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Friday Flashback: When Hope Ends and Somehow Begins Again
Featuring Natasha Bedingfield — Soulmate There are songs that don’t just remind you of a time period. They remind you of who you were emotionally when you lived inside that season of life. Soulmate was that song for me. Around 2010, I listened to it constantly while an on-again, off-again relationship finally, definitively ended. And…
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National Get Up Day: The Quiet Strength of Getting Back Up
National Get Up Day lands at an interesting time of year. January ends, winter still feels long, and many people are already tired of pushing toward goals they set just a few weeks ago. The ice-skating connection makes sense because skating teaches something most of us resist learning in life: that falling is not failure.…
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Florida Day: Sunshine Dreams in Snow
I have been embarking on a song-a-day challenge over on Substack, and thanks to Winter Storm FERN, I completely forgot that it was National Florida Day. Because of course it was. There’s something wildly ironic about celebrating Florida, the land of sunburns, palm trees, and salt-rimmed glasses, while staring out the window at over a…
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Why ‘Vienna’ Encourages a Slower Pace in Life
There are songs that feel like they were written for adulthood, even if you first heard them much younger. “Vienna” is one of those. It waits for you. You don’t fully understand it at first, and then one day it quietly taps you on the shoulder and says, “You’re tired because you’ve been rushing.” Billy…
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Red Hair Pride: Lessons from Jolene and Aging
For Kiss a Ginger Day, I can’t help but think about Jolene and about the years I spent wishing I looked like someone else. I was born with naturally auburn hair. Not fiery red, not strawberry blonde. Auburn, the kind that shifts with the light and refuses to be easily categorized. And for a long…
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The Power of Vision Boards: Seeing Clearly in Life
There are moments in life when clarity doesn’t arrive quietly.It comes after pulling over.After the fear passes.After the rain finally lets up. I still remember driving from Cleveland toward home on the Ohio Turnpike, caught in a dangerous storm that forced me into emergency parking along the freeway. Visibility was nearly gone. I couldn’t see…
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National Hot Air Balloon Day
When 2009 Taught Us How to Rise Some years don’t arrive gently.2009 was one of them. The economy faltered, security felt fragile, and many people found themselves standing in the middle of lives that no longer looked the way they had planned. It was a year of recalibration, not by choice, but by necessity. Hot…
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The Journey of Faith: Embracing Uncertainty
There is something deeply restorative about being alone in your car. No one is asking you to turn the radio down. No competing playlists. Just a stretch of road, a few thoughts, and a song that somehow knows exactly where you are in life. On my way to the doctor’s office this week, I found…
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Mastering Vintage Reselling: Insights from Kelly Really Resells
Keeping It Real (and Really Vintage) with Kelly Szabo Tools, truth, and thriving as a secondhand seller After the holidays, many resellers find themselves standing in front of overstuffed closets, half-listed inventory, and a quiet sales dashboard, wondering, What now? That’s precisely why today’s Feature Friday matters. Kelly Szabo of Kelly Really Vintage doesn’t sell…
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The Roller Coaster of the 2020s: Unraveling and Re-Weaving Society
The first half of the 2020s will be remembered as a decade that didn’t tiptoe in. It barged through the door, knocked over the furniture, and dared us to pretend everything was fine. Many of us walked into 2020 with vision-board optimism, only to find ourselves saying, like the Friends theme song, “No one told…
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End of Year Thank You
As we close out this year, I want to take a moment simply to say thank you. Thank you for reading, commenting, sharing, and showing up here. Whether you’ve been with me from the beginning or just found your way here recently, your support means more than you know. Every like, message, and kind word…
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Tuesday Tip: Close the Books on 2025 — With Intention
The final days of the year have a certain quiet honesty to them. The rush of Q4 fades, inboxes slow down, and you finally have enough breathing room to look at your business without urgency hovering over your shoulder. This is the time to do the kind of review that actually moves you forward. Not…
THE OUBAITORI EDIT 