Rob Tourtelot

I’m going to settle for small, random stabs of extreme interestingness – moments of intense awareness of the things I’m about to lose, and of gladness that they exist

Always provide a physical location for every moment of your story.

I often start my story in one place and end up working my way closer and closer to the end as I revise.

So we stumbled through our loving, difficult readings and tiny speeches; then the button was pushed, and as the coffin advanced solemnly into the furnace, dysfunctional squawks came like a shower of arrows out of the sound system. The tape kept trying to play and its clicks and grindings were amplified very efficiently into the overhead speakers.

• Reverse Walking (10 minutes on the treadmill)


• Calf Stretch (60 seconds per side)


• Tibialis Raise (25 reps per side)


• Poliquin/Patrick Step Up (25 reps per side)


• Split Squat (25 reps per side)


• (Incline) Pigeon Pose (30-60 seconds per side)


• Standing Pancake / Middle Splits (30-60 seconds)

How do you know? It’s a question we need to ask more often, both of ourselves and of others. The power lies in its frankness. It’s nonjudgmental—a straightforward expression of doubt and curiosity that doesn’t put people on the defensive.

Tell me, what questions do you carry, that wouldn’t exist if you knew exactly what you were doing? (Hint: That’s where your next interesting thing lives)

Most of the time there is a gap between the life we know is possible and the one we live. That gap appears as restlessness, pain, longing, fear, irredeemable loneliness, your skin crawling—some uncomfortable state.