OWLcourage
a blog invested in hope and creative possibility

A few days ago, my morning journaling found me wandering through my grasp of human gratitude. In searching for clarity, I realized that for me, immediate, uncomplicated gratitude emerges in nature, indeed specific expressions of nature. The shorelines of the Pacific Ocean earn top ranking, followed by sunrises, sunsets, tree thickets, and flowers. My iPhone photo collection reflects this valued list. Whenever I encounter any of these, I experience an instantaneous surge of a

I have been a student of complexity science for decades. Recently, I had the opportunity to engage in the optimal role of a student: I taught a course on Complex Adaptive Systems to nursing doctoral students. All this has involved a good deal of immersion in this topic. Over time, I have found the conceptual map provided by complexity science far more useful than the confinement of traditional Newtonian mind mapping. Because of this nurtured fondness for complexity science,

I keep tripping over this recent headline in all my on-line news sources: “Ninety Will Be the New 40 in 10 Years' Time”. Wow, poor timing on my part! If you trace this headline to its content, it involves a subscription for the Reboot Your Age app which costs $34.95 per month or $299.95 annually. You can try before you buy with a free 10-day trial. And it is individualized! It is the product of two entrepreneurs who created a program to encourage users to develop healthy hab

Deconstruction has consequences. Things collapse. When I started this blog in January, 2022, we were still crawling out of our Covid Caves, blinking our eyes, looking about with curiosity and uncertainty. In my first posting I observed: “I don’t believe we will ‘go back to normal’ but will collectively create a new ‘normal’ “. Soon, I began to notice numerous deconstructions. Over the intervening months, I have grown in the conviction that one of the most significant dimensi

Time for another poem, shining a light on our times and the challenges and opportunities that they present. Beleaguered You have ever been My endless work in progress, My tiger’s den: A non-erasing nub Protruding from a Pencil stub; A spiral posing As a circle, swirling Out from closing; Defeat and ashes, Now demanding, Cuts and gashes; My siren song Demurring, Harping “wrong!”; Endless query, Obsessing murmurs Hard and airy Beleaguered. “I can be alone without being lonely.

I published my first book when I was 50 years old. I had numerous professional publications by then, and an expansive track record of crafting written academic policies. I wrote in fluent “academese”, an obscure language practiced by scholars. My first draft of my book used that language. I was blessed by a review that noted the potential uselessness of opting for this language. I discarded the entire first draft and rewrote the book in my own “voice”. At the time, refle