My father woke at 5 a.m. for forty-something years. I grew up watching him do it. By the time I was in my teens, I had decided this was the most disciplined thing I'd ever seen. He was a school teacher. Long days at the front of a classroom, ...Read More
The day I handed over my office keys, I expected to feel relief. I'd spent over thirty years in education — teacher, career coach, executive manager — and I'd helped countless people navigate transitions. I knew the theory. I knew William Bridges' three phases of transition by heart. ...Read More
You leave the dinner party. You weren't even talking that much. Maybe you said five sentences across two hours. And yet you fall into the passenger seat feeling like you've just finished a marathon. The easy explanation is the one you've heard your whole life. You're an introvert. People ...Read More
I'm going to start this one with a confession. I've spent most of my adult life trying to figure out which kind of father I had. I don't mean this as a complaint. My father is, by most measures, a good man. He stayed. He worked. He provided. He ...Read More
I want to describe a specific period of my life, somewhere between thirty-three and thirty-five, that I didn't recognize as a problem at the time, because it wasn't, by any conventional measure, a problem. I was, on paper, fine. The restaurants were running. I had a flat I liked. ...Read More
My father bought a house in 2003. He retired in 2018. Between those two dates, I would estimate, conservatively, that he made nine hundred trips to the hardware store down the road from his house. That is not an exaggeration. I'm not even sure it's an overstatement. He went, ...Read More