horseback ride once a week on the dear old steeds at the therapeutic riding barn in a lesson set up just for interested volunteers. This is not enough to get me in any kind of riding shape, but it’s enough to keep my equestrian synapses (and courage) from withering completely away.

The other student in the class this week was a guy who has been volunteering with the program for a while, and we’ve ridden together a time or two. I know him to be a former eventer–meaning he competed in dressage, stadium jumping, and cross country jumping over solid obstacles. I dabbled enough in the same discipline to know it’s not for sissies (or for me).

So there’s my barn buddy on Lola, a darling warmblood mare who’s more whoa than go in terms of personality. Ridin’ Buddy had Lola traveling in a nice forward trot circle, and then he asked her for the canter. That mare jumped into the canter and went skipping around like the 17-hand chestnut show girl she used to be. I later learned that my fellow volunteer had not cantered on horseback for twenty years.

Oh, my stars and garters. To get back in the saddle at all is hard, to get back in the saddle when you were that accomplished, after that long… I was cussing, I was so pleased and excited for my fellow student. He was grinning like a kid, and Lola was all full of her gorgeous-mare self too. The moment was special, and I got to be there. I’m filing that one away in my mental jewelry box.

Another moment that goes in the jewelry box is the only time I caught a wave body surfing. I would have been eleven or so, and never before or since have I managed to be in the right place at the right time to feel the ocean lofting me along like a happy porpoise, but I recall the sensation now after more than half a century. Wheeee! is an understatement.

I recall the moment when my name was called at the Maggie Award ceremony in the George Romance Writer’s 2009 conference. I’d submitted The Heir as an unpublished manuscript and 400 people clapped and cheered when the book won. This astounded me, and it was that win that eventually convinced a publisher worn out with Regency debuts to give just one more duke (ducal heir) a chance.

I have been thinking more about my mental jewelry box lately, maybe because we’re heading into the darker, colder, “hermit-er” time of year, maybe because I am so disgusted with news and social media that I’m re-playing my personal highlights reel. Very few of my most special memories are of big, planned events. My wedding day was busy and tense, my daughter’s wedding day was the very day my mom died.

But from time to time, when I’m not expecting it, life has handed me a dose of unforgettable sweetness, and those gifts have kept on giving, when I take the time to focus on them. The friend who sent me two dozen roses when I brought my daughter home from the hospital (“A dozen for you, a dozen for her…). That day my college advisor roared at me for even thinking of becoming a paralegal when he knew I was destined for law school…

Sweet, surprising, and I get to keep them all. Do you have little gems twinkling in your mental jewelry box? I’m sure you do!

I operate best in the “almost too busy” zone, meaning I have writing projects, social activities, barn obligations, domestic chores, and various other tasks all rotating through my day. When I hit the balance right, I feel productive, satisfied, challenged, and fulfilled.

But when life or my own mismanagement result in overload? I get anxious, reactive, and down. Decades ago one of my older brothers told me, “You can survive a blowout going 90 miles an hour, but not if you’re driving with one finger on the wheel.” I’m learning, gradually, how to keep one hand on the wheel, but I have to fight my own impulses when compression phases hit.

My instinct, when I am overwhelmed, is to hide. Solitude solves everything… except it doesn’t. When the week seems overbooked is precisely when I need to keep that fried pickle date with a friend, so I can hear somebody tell me, “Don’t  be too hard on yourself.” (Thanks, Graham, Felicity, et alia.)

Another impulse when I’m slammed is to do everything (or make little rules exhorting myself to do everything). Do one housekeeping project every day, bring the general ledger up to date, walk a thousand steps every hour–it only takes ten minutes after all–and move some money into savings because that will somehow give Lord Julian the big insight to solve the next mystery. Just do enough stuff and surely calm will eventually return?

Erm… No.

Or… take a break, Grace Ann! Play all the solitaire and cribbage you want and pre-reward yourself into getting the never-ending to-do list done once you’ve indulged in a mental box of Girl Scout cookies.

Nope, not that either.

What really seems to help is limiting myself to focusing on one day, or–when my wheels are truly about to come off–one task. What is the most important task? Not the most urgent, not the most enjoyable, not the simplest. What is most important?

Usually, that’s writing one scene. Not only does writing give me breathing room from all my other chores and anxiety triggers, but it also generates revenue. Win-win! And once I’ve written the day’s scene, I’m usually less anxious too. So I do the best I can with one important task, then look around, and ask, “What can you reasonably do today with this pile of straw you want to spin into gold?”

I cannot make a feral cat population healthy and non-reproductive overnight. I can make a spay appointment for the one queen I know I can catch next. I cannot turn an old house into a show place, but I can air the rugs and run a load of socks and undies. I cannot slap down 7000 words a day, but I can outline three scenes ahead of what I’ve written so far.

In other words, when I am tempted to speed up, work faster, and discard time for reflection and self care., that is precisely when I need to slow down, work more strategically, and prioritize breathing room and support. And of course, at the end of every one of these slammed, daunting days, I make time to read a good book, and then–having done the best I could with the day, and having cosseted my heart and mind with a good yarn–I turn out the light and am grateful that tomorrow, I can give it all another shot, starting with: Write one scene.

How do you keep bailing when faced with a relentless spring tide?

PS: ARC files for A Gentleman Under the Mistletoe should go out over the next week. If you want one and don’t have it by Oct. 19 (I will send out to some usual suspects this week), drop me a line at graceburrowes@yahoo.com letting me know what device you read on. I can’t send files to every person who asks every time, but I’ll get out as many as possible!

I have been watching a friend struggle with chronic illness for the past several years. Her medical history was daunting before I met her, but as with most chronic health problems, the passage of time has seen further deterioration and complication in her situation.

Medications have side effects and interactions, the pharmacy often doesn’t have the meds she’s prescribed, and even if she were robustly healthy, the sheer volume of case management she has to do would be daunting. The mental health toll of insurance refusing coverage for needed procedures, doctors not returning phone calls, or appointments getting postponed when prescriptions have already run out… it’s a form of torture inflicted on somebody already cursed with chronic pain.

When I think about how did we get here, the answer is simple: We decided that efficient medicine (profitable medicine) was good medicine. We decided that education that meets external objectives was good education. We decided that monetized productivity is a cardinal virtue. I cannot tell you how many apps and programs out there purportedly help authors write books faster and more efficiently.

I touched a few weeks ago on the problem with setting achievable goals (we pretty much doom ourselves to mediocrity), but lately I’m more focused on the harm that comes from over-emphasis on measurable outcomes. When the focus is on measurement–how much profit, how many words written, how many students passed–we lose track of our qualitative experience.

Were all those thousands of words I wrote any good? Did I graduate “successfully” from high school with no friends and a lifelong aversion to reading? Is my company bodaciously profitable only because its policies and products are dishonorably designed and created (looking at you, ChatGPT)? As long as we’re looking at “data,” and “bottom lines,” and “objective numbers” for our sense of a situation, we are distracted from the uh-oh feeling, the sheer joy of a beautifully written scene no matter how short, or the harm done when we teach the curriculum instead of the child.

Measured outcomes pull us  away from our internal experience of a situation and yank us into emphasizing an external assessment of what we’re dealing with. That’s how our brains work. If we see that a YouTube video we loved has earned mostly a thumbs down score from previous viewers, we are less likely to give it a thumbs up. Our experience loses validity in the face of “what the numbers say,” even though we know those numbers are probably, even purposely, polluted by trolls and bots.

Accountability is a fine concept in moderation, but not when it pushes honesty, integrity, and joy into the periphery of our perception. You cannot measure those factors, you cannot test their efficiency, and you certainly cannot monetize them convincingly, but I fear to dwell in a world where they no longer guide us as individuals or as a society, because we are instead too mesmerized “by the data.”

How are you doin’ just fine despite any numbers to the contrary? Where in your life do you enjoy an abundance of some unquantifiable wonderfulness? I am wealthy in unstructured time, solitude, quiet, health, access to books I enjoy, meaningful relationships, animal friends… I’m such a tycoon, despite the numbers!

PS: The web store discount for this month is Truly Beloved, priced at $.99 for all of October. I chose this title  because Daisy and Penweather’s story is set at a bleak time of year, and heaven knows we’ve all faced, and some of us are facing, more than our share of bleak horizons.

I have been thinking lately about how we cope with adversity, especially the open-ended, no-clear answers kind. Then I found myself a guest in my sister’s house, which is small and lovely. Every wall has art on it that is meaningful to her, every room is arranged to maximize light, comfort, and simplicity. The colors soothe and please, the textures are interesting and varied.

Images and mementos of loved ones abound, as do comfy chairs, her late husband’s art work, and little touches of pretty.

My sister’s house has reminded me of the concept of safe places. I am not so good at making physical havens, but in adolescence, I knew the piano was a safe place. The basic operating principles were not going to change on me without warning, and the premise that the more correct work I did, the more skill I would gain held true. My horse Buck was a safe place. Nobody was on hand to criticize my riding, nobody put down my horse because he was fat and shaggy. We could be happy without fear of criticism.

English class was a safe place. I would have had to work quite hard to get anything but an A in junior high English class.

In later life, reading and writing have been safe places for me, and when they aren’t–when a work in progress seems hopelessly stuck–I get really rattled. When I can’t find books I literally want to go to bed with, I feel a little lost. (Then I go to author Charles Finch’s FB page and look at his last, “What are you reading?” post, and get good ideas!)

I can do much, much better about making my home look and feel like a safe, welcoming, haven, but another source of that “protected amid the chaos” feeling is loving relationships, and there again, I haven’t been so effective.

I need a lot of privacy and solitude, but that alone cannot restore my equilibrium when I’m overwhelmed by the click-bait, guaranteed mega-negativity news, or by personal issues. My neutral corner is for getting to neutral. For getting to positive, resilient, and brave, I need safe spaces characterized by beauty, comfort, and kindness. If I get enough of that in my life, I can be pretty darned fierce in the face of set backs, hefflalumps, and whoozels.

How are you doing for safe places and havens? Do the old reliables still work, or have you fashioned some new ones in recent years? Are you working on creating any more?

And oh, lookee! Pretty soon time to make that ARC list for A Gentleman Under the Mistletoe! Wheee!

Authors are exhorted in workshop after workshop to ensure that in every scene, the main character has a goal. The character must be moving toward some objective, whether it’s to consummate wedding vows, find a particular library book, or overtake the villain’s carriage. Similarly, people approaching retirement are instructed to retire to something, not just from a job.

And lately the questions, “What am I moving toward? What am I moving away from?” have caught my interest. The whole “learn to be a therapeutic riding instructor” project is born in part out my need to feel like I’m moving toward the best version of myself, acquiring new skills, gathering new insights. Still growing. I’m also prone to move-away goals: Stay away from large gatherings, stay away from cluttered mornings, stay away from privacy pirates. Still patrolling the parapets of the self I treasure.

I tend not to set overt goals. I did not look around my writing life on a conscious level, and think, “Well, the published author thing continues to delight, but the artificial intelligence barbarians are at the gate, the pirates steal every book the day it comes out (with the affirmative support of the very wealthy AI barbarians), and the subscription model interposes powerful corporate money-suckers between author and reader–money suckers far greedier than any traditional publisher has been with me. Might have to build a fall-back plan for when relevance as an author has been obliterated.”

All of those arguments are painfully valid, and yet, what I was aware of, when I decided to pursue instructor certification, was that at the barn, I have energy. I, who am the spuddliest couch spud every to spud, could do 10,000 steps at the barn and barely notice the effort until I got back into the car. I like and respect the people there. I have wonderful, lifelong associations with horses and horse barns. Why don’t I move in that direction, but along a new path? Could be fun, could be a way to continue to make a constructive contribution.

That kind of decision is typical of me. I don’t make plans or do annual reviews or read the market in any conscious process. I think about stuff, and ponder, and question (“Why not take a look? Drop in for a session? Do a trial run?”), and then those small, noncommittal actions move me off in a specific direction. If the baby steps go well, the steps get bigger, and so on. One of the reasons I decided to try the weight loss drugs was because the apparent mandatory step–one shot a week, quit whenever you feel like it–was so small. No commitment, no publicity. Just a little experiment.

All of which is to say, that I don’t think goals are all that important for me. Every goal is an opportunity for failure, or worse, an opportunity to get sucked into a mis-guided investment of time, effort, and ego. I am more comfortable thinking instead of directions, paths, progress, learning experiments, and satisfaction. I may never, ever achieve certification as a therapeutic riding instructor, but I have already learned tons, and I am inspired to keep moving in this direction, and that is enough.

What are you moving toward or away from? Are you a goal setter or more like me–a wander in that interesting direction and see where you end up-er?

* The phrase translates to, “And yet it moves,” and is attributed to Galileo. According to tradition, he’d just finished dutifully recanting the evidence he’d gathered for the sun-centric theory of the known universe to the delight and relief of Inquisition (the Church had congratulated him on his brilliant science years before, but oh, well). He looked up at the sun, thumped his heel on the earth, and said, “And yet it moves.” History is silent on the question of what he did with his middle finger in that moment.