Marc Sirkin's Mindnumbing Thoughts

Just finished reading " The Power of Now " by Eckhart Tolle. Trippy, new age stuff. I'm really happy I read this book though - tons of great tools and thoughts inside to help me manage my own consciousness. I'd love for my sister to read this, I think it would help a lot if she "got it" in any meaningful way. Two of his more important thoughts (read more here and here ): Only the present moment exists. That is where life is (indeed it is the only place life can truly be found). Becoming aware of the 'now' has the added benefit that it will draw your attention away from your (negative) thoughts. Use mindfulness techniques to fully appreciate your surroundings and everything you are experiencing. Look and listen intently. Give full attention to the smallest details. Accept the present moment. It is resistance to the present moment that creates most of the difficulties in your life. However, acceptance does not mean that you cannot take action to recti

This is exciting... my 10 year old daughter is doing her very first service learning project. She's picked the New Haven Diaper Bank to try to help and is hard at work both in school and online trying to fundraise. I'm using a bunch of different outlets to try to help her reach her modest goals of $500 by February 11th (that's the due date on the service learning project). Obviously I'm proud of her, and am even more excited to see her accomplish her goals. She and I shot a video (outtakes coming soon), built a blog and started to use my Facebook account to promote her efforts (i.e. we'll do anything to raise the money!) In addition, she got the school principal to agree to let her distribute flyers to every class in school - pretty slick I thought. Kids today, eh?! Here's her first post on her new blog : Hi! This blog and web site is designed to help raise money for the New Haven Diaper Bank - I'm doing a service learning project called "Dimes and Doll

I'm a coach. In another life, I think that I'd do that as a profession. In this life however, I've been coaching my 2 girls in a variety of sports and learning so many lessons. As they have gotten older, more and more issues have come up that have pushed me past those easy tee-ball days. Suddenly, drafts and organizational politics have come into play - neither of which I could care about all that much. I'm still more concerned with my singular goal for each season: How many of these kids will have so much fun that they will come back and play another season? There was a study done recently that showed that 75% of all kids who play sports stop completely by age 13. Athletics was such an important part of shaping who I am today and for my girls, I feel that it is extremely important for them to keep playing (something, anything) and having fun. I picked up a copy of " Parenting Young Athletes The Ripken Way " from the library this weekend and blew through it

Karen thinks I'm nutty (and she's right), but I'm doing it anyway... improv class tonight!