2022 was the year I let hope go. I know it sounds bleak, but hear me out. We all have expectations and goals and exercise our free will to affect the courses of our lives. In spite of our best efforts, there is only so much an individual swimming against…

For the unfamiliar, Upwork is a site that connects freelancers with clients. I’ve been thinking about diversifying my writing more and stumbled across a thread about Upwork on Twitter a little over a month ago. I decided to take a look. The site is clean and relatively easy to navigate…

We’re getting into holiday season. This is the danger zone if there is or was a narcissist in your life. They go off the rails at this time of year. I think there are a few reasons. Narcissists guard access to their targets jealously and try to prevent them from…

Nostalgia is an important weapon for narcissists, because they want to control their targets’ memories. It’s one of the reasons they act out so much during the holidays, etc. — there are nostalgic forces at work that are much more powerful than theirs. Narcissists tactically create memories with their targets…

On September 8, 2022 came the cry: “The Queen is dead. Long live the King.” And so the wheel of history turned, and the Windsors (or should it be the Saxon-Coburg-Gothas or the Mountbattens?) continued to rule. Years ago, I watched Helen Mirren’s excellent performance as Queen Elizabeth II in…

Track and field may be the sport that’s the easiest to understand. Who can run the fastest? Who can throw the farthest? Who can jump the highest or farthest? The competition goes straight to the heart of questions about who has the superior level of baseline athleticism. Even though there…

I wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember. In my youth, writing never made it onto my list of potential career choices, though. Writing for a living never seemed practical. In addition, although I’ve always been outspoken, I recognized the powerfully self-censoring shield I live…

Much of the world is failing. It has always been so, in one way or another. Destruction lays many of the markers of history, as does mass death. We live in a time of plague. It is 2022. The Covid-19 pandemic has ravaged the world, and now monkeypox is spreading…

Hustle is the story of Stanley Sugerman (played by Adam Sandler), an exhausted middle-aged NBA scout, who, on the verge of giving up on his dream of coaching in the league, is revitalized by his quest to get his newly-discovered talent, Bo Cruz (played by Juancho Hernangómez), into the NBA…