I write about almost anything. Right now clients are paying me for articles on:

• Narcissists
• One of the most powerful telescopes in the world
• The COVID-19 vaccines
• Acne scars
• Fighting racism with lament
• Insomnia in the pandemic

That’s not everything I’m working on, but you get the idea. Plus I write about writing, health, cooking, personal growth, and productivity on Medium.

Here’s a little bit about me:

I grew up in a great family in Swansea, a middle-class coastal town that’s in the part of Massachusetts that’s not Boston, Cape Cod, or the Berkshires. It’s where I learned to love clam boils and morning mist rising…

When my son was a year old he was sick with bacterial meningitis. At first, we thought he had a cold and we were overreacting as first-time parents. But he got sicker and sicker.

We took him to the pediatrician. Within minutes they were starting IV antibiotics and calling for an ambulance to take him to the children’s hospital. He fought for his life for nearly a week, lying unconscious in a sterile hospital crib.

Finally, he pulled through. But before we could take him home the doctors wanted to check his hearing, since meningitis can cause hearing loss. …

Unless I’m sleeping, my phone is almost always within arm’s reach. It’s what I use for my work phone calls and texts, so I keep it by my side during the day. In the evenings I use it to play Words With Friends, learn Spanish, and manage my finances.

That all feels productive and doesn’t stress me out.

But I also get sucked into social media. I’ll pop onto Facebook “just for a minute,” and look up 20 or 30 minutes later. Sometimes, I’m aware that I’m not even interested in what I’m looking at, but yet I keep looking.

…

I am one of those people who put stress into “good” or “bad” buckets. If the event triggering the stress was positive, like starting a new job, that would be good stress in my book.

Something negative triggering the stress, like missing an important deadline, meant the stress was bad.

But I talked to a couple of experts as part of my research for an article for NBC TODAY. And they told me that I’m looking at stress all wrong.

Whether I see the event as positive or negative, stress is just stress. …

Here’s how one day started for me last week. I overslept. When I was walking my dog, I ended up chatting with my neighbor for a few minutes, which set me further behind schedule. Then the cat threw up on the bed, so I had to wash the sheets.

I didn’t have time to eat breakfast. I had just enough time to swipe on some lipstick before I had to log into a Zoom meeting. The meeting took up the rest of the morning, and it ended with a lot more work for me than I expected.

By then it…

Just about all of us are a little bit narcissistic, at least some of the time. If we’re honest, most of us can point to a time when we look down our noses at other people. We feel special and superior. We get self-involved.

But usually, we don’t feel that way most of the time. Narcissists, on the other hand, go through life with a sense of entitlement and self-importance.

If you’re a narcissist, you probably don’t think the way you behave is a problem. But you might have narcissistic tendencies if you:

• Have trouble in your relationships because you…

I was one of those people who didn’t have to worry about my weight for years. I ate mostly healthy foods, but I didn’t worry about how much avocado, Greek yogurt, or olive oil I was eating.

Even when I gained weight during my two pregnancies, I lost it soon after. My weight settled into a five-pound range and stayed there.

Until it didn’t.

As I got older, my weight climbed to the top of that range and kept creeping up. My jeans were getting tighter and my runs were getting slower. …

The freedom that comes from being a full-time creative professional can be exhilarating. No boss! No set hours! Live your life on your terms! But then the reality sets in.

You’re working at 1 a.m. because you procrastinated all day. Your stomach is in knots because you have a deadline barreling down toward you and you know you should have started sooner. Living life on your own terms has become wearing the same sweatshirt every day and eating cheese sticks from the back of the fridge for lunch.

As a content creator, you want to be doing what you love—…