Larry Messing

Bite-Size Goals

Every one of us has some list of goals we’d like to accomplish: Exercise more. Read more. Get a better paying job. Goals are great for building the life you want, but, once you add a deadline to them, they can become stressful. Exercise more suddenly sounds like “Run a marathon”. Read more feels like…

A Blog Post about Accomplishment, Balls and Newton’s First Law

I have three regular to-dos each week: Do a daily planking routine for about 5 minutes. Lift weights three days a week. Write one blog post. How I judge the success of my week is partly based on accomplishing these three tasks. Also, not dying. On an average week, I do the planking once or,…

Professional Networking: Conditioning for your Career

Each year, I say one of my goals is to run a marathon. And then I say something like “I’ll run 26.2 miles spread out over the course of 365 days.” It’s a horrible dad joke and I have many more of them. Truth is, if I had to run more than a 5k, I’d struggle…

Missing Memphis or missing a moment?

A little more than 21 years after graduating, I sat in a bar in Memphis that I would occasionally frequent in my college days, watching my alma mater play on TV while enjoying microbrews that didn’t exist (and I probably couldn’t afford) back when I was getting drunk off of Natty Light. It was like…

Power of the Pivot

In my every day life, I am a fundraiser. Fundraisers are resilient people. Perhaps among the most resilient out there. Rarely is anything truly cut and dry, one-size-fits-all. And yet we succeed. Over the last year, I’ve learned about the Power of the Pivot. A roadblock is introduced and you find yourself looking at the…

No, the music these days doesn’t suck.

Sometimes the hardest thing for us to acknowledge is that, perhaps, we aren’t always the target audience for a particular bit of pop culture. We assume there is no way something can be good/appreciated/successful without our approval. And, if it is, it’s because people are idiots. There is no better evidence of this than the…

50 Meaningful Words

I’ve always had this dream of being a writer. I never really defined it beyond that. Magazine writer? Journalist? Novelist? Short story teller? Yes. So, two years ago, I paid the little money it took to sign up for a WordPress personal account and, on a whim, decided to to even pay for my own…

Random Thought: “…Especially for this Weekend”

Random thought about a weird conversation… Out for my evening walk a few days ago, the following conversation occurred: Guy on patio: Good eveningMe (wearing my favorite shirt): Good eveningGuy on patio: What’s that on your shirt?Me: Golden GirlsGuy on patio: Oh, man, that’s great! Especially for this weekend. I spent the rest of my…

COVID Diary: Lessons from My Wonder Years

Last July 4th holiday, my wife and I did what many patriotic Americans do these days and took a trip to Canada for the long weekend. Toronto, more specifically. Beautiful city. The thing I remember most about it was the roads seemed almost as bad as the Midwest, but they were offset by the sweet…