It can happen any where, any time, any place.  I see an ad, overhear a conversation, see it in an Adult Ed magazine.  Whatever “it” is, I see it and say to myself, “I want to try that!” “Try” is the key word here.  I decided I wanted to try flying on a trapeze.  I…

Our life is full of other people’s expectations.  They start when we’re quite young.  As infants our parents expect that one day we’ll crawl…then pull ourselves up…then walk.  As we get older, we’re expected to go to school, to graduate, to get a job and be successful.  But successful by whose definition?  At what point…

Following your heart is not to be confused with following your head.  How do you tell the difference?  Well, here’s what I’ve learned: 1 Your heart’s message is usually pretty simple.   (For example, “Give them one more try.”) Your mind’s message is usually a never-ending stream of debating what you should do.  (For example, “You’ve…

I’m a volunteer at Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site  in Hyde Park, NY.  What I love most about being there is talking to people from all over the country, and the world.  Today I met a woman visiting us from Maine.  Her father had asked me about the other historic sites in our area, and…

Because there are plenty of things that I only want to try once, and this was one of them.  It wasn’t like it was something I had wanted to do for a long time.  In fact, I hadn’t given it much thought at all until the day a co-worker said “a bunch of us are…

A friend saw the tagline for my blog and said, “Why don’t you shorten it to: one woman’s quest to pursue everything?” Well, because believe it or not, there are things that actually don’t interest me.  I recall that Barbara Sher’s book Refuse to Choose had an exercise for those of us that felt too…

Last week I was invited to a Barn Blessing.  I had never been to one, and so of course accepted the invitation.  The barn belongs to M. –  someone I’d just met a few weeks earlier and spoken to for all of about 15 minutes.  This was all the time I needed to find out…