Ask This Question
Sometimes the flair you experience isn’t your own. Sometimes, the flair for the day is the flair you helped make happen for somebody else. In the words of my wise hairdresser: Sometimes you are in the spotlight, and sometimes you are the spotlight. It’s better to be a spotlight. When I’m a spotlight, I’m shining […]
How to Survive Rejection
There’s a way to handle rejection with flair. I always come back to the same three truths to survive it. When it comes–that awful companion, Rejection–and says no, I realize what the no signals. It signals that I put myself out there. It means I risked something. It means I offered myself. These are good […]
The Texture of Flair
We are sensate creatures. We feel textures everyday: this firm keyboard, the spongy-soft of this office chair, the feel of a hard nail on my finger as I pick at it. Often, throughout any given day, I can remember what I saw, heard, or smelled. But rarely can I recall what it felt like to […]
How to Gather in Your Life
I hate that feeling of being scattered. I’m beginning to think that if I’m not careful, I will always tend towards an out-of-control life. To scatter means to disperse in different directions. When I’m scattered, it means I’m investing energy in multiple, often opposing, directions. The opposite of scatter is to gather in. Today, I […]
What Does This Spell?
My preschooler has a little etch-a-sketch with a pen that lets her write letters. We were driving down the street, and she wanted to play this unusual game. She wrote any letter she could think of, in any order, to see if she could create a random word. She can’t read yet, so she’d put […]
50 Ways to Stay Out of Trouble
It’s a big weekend in my town. It’s a big party weekend. This means I avoid campus and expect a really low attendance in my early classes on Monday. It’s always the same story: students act out this script of what it means to be a college student. Last year, a man came to my […]
The Cutting Board Cure
Whenever I get my cutting board out with friends or family, good things always happen. I remember chopping garlic and fresh ginger with my boyfriend (now my husband) on one of our first dates. We were hungry after playing tennis, and we had to find something in my kitchen for dinner. Afterward, he offered to […]
Admiring the Raw
I’ve been practicing a new flair attitude. I want to admire people. Admiring somebody seems gushy and cheesy; we think about valentines or romantic movies. But the real meaning of admire is to esteem, respect, and have a high opinion of someone. I want to be the kind of woman who thinks highly of all […]
Crying (with flair) in Front of My Students
Every once in a while, students make me cry. I didn’t make a fool of myself or anything. But I did cry. It’s all because of these particular students who are so great in spite of traumatic childhoods. I know, I know, it sounds cliché that I would cry about students who suffer and yet […]
The Double Dutch Challenge
I learned Double Dutch with the neighborhood children. I did it. Seriously, I did. It was a community effort. One mom bought the jump ropes at a sporting goods store, one mom offered her vague memories of how to do it, and one mom agreed to turn the ropes with me. We read an instruction […]