Dive into the archives.
- The CEC: Stacking the Middle-Aged Deck To Failure
The developmental effect of the “Current Economic Climate” upon the under-employed middle aged worker, is to force the normative later-life crisis of generativity vs stagnation before its time. The crisis itself is to be expected– worked through across the years in contemplation of one’s lifetime of accomplishments and failures. But the additional external pressures of [...]
- The Real Shift in Middle Age Development
The current economic climate in the United States serves as a catalyst for a shift in the normative developmental tasks of middle age. The popular twentieth century pattern of career leading to retirement has ended. Partly obscured within the spiraling numbers of unemployed workers of all ages, is the high incidence of professional knowledge workers, [...]
- Joy in Discovery of Received Wisdom
We cannot rediscover what we do not know. And this is the paradox in learning from “received wisdom”. Its reception is often within fields of knowledge foreign to us. The wisdom may be common enough to practitioners in the field, but to others? It is as if it never existed. Surprise or mentorship may bring [...]
- A Very Human Response
The poignancy and resilience of the human experience, especially as we undergo difficulty and hard times, is not only a “human asset”. It is our blessing. A reader shares this response to the blog post a few weeks back. Ian- Just finished rereading your post on “Adrenaline Withdrawal” and feel like it was addressed directly [...]
- From Elevator Pitch to Tag Cloud
The elevator pitch is an efficient message form whose time has passed. Think of the elevator itself as metaphor: a tiny moving room, with time enough only to alert another captive individual to the particulars of one’s self-presentation. A reframing or re-description of the pitch, more congruent with our times is the visual presentation of [...]
- On Balance at Year’s End
The beauty of the Balance Sheet is in its clean demarcations and sharp clarities. The summarized ledger: the readable picture. Momentarily, we are distracted from the ongoing accounting of profits and loss at the financial-emotional border. Momentarily, we are distracted from the calculations of cash flow that accompany us through the solvencies and insolvencies of [...]
- Embracing the Slash
I woke this morning to the radio’s discussion by a chipper 20-something about her “slashes”. It took a few moments to figure out what she was saying, which was shorthand for freelance projects. She began each with her profession, followed by a “slash”, and then a description of a task. She’d just been fired from [...]


