Listen to Traci

There’s no such thing as a perfect life.  It’s filled with obstacles, start to finish.  From the time we are born, utterly helpless and dependent, to the time we die, however that death may come.  In between, we face challenges that span the mundane, the unique, and the tragic. Life is hard.  It just is.  What separates success from failure is how we deal with difficulties.  Success means working hard, training, learning, improving, figuring out what challenges you are up against and how you’re going to get around them.  Complaining means blaming someone else for your problems, and then sitting smugly back as though you’ve done your part.  If complaining is your coping mechanism, you’re bound to fail . Everyone complains, it’s human nature.  But what does it accomplish?  I’m not talking about sticking up for yourself, pointing out a wrong that needs to be righted, or asking for help.  It’s not complaining if you’re ...

Recently, someone important to me died.  I have two brothers, and they’re pretty good, as siblings go.   But having Dyana in my life was what I imagined it would be like to have a sister.  We lived together, went to school together, socialized together.  When my favorite blouse went missing, I knew I could find it in her closet (or her bedroom floor, whichever). Side by side, we shopped for prom dresses and learned to drive. After college, we slowly grew apart, and ultimately I made the difficult decision that being her friend wasn’t healthy for me.  But I never stopped loving her or the relationship that we once had.  Because she was frequently in my thoughts, I occasionally stalked her on Facebook and asked mutual friends what she was up to. What none of this subterfuge told me, though, was that she was sick.  On July 6 of this year, she passed away from an extended illness.  Strangely, I had just made the decision to reach out to ...

When kids feel slighted or jealous, they’re likely to accuse their parents of favoritism.  I’ve let my children know, from the get-go, that I probably do have a favorite, but don’t panic.  My bias is fluid and easily won.  This is a carefully thought-out and tested philosophy intended to keep the young’uns on their toes and kissing up, which is right where I like them.  Now that I have access to the latest and greatest Plantronics’ offerings, it turns out that my choice of headsets can also be swayed.  But I’ve never denied being fickle. Not long ago, I waxed rhapsodic about the Voyager Focus, its superior noise cancelling, comfort, and the way it helped me concentrate and get work done.  Recently, though, I started using the new Voyager 8200 UC, and, well, be still my beating heart. The 8200 is Plantronics’ latest offering in the Bluetooth enterprise headset market.  It’s modeled on the amazing BackBeat Pro 2, and looks more like a cons...

“Setting a goal is not the main thing.  It is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan.” – Tom Landry You can’t have success without a mission.  To determine what your mission is, you need goals.  To decide what your goals are, you need planning.  To develop your plan, you need strategy and tactics. Let’s break that down, starting with the final destination and working our way backwards: Success :  Success is anything you want it to be.  Having lots of money, reaching the peak of Mt. Everest, providing fresh, clean water to a village in a third-world country.  But at its most basic, the dictionary definition is, “the accomplishment of an aim or purpose.”  Achieving your aim or purpose is what makes you a success.  It’s up to you to define what that means to you, and to do that, you have to have a mission. Mission: A mission is big-picture.  While a goal can be winning a Super ...

I love spreadsheets One caveat:  by spreadsheets, I mean Excel.  It’s the only one I’ve ever used aside from Google Sheets.  Sheets is great because it’s free and cloud based, so I can access it from any device, any time, but let’s face it, Sheets is definitely Excel’s ugly stepsister. If I haven’t previously emphasized sufficiently what a huge geeky nerd I am, today’s blog is here to seal the deal. I was recently helping a sales rep with a large, complex order, and I asked him if he had a spreadsheet to keep all his data straight.  He didn’t.  Can you believe it? Secretly (OK, not so secretly, shut up), I was pleased, because it meant I got to build the spreadsheet from scratch.  Woo-hoo.  And I was generous with that thing, let me tell you, I felt like Oprah:  “ you get a copy, and you get a copy …” you know the drill.  When a similar order came in for the same customer a few months later, you better believe I whi...

Labor Day was created in the late 1800s to honor the contribution the American worker made to the strength and prosperity of this country.  Its intention was to gain favorable attention for the Labor Movement’s goals of fair wages and safe working conditions.  Although there are examples of colonial workers striking as early as 1636, it wasn’t until 1842, 206 years later, that Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw ruled labor unions were legal (Commonwealth v. Hunt). For a nation built on the premise of democracy, labor collectives were suspiciously unwelcome in the burgeoning capitalist territory.  Prior to Hunt, combinations of workingmen to raise wages or shorten hours were considered conspiracy and therefore illegal, overwhelmingly resulting in convictions. In 1886, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) was formed as a conglomeration of trade unions, limiting its membership to wage earners.  It’s interesting to note that African Americans and women were excluded fr...

I have to confess that I'm a little behind in my blog for this week.  To tide you over, here's a recipe for super easy, no-knead bread that practically makes itself. You can make endless variations on this recipe (at least I haven't come to an end) by switching out some of the AP flour for whole wheat (not all of it, that makes for a pretty unpleasant loaf), adding nuts, seeds, grains, spices, herbs, a little sourdough starter, a touch of olive oil, etc.  You can even put in a scoop of canned pumpkin (decrease the water a little bit) and some cinnamon.  Or soak garlic cloves in olive oil, then brush the top of the loaf with the infused oil and sprinkle with sea salt and dried parsley before baking.  Once you get the hang of the basic loaf, the sky's the limit. If you add just enough extra flour to make the dough a little more stable, you can form a standard loaf, or rolls, or even braid it, if that's your heart's desire.  It probably wouldn't make a bad ...