Dive into the archives.
- My Single Tip For Success
The great benefit for a self-help essayist in this era of recession is the value of the singular. How many times I have marveled at the multiplicity of tips offered (often in blocks of 7: at the limits of our human capacity for “chunking”, or holding ideas consistently in our heads) for emotional coping and [...]
- “Recession Psychosis”
My psychotherapist colleagues knew it was coming, but Saturday’s Times confirmed it: the severe symptoms of anxiety, despair, and even sucidality they’re calling “recession psychosis”— not a formal DSM diagnosis— but descriptive enough. Studies of unemployment reflect that downsizing is the only traumatizing life event which prevents sufferers from returning to their pre-morbid ‘setpoint” of [...]
- Daily Maintenance: The Job of Curating
Having spent much of the day at my desk, I look back and reflect on what’s been accomplished. Not much on the face of it. It is clear once again, but won’t remain that way. The bills will once again begin to accumulate, anxiously demanding their due. The receipts and slips from purchases and services [...]
- Dynamics of My Emerging Blog Relationships
I have been observing how the development of blog relationships closely parallels other relational forms from business exchanges to friendships and mutual support. What begins in the offering of a personal statement finds either a receptive or non-receptive hearing in another’s interest. In the instance of this receptive hearing, my reader selects a dimension of [...]
- 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 [...]
- The Present Necessity for Kindness
When despair, fear, exhaustion and external answers beyond the encouragement to “keep on keeping on” are all: when the terror of occupational “redundancy” strips one’s sense of personal contribution, of meaning to others- what is left? The harsh formula of winner-loser is clear: this is no tv game show proclaiming, you are the weakest link: [...]
- 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 [...]
