I've just read a quick, clever, and compelling look at magnificent midlife in The Atlantic by James Parker. Here's a tease (with advice for middle agers to "feed the flame" and "Go up brightly"! You know yourself, quite well by now. Life has introduced you to your shadow; you’ve met your dark double, and with a bit of luck the two of you have made your accommodations. You know your friends. You ...
Midlife Blog
Sleep & Hope
“The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night’s sleep.” — E. Joseph Cossman ...
Coffee Ring
Coffee Ring Excerpt (Source: Geo Davis) Some mornings manifest with déjà-vu-esque familiarity. This morning. The clock sighed backwards into a poem that was born early in this meandering middlescence, about six years ago. Coffee RingMorning’s lazy flyAnd I consider theCoffee ring phantomOf your mug half full.No grinds to read.Only lingering scents,The dregs of youth,The dross of ...
Strangers and Self-imposed Isolation
Let's talk about strangers. Let's talk about talking with strangers! Excuse me. Sorry for interrupting. I'd like to pass along an invigorating reminder from the BBC about the surprising benefits of talking to strangers, yes, even at the risk of breaching privacy protocols. Most people spend part of every day surrounded by strangers, whether on their daily commute, sitting in a park or cafe, or ...
Dreaming While Middle-Aging
Dreaming While Middle-Aging (Source: Geo Davis) [NB: This post, more of a lyric essay or freestyle poetic riff than a journalistically sound response to Wajahat Ali's August 28, 2018 op-ed, takes liberties with quotations that may misrepresent the intentions, emphasis, and/or conclusions of the author. All quotations are excerpted from the original, but the nature of remix/mashup alters the ...
Necessary Risk
The issue of risk is absolutely central to being a creative person... I'm a very big believer in starting small and getting feedback from the world and course correcting there. (Source: Michael Ellsberg, The Necessity of Creative Risk Taking | Big Think) If risk-taking is fundamental to creativity as I've repeatedly insisted, then how do we assess what risks are worth taking, how do we to scale ...