Quotes from Dee Williams

Being an entrepreneur is a mental job...It takes patients! YOU are doing more motivation to yourself than anyone on this planet.

The library made me feel safe, as if every question had an answer and there was nothing to be afraid of, as long as I could sort through another volume.

Books had rescued me when i most needed saving... Books were smarter than me and words inspired me... to try something new, charge forward without a clear understanding of what would happen next, because "given something like death, what does it matter if one looks foolish now and then, or tries too hard, or cares too deeply?" In the end, Thoreau, Whitman, Hafiz, and a dozen other writers put me up to the task of seeing if I dared to "live a life worth living.

I was stubborn like that, refusing to let my heart redefine how I operated. Looking back, there is a part of me that wants to replace the word 'stubborn' with 'reckless'; there are many things I would do differently now, but what good does it do to retrace your steps? Sometimes you simply do the things you do, and it doesn't necessarily help to pick on the "old you" by proclaiming how smart the new you is.

I've never been good with asking for help; it seems risky, but at some point when things are really dicey, your stubbornness gives way to a certain form of humility that, after you get over yourself, feels liberating. I started to believe that the universe was conspiring to help me finish my house, sending people along at the right moment.

Letting go of "stuff" allowed the world to collapse behind me as I moved, so I became nothing more or less than who I simply was: Me.

When I mentioned my early morning waking to the old witch down the street, she explained that this is the time the "ceiling is the thinnest," the moment that the earth's creatures have the greatest access to the heavens... It is a magical time, or so she said.

I had no idea that "letting go" would be so complicated; that it would sometimes feel liberating and other times more sorrowful and lonely. In the long run, most of it was like standing on the shore, watching your family set sail for America, and they're smiling and waving good-bye, and getting smaller and smaller, but you are still the same size with no one to talk to.

I think I'm more curious than I used to be - curious about why people live like they do and how they make sense of their time... Do they see how the sun has made it like a champion around the world overnight, and that all day today we get another chance to be brave, to exercise our humanity with boldness and deft precision?

For me, the idea of living small has always involved being curious - taking a look at how my day-to-day is connected to the larger world around me, and to the delicate universe that sits between my ears and in my small body.

It was true; books had saved me in my home remodeling projects, but they fell short in teaching me how to trust my instincts, and how to stop thinking with my educated brain and more with my kneecaps and butt cheeks.

I was thinking this was a great teaching moment, where they'd finally come to see that even something teeny-tiny can be big enough.

Over time, I realized I wasn't necessarily seeing people or things at their best or worst; instead, I was simply seeing things as they were. There didn't seem to be a moral high road to take in most situations, and "What's the right thing to do?" wasn't an easy question.

I imagined that a better world would be less complicated, less involved, and with less need to mass produce doorknobs and lock sets, electric outlets, power cords, frozen chicken wings, packages of steak, rubber bands, and a million little foam earbuds that slip over the broadcasting end of an iPod. I'd stand staring at Jenna's room, the recycling porch, and imagine what my life would be like if I could squeeze all my worldly possessions into a space like that.

I wanted to design the house around my body and my needs, instead of following the pattern that I'd fallen into in my big house: picking paint colors and finishing the woodwork with some future owner and salability in mind. This was going to be my house.

I never saw this coming - the little house was working its magic, connecting me to people and materials I never would have guessed would find their way into the picture.

Sometimes the word 'gratitude' feels too thin to explain things.

Sometimes I worry that I'll slide back into the mindless rotisserie of work and projects that guided me in my old house... that I'll grow numb to the way nature can leave me awestruck. I worry that I'll fall asleep at the switch, only to wake up years later and find that I can't remember what I did last week or the month before that, nor do I recognize the old lady staring back at me in the mirror.

If more people understood how nice it is to have a sense of home that extends past our locked doors, past our neighbors' padlocks, to the local food co-op and library, the sidewalks busted up by old trees - if we all held home with longer arms - we'd live in a very different place.

Whose idea was it that we should all get jobs, work faster, work better, race from place to place with our brains stewing on tweets, blogs, and sound bites, on must-see movies, must-do experiences, must-have gadgets, when in the end, all any of us will have is our simple beating heart, reaching up for the connection to whoever might be in the room or leaning into our mattress as we draw our last breath.

I didn't do anything but sit quietly and pay attention to the fact that my hollow chest was still beating. I was still alive and could see that the new normal wasn't so bad.

Whose idea was it that we should all get jobs, work faster, work better, race from place to place with our brains stewing on tweets, blogs, and sound bites, on must-see movies, must-do experiences, must-have gadgets, when in the end, all any of us will have is our simple beating heart, reaching up for the connection to whoever might be in the room or leaning into our mattress as we draw our last breath. I hate to put it in such dramatic terms, but it's kinda true.

I had turned myself inside out working on the house, and had come to love it; at least, I supposed I loved it. Maybe it wasn't love so much as a fear of losing everything I'd accomplished. I was afraid to let go.

These days I find that I am happy enough in the same way that I am warm enough - the goal isn't bliss or even comfort in some cases. The goal is to feel alive.