A few years ago, I experimented with something in my diary: I expressed gratitude for something every day. And despite everything that I know in the abstract that I have to be thankful for, the exercise turned out to be harder than I thought. Gratitude, as many who sat at Thanksgiving tables today racking their … Continue reading On gratitude as a muscle
Author: T Coe
On embracing Christmas lights
I’ve never been a big holiday person. I used to think there was something lame about being too into the holidays. Holidays were just another day, right? And totally arbitrary? I’ve always had—if you couldn’t tell—a strong inner cynic. The guy just rolls his eyes at everything. But if you start with cynicism, it’s hard … Continue reading On embracing Christmas lights
On brushstrokes
The best advice I’ve encountered for how to navigate an art museum was simple: Look around the gallery and notice what catches your eye. Walk directly to whatever object you noticed. (Notice nothing? Scan the room again, then go on to the next gallery.) Spend 5-10 minutes in front of the object. Notice stuff about … Continue reading On brushstrokes
On 9 things from last week
Watch Top Chef. Season 13. A lesser season of the great cooking competition show. “How to Get Good at Small Talk, and Even Enjoy It.” Harvard Business Review. YouTube. White flag rule: tell the person that you need to close the conversation, but ask them one more question. “How to Start a Speech.” Conor Neill. YouTube. Don’t … Continue reading On 9 things from last week
On cleaning up the yard
I see immaculate yards around my neighborhood and wonder, honestly, How do they do it? Our own yard is littered with leaves. Two cottonwoods looming over opposite ends, plus the gnarly little leaves of our locust, mean for a relative (for Colorado’s climate) abundance of foliage to clean up every fall. I spent a three-hour … Continue reading On cleaning up the yard
On the white flag rule in conversation
I don’t love admitting to it, but I’m not the greatest conversationalist—not that I’m a total bumbling weirdo or a unstoppable egoist. It’s thankfully not so dire as that: I’m occasionally awkward, a bit self-indulgent with my anecdotes, and ask too few questions. Things could be better! So it was with reservations that I watched … Continue reading On the white flag rule in conversation
On loose ends
When I explained why I’d called—that I still owed her feedback—she laughed. “Isn’t today your last day?” “Well…yeah?” I hate loose ends. There’s a self-flagellating aspect to them—I will dutifully pick them up and lash myself. Braggy, I suppose, to talk about tying up loose ends on my last day. It sure is! But I … Continue reading On loose ends
On the last days of my job and the peak-end rule
Look, endings are important. I didn’t need to learn about the peak-end rule to get that. It’s one of those things that school teaches you indirectly—we all remember the frenzy of the final week before summer. Mostly, there is joy to these endings: everyone amped for the start of summer. But then you reach the … Continue reading On the last days of my job and the peak-end rule
On looking at every button
During a training earlier today, several colleagues were shocked at how much I know about InDesign. But it made perfect sense to me, because of something I did over a year ago: I went through every visible button in my InDesign workspace and figured out what they did. With one to three buttons a day, … Continue reading On looking at every button
On having long(er) hair
For most of my life—over three decades—I never had anything approaching “long hair.” Part of this is parental, obviously. It takes parents more open-minded then mine, apparently, to let their boys grow long hair. So it was only at age 32 that my hair crept below my ears. And I learned some stuff. Bad hair … Continue reading On having long(er) hair
Taylor Coe 