Usually these days, when the media reports “unemployment was flat, but job growth was sluggish,” you all know how to translate that by now. It means that unemployment actually ticked up through people leaving the labor force, but the BLS…
Category: A Day in the Life
My Life with Yoga
“When I talk to people about sadness and depression, as I often do, one of my suggested strategies is really internalizing and absorbing good days and ‘banking’ them as antidotes against future storms of sadness. Not because they will make…
The Invisible Power of Shame
When people ask me what I want to replace violence as the main motivating force to behave in our society, I instantly reply “shame”. I think a lot of people believe that I’m kidding when I say this. I am…
Zero Sum Games and Conservativism
I’m working on the budding theory that, if you can afford to quit your job, it may be at least a little immoral to keep it. Unless, I guess, you’re much better at it than someone else would be and…
Senior Retreat and the Infinite Sadness
My image of God isn’t really an image at all. I think we’re all to an extent overly influenced by religious, Biblical, and societal depictions of the divine as a white-haired bearded father sitting on a cloud and looking vaguely…
Droning On
Planes are in the news this week, though the one getting most of the attention was manned. People are desperately trying to discern the motive for 27-year-old German Andreas Lubitz’ decision to calmly place his passenger jet into a gradual…
Ted Cruz and the Elaborate Troll Hypothesis
People simply cannot get enough Ted Cruz these days. The Senator, one of two representing the state of Texas, perennial hotbed of Presidential candidates successful and otherwise, recently became the first official candidate to take the office of the Presidency…
The Myth of Linearity
Sometimes, life gets worse. You wouldn’t think that would be such a controversial statement. You might think, off-handedly, that it’s kind of trivial or obvious. People go from better situations to worse situations all the time. They lose jobs, relationships,…
New Orleans March
The nights got suddenly sultry this week, as the bobbing of 40s and 70s and back again gave way to 80s and March did its job of actually transitioning the seasons over into something warmer and more life-giving than the…
15 Years and a Day
It is perhaps fitting that I went with Introspection-style dash-bullet-points to summarize my experience in yesterday’s post. After all, yesterday was the 15th anniversary of my opening salvo into blogging, the first post of Introspection. Like so many things done…