I can’t make up my mind about whether unhappiness is a fundamentally lonely or social experience. On the one hand, it’s the most collective of all human emotions, the one true commonality. No matter who we are, how we grew up, or where we live on the planet, we’re all susceptible to the same fears, […]

This piece also appeared in The Huffington Post.
A month ago, I woke up feeling peaceful for the first time in months. I’m 29, I had just closed on my first apartment, and I was leaving a five-year relationship that, despite my dogged hopes of marriage, had become a stew pot of resentment and anger. While […]

We like to give generations plenty of labels. It’s a little absurd, slapping a sticker on millions of people that just happened to be born in the same time range and proclaiming that they’re somehow all alike. But we do it anyway, and then spend our time finding examples of how our designated labels are […]

We tend to do things for reasons. We need to pay the bills, so we go to work. We need sustenance, so we hit Dunkin Donuts in the morning. We want to keep our jobs, so we sneak in up the freight elevator and through the back hall when we’re running late.
In fact, when […]

I’m great at developing relationships in my life. Most of them are meaningful, involved, and require a lot of time and effort. Granted, they aren’t all with actual human beings, but that’s somewhat beside the point.
Take Cat, for example. We have a complex and dynamic bond, mostly consisting of her making her needs known […]

Nope, this blog hasn’t been abandoned, left to float for an un-posted eternity through the endless folds of cyberspace. Look for updates soon!

There’s something deeply flawed about Valentine’s Day. It’s surprising, given that we’re talking about an entire holiday devoted to having fun with someone you find attractive, consuming decadent food and alcohol, exchanging cards, gifts, and statements of devotion, and, in all likelihood, getting laid. From that perspective, the idea that a ritual like this could […]

New Yorkers aren’t the happiest bunch. For any number of reasons (working too much, subsisting on mercury-laden tuna, living in $3,000-a-month concrete boxes surrounded by two thousand other concrete boxes at even more laughable prices) those who chose to live here don’t tend to be the happy-go-lucky type.
In a way, it’s a matter of […]

I’m not smart every day. Or even 85% of days. I’d lay the odds at around 5/6ths. Maybe that’s being generous.
I’ve learned to accept this, after countless mornings spent poring through WebMD to see if there’s some way my brain cells could have evaporated overnight. Writers love to flounder in self-created dramas about “the […]

People hate Christmas. They really do. When I was a child (a time period that includes the majority of my life so far, including the odd day or two in the present), I would listen to adults talk about how much they loathed the holidays, how the whole business was one earth-shattering headache, and all […]