Writing
The One Thing to Save Your Relationship
What is the one thing to save your relationship ? Communication. It is the most critical ingredient of any type of relationship. Yet today’s world has so much noise that we have all forgotten how to listen. “Yep, yep. Got it. Great. Yep. Yep,” he said. I was telling...
Gut Feeling? 4 Reasons NOT to Listen to It
“Just listen to your gut,” popular wisdom says. Hell, I’ve even said it myself.Your heart may lead you astray and your head could hold you back, right? But sometimes our gut is dead wrong. Like the time it told me the habanero-fired burrito at 1am was a great idea. So...
Has Tech Killed Art in San Francisco?
My city, San Francisco, is one of the world’s smartest and wealthiest cities. Its concrete seams are bursting with tech dollars, Python code and every imaginable type of logoed hoodie. I’m thrilled to be surrounded by such innovation and easy fashion. Yet I am...
50 Shades of Ambiguity: Why the ‘Gray Zone’ is Good For You
‘Embrace Ambiguity’ is one of my design firm’s seven core values. It’s the one value I used to secretly wish we could hogtie and gag. Yes, I wanted to torture ambiguity like it tortured me — you know, draw and quarter it into four understandable chunks. Why? Because I...
Tell Fear to F*ck Off-4 Ways to Jumpstart a New Life
“I love her, but I’m too afraid to tell her in case she laughs.” “My real dream is to be a chef, but I’m afraid of starting over at 39.” “I have this idea…..but I’m so afraid it just won’t work.” All these were quotes I pulled from Scaredy Cats Anonymous, a dimly lit...
Why You Can’t Make Your Relationship Last
“Stop writing about finding a relationship,” he told me. “That’s the easy part. Write about how to keep one.” My friend John was a 40-year-old serial monogamist. He couldn’t make a relationship last even though he aspired to find a woman he could “have passionate sex...
Quantity or Quality? My Blogging Struggle
I’ve let my readers down this week. My usual Wednesday post, ‘humpdayheidi’ is on a 7 day hiatus and it’s killing me. Writers aren’t supposed to take breaks, are they? They are the entrepreneurs of words, working 26 hour days and taking out second mortgages so that...
My Family’s Gay Indian Montana Wedding
“In my wildest dreams, I never thought I’d be going to a gay wedding,” said my uncle. “I didn’t even know what gay meant as a kid,” said my dad. “In college the term gay just meant being happy. We’d say we had a gay ol’ time.” My uncle chuckled. “Well, guess we’re...
How to Survive Loss, Without Losing Yourself
“There is an art to missing,” said an old man in Nice as he took a sip of wine. Red droplets hung from his mustache while he told me about his lost wife, his amour de la vie. The french translation of “I miss you” is “tu me manques” which literally is “you are missing...
Books that Change the Course of Our Lives
“Books change people’s destinies.” - Carlos Maria Dominguez, The House of Paper Good books have a way of getting into your bloodstream. They become a homeopathic treatment, imprinting new thoughts into your molecules, changing the core of who you are and what you...