Category: Uncategorized
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Why to Choose Living
Actor, Robin Williams; Fashion designer, Kate Spade; Chef, Anthony Bourdain all killed themselves. Prodigal computer hacktivist, Aaron Swartz, hung himself at 26 years old. Miss USA, Chelsi Smith, is the most recent ‘influencer’ suicide as of this writing. In 2020, it’s estimated 1.2 million of U.S. attempted suicide, and over 126 a day actually succeeded […]
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STOP Believing. START THINKING
My father is a fervent Republican. My mother was a Democrat. Once saw him put his fist through the solid maple cabinet an inch from my mother’s head because her vote was going to cancel his in the second Reagan election. Though he never hit her, connected anyway, he often shouted, slammed things, threw things, […]
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On Being Fat
On the plane coming back from Hawaii, the guy seated in front of me was easily over 300 pounds. He bulged over the armrests on either side of him. When he leaned his seat back, it came back so far it was virtually in my face. A teenage boy of equal girth sat next to him […]
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Why NOT to Be Proud You’re Fat
#Litchat hosted an author on Twitter who’d recently written a book about being proud to be obese. The author tweeted of being 310 pounds on her 5′ 5” frame. She touted that she was in “great shape, healthy and happy.” Others joined in and congratulated her on finally accepting herself for being fat. And I […]
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Between What is Said and What is Heard
On our drive from school the other day my tweenage son told me a classmate had offered him a joint. I’d been preparing for this moment, staging it in my head for years, ready with my bag full of allegorical stories of my reckless youth before easing into the “Why drugs are bad for you” […]
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Living with Depression
I imagine when all is black in my head and heart, I’ll write something brilliant that justifies the darkness within. But when I’m depressed like this, I can not motivate myself to create, or do anything beyond succumbing to my sadness. This essay is simply on depression, living with it in a world that wears masks, […]
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Chemically Sane
For Lisa, my BFF since elementary school, until her other took over… — I haven’t always been mentally ill. I’ve always been on the fringe of the norm, the glass wall between me and humanity kind of thing, but I didn’t feel myself start to fragment until my mid-twenties. The first time it happened I […]
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The Psychology of Marketing
I teach my students at Berkeley and Stanford that the foundation of marketing is psychology. Marketing is manipulating people to do what we want, so to get people to do what we want, we have to understand how they think, what they feel, and why. I also teach that the foundation of psychology, what motivates […]
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Therapy for Change or Ego?
Lonely? You bet! So is most everyone else, even people with partners. And no need to be jealous of the relationship they have, since they likely don’t have the fulfilling romance you imagine they do. Sad? Of course! Lonely is depressing! Anxious these days? Or any days navigating our modern world? Sure you are. As […]
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The Layering of Life
Hiking on the Matanuska Glacier in Alaska a few weeks ago, I was trying to capture the iridescent blue/green light coming through the ice below my feet with my Canon Digital SLR. I took a few shots, with different apertures, from different P.O.V.s, but knew when I put them on the computer the picture would flatten. The […]
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