Craving Stabililty

Broken Bridge

A Case for Atheist Asceticism

SuperSimple: Paring your life down to size

A Word With Marty: "SIMPLE"

Guilty Pleasures

A Story Without Plot

Steady Eddie: A short-short story

A Little Life: a short-short story

In Search of Simpler Times: How to make modern life less frenzied

Today, when you ask someone, “How are you?” you may hear a perfunctory "fine." But you may well hear: "Hangin' in." "Tired." “Slammed.” "Overwhelmed." Indeed, like many of my clients and friends, I find our modern times challenging.

In the supermarket, I saw a can of Simpler Times beer and thought, “Hmm, that's appealing.” My Psychology Today article today offers some thoughts on how to create a simpler time for ourselves in today’s far-from simple world.

Adventure: Is it time for a more or a less piquant life?

Adventure. That word can evoke images from shopping to swashbuckling.
My Psychology Today article today offers composite letters, one from a person who is living a quite standard life, the other from someone who is living quite large. I offer thoughts to each.

Pruning the Dead Wood From Your Life

When pruning a rose bush, you remove weak canes (the branches) so all the plant’s energy can go into the strong canes, yielding more beautiful flowers.

In improving our lives, we tend to think of adding, but sometimes pruning the weak wood is wiser. Yes, less can be more. Or to invoke another metaphor, when a cook sautes mushrooms, the water evaporates, leaving richer flavor.

My PsychologyToday.com article today offers pruning opportunities for your worklife, relationships, charity, and more. 

Pristine Pleasures

I live to solve problems. That means I live in the negative---problems are by definition negative. I live in the complex---If a problem were easy to solve, I wouldn't be needed. I live in worry: What if I miss something? What if I can't solve it?

Yet I continue to be able to stay in that world of problems, decade after decade. Why? Partly because I'm often enough able to prevail. But partly because, outside that world of problems, I get my pleasures from things abundant and free, if you look out for them. I call them pristine pleasures. 

I list some in my PsychologyToday.com article today.  Perhaps one or more will please you, or better, trigger your own list of pristine pleasures.

Old People Doing Good

We tend to write-off old people. But, at their best, they can be a much needed balm for our ever more harried lives. 

In my PsychologyToday.com article today, I write an ode to kindly older folks plus a list of kindly activities that older people may have more time to bestow. HERE is the link.

In Praise of a Normal Day

A normal day is underappreciated.  My PsychologyToday.com article today helps us realize how wonderful normalcy can be. HERE is the link.

Ever Feel Overwhelmed?

I'm overwhelmed. I can't catch up with my email, even though most nights I'm still answering them at midnight. Doing my income tax is hanging over my head. So's the play I'm committed to start directing soon. The piles on my desk are growing. My 87-year-old mother could use more of my attention. The optometrist just told me my eyes are aging: "Your tears aren't as high-quality as they were." (And that's not the only part of me that's aging.) I'm so rushed, I eat nothing that requires more cooking than 60 seconds of microwaving. I eat standing up--average mealtime: five minutes. My garage is falling off its foundation and so am I.

While I love Google, email, iPhones and the rest, and I'm grateful for my full career counseling practice, radio shows, and that I get to write for prestigious publications, at times like these, I wonder if I'd be better off in simpler times, in which you work at a moderate pace for 35 hours a week, then sit down for a leisurely dinner cooked by your adoring wife, after which you snuggle together watching I Love Lucy instead of shows designed to manipulate your socio-political views.

My normal rule in writing blog posts and articles is to never raise a problem unless I can propose a solution but this time, I'm making an exception. If you look at my bio and how prolifically I write, you'd think I had it totally together. It may somehow be reassuring to know I don't.