Dive into the archives.
- Disappointed Expectations: The Obstacle of “No Guarantee”
Reading about the history of retirement as a life-stage in the industrialized world, I realized that the expectations held by most of us, born after the Second World War, were “givens” or “truths” that were incredibly new as social phenomena. In fact, funded retirement from work-life only emerged in the mid 19th century, modeled on [...]
- On Pessimism, Beckett, and Optimism
Reading Beckett, reading Beckett’s reading of Proust, reading the intellectual regress back to Schopenhauer and Kant, I put down the books. I stop. It comes down to this in human affairs: we know that on the way to dying, we live and experience. Obviously, not only good times, but the odd “peak” experiences, fade: sometimes [...]
- Productive Hate
Some weeks back, I discussed the connection of flow—- as the integrative, passionate engagement of competence and skills toward a discrete task —- with an internal, late-life correlate to the mother-child relationship, now freed from external dependency on institutional facilitation or permission. That is, the freedom to demonstrate pleasurably one’s skills and competence. Certainly, from [...]
- Cultivating the Flow of Internal Resources
Two terrific forces silently conspire to undermine the equilibrium of the mid-life underemployed. The first is the economic fear of watching one’s savings diminish in the absence of meaningful employment. The second is the related, private shame of unemployment. It is easy to forget one’s lifetime career of productive economic support for self and family [...]
- Working Knowledge Initiative. Transforming the sunk cost of job loss.
Peter Goodman reports in today’s New York Times that the underemplyment rate– including the jobless and those working part time though desirous of full-time work– has reached 17% of the workforce. That’s up from even a week ago . Pausing for a moment both to reflect on the despair of economic dislocation and to ask, [...]
- From Unemployed to Self-Employed
We met in the dog run, Sean and I. Sean had a mastiff—big guy, rolling around with a bloodhound; and my terrier wanted to break up the fight. After vetting one another, sniffing about and introducing ourselves via the names of our dogs, we got to talking about the work we did. Sean is 26 [...]
- The Business of Family
Awash in information, we scan the headlines continuously, adjusting our ongoing visions of externalities upon which we depend: politics, economics, and shifts in the markets. We trust the fine attunement of our filtering capabilities to deliver a unified picture of the front pages we consume from multiple sources- sometimes print, sometimes tv, increasingly internet. Our [...]
- Family Business: Opportunity Lost in a Daughter’s Recognition of Dad’s Grumpiness
“Gosh, you’re grumpy today,” I heard, as I parked the car. It hadn’t been addressed to me, but to the man in the car beside me, by his adolescent daughter. Though not feeling particularly grumpy myself, her comment got me thinking. Everyone experiences moods. Some, more frequently and more intensely than others. Everyone experiences moments [...]
- Bartleby and the Avoidant Personality
I woke up one morning last week, thinking about Bartleby the Scrivener. It was a few days after my last posting, which had related to Bartleby via two Welsh Academics and one Slavic Lacanian, which is an oblique route to Herman Melville, and Bartelby— who worked, as it happens, in an establishment very close to [...]
- Outflanking the Recession Avalanche: Fighting Depression
Like most of us, I’ve become a newspaper junkie: whether paper or on-line, luxuriating in the onrush of information as markets fluctuate and both corporations and nation-states tremble in the shadow of Moody’s. It’s a pleasure akin to visiting the dental hygienist: the discrete pain of acceptable bloodletting. But then, I have to be in [...]
