Hitting the Reset Button at Work
A colleague recently shared an observation with my business partner and me, a comment echoed by other coworkers as well: “It looks like Renee and Terry have hit the reset button.” We both agree those words are a compliment of the highest order as they perfectly capture our intentions while also providing evidence that our…
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Tracking Progress
Congratulations were in order. May 27, 2021, marked my 365th consecutive day of meditating. A whole year! I was proud of myself for finally “possessing” the ever elusive consistent practice I’d spent years chasing, and I could feel its many benefits manifesting in my everyday life. I’d become calmer, more centered and detached, although not…
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Testaments
In this strange town the funeral home lurks across from the county hospital the porch on the pink house sags while the rescued mansion next door remains a monument its newly-built wall a medieval illusion of concrete and stone steep streets and their names an awkward accent in my mouth unheard by twin babies swinging…
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Our Lists of 100 Things
On August 20, 2020, my friend, Renee, and I visited the beautiful Turning Point Park in Rochester, New York, walked their 3572 ft.-long footbridge, and started our Lists of 100 Things. The List of 100 Things isn’t a bucket list or a wish list, but it also kind of is. It’s more of a list…
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A Gratitudes
I’m grateful for all the airplanes that carried us safely on planned vacations that somehow turned into unexpected destinations. I’m grateful for attitude, our only choice sometimes, and for being able to choose well more often lately. I’m grateful for appreciation, amazed and astonished by daily miraculous acts of which I am in awe. I’m…
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Easing Into Meditation
The benefits of meditation are substantial and well-known, which is why many of us are striving to integrate the practice into our daily lives. My good friend and now business partner, Renee, and I set out on our learning-to-meditate-journey together. That shared resolution, made while on vacation, is one we’ve kept over the years because…
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Perfect Posture
Stack the books. Penmanship. Recipes. Atlases. Etiquette. Square your shoulders. Pull them back. Put your chin up. Straighten the spine. That stomach: suck it in. That chest: push it out. Smile. Hold still. Let me put the books on your head. Walk. Turn around. Face me. Smile. Walk. Sit in the chair. Cross your legs…
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Umbrella Shopping
For their second birthdays, I buy each of my grandbabies their own special umbrella. The first, a Hungry Little Caterpillar see-though dome for my avid reader I found in the Curious George Bookstore in Harvard Square while away for work with friends. Its curved green handle had already outgrown my suitcase and the overhead bin,…
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The Meme for Our Lives
In 2007, my husband and I decided to go to the city to see a movie. This is not something we do often, but we really wanted to see Balls of Fury, mainly for pointers on how to become ping pong ninjas. The reason we needed that important knowledge was because we’d just bought ourselves…
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Addressing the Affective Domain in the College Classroom
Hunter Boylan and Barbara Bonham believe the key to implementing effective developmental education is the integration of courses and support services that are “grounded in what we know about how adults learn and how they develop their cognitive and affective skills and characteristics” (vi). Boylan cites classic research by Bloom who estimates that a quarter of…
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Household Rebranding Agreement Reached
After intense negotiations, the items formerly known as Junk Drawers will now be called Keepers of Miscellaneous Objects. “This name is more reflective of the important service they provide,” says Pancake Flipper Spatula, steward for the Union of Household Matters, “but without the negative connotations and their potential to set this membership back years, if not…
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Bread
I was my family’s first child, first daughter, first grandchild. Every day my mother put a spoonful of Karo Syrup in my bottles of milk to keep my system moving and filled them with sugar water in between. My grandfather topped them off with red Kool-Aid and took me for long rides in his pickup truck. They doted…
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Our Personal Pestle
Pick a sprig of anger, fresh when plucked in full bloom, and place its small yet precious self across the bottom of the bowl. Then, add seedlings, tender rose-colored resentment, hurt, resignation, pulled from the soil moments before fully taking root. Sprinkle on carefully measured heaps of our favorite flavors, selecting perhaps guilt, shame, perfectionism,…
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Emerging from my Media Cocoon: The Top Five Reasons I Started a Website
While I’m certainly no Luddite and definitely embrace technologies of all kinds, I’ve never been one to put myself out there in the online social media world. Sure, like many good people, I have an outdated, practically abandoned Linked In profile desperately in need of updating, but Tic Toc and my own YouTube channel are…
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Terry Shamblin Writes 