How Does It Feel to Not Know?
Like everyone I know, I’ve tried and failed to stop thinking, talking, and now writing about the coronavirus. This week has been like watching an expensive piece of fabric methodically ripped, a piece of fabric we’ve been sitting on for a long while.
Spend Less, Appreciate More: A Few of My Favourite Things
The other day I dragged my two-year-old daughter on a lengthy series of errands. She protested in the beginning — “Playground! Playground!” — but once the first storeowner slipped her a black cherry lollipop, she warmed to the idea of making the rounds. “Another store?” she’d ask conspiratorially as we walked back to the car.
Machines That Grind Wonder
We have this recurring nightmare in my house where my wife and I are sitting in the kitchen after putting the kids to bed. After 20 minutes of silence upstairs, just as our withered and awkward adult personalities are again beginning to emerge, we hear a crackle from the baby video monitor which means someone is physically handling the microphone in my daughter’s room. We sink into our stools and resign ourselves to the punishment ahead. My 2 ½-year-old has rocked her wheeled crib across the room and is now cupping the baby monitor in her hands like an evil sorceress. Her nose and mouth fill the small video screen in the kitchen as she asks, brightly, “Can I wake up now?”
“In Your Light: Miraculous Courage”—A Hanukkah Guest Post
In this special Hanukkah edition, I’m delighted to share this short piece from my friend and colleague, Emily Herzlin, founder of Mindful Astoria. Emily is a writer and mindfulness teacher at Weill-Cornell Medicine, and is writing a book on the connections between Jewish traditions and mindfulness. Enjoy. —Dan Cayer
Originally published on Kveller.
Why I Lie
Lying has long presented an attractive option for diverting attention from uncomfortable details of my life. When I was in elementary school, soon after my parents’ divorce, I told my class that I went to Bill Clinton’s inauguration (which I did) and shook his hand as he walked down Pennsylvania Avenue (which I didn’t).
Leaving Brooklyn
About two months ago, my family and I drove our car out of Brooklyn, trailed by a 26 foot moving truck which was packed to the gills with our belongings. We’re out! Finito! Brooklyn no more (except for visiting friends, my wife’s haircuts, a concert next month…).
Vinnie & The Goose - A Westchester Fairytale
Within days of moving up here, I found myself chasing a goose across a Metro-North parking lot at 11 p.m. Had I lost it already?
Microdosing (for underachievers)
Originally published in Human Shift Magazine, a bi-annual book where culture, sport and spirituality meet.
You might take acid and go to work. In fact, you might take acid specifically because you are going to work.
In Silicon Valley, because coffee only goes so far, the search for greater focus and productivity has led to a reboot of psychedelics: microdosing. To microdose is to take a small enough quantity of a drug to elicit no adverse side effects (i.e., no hugging of office plants), yet high enough to experience subtle physiological benefits. A typical microdoser takes about one-tenth of a full psychedelic dose. This is not the presentation of psychedelics as in the 1960s; no one is climbing aboard painted school buses at LinkedIn HQ. Timothy Leary’s famous call to “Turn on, tune in, drop out” has been adapted to fit within the constraints of family and even corporate life. Hell, you might make a lot more money on drugs. Tim Ferriss, the Silicon Valley investor and author of The 4-Hour Workweek, has said, “The billionaires I know, almost without exception, use hallucinogenics on a regular basis.”