One Guy's Truth
Last night – dinnertime at the D’Agostinos. “Dominic, stop smacking your lips.” “Dominic, stop smacking your lips.” “Dominic, please eat with your mouth closed.” “Dominic, keep your mouth closed.” And then I lost it… “DOMINIC!!!!!!!!!” As soon as I screamed his name, I could see my mistake. At the sound of my booming voice, my […]
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A week and a half ago my wife and son were nearly killed while walking across the street. The day began like any other with my wife, Jenny, and I walking our kids to school. As Jenny and our 5-year-old son took a left and began crossing the street, my daughter and I prepared to […]
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You can change. I know you can change, because I recently changed something about myself that has been haunting me for years. For as long as I can remember, there has been a Hulk lurking within me. This big, green, angry, Hulk, is the side of me who is ready to pulverize anyone or anything […]
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My daily meditation practice consists of around 45 minutes in the morning, before my kids wake up (and all hell breaks loose) and 45 minutes in the evening, before I go to sleep for the night. It’s as basic of a practice as one can find – I sit on a plastic foldout chair in […]
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As a coach and writer, I have taken an unofficial vow to never tell you what to do. Today, I am breaking that vow. Stay the f*ck home (if you can). For those of you in the United States, we have just begun to deal with major disruptions to our everyday lives caused by the […]
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I recently finished the book, Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari. In my humble opinion, this should be required reading for all humanity. Harari provides an easy to read summary on the 200,000 year old history of our species. Throughout this time, these ancestors were nearly identical to our present selves in terms of cognitive and […]
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On Saturday, I achieved a feat so remarkable, they should probably write a book about me (or a blog post). For 30 straight minutes, I “played Legos” with my 5-year-old without checking my phone, glancing at a magazine or talking to another person. My daughter had my complete focus and attention. I was fully present […]
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My last post, Craving Community, wasn’t the most uplifting to write. Maybe you are someone who enjoys reading about the loneliness of a random blogger, but it didn’t feel great admitting to the internet that I’m a bit lonely during the hours of 9am and 3pm (when my kids are at school). With that said, […]
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I haven’t written a post in a while mainly because I haven’t been feeling creative. Even now, I worry that this attempt will turn into yet another draft in my MS Word docs that never sees the publish button. Where has the creative juice gone that brought you such epics as Last Life and Marry […]
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Have you ever heard something so profound that your life was changed on the spot? Maybe it was a powerful sermon in church or a motivational speech from a coach. Or, maybe it was the first time a crush said they, “liked you”. Or, maybe it was the first time you heard, “Luke, I am […]
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Growing up, Christmas in my house was no joke. Mom has a Santa collection the Smithsonian would be envious of and she worked harder than Mrs. Claus to make sure my brother and I had an ideal holiday. She busted her tail to wrap our presents just right, baked multiple types of cookies to decorate […]
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You hear a lot of stories about the suburbs being too “cookie cutter” or lacking culture or just being downright boring. However, that’s usually talk coming from “sophisticated” adults or a college kid back from fall break. Give a latch key kid time away from Mom and Dad, a Diamondback BMX bike, and a couple […]
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Going through some old stuff the other day, I came across a stack of savings bonds. Every Christmas and Birthday, my Grandparents (children of the great depression), would give their grandchildren a savings bond. These bonds varied in amount, but usually had a maturity value in the neighborhood of $100. Being an ungrateful little punk […]
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One of the reasons we flew through the southwest was to make it to Oklahoma City by October 6th. Why would we want to visit the thriving metropolis of OKC so badly, you ask? Well, we had a flight back to the DC area to attend my Dad’s retirement party. The expeditious driving and flight […]
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DGATWFWA or “Driving Gringo and Tin E While Female While Asian.” Stereotypically, this would give others on the road some concern. In our case, this was Jenny throughout the majority of our drive through the Southwest. Lots of people have asked, “is driving our big rig hard?” It took some getting used to, but it’s […]
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It’s hard to talk about San Diego without talking about the weather – it’s perfect. We initially thought to spend 2-3 days here, but decided on 7. Taking it easy, we continued to knock off the travel fatigue by way of pool time, Mexican food consumption, and workouts on the beach. Switching it up a […]
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Supposedly, tons of Californians move to Oregon each year to escape the high cost of living. I know of a couple Marylanders who would love to move to Oregon…for the summer. Driving from Portland to Bend, the landscape goes from the forested hills of the Mt. Hood range to something straight outta the moon and […]
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What’s better than having 4 people live in a small trailer? How about 5 people living in a trailer! For our trip to the Portland, Oregon area, my mom courageously flew out to travel with us for a week. Frankly, I’m still surprised she came because she certainly had enough information from this blog to […]
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Driving our truck, “Gringo”, today to get an oil change, it dawned on me that we have logged some serious mileage over the past 2.5 months. Looking at the oil change sticker in the upper left hand corner of our windshield, it was surprising to calculate that we were getting an oil change some 3 […]
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Houston to Las Vegas to Spokane. When traveling for business, you probably wouldn’t be too excited about this route. When traveling with squirmy wormy Lil D, this route includes one too many flights. Imagine carrying something for over 6 hours that you can’t have touching the floor or leave the space of three airline seats. […]
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Fired & Free 