What’s good?

Ok, so our first decade of the 21st century began and ended with suck.  Aside from 9/11 and the economic sludge of late, there was personal suck: I was laid off.  Twice.  I lost both my Mom and my Dad.  Was it a total loss? No.

• I met the love of my life, & we married each other on our terms. Finally. 10 years later we remain happy as clams.
• I entered the wonderful world of blogging. Lucky you!
• I discovered how enriching it is to live with yellow labs, & that all cats are not created equal. (Some are actually very cool.)
• I started swimming laps 3x a week. Great release, great exercise. Wish I’d started sooner, but glad I have it now.
• I learned how to drink coffee.
• Star Wars came out.  Oh, wait.  That was 3 decades ago.  It’s still awesome, though.
• I met some fantastic designers in the residential kitchen industry thanks mainly to twitter.

Next!

Repairing our planet.  It’s the biggest & most challenging mission humanity has on its plate.  It’s also THE ultimate design puzzle to solve.  We will have to find our own roles in that puzzle.  If we do it with passion, we’ll solve multiple problems at the same time. Fortunately, there are role models.

Wangari Maathai is inspiring to me. & she has a new book out! She is the founder of the Green Belt Movement, among other things.

Only way is up

Solving a puzzle sounds much more fun than drowning in gloom and despair.  We may as well do some good while we’re here.  Don’t you think?

*#letsblogoff is a group blogging effort every 2 weeks that answers a question posed by Paul Anater, the maniac that started the blogoff epidemic. To see other insightful & entertaining responses to this edition’s question, Is There Reason to be Optimistic?, click the letsblogoff button at the beginning of this post, & enjoy.*