Finding Grateful
I feel a very unusual sensation — if it is not indigestion, I think it must be gratitude. -Benjamin Disraeli When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around. -Willie Nelson According to some of my Facebook friends, November is an unofficial month of gratitude, where each day a participating person is supposed ...
Letter to my fairly recent self
It’s the most glorious time of the year in Minnesota, the cusp of autumn, with bright, still-long days, a warm but no longer humid breeze in the air with the green smell of trees and flowers still in bloom. My family and I are visiting my brother and his family — his wife, toddler, newborn, ...
Tumblr – The Three Amigos
I’m posting a link to the recent Tumblr post I wrote for the soon-to-be-released book Dancing at the Shame Prom. The book is a compilation of personal essays by some well-known writers and is coming out on September 11, 2012. I am planning to buy it! (To be clear: I’m not one of the authors ...
Fight Club of One
Last month I learned how to ski in Canada, at the same place where 12 years earlier I learned to snowboard. In those days, at 30, I suspected I was too old to learn how to do something like ski or snowboard. Still, I put on my helmet and hoped no one would guess my ...
Tales of Marriage and Baggage
Last week I was lucky enough to tell a story at The Moth ”Marriage” show in Santa Monica. I’m not someone who moved to Los Angeles to be an actor, although I love my actor and comedian friends and go to as many of their shows as I can. I don’t really want to be ...
To Live and Drive in LA
I read an article on “mindful eating” the other day in the New York Times. It’s about applying the principles of mindfulness and meditation, being in the moment while eating. I couldn’t figure out whether to laugh or cry, since I practice the exact opposite of mindful eating. This practice of mine is not ...
Free to be (crazy) you and me
This week I am starting a class and working on a deadline. So far in 2012 I’ve been meeting all my deadlines, but I don’t want to gloat lest I start missing them! Instead of a new post, I am re-posting the following entry from June 3, 2011. Thank you for reading, friends. A New ...
The Meek Squawk of the Chicken Mother
Much has been written about The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, the book by Yale Law School professor Amy Chua. If you are not a parent, or are not Asian, perhaps you have not heard of it, except possibly from your friends with kids. They probably either hate the book and wish ill to ...
Swim (me) part deux
Last summer, I posted Swimmies, about my kids’ swimming despite the fact that I hate doing it myself. Nothing earth-shattering has changed between then and now. But on a recent trip with my family, I was trying to keep up the exercise routine (Run. Get sore/injured. Repeat.) when I discovered that I hate swimming slightly ...
The dreaded list
Lists of new year’s resolutions are the devil. The act of writing them down practically dooms the endeavor to failure. Keep it vague, and it’s just magical thinking, an amorphous wish to wake up with a new personality. Get too specific, and it becomes the incredibly detailed list of things you won’t do. At least ...
