Balance & Practice

February 11, 2016 by Scott Todnem

The new year brings so many opportunities for fresh starts. But I have a little problem… turning those fresh starts into year long pursuits.

With the help of some thinking, some writing, and some inspiration through reading, I put some ideas together. Nothing mind blowing, nothing revolutionary, just simple ideas. Which I think is why liked them so much; because they were simple and things I could easily do. I thought a lot about two things: the idea of balance in life, and the idea of practice.

Writing This Story a Thousand Times

January 19, 2016 by Scott Todnem

Going through old boxes, random pieces of a life once lived now stacked away in a dark dry part of my basement. There it was, hidden in time and busy perpetual motion, in a box that came from my childhood home to college, then apartment to apartment to my married home, now divorced.

An unassuming orange hairbrush. The detangling agent of the wily beast that has always been my knotty long dark brown hair. But it was more... my weapon of choice.

I always felt responsible for my father dying. This is not sane or logical or fact-based. Have the coroner's report. Know it wasn't really my fault and yet my heart hangs heavy just thinking of him.

With No Risk, There is No Reward

December 10, 2015 by Scott Todnem

Every single time I get on an airplane to travel for one of my freelance jobs, I repeat the quote, “With no risk, there is no reward,” in my mind. This has driven me to push myself to try new things in a dozen different ways in the past couple of years.

"My people” are not among those who put themselves out there in any sense of the phrase. I was blessed with two hard working parents who never let me quit and encouraged me every step of the way as I was finding my way through my adolescence and into college.

Despite all that, I grew up as . . . well . . . a wuss.

Incompletion

December 08, 2015 by Scott Todnem

A book sits next to my bed. 227 pages read, 129 more to go.

Three drafts reside on my Google Drive: a children's story about a clown dog, a ghost story with only three pages written, and a true story about me and my relationships. All started, none completed.

A to-do list jotted down in a spiral notebook with ugly, yellow pages, sits on my desk at work. Some things are crossed off, some things are not.

A 2015 list of resolutions is folded eight times in a small white, cardboard box; it’s never been taken out since the move.

If I unfold the piece of paper, one corner at a time, to reveal the list I wrote in 2015, would I be disappointed? Probably.