Doing the Things I Love

When the Charles A. Tindley Accelerated School opened several years ago, I became the coach of their Boys and Girls Cross Country teams. I spent four years coaxing these kids, who thought a long run was from one end of the basketball court to the other, into traipsing thru a 5K run. At times I [...]

Radical Difference from Changing One Thing

Ever since George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead debuted in 1968, there have been standards for what zombies can and cannot do. For nearly 40 years, everybody who knew anything about zombies learned it from Romero. Until Danny Boyle came along in 2007 with 28 Days Later. In this genre cracking film, Boyle changed [...]

Revolutionary Running

A couple of years ago, I decided to quit coaching high school Cross Country. I felt like I was the only person who cared about the program. The students didn’t show up half the time. We finished perpetually last in every meet. I had lost the joy, so I quit.
Later that year, as Winter approached, [...]

Turning Play into Work

I just finished reading Play by Stuart Brown and Christopher Vaughan. some of the best information I get from reading inxolves reminding me of things I already knew. That’s the case with this book. We all played as a natural part of our childhood, then we grew up and eschewed play. We feel that adults [...]

Thoughts on Enjoying Life

I coached Cross Country at the Charles A. Tindley Accelerated School for three years when it first opened. I had a small group of runners who could barely cover the 400 meters to the first stop light from the school without walking. In fact, I agreed to coach after seeing them in their first race [...]

Word of the Day

I’ve become an avid reader of brain research information. I’m reading the stuff that is designed for lay people, but I find it amazing that we know so little about how that three pound, forty watt glob inside our heads does what it does. I’m also amazed at how much we’re learning about it each [...]

Playing Games for the Fun of It

I grew up in a family that loved to play games. In fact, we still do. On the first Friday of each month, we all gather at my sister’s house to eat and play games. We’re an extremely competitive bunch too. My house wasn’t the kind of place where the adults would “let” the children [...]

Games People Play

I love to play games. I especially love it when I’m playing with people who love to play games. Susie and I started a game company with a group of friends a few years ago. We really enjoyed testing the games by playing them at our “meetings.” We found that we weren’t really any good [...]

Damon’s Toys

Whenever I travel, I “reward” myself for having to be away from home by purchasing something that I’ve been
considering for a while but have been unable to convince myself of the expense. This started when Susie and I vacationed in Hawaii. She convinced me to splurge on a nice pair of sunglasses since it came [...]

Pie Day

Today is Pie Day! Only math geeks really appreciate it. I was a math minor in college. Pi starts with 3.14. Today is 3/14. I probably didn’t have to give that much explanation but just in case your wheels are turning slower on Saturday.
I’m a big fan of holidays that are just fun rather than [...]

Movies on Demand

I was a latchkey child before sociologists had coined the term. I got home from school every day and let myself in using the key around my neck. Then I proceeded to watch TV for the next three hours until my mother came home to fix dinner. I still remember the theme songs to Gilligan’s [...]

Pecha Kucha

I’m sitting in the Invoke Yoga studio during the second intermission of the fifth Indianapolis Pecha Kucha event (Google it because I don’t have space to explain it here.). It’s the culmination of an evening spent with my beautiful daughter Kimberley. Life doesn’t get much better than this. I spent this evening with my only [...]

Taking Things in Stride

I’m riding in a car with the five other smal lbusiness owners that make up my C3 Forum group. We’re headed to central Michigan for our annual retreat. I’ve been in this group for well over a decade. We’ve watched each other’s businesses grow (and shrink) over the years. Times are hard on many of [...]

Slowing Down

I’m reading Brenda Ueland’s book, “If You Want To Write” over the holidays. I’ve always thought there were a couple of good books (and quite a few bad ones) in me just waiting to get out. I did some research last Spring and decided that I’d set out to start on one or two of [...]

Finding Opportunity Wherever You Are

November has been an exciting month for me. At least the last two weeks have been. As I already posted, I won the Fast Company/Brother Best Business Idea competition in Mountain View, California on the 12th. I didn’t write here about the two people who competed against me for the title. You can read about [...]