Live Joy

  Last week, I wrote about how life requires both the highs and the lows because without grief, we wouldn’t understand joy. Without sadness, we wouldn’t fully recognize happiness. What I didn’t expect was to be living those very words just days later. A few weeks ago, our dog Bailey was diagnosed with pneumonia. She wasn’t eating, her breathing was labored, and when we brought her to the vet, her temperature was dangerously high. X-rays confirmed the infection, and she was immediately started on two antibiotics. We were hopeful. But at her follow-up appointment, everything had gotten worse. Her breathing was more strained, her fever had climbed even higher, and the X-rays showed progression instead of healing. The veterinarians began testing for fungal pneumonia, a process that takes 7–10 days for results and started her on antifungal medication while we waited. Then came the longest 48 hours. She deteriorated quickly. One night, she kept me awake with what I can only...

  I did everything “right”… and still gained weight  Let’s talk about the type of cardio we should be doing in midlife. I grew up playing soccer, where conditioning and speed were everything. Later, while training for figure competitions, I spent hours doing steady-state cardio- running, elliptical, stair mill, sometimes up to two plus hours a day. Like many of us, I was taught that running was better than walking, that cardio mattered more than strength training, and that getting your heart rate up was the key to burning calories and protecting your heart. And then came the midlife edit . What worked effortlessly for years suddenly stopped working. I learned this the hard way when I realized that running, something I had done on and off for most of my life, was no longer serving my body. In fact, every time I trained for a half marathon, I gained weight instead of losing it. What I eventually discovered was that my cortisol levels were chronically elevated when I ra...

Winter has a way of giving us permission we rarely grant ourselves. All year long we tell ourselves we’re too busy for the things we want to do. Too busy to rest. Too busy to read. Too busy to think. Too busy to just be. Life moves fast, calendars fill up, and we convince ourselves that slowing down will happen “someday.” And then winter arrives. Right now, we’re in the middle of a storm. Soccer games were canceled. School is canceled tomorrow. The world outside has literally pressed pause. Snow covers the ground, the air is cold and quiet, and everything feels just a little softer, a little slower. This is your invitation. Winter isn’t here to interrupt your life, it’s here to remind you of it. The snow and the cold give us a natural reason to stay in, to exhale, to move at a gentler pace. To sit with a warm drink. To read a few pages. To journal. To stretch. To do something simply because it feels good. You don’t have to be productive today. You don’t have to hustle thr...

    Some people think routines are boring. That doing the same thing every day must mean you’re stuck, uninspired, or missing out. I’ve found the opposite to be true. Over the years, being “boring” has given me the luxury of freedom. I make a lot of decisions at work. I have to be on all day—thinking, leading, talking, evaluating, guiding. By the time the workday is over, my brain has already made hundreds of choices. So, I remove as many unnecessary decisions from my personal life as possible. Every morning looks almost exactly the same. I wake up. I drink a big glass of water. Brush my teeth. Make coffee. Sit on the couch. Light a candle and incense. Practice gratitude. Meditate. Then I wake the boys. Once they’re out the door by 6:40 a.m., I already know what workout I’m doing because I follow a program. No thinking required. After that, I walk my dog and get ready for the day. By 8 a.m., I’ve done more for myself than most people do all day. And...

Some people think routines are boring. That doing the same thing every day must mean you’re stuck, uninspired, or missing out. I’ve found the opposite to be true. Over the years, being “boring” has given me the luxury of freedom. I make a lot of decisions at work. I have to be on all day—thinking, leading, talking, evaluating, guiding. By the time the workday is over, my brain has already made hundreds of choices. So I remove as many unnecessary decisions from my personal life as possible. Every morning looks almost exactly the same. I wake up. I drink a big glass of water. Brush my teeth. Make coffee. Sit on the couch. Light a candle and incense. Practice gratitude. Meditate. Then I wake the boys. Once they’re out the door by 6:40 a.m., I already know what workout I’m doing because I follow a program. No thinking required. After that, I walk my dog and get ready for the day. By 8 a.m., I’ve done more for myself than most people do all day. And I’m “boring” with food...

  A Clear Start to 2026 Now that we’re almost two weeks into 2026, the “fresh start” energy has faded a bit and honestly, this is where the real work begins. The vision boards are made, the words have been chosen, the goals have been written down. And now we’re left with the part no one talks about enough: showing up when it’s no longer exciting. This is usually the moment when people start questioning themselves. Did I choose the right goals? Am I already behind? Should I be doing more? But the truth is, you’re not behind, you’re right where consistency starts to matter. A clear start to 2026 doesn’t require a perfect plan or complete certainty. It requires movement. Forward motion. A willingness to take the next step even when you don’t see the entire path yet. You do not need to know how everything will unfold. You do not need every detail mapped out. You simply need to keep taking small, intentional steps in the direction you want your life to go. Consistency is what ...