Smoking has bedeviled me for 25 years. After years of success slaying one behavioral and mental health demon after another (binge eating, alcohol, and depression), smoking is the one that keeps coming back. Why is this addiction so persistent and pernicious? I still don’t fully understand the allure, and why I lose the power to… Continue reading Smoking Gun
By now, many people have heard of the paradigm-shifting research of Dr. Carol Dweck that led to her definition of a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. “In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view… Continue reading Old Dogs, New Tricks
Worry, my friend always says, is a useless emotion. I worry a lot – I ruminate over problems I can’t solve because they haven’t happened. I spin off into future problems like how I will respond when I miss deadlines I haven’t missed yet. I wring my hands over decisions I will have to make… Continue reading Stopping the Rain
Kristin Hersh released Hips and Makers in 1994. Her band, Throwing Muses, was my favorite band, and I idolized her. I can still picture the record store chalkboard where her impending solo release was announced. In the days before Google, we got our news from chalkboards in record stores. I bought the CD the day… Continue reading The Ghost of 1994
We are in a river of time, all the time, whether we’re aware of it or not. This is pretty far from a mindfulness practice, very thinky, but is certainly a meditation on seconds. A contemplation, perhaps? You can bring this contemplation to any sound you hear in meditation – the heater or fridge kicking… Continue reading Anyone Want Seconds? Meditation
“The pace of our lives governs our experience of the passage of time. And how we move through time is, ultimately, the way we live our lives.” – Robert Levine, A Geography of Time In this blog, I’ve talked about swimming in an ocean of breathing, of air, of thoughts, of life, surrounded so much… Continue reading A Time Diet
I studied writing in college like a lot of mentally ill people major in psychology – to figure out what the hell was wrong with me. I’d been told my whole life that I was a good writer; it was pretty much literally the only thing people identified that I was good at. Yet I… Continue reading Recorded Memory
