a daily blog on well-being and how to feel better by Mark Barger Elliott…

We were in Greenwich Village yesterday afternoon, a few blocks from where President Biden was inaugurating a visitor center at the Stonewall National Monument.  Police were posted everywhere as was metal fencing. At one corner we came across a 4-foot gap created for people to pass through. A police officer stood watch, and I watched…

It needed to happen, for this to happen. One of the hardest things to perceive when things go wrong is such events are part of a larger, unfolding process. “It” can be the loss of a client, job, relationship, discouraging medical results, or even a debate performance.  “This” is what happens next.  We never know enough in…

In the documentary Drawing a Life, designer Geoff McFetridge shared how he chooses to sketch ideas inside a “small box” and with a “pencil” because he discovered that his brain works best within that space and at that pace. The “small box” helps him to define and give parameters to his ideas, while the “pencil”…

In the documentary Drawing a Life, I saw this phrase appear on the screen – “patterns are identity.” Which is a fascinating idea. That the patterns we construct in our lives – when we choose to awake, if we exercise, the food we purchase to eat, the clothes we wear, the books we read, where…

“The well is white,” observes noted graphic designer Geoff McFetridge in a wonderful documentary about him called, Drawing a Life. McFetridge’s point is making one more iteration of a project, one more sketch for a painting, one more draft for a writing project, doesn’t actually lead us down into a well of frustration, but each…

I was watching Stanley Tucci’s travel show yesterday and he was exploring the city of Naples. Along with investigating the origin of pizza, he also met with the police captain to ask about crime in the city. Where they had their conversation was near a street vender brewing coffee and Tucci noticed he bought two…