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Let’s slow this down. If we were sitting across from each other right now. No distractions. No performing. Just an honest conversation. I would ask you this. Why is “no” so hard for you? Not for everyone else. For you. Because toddlers have no issue with it. They say it from their gut. Full body. No filter. By six years old, they still test it daily. Trust me, I know. Then somewhere along the way, we learn something dangerous. We learn that “no” makes people uncomfortable. We

My career didn’t start in an office. It started in mud. Twelve. Thirteen years old. Baling hay with the boys. Trying to prove I could keep up. My boots were always dirty. My hands were always sore. My butt was literally in the muck cleaning stalls before most kids had their first real job. That’s where it began. And if you trace the line from there to where I sit now, it doesn’t look straight. I’ve worked in farm stores. Federal offices. Ag tech. Higher education. Marketing.

I’ve always joked I’m 29 forever. You may have already read that this morning. I still think that would be hilarious on a headstone. “Whitney. 29 forever.” Let my kids argue with the cemetery about the math. But here’s the part that keeps tugging at me. Every headstone has two dates. And in between them is that tiny little dash. That’s it. Birth year. Death year. And this short line that is supposed to represent decades of living. And I don’t know why, but that feels… insuffi

I tell everyone I’m 29. Forever. It’s a running joke. I say it confidently. I say it like my skin signed the agreement too. But the other morning at 6:12 a.m., standing at my bathroom sink with a claw clip in and toothpaste on the counter, I caught my reflection and thought… Ma’am. We need to regroup. Because when your face starts slipping into its fifties and you are not even a decade there yet, something has to give. Enter my influencer of a daughter. This child has a skinc

I lost my coffee mug in the microwave this morning. Again. Poured it. Heated it. Walked away. Found it later, full and cold. So I stood there waiting for it to reheat, staring at the spinning plate, and my brain was running a hundred miles an hour. Weekend replay. Wrangling cows with one of my deepest roots. Laughing with parents who started as clients and somehow became family friends. Watching my students, who are no longer just students but bonus kids I care about fiercely

Okay. Let me talk to you the way I would if we were driving home from a long day from work and the sun was setting and everything felt honest. I do not want my kids growing up thinking small is normal. I do not want my students believing “good enough” is the ceiling. And I had to look at myself first. Because for a long time, I was good with comfortable. Not miserable. Not failing. Not desperate. Just comfortable. I knew how to operate inside the lines. I knew how to be agree

Can I tell you something I miss? Doorway conversations. Not the scheduled ones. Not the polished ones. I mean the in-between moments. The leaning on a doorframe. The quick, “Hey, what do you think about this?” before running to the next thing. About a year ago, that’s where this started. I was standing in a doorway with Kevin Mitchell , a Director of Development at Carle Illinois College of Medicine . We were good like that. Banter. Push. Challenge. No ego. Just big energy. A

This weekend looked shiny on the outside. Three rodeos. Heated indoor arena in the middle of cold Illinois. Sticky, quick ground. Digital timers. Full trailer. Late lunch with the team. Qualifying runs. Personal records. It would be easy to talk about the numbers. But the numbers are not the story. The story is the hours no one sees. The slow circles in an empty arena when everyone else is chasing speed. The quiet conversations about posture and hands. The reality checks whe

There I was this morning, snapping a coffee pic like I do. Trying to have a moment. Trying to feel put together before the day took off running. And my nails looked like a junior high art project gone wrong . I am an acrylic nail girly. Matte black . Sharp. Clean. A little corporate. A little sexy. A little don’t-mess-with-me . Those nails have sat in high-stakes donor meetings. They’ve held lead ropes. They’ve adjusted helmets and counted cash and wiped dirt off a kid’s ch

I had a health scare this week. The kind that stops you mid-thought and makes everything go quiet. If you know me, you know I avoid the ER like the plague. I will talk myself out of going unless I am pretty sure I am actively dying. I hate hospitals. I hate the sterile lights. I hate the waiting. I hate the bills that follow you home long after the IV is out. So I don’t go. I push through. I always have. This time was different. After getting my butt chewed by my neurologist’

I’ve been on a lot of work trips. Enough to know that the destination rarely matters as much as the people sitting next to you on the plane, the people you end up grabbing coffee with, the people you’re stuck with when the day runs long and the schedule falls apart. This trip was different. I traveled with about ten colleagues from CCMSI, including my boss. On paper, it was just another business trip. Meetings. Sessions. Long days. Notes. Early mornings. Late dinners. But in

Today is the last day in class before we pack up and head north again. The next stop is near Disney World, close enough to feel the pull of it. Sunshine. Parks. The kind of place people get excited about. But I’m not going. And honestly, I don’t feel like I’m missing out. If I could choose, I’d be in Cloverdale this weekend. Inside that indoor arena with the heat on. Standing by the rail. Watching my kids run cans without frozen fingers or stiff horses. Listening to hooves hi

Today’s vibe: cold toes, warm weather, and a countdown to happy hour Today is powered almost entirely by Diet Pepsi. The kind you crack open out of habit. The kind that sits next to your laptop like a coworker who gets you. I have lost count. I am not asking questions. I do miss my Diet Coke though. The conference rooms are freezing. Aggressively freezing. The kind of cold where you start wondering if circulation is optional and whether your toes have quietly resigned. I am l

Here it is. All in one piece. Clean. Grounded. Podcast-style. Full Wytnee grit. I finally sat down at my gate. Shoes off. Bag tucked under the chair. One of those deep exhales you do when you realize you made it. I had to make two pit stops on the way because my bladder has officially entered its old-lady era. I laughed at myself the whole time. TSA though? Shockingly smooth. No chaos. No barking orders. No bins flying everywhere. I got through early enough to actually sit, b

Tonight, I dropped off my 11-year-old daughter at her junior high winter formal. Sixth. Seventh. Eighth grade. It was snowing hard. Temperatures in the single digits. Parents were pulling up to the doors, one car after another. I sat there in the parking lot and watched. And watched. And watched. It was not one or two girls. It was nearly all of them. Dozens of cars. Dozens of children stepping out in skin-tight dresses, hemlines so short they could not bend over, sit down, o

Here we go again. A nationwide polar vortex. Double digit negatives. Ice . Feet upon feet of snow. And suddenly everyone is a disaster prep expert. TikTok is full of it right now. “What we’re doing to prepare.” “What we learned from losing power for a week after XYZ storm.” Generators humming. Calm voices explaining freeze dried food while the comments spiral. The country feels like it’s collectively holding its breath . I’ll be honest. I hate cold. Not a quirky dislike. A d

This morning I was driving and Pink Pony Club by Chappell Roan came on. And I laughed. Out loud. Because if you had told younger me that this would be the song that cracked something open in my brain, I would have said absolutely not. That song is taboo where I come from. The story, the vibe, the freedom. All of it sits squarely outside the box I was raised in. But there I was, nodding along, thinking… why does this feel so good? And I realized it had nothing to do with the

This past week reminded me of something I forget more often than I like to admit. Not every week is about momentum. Some weeks are about staying. Staying present. Staying upright. Staying soft when it would be easier to shut down. There’s a quiet pressure we all live under to prove progress. To show results. To point to something tangible and say, see, I’m moving forward . And when life piles on logistics, responsibilities, expectations, and noise, that pressure doesn’t

I’ve realized something about myself over the years. I am a photo-o-holic. Not in a cute, aesthetic way. I mean I feel a pull to capture moments. To freeze time. Because once it passes, you don’t get it back. I take photos constantly . I take videos too. Short ones. Not for posting. For voices. For laughs. For the way someone sounds when they say your name. Baby coos. Life stages. The last celebrations before someone is gone. Those clips turn into time capsules , and once y

Today I keep coming back to music. Music brings back memories. Music shifts mood. Music inspires. Music pulls us out of our own heads when thoughts start looping. Music uplifts. Music tells stories regular words cannot. Some songs feel like love letters. Some feel like apologies. Some feel like encouragement when you have none left to give yourself. There is something about music that feels magical. Growing up, music was always on. Cleaning stalls before school. Feeding at ni