Month: May 2011
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Recently, someone called me successful. I laughed. I quite literally own nothing but the contents of one Samsonite suitcase and four cardboard boxes (most of which are filled with papers) and a laptop that’s about to give up the ghost. I’m not married. I don’t have a family. I don’t own any property. And I…
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What if “carpe diem” really means “Better you than me, sucker”? I think about that sometimes. I’m not entirely sure where the line between genuine encouragement and dirty secret schadenfreude is. But I bet it’s a lot blurrier than you think. What if the people telling you that you should quit your job because it’s…
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Everyone wants to outsource, I explain. We think about how nice it would be to crawl into bed, unplug the clock, turn off the phone and just sleep and sleep and sleep until we’ve made up for every wide awake night of the last decade. We wonder if there are people out there we could…
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If someone had told you about this moment, would you have believed them? This time, I am standing by the railroad tracks, staring at the cranes, scenery broken up by a man in coveralls riding past on a bicycle from WW II. My hard hat pinches because I wear it too tight, like a vise.…
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Psst…and everyone else is scared of them, too. That you’re unlovable That you’ll never be happy or don’t even have the capacity to be so That people are nice to you out of pity or duty, but not genuine affection That if you really shared what you thought and how you felt, you’d be shunned…
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“We’re different kinds of writers.” This followed shortly after,” I know you like writing and all that journalism stuff.” No, I like pad thai and Christopher Guest movies. I am a writer. And you are unable to distinguish between common homophones. Journalism is how I put myself through school. People actually pay me for my words.…
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As I announced on Twitter and Facebook, I’m more than a little chuffed to report that I’ll now be blogging for Forbes. The process by which this came about is pretty similar to my pal Susannah’s story. But now the time is right (long-distance move, dumping all my worldly possessions, landing the job I wrote…
Generation Meh 