Category: Five Minute Observation
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Finding Tuesday
Everyone wants to write the mission statement first. It feels official. But the people who’ve done this longer say: find the moment first. Not the problem. The moment.
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Tuesday’s Twelve Minutes
Grants fund the work. Data measures it. Spokespeople explain what you do. But the story? Story lets people feel all of it.
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A Secret I’m Bad At Keeping
Finally, it’s finished! My first thriller fiction novel. Restitution — it’s about a woman who uncovers something she was never supposed to find and must choose between exposing it or staying silent. I’ve spent the better part of the last three weeks getting it ready for the BookLife contest. Now I’m ready to talk about…
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Waving Her In
Respect is soft, quiet, and a glance. Consideration for others isn’t a generational gap. It’s discipline.
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Line Work
Drafting a novel is the fun part — the characters talk, you listen, the story shows up. Then the characters go quiet, and the real work starts. New post on line editing Restitution, and why it’s a lot like running an ultra.
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Moving Like the Mississippi
A quiet morning in Michigan, reunited with family, and the slow work of settling into a new home — even when the movers break what mattered.
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Time on Feet
Discipline doesn’t remove fear or difficulty. It builds the capacity to stand inside both and keep moving. That shift, from avoiding hard things to trusting yourself inside them, shows up everywhere: training, work, writing, leadership.
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Getting Out of My Way
A short confession on revision: cutting 16,000 words from a novel taught me more about ego than craft. New post on the discipline of getting out of your own way as a writer.
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Unlocking the Door
Kevin does the job. Somebody else gets the title. Twenty-one forms by five o’clock — still not enough to be seen.
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Running Backward Up the Hill
I finished my first draft in six weeks. 113,000 words, running downhill the whole way. Now I have to cut 18,000 of them — and they all feel necessary.
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Who She Is
Green light. Head down. My hand hovering over the horn. I knew exactly who she was — until I remembered who I was.
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What Got Left Out
His photo ran above eight hundred words of honest praise. I know the other side of that door. This is about holding both.
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Choose Words That Count
Two coffee shops. Two conversations. One word ended a friendship. Another changed someone’s whole day. Your words carry more weight than you think.
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What If We Just… Removed Speed Limits?
What if we just removed speed limits? A trucker’s 2 a.m. drive kicks off a fair look at trusting drivers, Germany’s autobahn, and the case for and against.
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Just Ask Me
Dana rides in the passenger seat every Tuesday, folder of paperwork in her lap. She talks when she talks. This time, she talks about church — and about a pastor who knew everything about her except how to talk to her.
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Tales of the Dragon — Part Three
Eleven years without a rumor of an answer. He’s not chasing a royal daughter or wolves that were never lost. The stranger shows Old Maren something, changing the story she thought she knew.
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Keeping Your Word When It Costs You
Jonathan won’t speed, even with his daughter’s scholarship interview on the line. She thinks he’s choosing a sign over her future. Thirty years from now, she’ll understand exactly why he didn’t budge.
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Worth Waiting
He stood at the door for two minutes. No one was watching. That’s the story that actually lasts.
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Reliable When She Can’t Be
Four days in the last two weeks. I’ve spent hours inside the Versa, sunglasses on, air conditioning running, waiting for one participant who has zero regard for timing, schedules, rules, or even other people. I have to keep telling myself that greatness isn’t built from magical, life-changing moments. It’s the small acts. Ones showing others…
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Rose Festival 1990-Something
A bucket hat, a festival, and a version of himself he hasn’t thought about in years — here’s a memory that still fits.