The Bloom — happiness

Setting a vision for my life. I’ve been thinking about this, but all I come up with are questions: How does that work? What does it look like? Where do I even start? I’m going with my dreams. They’re what we want most in the world and the things that keep us aiming true through all of life’s roadblocks and detours. They’re the roots of the meaning our lives have, and if the vision we have for those lives is to mean anything at all, I think our dreams need to be the marrow in its bones. But it seems...

I don’t have the greenest thumb in the world, but I like to make things grow. So I keep lots of plants in my windows, potted herbs on the kitchen counter, and during the summer even a few larger containers outside. With the days getting warm, it’s time to decide what to grow in those containers this year. I’m thinking about green onions. Maybe carrots. Definitely tomatoes. (Gotta have tomatoes!) It doesn’t really matter. For me, it’s not the harvest. It’s the planting and the tending I love most—the journey not the destination and all that. I just like to...

When I was a kid, my parents took me on a killer cross-country vacation, and it was one humungous major-league adventure. From Yellowstone to the Grand Canyon, the whole month was packed to the roof of Mom and Dad’s minivan with big days in even bigger places. I was about thinking about that trip yesterday because yesterday was quite possibly the most boring day in the entire history of the human race. Nothing happening was happening in my world, and everything I was doing had already been done to death. I wanted to be doing something huge—climbing a mountain, trekking...