The best advice I ever heard is: Make your bed every morning before you leave the house. My mom always made my bed when I was growing up, but her action (and her gentle admonishment about order) instilled in me the strong message that an unmade bed is not only unsightly, but also unclean. As an adult, rarely has my bed been left unmade. At some point, probably in my 40s, I began to correlate made-up beds with accomplishment. When I came home feeling as though I had not accomplished much during the day, I had a made-up bed to remind me that at least I started my day with an achievement.
My three most recommended books are: Marianne Williamson’s A Return to Love, Lynne Twist’s The Soul of Money and Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life.
To me, success means: I grew up believing that success was defined by performance, until I began to meet very successful folks who didn’t fit this model. Happy, secure, high-performance, leadership people driving the wrong car? Living at the wrong address? Yes! So, success for me has come to mean “the achievement of a surrendered, balanced life created by a diminished need to take one’s life so seriously.”
People who know me might be surprised that I: cannot answer this! I rarely surprise anyone.
My biggest pet peeve is: people who drive in the far right lane of an interstate and never exit. This is literally an epidemic in Amarillo.
Everyone in Amarillo needs to experience: the left lane. Seriously, maybe just the middle lane. And you don’t have to leave the right lane entirely, just be willing to move to the left enough to let those coming from the on-ramp the chance to get onto the expressway. Perhaps this is all metaphorical and we simply all need to experience something different from that with which we have grown comfortable and helps us feel safe. Let me see your turn signal and we can both move over a little.
If I could change any one local thing it would be: to diminish the need for political control in order to make an attempt to foster a servant leadership model committed to civil discourse and respect for all points of view.
This city is amazing at: letting those who move here become part of the fabric of the community. I will forever be grateful to the many people in this community who agreed to an appointment with me when I moved here in 1989 as a young insurance agent. I knew no one in Amarillo at that time, nor did I have much experience as an agent. I would never have lasted 20 years if people had not welcomed me.
My favorite place in Amarillo is: downtown. I moved here 36 years ago. In that timeframe, downtown has radically transformed into something of which we should all be very proud. What we do in downtown Amarillo in 2025 does not resemble that which could be done in 1989. It is a beautiful sight to see.
A local organization I love right now: So many local organizations are doing such incredible work, which makes this a very difficult choice. But I am going to go with the one that refreshes my spirit and feeds my soul each time I walk through the doors. We are a lucky community to have the wonderful Amarillo Museum of Art.
