A note: Written during playoff season — NHL, NBA, NCAA and ISL lacrosse — when mistakes are most costly, and how players and coaches respond to them most revealing. Publishing on a Saturday morning because it’s game day! The pass sails wide and out of bounds. Your head drops. Now your opponent is on the…
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To Readers of The Practice There’s a moment in any good practice when the form starts to find you — when you stop deciding what it is and start following where it goes. That’s what happened here. When I launched Practice Notes alongside The Practice, I imagined two distinct things: longer essays in one place,…
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I took this picture some years ago. To me, it has always captured what motherhood is all about. I sometimes post it on this day. It honors so much of what is good, what is real. A field on an island in Maine. Summer. Two small children bent toward the earth, learning to find blueberries.…
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The harbor fills without effort. Without agenda. Without questioning itself. It holds what comes. Then it recedes. Not fully — something always remains. A stillness at the bottom. A pool that never quite empties. Twice a day. Every day. The moon pulls. When it’s near, the tide rises higher. So do we. The heart, at…
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Christopher D. “Flash” Burner 6/16/62 – 3/3/2026 On April 25th, I stood up at Western Reserve Academy and said goodbye to my closest friend, Chris “Flash” Burner. I’m sharing it here because he deserves to be known — and because I am so grateful to have had him in my life. Friendship is everything. Flash…
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Van Morrison came on while I was driving to work. I know – shocker. One of those songs that finds you in the shuffle. And I got to thinking. The song that started it – © Van Morrison Words have edges. Definitions. They do their best work in the middle of things — describing, explaining,…
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It’s mid-April. The bulbs are coming up again. Some plants die back completely in winter. To the ground, to nothing. And every spring they return. Not despite the disappearing. Because of it. The retreat was the work. Athletes know this. Improvement doesn’t happen during effort — it happens in recovery. You stress the system, step…
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The text took twenty seconds to write. Thinking of you. How are you doing? They’re already in your contacts. The phone is already in your hand. She lost a parent, way too soon. That’s all I’ll say. A text came back this morning, and I’ve been thinking about it since. Good days and bad days,…
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A few weeks ago I made my annual sojourn to visit my old friend Danny in Arizona. We’d spent previous trips on his land — hanging out in his RV, hiking, riding — but this time was different. His beautiful home was finished, and he and his wife had moved in a couple of months…
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First, he hears my footsteps. He waits for me at the bottom of the stairs every morning. When I come down, he doesn’t give way. He fills the space between me and the day. So I stop. He puts his paws up on my waist. I bend down and hold him close for a minute…
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