I Wanna Be Me When I Grow Up
I'm Kara. I create content about personal growth, productivity, and technology, faith, and my well lived life. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter to get a fresh new article, a roundup of anything I published this week, and other fun stuff in your inbox (most) Monday mornings.
Allow me to introduce you...
Register for Off The Clock, On Purpose This week, I wanted to do something a little different in the I Wanna Be Me When I Grow Up Newsletter and feature my new course, "Off The Clock, On Purpose." Allow me to introduce you to Off The Clock, On Purpose As many of you know, my picture of retirement looks a little like the photo above - a shaded spot near water. And, this picture is one of the first places that Off The Clock, On Purpose is different from other retirement planning options. Most...
Just Start
Just Start Photo by Gia Oris on Unsplash I've had this idea in my head for a "product." I use Obsidian daily to do my own Bible Study. Currently, the only Bible versions you can legally download to Obsidian are those in the public domain (think King James Version). I'd like to produce a version that has more modern translations like NIV, NRSV, etc. and include the Bible Study templates that I love using with my current setup. To create something like this, I have to get copyright...
Building an Ideal Day
Building an Ideal Day Approaching July 2, aka Halfway Day, I always get more introspective. Somehow this week or early next, I'll set aside some time to do my Quarterly Review which is a key practice for trying to keep from feeling just like I feel right now all year long. You see, I'm overwhelmed. It's overwhelm in the best possible sense of the word. I've got projects I’m enjoying with people I love and lots of things on the horizon that I can't wait to get to. As I was driving home from...
Paved with Streets of Gold
Paved with streets of gold Kona and I enjoying a morning walk by our freshly paved neighborhood street. Your environment shapes how you live. I know this firsthand, because I've lived in three very different ones. I've lived in Indiana nearly my entire life. I grew up in a county that currently ranks in the bottom quartile in terms of income. When I moved from there to the state's capital area, I moved to Marion County which ranks about 59th amongst Indiana's 92 counties. When Gayle and I...
The Skill of Beginning Again
Happy Memorial Day to my American readers. The Skill of Beginning Again Photo by Gia Oris on Unsplash I watch streaming as I'm going to sleep. Recently, the YouTube algorithm served up a guy who creates aquascapes. You might be wondering what in the world this has to do with beginning again. One night, after watching this guy build yet another beautiful aquascape, I found myself thinking, "You should create one of these." It got to the point where I was googling fish tank prices. Something in...
Choose Slow Dopamine
Choose Slow Dopamine A while back someone shared the image above in a Zoom session. I quickly drug it into my "ideas" folder and then moved on ... because there is always stuff to do.As I was looking at my list of article ideas in preparation for being out on vacation - and wanting to make sure I had newsletters and other publications scheduled even while I was gone - I decided to take a closer look at this one. Over the last three weeks, we've been talking about the role of challenge in...
The Challenge Restart Button
The Challenge Restart Button As I've shared before, the scale and I have a complicated relationship. I know I'm not alone in this. For months, I was doing the all right things - eating less and moving more - but the numbers just sat there. Or even moved in the wrong direction. I wasn't trying to run a marathon. I just wanted something to shift. What ended up shifting wasn't the number. It was me. I went back to the pool. Not to train for anything. Not to become a competitive swimmer (though...
Play your way to motivation
Play your way to motivation Later this week, I’m running my “Meet Robot Kara” session live for the first time. (It will be recorded if you cannot attend live so sign up to get notified as soon as the recording is available). I doubt I’ll speak much about this in the workshop, but one of the biggest reasons I’m enjoying the work with the robot is that it feels like play.In last week's newsletter, we talked about challenge calibration — finding that Goldilocks zone where a task is just hard...
Pushing yourself just enough
Pushing yourself just enough Some days, I sit down to do my work and I just don't want to start. There is plenty of work on the list, but none of it is interesting or even remotely challenging to me. I can blow through a list of bill payments, phone calls, and meeting schedules like it's nobody's business. But, it's boring as crap and - sadly - even when I do go through a big list like that, I rarely feel any sense of accomplishment. A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I wanted to explore...
Writing to Think
Writing to Think As I mentioned recently, I've been playing around with Claude Cowork to build "Robot Kara". Just like with that newsletter, the robot did all the behind-the-scenes publishing and tinkering to get this post delivered to you — whether on Circle or via Kit in email. That technical stuff probably doesn't matter to you — but for me, it's the "boring" part of what I do. It's not hard, but it isn't exciting either and so it doesn't hit me with the right level of challenge (a topic...
I'm Kara. I create content about personal growth, productivity, and technology, faith, and my well lived life. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter to get a fresh new article, a roundup of anything I published this week, and other fun stuff in your inbox (most) Monday mornings.