Systems of Wonder

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New Workshop: Build a Brilliant Planner

Do you dream of a planner that works for you? This two-part workshop shows you the way.

Events

Workshop: Explore Beyond Competence

Competence is joyful and empowering. It also limits us.

Events

New Workshop: Engineer Your Overwhelm

Learn the four strategies for coping with overwhelm... and why we struggle to use them effectively.

News

The Line of Words

I realized I was less interested in justifying or correcting myself, and more interested in my own reactions. Why was I so distressed that one comment in an hour-long interview might annoy some imagined listener?

travel

A Day in Paris

I am eternally besotted with morning, and I’ve never seen a more beautiful morning than this one.

Iceland 2021

A Waterfall, a Crater, and a Mood

The thundering falls send up a wide spray of mist that curls over the parking lot; every exposed centimeter of my skin is frigid but I don’t care.

Iceland 2021

Thanksgiving in Silfra

It is the third day of creation, nothing in the world but light and water and bare earth around us. No plants, no animals, nothing that teems in the water or crawls on the earth, not even a sun above to warm the firmament.

Iceland 2021

Sunrise Breaks My Heart

I continue, marveling at the brave/idiotic souls who are attempting this terrain in mere hiking boots. They are, by turns, slipping, sliding, creeping, crouching, scrambling, and in one case lying flat on the ground in a state of bemused acquiescence.

Iceland 2021

A Saturday of Fire & Ice

The swirls and swoops, the bunched ridges, the long cracks where a swell couldn’t hold, it all looks as if someone whipped up egg whites and then inverted the image, white to black.

Iceland 2021

The Light, the Light, the Light!

Stack overflow, mind blown, brain swirling with thoughts and ideas instead of taking it all in. It occurred to me: I need to restart my meditation practice. Not for the calm, but so I can hold more. So I can stay wide open to all of this. High intensity interval training for the sense of wonder.

Iceland 2021

Unexpected Wonderland

We step into a wide bog of terracotta mud that leads from the hot springs higher up the slope down to the main area at the base of the hill. Red water pools in the constellations of bootprints, and mud slurps at our boots as we pick our way across.

Iceland 2021

All the Cozy Is on the Inside

As we proceed, it's much more Natural History Museum than Mad Magazine, with specimens taken from animals ranging from field mice to black bears, seals to sperm whales. There is a clear prejudice in favor of mammals, so there's little insight into the reproductive organs of birds or fish.

The Strange is Now Familiar

Then I crest a hill and all at once there it is, the city. As on the day I arrived, I’m struck by its symmetry; it seems ordered in a way that’s unfamiliar but which tonight I find pleasing. I’m shocked out how strange the grid of lights seems to me after less than a week in the country.

Sulfur & Memory

The cold water from the kitchen tap is clean and tasteless, but the hot water is geothermal and smells like it came from a posh neighborhood in Hell.

Travel Dino

Travel Dino is a great companion, although since he's an inch tall and has exceedingly short arms, he's not the best at guarding luggage. We've been to six countries together and several states.

Sheep, and the Glories of Northern Light

On a clear day, mornings and evenings are ridiculous; long shadows, rich colors, the luminous gold of my favorite times of day drawn out over hours. Noon is a stranger affair, the sun weirdly low at midday.

That’s Not a Cloud

What I thought was a cloud directly above me begins to swirl and undulate, creamer in the coffee of the sky; at first it loops and whorls directly above me, and then begins to stretch and flow.

Beethoven at the Harpa

Yesterday’s exhausted thought — I want to go home, why did I come here — is replaced by its opposite — I never want to go home, I want to stay here forever.

A Long Flight, a Barrel Roll, & Bookstores

Did it really barrel roll? Is it really a raven? I’m used to seeing ravens in remote territory, not the middle of downtown. But then, this is Viking land.

Adventure, Day 2

Eagles are assholes to be sure, territorial rascals with a mean streak, but I've always loved raptors and can't help but read the unexpected presence of bald eagles in particular as an auspicious sign.

Adventure, Day 1

Apparently railway cars and airport lounges alike demolish all sense of “is it too early for a glass of liquor.”