Category Archive

This is life in my 50s: I have a half-time job I enjoy. I go on date nights. I see friends and make an effort to stay in touch with older family members. I spend time on fitness, even as the betrayals of the body come at me in a crescendo. I have a decent amount of time on my …

The title of this post, a quote from the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips, is one of many gems sprinkled throughout an essay by Rachel Kushner in a recent New Yorker magazine. The rather startling phrase sums up a great deal of longing experienced in youth, when the wrong hair, the wrong clothes and all the secrets you do not yet know …

The mathematical concept of degrees of freedom is familiar enough to recall having studied when I got my MPH, but not relevant enough on a daily basis to remember the definition. It has vaguely to do with the number of values in a statistical calculation that can vary, affecting the distribution curve of any given statistical model. If that is …

I took a walk this week – it was perfect California summer day of clear skies and sunshine illuminating the Pacific. It was made even better by the company of a tier one friend. The friend and I both have kids applying to college, and the process is a grind. Part of what we discussed was that in high school, …

Back in 2016, I fired my financial advisor and moved all of our assets to Vanguard. It took just shy of 2 years of intensive reading of books and blogs (and not a little bit of chutzpah) to toughen up and assume accountability for our retirement portfolio. 9 years later, we have reached a unique and exciting milestone in our …

I’m making myself an iced coffee on a lazy Thursday afternoon. I am off on a weekday, which feels luxurious. It’s not just having more time – I live like a baller. Let me explain the many ways, small and large, that my life feels abundant. I added some oat milk to my iced coffee just now. Oat milk is …

This morning brought a solid 2-3 foot swell to my local break, a sandy reef. I was out among a dozen surfers, the lone bodyboarder in the (just after) dawn patrol crowd. I should clarify a couple of points at the outset. First, I do not surf the chest-thumping, testosterone-heavy breaks that make the headlines for hooliganism and size. My …

I spent the holiday weekend visiting family, and a central part of the experience was spending time with my 4 month old nephew. To hold a newborn as a parent of adolescents is to open a firehose onto your limbic system. The memories can overwhelm and leave you in a state of emotional diarrhea. My first morning back, I woke …

I’ve always nursed a secret author crush on Jonathan Franzen. His tales of dysfunctional families, timely narratives dissecting interpersonal politics and his writing as a committed birder have endeared him to me over the years. After devouring his novel Crossroads, which mentions the area where I live, I sent him  an email via his publisher pointing out that a bird …

We’ve had a couple of major knucklehead moments among the men in our household this past week, and they are remarkable enough to be worth noting – we’ve earned the public shaming. The first belongs to my son. A month ago, his all frosh high school team overcame the odds to beat an all-star senior team in the school trivia …