Most of us are handed a script long before we’re old enough to realize we’re acting in someone else’s play. Five questions that helped me ditch the script.

In 1988, on mess duty aboard a Navy destroyer, a sailor named Davis taught me the sentence I still reach for whenever life stops making sense.

Journaling, puzzles, and hunting shark teeth gave me everything the meditation books promised. Then something surprising happened when I sat back down to try the real thing.

Hate making mistakes? Me too. But unless you never attempt anything hard, making mistakes comes with living a full life. I've made a lot of them, but I'm lucky to have a daily reminder of the importance of being free to make those mistakes. It comes from…

I sometimes envy people who travel the world with everything they own slung over their shoulders in a backpack. How carefree must it be to…

I drive through an old neighborhood on my way to the office and back every day. It’s the highlight of my commute because…

Pilots of small planes give thunderstorms a wide berth. Accidentally flying into a brewing system is feared by many aviators and I’m no exception. But in my...

Failure can be a scary thing. Most of us sense it lurking at the edge of...

In my last post, I promised ideas to help you flow with life versus forcing it. If you’ve been trying to force life to...

Continued from Life Force:

There must be an easier way.

Those words sifted through my mind five years ago as I...

Summer always reminds me of childhood when I’d play outside with friends until dusk and beyond. Many evenings, when the light faded, the soft glow of fireflies pulled us from…

Life on the ground is often rigid. We spend the better part of our days living between the lines, whether it’s the boundaries of a house or office, the narrow edges of a sidewalk, or the slightly wider lines of a…

As I neared my speaking venue, I suddenly regretted not making time to wash my car. The thin film of dust on the vehicle’s black hood looked even worse through my…

Susan and I spent a recent Saturday cleaning out a few closets in dire need of organizing. One of the closets was in the…

Six years ago, three friends and I spent a week paddling fifty miles in canoes on the Green River. The stretch of water winds through…

Several years ago I drove to a friend’s mountain cabin near West Jefferson for ten days to get my novel jump-started. I’d dabbled…

In May 2009, I left a high-paying job to write a novel, and I’ve never regretted it one bit. Navigating the traditional publishing route—versus self-publishing—takes vast patience, but…

There’s an old aviation joke that gets passed down often. It usually surfaces during the required night flight that every student must take during training. Night flights are stressful in a single-engine plane…

If you read Don’t Look Back, you know I don’t spend much time fretting about the past. I’ve made enough stupid mistakes to fret over—trust me on this—but I try not to get…

When non-pilots see the plane I fly, they assume it carries a lot. But everything in life, love, and lift is a tradeoff. If I want to take four people on a trip with…