Blog

I launched my blog in 2009 when I was wrestling with a midlife crisis. Since then, the digital world has changed so much. I was new to both Facebook and Twitter when I started blogging, and I was still rocking the BlackBerry for email. Instagram hadn’t launched yet. Podcasting and short videos are what the cool kids do these days, blogging is considered old fashioned. But I still find it the best way to share my thoughts and to profile people who inspire me.

I hope you’ll find something here that inspires you, or at least sparks a conversation. Some of my favorite posts are pinned to the top, scroll down a bit more to find the most recent, or check out the categories in the sidebar.


The Holstee manifesto: This is your life

The Holstee manifesto: This is your life

I kept seeing people post this photo on Facebook but only recently stopped to read the poster. I encourage you to do likewise — it’ll just take a minute and with luck, it’ll make your heart feel good like it did for me. Mission for this week: ask the next person you see what their passion is and share your…

38 Things I Have Learned at 38, by Amy Spooner

38 Things I Have Learned at 38, by Amy Spooner

I love that the contributions to the “Things I Have Learned” series keep coming in. I asked a small number of my writer friends to participate at the outset, but now the majority of participants have volunteered themselves and that’s fantastic. Keep ’em coming, all! Today’s list comes from Amy Spooner, who I met when she profiled me for the…

6 reasons to stop explaining yourself

6 reasons to stop explaining yourself

Some of the decisions I have made this year — choosing a part-time job over full time so I could launch my own business in a tough economy, spending two months in New Orleans when we have a cozy place in a great Brooklyn neighborhood — don’t make sense to some people. Ditto our choice not to have children, not…

There's more than one way to be grateful

There's more than one way to be grateful

If you haven’t already seen this video of pastor Joe Nelms giving thanks in prayer before a NASCAR race in Nashville, you’re in for a treat. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J74y88YuSJ8] I grew up Catholic and have heard a whole lot of prayers and invocations in my life — but have never heard such impassioned thanks raised up to God for the power and…

7 tips for dealing with negative people, via Zen Habits

7 tips for dealing with negative people, via Zen Habits

I’ve shared posts before from one of my favorite blogs, Zen Habits. I know you can read it yourself if you’re interested, but this recent column on dealing with negative people just struck me as such good advice that I wanted to share here. Zen Habits encourages sharing by offering all its content freely, without restrictions. This post, borrowed from…

Conversation starter: Imagine you meet an idol

Conversation starter: Imagine you meet an idol

Picture someone you really look up to — someone who goes beyond an important mentor, someone you idolize as very talented or successful in your field, perhaps the person you wish you could grow up to be. Got someone in mind? Now imagine getting an opportunity to have a one-on-one conversation with that person. Not just an “I love your…

50 Things I Have Learned at 50, by Ann Belote Weir

50 Things I Have Learned at 50, by Ann Belote Weir

Today’s installment in the “Things I Have Learned” series comes from a colleague at my first job after college, where I worked as a reporter at the Alpena News. If you’ve never heard of Alpena, think cold. It’s five hours north of Detroit, and in addition to learning a tremendous amount about real-life newspapers, I learned such things as how…

More reflections on life in New York City

More reflections on life in New York City

A few months ago I wrote a pair of posts reflecting on what I’ve learned in five years as a New Yorker: Five observations after five years in New York New York tourist tips gleaned in my five years in NYC But I have to give it up to Sarah Hepola for writing a piece with an almost identical theme — lessons…

HBR: Developing rituals can help achieve your goals

HBR: Developing rituals can help achieve your goals

A recent Harvard Business Review suggested the best way to achieve your goals is to not demand too much of yourself. That’s not to say set your goals low — but if you want to reach a goal, don’t make it harder than it needs to be to get there. In a post headlined “The Only Way to Get Important…

Margaret Yang on how and why she writes

Margaret Yang on how and why she writes

This post continues an occasional series on writers — how and why they write, what inspires them and how they overcome challenges like writer’s block and rejection. Previously we’ve heard from Jim Tobin, Jim Ottaviani, Lara Zielin, Bruce DeSilva and Jennifer Worick. Today’s Q&A features a baker’s dozen questions with Margaret Yang, an Ann Arbor-based science fiction writer whose first…

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg eats only the meat he kills

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg eats only the meat he kills

Mark Zuckerberg, the gagillionaire founder of Facebook, apparently posted to his person Facebook page this spring that he had just killed a goat and a pig. No, not a sacrifice to the gods of Silicon Valley. Fortune magazine followed up and learned Zuckerberg has pledged to only eat meat this year from animals he personally kills. He wrote in an…

Heather Newgen on her latest career transformation

Heather Newgen on her latest career transformation

A mutual friend introduced me to Heather Newgen when Heather was moving to New York from LA last year. After trading several messages, we met for the first time in New Orleans — I was there on our semi-sabbatical and Heather was shooting a TV pilot she’s pitching called The Voluntourist. I was impressed by her passion for this new…

Humans are wired to mimic those we're around

Humans are wired to mimic those we're around

I’d never heard of St. Vitus’ Dance until I read an ABC News story recently about its anniversary: St. Vitus’ Dance, back in 1374, groups of people — sometimes thousands at a time — started dancing uncontrollably. It continued for days, and in some cases, weeks and months. Some people reportedly danced until they collapsed from exhaustion or even death,…

Dan Gilbert speaks about synthetic happiness at TED

Dan Gilbert speaks about synthetic happiness at TED

If you’d like to take some deep thoughts into your long holiday weekend, here’s a great way to spend about 20 minutes. Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, explains in scientific terms that we overestimate the effects of things outside ourselves have on our happiness and that we have great capacity for creating synthetic happiness. In more concrete terms,…

35 Things I Have Learned at 35, by Amanda Hirsch

35 Things I Have Learned at 35, by Amanda Hirsch

Today is installment #3 in the “Things I Have Learned” series, with this latest list coming from Amanda Hirsch, a friend I met thanks to the wonder of Twitter. Previous lists have come from: me Margaret Yang Amanda Hirsch is a writer and comedian. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband, Jordan, their dog, Cosmo, and a lot…

Why Your Life Purpose Hurts Sometimes – a guest post from Christine Kane

Why Your Life Purpose Hurts Sometimes – a guest post from Christine Kane

I subscribe to Christine Kane‘s email newsletter, which offers a variety of business- and life-related advice. Christine, an Asheville, N.C.-based musician turned life coach, offers her content for free reuse, as long as its attributed, so here’s one I especially liked recently: The Sharp Edges of Expansion: Why Your Life Purpose Hurts Sometimes Somewhere along the way, we learn to…