Magic

After 20 years of incredible personal and professional growth, revelational conversations, and unforgettable experiences, I’m choosing to walk away from all of my professional affiliations and all of the tools I have used in my practice. I wouldn’t change a single thing about any of it, but I’ve come to realize that those tools and affiliations are no longer serving me. And equally to the point, I have lost confidence that my contributions in those circles are helpful, because my ideas aren’t being field-tested in “real world” business environments. It’s easy to say something ought to be some certain way — much more difficult to show evidence that the way works.

My beliefs aren’t coming from evidence of what works.  They are coming

In the 1800s, “Consumption” was the common name for tuberculosis, a widespread and deadly disease with the notable symptom of coughing up blood. In the modern era, “consumption” is a common name for what Americans do for fun. We consume food, media, and various products, all of it in excess, and much of it not very good for us. We snack on industrial waste, stare at screens depicting other people’s suffering with near-addictive fascination, and accumulate brightly colored but poorly made plastic items in staggering quantities.

Most Americans also work ridiculously hard, because the Puritan work ethic has driven work culture since the first white people stood on American dirt.

This is a “reprint” of an article I published on Medium in June, 2025.

I came across this quote today, in a moment when I was in absolutely no fit state to do anything for anyone, and it reminded me how often Dr. King’s wisdom is harvested for sound bites and misused for the benefit of the very people he spent his whole life warning us about.

Either I have never read or do not recall the text from which this quote was extracted (and “extract” is a very intentional word choice here), and I’m choosing not to go look it up today. But if I had to guess, my guess is that there’s a lot more to this than a simplistic demand for your service.

In this current oligarchical, extractive, colonized dystopia where efficiency, growth and profit seem to be the

This is an excerpt of an article I wrote on Medium in April, 2025.

A wise person once said, “we do not describe what we see. We see what we describe.” You may also have heard the expression, “where attention goes, energy flows.” Our minds and our hearts and our bodies have incredible power to create our reality. We can choose what we consume — whether it’s food or information. We can choose to turn off the news. We can choose to redirect our attention away from what is causing us pain, and instead seek out sources of beauty or joy. We can intentionally let go of our obsession with things we can’t control.

This doesn’t have to be expensive or difficult. If a flower can break its way up through concrete, you can choose to look at that flower instead

I moved home to Chicago this past fall, after 20 years in other places (mostly Florida). I can hear “why?” in various tones of voice depending on how you feel about snow; just trust me that it was the right choice both because of, and in spite of, the upheaval that created the need and resulted from the choice. This one’s personal, but maybe my story will remind you of you, or of someone you care about.

Sometimes you go out into the world with big dreams and a taste for adventure. You realize you can do anything, go anywhere, be whatever you want to be, and so you take the leap. You have amazing experiences that you never would have had. You meet people who change your life. Maybe you even start your own business. And all of that incredible stuff fills you up and makes you glad

Language is a funny thing. We have this crazy idea that words have “definitions,” when in fact the meaning of words is nothing more (or less) than a broad consensus of a lot of people. As the consensus shifts over time, so shifts the meaning of a given word. And in this way language sometimes becomes more precise — and more often, becomes much LESS precise. (Case in point: swell, neat, keen, cool, awesome, hot, and dope have gone from meaning seven very different things to all meaning basically the same thing!)

One of the keen, cool, awesome things that happens with language evolution is when a word that was used in a mean or hateful way is “reclaimed” by the people it was once used to deride. “Queer” went from being an

Almost as soon as I wrote my last post (last summer, in an “old” blog that I have since deleted), a bunch of things changed in wonderful ways. I visited with some professional colleagues and got a ton of new ideas as well as a couple of great gigs. I spent the second half of the year collaborating with really smart people on very worthwhile projects. And the company that has nourished me professionally for the last 13 years reinvented itself into something even better than it already was.

In many ways the last 13 years have been about peeling away layers of pretense to reveal the person I want and need to be, particularly in the sphere of “work.” The fact that it has continued to happen (and to be needed) for all that time tells me it may never be finished. AND, it’s as good as

If you can step far enough back from the noise and chaos of current events, you can see a long-term trend that needs our attention. Key leaders in business, culture, and politics are wringing their hands about “jobs” and the rate at which people are employed. There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth about jobs “disappearing” due to automation or offshoring or simply the elimination of obsolete industries. “Job creation” is the watchword of those who hope to make friends and influence people. 

What nobody seems ready to consider is how this shift reflects a step in human evolution, and how that evolution will change not only the nature of work, but the amount of it that is necessary!

Technological advancements and automation have made it possible to produce more

No matter what business you are in, your customers do business with you because of what you communicate. When you are successful in gaining a customer and a sale, it’s because someone heard your message, understood it, related to it, and decided that its content held some value for them. When you are NOT successful, it’s because one of those steps did not occur.

If we unpack that a bit, we can break down the whole process of marketing and advertising into these four steps. First, the customer has to hear your message. How, where, and to whom do you communicate? Have you decided who your target customer is and how to reach them? Is your strategy working? If you suspect that the people you want to reach are not receiving your message, what would you need to change to