My first trip to the emergency room, I was a freshman in college. My appendix blew up, but modern medicine won. The following two decades were smooth sailing. My on-ramp for my 4th decade was a fabulous long weekend full of friends, tasty food, and outside time. A perfect start. Then last Friday I woke […]
One of the guys I mentor is in life setup mode and is juggling an incredible amount of obligations and hobbies. When I observed this, he asked me to list them…and was surprised to hear such a long list. Yup. Sometimes we boil away in the pot and don’t realize how overwhelmed we are. This […]
How approaching life with a chess mindset helps focus us on achievable goals After enjoying chess in my youth, this winter I returned to playing online with friends. The nuances of the game and geometric beauty of the positions fire my brain up. Whoa, I sound like a chess nerd. YES. One chess concept is […]
I recently read the art instruction book Drawings Lessons from the Great Masters. Via examples from art legends like Davinci and Rembrandt, the author demonstrates how the masters approached creating art. My biggest takeaway: they rarely drew exactly what they saw. They’d leave out shade on an upper lip from a nose because created a […]
The writer Austin Kleon posted recently about buying a bicycle (his first as an adult) and getting obsessed. He’s a total beginner, so he put out a call to his readers asking for tips. I’ve ridden my fair share of miles on a bicycle (30,000+ by last count), so I decided to weigh in. I […]
It’s been a full-on start to 2022 in Traipsingville. Drama for my business, tenant trouble in a rental property, a couple of minor surgeries for Chelsea, and more. Curveball after curveball. My dad reassured me that I’ve always excelled at hitting, but wow. Along with my “this is why I get paid” mantra, I also […]
My January portrait challenge taught me a number of things. The most important? I don’t ever want a job drawing just composers. Especially ones with wigs. Take a hike, Mozart. (Here are round 1 and round 2 of my month-long challenge.) More insightful revelations also surfaced. For one, our brains lie to us all.the.time. They […]
This tutorial on optimizing foreign language learning is for you if: Update 2023: check out my “2 years with Anki” blog post to see the power of Anki! My Foreign Language Journey I’ve “studied” Spanish for years: high school classes, traveling in Spain and Central America, plus a language immersion in Mexico pushing me to […]
My January portrait challenge continues! I know it was tough to wait an entire week to see who I’d draw next, but your wait ends now! Portrait party time. (Check out the first round here.) I still haven’t made the time to actually study how to draw portraits. I’m just diving in. However, I’m finding […]
As part of my quest to not only draw stick figures forever, I’m reading the classic book Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain. The section on brain development in children is fascinating. When we’re infants, our brain hemispheres are not clearly specialized for different functions. That “lateralization” for left and ride brain doesn’t […]
I suck at portrait drawing for two main reasons: 1) it’s par with rocket science difficulty-wise and 2) I’ve put exactly three hours of practice into it in my entire life. Enough! January is my month to go from “is that a person?” to “hey, only the ears and chin are weird!” (Here’s week 2.) […]
Austin Kleon shared this 2-min video of Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama laughing gleefully during an interview. At one point, Tutu is asked, “What is it about your friendship that allows you to have this extraordinary joy?” He ponders a moment and says, “He’s always troubling me…” and then cracks up. I just love […]
Ah, a new year! A fantastic time to hate the old us: let’s whittle away our bloated physical bodies, quiet our ping-ponging minds, change our crappy jobs, and eat celery while taking cold showers and doing pushups. Meh. I don’t buy it. Can’t we just be happy with who we are and still be on […]
Here are all my T. Rex drawings from 2021. After all, what better way to tee up a successful next year than referencing dinosaurs striving and failing? By the way, the whole T. Rex thing started when I sketched a piece of Guatemalan art that Chelsea and I have on our wall. I randomly added […]
Have you ever considered sharing your thoughts publicly via a newsletter, blog, podcast, or vlog? Based on my experience doing so, I can heartily say make. it. happen. Why? Well… Publishing Traipsing About for the past eight years has added so much richness to my life. Almost 100 newsletters and 200+ blog posts in, things […]
In today’s full-tilt culture, amateur often carries a negative meaning. If a hobby doesn’t morph into a monetized side hustle, what’s the point? Take drawing, for example. I’ve always wanted to learn how to draw something beyond stick figures. To test the waters, I’ve sketched almost every night this year. Then I text a photo […]
For years, our Sprinter van’s “gray water system” consisted of a simple 3-gallon plastic jug. When it filled up, we’d haul the jug outside and dump it out. Usually discreetly, sometimes on an azalea in someone’s front yard. After I upgraded our batteries to lithium and moved them inside, we lost the space for the […]
The Colorado Trail is the big leagues of bikepacking. Get ready for leg-thumping elevation gain, lung-emptying altitude, afternoon thunderstorms tossing lightning and rain at the passes, and remote, rocky terrain with significant consequences. Oh, AND prepare yourself for a fabulous adventure you’ll never forget. We experienced no days I can label easy, but for determined […]
At some point in the past decade, I read an eye-opening article about how mental load, the invisible labor involved in handling a household and family, is usually carried by women. It suggested that for those of us without it, mental load is the water we swim in, unseen and natural, the actions helping the […]
I remember the glee and rush of dopamine from my first hits of Instagram in 2012. People cared about what I shared! (And not only my biggest fan—hi, Mom.) Beyond travel blogging I cranked out in 2005 during a world trip, Instagram was my first foray into sharing creative work with strangers. It encouraged me […]