Whenever you put your ideas out there into the universe, it's always scary and, from my perspective, takes courage.
Yet whether you're a painter or a director or a choreographer or a writer, regardless of your intention, once you make your stuff public, it's like a free-for-all. It's 100 percent up to your audience to make sense of your message, interpret or reinterpret your ideas, and like or dislike your work or even you.
Read More“How would you feel about categorizing your book as self-help or personal growth?”
I was having a telephone conversation with an editor at a publishing house about my memoir. I had finished the manuscript in August and had been pitching the project to literary agents and publishers, taking online workshops on how to publish a book, and tweaking the pages based on feedback from readers.
I was never sure whether it was a good idea to call my book a memoir. I’m always visiting bookstores to look at what’s on the memoir shelf or the self-help, psychology, or personal growth shelves, so I get why she was asking the question.
It’s my fitness journey, that’s true, but I wouldn’t say fitness defines me.
“Sure,” I said, “I’m good with that.”
Read MoreI reconnected over the summer with a woman I first met when I was living outside San Francisco and our daughters had become friends. We were having coffee in Palo Alto late one afternoon when she told me she had lupus.
The subject came up because she was apologizing for meeting me in her workout clothes as she was just coming from the gym.
Really? Everyone in Palo Alto looks like they're in exercise clothes.
She told me that one of the ways she copes with bouts of extreme pain in her joints is by exercising regularly.
This memory popped into my head a few weeks ago as I woke up after sleeping nearly 12 hours. The last of my Thanksgiving guests had left late on that Saturday, and I practically passed out within minutes.
My plan had been to do a longish run that Sunday morning, but when I stepped out of bed, my sides and lower back were so sore and stiff that I nearly crept down the stairs to make myself a cup of coffee.
I assumed I had suffered a sleeping injury by being in bed so long.
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