OTR, Take 17: Benny Goodman Sextet - On Stage (Copenhagen)

Hello hello! Happy #saturdayvinyl !

This, and all future weeks of the LinkedIn edition of On the Record, will provide only a taste of the newsletter, which has moved off LinkedIn – because LinkedIn newsletters are terrible.

Sign up for the full On the Record here .

I know it's a bit of a pain to go to a website and submit your email. I promise your email is safe with me, and you only have to go once to sign up, confirm your email, and the rest is all taken care of.

It's funny how we fall into obsessive action during the grieving period. Often, this occurs without the slightest conscious awareness of it; it just seeps into our behavior and can baffle those around us.

Winnie passed away three weeks ago and one of the ways my mind processed it was, "I wish I would have been better and taken her for more walks." When I look back on the OTR I wrote for her three weeks ago, I see the language embedded in the writing, "I took my final walk with my best girl." I told the story about how Winnie helped me learn to walk after my transplant and encouraged you to take the walk, always.

In the last three weeks, without fully recognizing it, I have been obsessed with taking Clare for long walks every day. Don't get me wrong: I've always walked my dogs every day. That's part of the human deliverables when you agree to get a dog. But I've been taking Clare on walks up to ten miles a day in the last three weeks. It's amusing how we subconsciously justify our obsessive behaviors to ourselves: the walks are good for me and for her; walks help me decompress and recharge; I'm more creative after taking walks; these walks help tame Clare's puppy energy.

All of those things are true.

Head on over to the new home of On the Record to read the rest!