What’s curious about “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” is that it makes it sound like working is bad, which is the most un-American sentiment there is. In fact, Americans tend to believe work is what determines our morality and worthiness, so what drives the DWYL idea?

I once took a job at Whole Foods. I lasted three days. My co-workers were great, I liked the customers and the work itself was fine, but I came up against two big problems: the scheduling and the pain in my feet. Retail scheduling is brutal…

I used to envy divorced people.

I had a protracted spinsterhood that lasted into my 40s and towards the end of my 30s I discovered that between the 1960s and 2005 being divorced had gone from being a liability to being preferred. A conversation with a man I’d met through online dating went like this:

“Have you ever been married?” he asked over the phone. We’d liked each other’s profiles and were chatting to see if we wanted to meet in person.

“No,” I said. I was 38.

“Have you ever been engaged?”

“No.”

“Have you ever lived with anyone?”

…

When a dying wish conflicts with the needs of the living, which should take priority? Some cases are easier than others. A friend told me of a terminally ill woman who felt so worried about leaving her dog behind that she made her daughter promise to have the dog euthanized after she died. The daughter promised, but after her mother was gone, she made the decision to find the dog another home instead. Should the daughter live with the guilt of having disobeyed her mother’s dying wish? Many people would probaby say no.

But where’s the cutoff point? Several years…

Yesterday was my birthday. For weeks I’d had a feeling of despondency and sadness. It perplexed me because what did I have to feel sad about? Or maybe a more correct way to put it was: what did I have to feel sad about that had just happened in the previous few weeks? Nothing.

But the approaching birthday tugged on my sense of what I wanted in life and it felt bad. This wasn’t even a milestone birthday, so what the hell was going on?

Yesterday a friend gently reminded me that the pandemic has made everyone’s lives worse (with…

In my 30s and 40s I was a gym rat. I would get up as early as 5:00 a.m. to exercise hard, driven by the fear of becoming fat. With free weights and restricted eating, I desperately worked to stay slim and conventionally attractive (even years after becoming a wife).

When my marriage began slipping into the toilet, I gave up all exercise. What was the point? Staying thin and hot hadn’t kept my husband interested in me, so I started eating everything. When I hit size 18, he ended the marriage.

Post-divorce my gym boycott solidified. I spent years…

Let’s say your name is Chris and you have a friend named Rita. Let’s say you see her right outside of your usual coffee shop, while she’s carrying her latte out and you’re on your way in for your morning pick-me-up.

You say, “Hey, Rita, what’s up?”

She steps out of the way for others and says, “Hey, Chris. My new job is driving me crazy.” Rita’s face is more flushed than usual and she looks like she’s already worked a whole day.

She continues, “Yesterday my boss asked me to find out how to ship a Tibetan carpet from…

I’m 54 years old, 5'2″ tall (1.57 m), 197 pounds (89 kg), and I wear a size 20 (52 EU). I became fat at the age of 46 and after a few years, I decided I wanted to bend easily again. In 2016 I began seeing a Nutrition Response Testing practitioner and one of the the things I wanted to work on was getting rid of my fatness (I’m avoiding using the word “weight” since fitness experts say you should focus on inches and size, not pounds). In five years, the treatment of Claire Boye-Doe of Gnosis Natural Health has…

As a new adult in my 20s, things weren’t easy. I needed to establish my independent life with a job I at least liked while still in the grip of my mother’s needs. But as lost as I often felt, I had faith I’d figure things out.

My 30s weren’t as much better as I’d hoped. I changed careers a couple of times, and after years of moodiness and feeling easily sunk by setbacks, I received a diagnosis of depression. It was actually a relief because now that my struggle had a name I could get treatment and the grayness…