Featured Posts
Career Blues and Blessings in Disguise
Writers are resourceful and resilient and always willing to take a (public) risk. Recently several of my friends have taken bold career steps that wouldn’t have been possible if they hadn’t been laid off from their full-time jobs. And I’ve met a couple of people who have other options in life but are choosing to enter the writing and editing melee. Let me introduce you to three of them.
Craft Beer and Confirmation Bias
Around 9 percent of Americans move every year, and here’s how we break down in our destination choices: “41 percent of movers preferred suburbs; 16 percent, small metropolitan areas; and only 13 percent leaned toward large metros. More surprising, 30 percent were seeking rural locations.” But I’m not surprised like author of that news story was — and I almost got to write about what that might have to do with beer.
Geek Alert: Network Science Says We Have More Control Than We Think
Network science helps explain why I am so optimistic that most people in the world ultimately have good intentions, and therefore why I’m able to confidently enter new situations with strangers day after day after day. The people I choose to connect with are the “cooperators” instead of the “defectors,” to use the language of game theory.
Welcoming: Who, Where, and Why
I thrive on self-expansion, and I have a hunch you do as well. Being exposed to new points of view fulfills people’s ”fundamental desire to expand the self—that is, to increase their self-efficacy, perspectives, competence, and resources.” Here’s why that matters in our own neighborhoods as well as new place.
Hosting Myself Out of a Party
What if you hosted a party and nobody came? Or worse, only one person came, so you had to put on a brave face for hours until the event was over and you could have a good, long cry?
It would be damn tempting to never have a party again. Or at least not a Soulard Mardi Gras parade pre-party.
But at some point during the long year between one Lent and the next, it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, there was another perspective on why people who had partied with me in the past didn’t return.
Cannamom Break Stereotypes?
Kimberlee Kesterson and Jessica Carroll have been cannabis users for longer than they’ve been parents—but both facets of their identity dovetail in STL Cannamoms, the social organization that they founded three years ago. And it turns out there were a lot of other parents just like them looking to connect and improve their well-being.
5 Paths to New Outdoor Adventures
My first time rappelling happened in France. I was with a longtime friend and her cousin, who only spoke French. He suggested something that I vaguely understood to be an outdoor activity. My friend agreed with gusto for both of us. And that’s how I found myself strapped to a rope and descending off an abandoned railroad bridge to practice. Then it was off to the real adventure on the cliffs of Ardeche.