Monthly Archives: March 2017

What Do People Want ‘More Of’ In Their Lives?

I was at my barn, one of my favorite spots to “be” the other day, surrounded by my two horses and my sweet Australian Shepherd, Twosocks.  The horses were contently eating and Twosocks was busy appreciating the smells of the early morning.  I was scooping horse shit into my Gator and carting it off to the compost pile; it’s one of my favorite things to “do”.   Why?  Because I am outside in nature doing a chore that doesn’t require much talent and it is when I have some of my best thoughts.   I stood there for a minute and I pinched myself, literally as I often do and said out loud, “I am so grateful to be here and have this wonderful property.”  And then I thought, I wonder what most people want out of their life.  Later that day I did what I always do when I am curious about something, I Googled it.  The first thing that popped up was an article by Kathy Caprino titled, The Top 10 Things People Want In Life But Can’t Seem To Get.  It was the “can’t seem to get” part that caught my attention.

Caprino surveyed 700 people.  The key question the survey probed was:  If you could say in one word what you want more of in life, what would it be?  What intrigued the author most is that it is becoming more and more obvious that the things we humans desperately long

Patience While Building And Growing

Although I had never considered building a home from the ground up, I was given the opportunity to do just that when my home burned to the ground.  There were many intriguing steps and processes that I witnessed during the construction of my new house.  One thing that I recall is the amount of site preparation that took place prior to pouring the foundation on which the house would be built.  I learned that soil compaction is a vital part of the construction process.  I also learned that this is a protracted process that takes time, patience, precision and the watchful eye of geotechnical engineers.

In my case, I watched as giant excavators moved big mouthfuls of soil around and a D-9 caterpillar methodically crawled back and forth over the ground to ensure the proper level of compaction.  During the five months that it took to complete this stage of the construction process, I noticed myself experiencing a range of emotions from impatience to fascination.  I liken it to the seven stages of death and dying; one finally gets acceptance. For me, I finally got to fascination. Once I embraced the fact that there would be a house on what, at the time, appeared to be a big pile of dirt I settled into a state of curiosity, knowing that the next twelve months could be as frustrating or as fascinating as I was willing to let them be.

Build Upon a Strong Foundation

The primary thing that I