Grief: keen mental suffering or distress over affliction or loss; sharp sorrow; painful regret. For most of the people I know, whether they celebrate Christmas or not, the day after Christmas is always a somber occasion. It could be as simple as post-holiday drop, or...
Creation: Something new begins to emerge The new thing here is my my new secular "New Year Advent", an idea I mentioned as a joke in a previous post. The more I thought about it, the more I liked doing something ritualistic to mark the end of the past year and the...
My "holiday tradition" has become using the week between Christmas and New Year's Day as a time of personal reflection. I rarely go anywhere or do anything with other people in this time frame. Since I don't celebrate any religious holidays and I am single, I can and...
In casting about for ideas for this blog post, because as always I am utterly inept at planning ahead, my friend TimH suggested "purgatory friends." Only that's not what he actually suggested. He said: "write about the odd 'purgatory level' of friends on social media...
I've always been haunted by the question, "what do you?" It is just nonsensical to me because what we do in our lives is...everything? But that's not the intention with the asking. What is meant: what JOB do you have? What is it that earns you MONEY? What is your...
2016, like 2009, has been for me personally "the year of therapy." Not that therapy is always something so neatly boxed up with start and end dates -- the therapy of 2009 started in mid 2008 and ended in late 2010, for instance. Even then I knew it was not a "done...
So yesterday I poured my heart into a post that meant a lot to me. There were a few supportive comments (thank you!) and one...not so supportive. I'm not here to hash out what that one person meant to do, or what their intention was, but to say that the net effect of...
Just a list, because there are many. "Pro-life" activists who are also pro-death-penalty "Family values" supporters who are fine with parents kicking their children out of the house because gay/trans/sexually active/pregnant. All those critics of "safe spaces" for...
Friends have posted generally that they hope Trump supporters are starting to see how badly they were duped. Here's the thing, though: you can't have a sudden insight into something you were completely aware of the whole time. Trump supporters weren't duped. They were...