A Love Note to Amateurishness

I’m an amateur word nerd. Nobody pays me to rave about etymology or to irritate my friends with my Wordle score every morning. But I like it that way. Being an amateur is wonderful. After all, the root of the word is “one who loves”. Is there any better reason to do something than…

Your Wins Exist. Celebrate Them.

I’ve always been obsessed with the future. As a child, I dreamed of asking my house robot to fly my car for me. If you’d told me about an impending vast network of connected computers, I’d have been thrilled at the prospect. After all, what results could that possibly produce except uniting humanity through…

What to Do When Trying New Things is No Longer Exciting

Suffering comes in many flavors, but one of the cruelest is when something we used to love becomes a chore. Disliking something that once brought me joy makes me feel sad, hopeless… and even a little guilty, as if I’m betraying myself somehow.

I feel lucky that, these days, most things I spend…

Can Niceness Change the World?

Like seemingly everyone I know, I watched Ted Lasso last year. It’s an Apple TV series about an American football coach being appointed as a manager in real football—or soccer, as it’s also called.

But this isn’t a typical sports show. I’ve seen the premise of Ted described as simply “what if a…