I love to travel, try new foods, ingest caffeine, and watch political news coverage. A psychologist by training trying to bring a little common sense to it all.
Steve Jobs famously said the only way to do great work is to love what you do. And listen, I both agree and would like to lovingly challenge Mr. Turtleneck. Because here’s the inconvenient truth. You don’t get a moral hall pass just because you’re not “in love” […]
Google, in its quiet algorithmic way, decided to ambush me today. “This day, years ago,” it said, like it wasn’t about to rearrange my entire nervous system before coffee. And there he was. My son, younger, mid-air, literally suspended in that impossible, physics-defying moment of childhood joy. His […]
I watched yet another true crime documentary this week, which is starting to feel less like a casual viewing choice and more like a personality trait. This time it was The Scream Murder: A True Teen Horror Story on Hulu. Three parts. And like so many of these […]
There is something deliciously cinematic about a 21-year-old university student casually stepping in to play piano for La La Land in Concert when the scheduled pianist falls ill. I mean, of course it happened during La La Land. Of course. Life sometimes has the subtlety of a Broadway […]
What’s a moment that made you question reality? So I did ask myself what is a moment that made me question reality. And I just blinked. A moment? I laughed because are we not doing that all day? Because my answer isn’t a moment. It’s a mood.A lifestyle, […]
I loved youuntil I didn’t until I couldn’t. There’s a difference. One is a quiet dimming,like a room at dusk.The otheris a circuit breaking;sparks, smoke,the unmistakable smellof something inside meburning out. Loving you meantlearning to disappearin plain sight. It meanthating myselfin small, socially acceptable waysthe kind no one […]
There’s a particular kind of human arrogance that assumes insight belongs exclusively to us; along with taxes, existential dread, and the ability to overanalyze text messages. For a long time, scientists mostly agreed. Sure, animals could learn. They could try things, fail, try again. Trial and error. The […]
At approximately 2:00 a.m., which, clinically speaking, is the hour when good decisions go to die, a group of six individuals reportedly emerged from a manhole in Brooklyn. Let me repeat that. They didn’t open the manhole and go down. They came up. Like a plot twist.Like a […]
You really can’t make this stuff up anymore. Or rather, you can, and apparently people are doing so with admirable commitment and a suspicious amount of PowerPoint. This week’s dispatch from the “Is This Real Life or Did I Fall Asleep on the Remote?” files includes a story […]
Lately, I’ve been reading about so-called “dark personality traits.” Not villains-with-capes dark. More like everyday-people-with-good-lighting dark. Psychology tends to group them into a familiar trio: narcissism (I’m the main character), Machiavellianism (I’ll move the pieces), and psychopathy (I don’t feel much about it either way). Collectively, they’ve earned […]
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