How to Deal with the Manager from Hell. Earth, it seems, is populated with denizens from Hell. Dramatic, not? Words have become cheap. “From Hell.” “The Devil himself.” That balding little guy in the corner office, sporting an old-fashioned tie…
What do you see when you look at the photograph? Chances are, you thought, “Wow, such a beautiful young woman. Some people just get it all.” And then you hear she passed away at the age of 21, after an…
The Death of Connection Song lyrics become a battlefield, filled with collective despair that torpedoes the illusion of connection. We sing along to heartbreak anthems, breakup ballads, hopeless fantasies, because singing the chorus is easier than facing the silence alone.…
Ferd’s Core Human Fracture of Ego vs Healing. Ferd’s steely blue eyes pierced the Teams filters with venom. He had been accused of not wanting a project to succeed, of merely earning his salary while sitting all day. I could…
I watched a live video of a village being destroyed. How do I respond to tragedy, and to the scary things I witness daily? How do I handle it? This question becomes universal, even if you never articulate it in…
As a youth, my hair was routinely massacred by Adventure Barbers. A couple of middle-aged gents operated a lucrative gig on the outskirts of my community. No matter what style you requested, you always got short back and sides. School…
The dirty secret of side-hustle culture is that if your life is already crammed with stress and chaos, your creative hustle isn’t going anywhere. You can romanticize the beauty of the escape plan all you want, but creativity needs oxygen.…
THE HUNGER FOR MEANING Scrolling while your soul starves. It’s important to me to remember that people also experienced existential crises in the 80s. One of my schoolmates committed suicide. He stared out of the window one day, just before…
You won’t change the world. You light a fuse in blue-collar Joe who’s had enough. He burns down what you couldn’t torch. You guard the embers. You wait for the next spark.
Promotions that feel like punishments. “Congratulations. You now get to drown with a better title.” Glen emerged from his military career as a Major. Nice dude. He was surprisingly “unmilitary” in bearing. We reminisced about trivial shared experiences like inedible…