I find the paradox intriguing (and a little appetizing).
Specifically, the classic Iyengar & Lepper (2000) study on attraction vs. simplicity.
The researchers found that in an upscale market, shoppers were more likely to stop at a table offering samples of 24 vs. 6 jams, but they were actual...
The first temptation — to simply “wing it” — was easily fought off.
Interestingly, that phrase, I’ve since learned, comes from 19th-century theater actors who, not having enough time to learn their lines, would hover near the corner of the stage (“the wings”), ready to receive prompts from the scri...
I’m not sure where it came up with the name, but I went with it nonetheless.
Only afterwards did I ask why it had made that particular choice.
(The theme again this month is Discernment — meditation HERE).
The ChatGPT response was that “Orion” was:
memorable
specific
...
As mysteries go, I concede it’s not particularly CSI-worthy.
Even so, it’s haunted me all week.
Things began to get weird almost three weeks ago when my iPhone died in the January winter storm.
My new phone is superior in every way — except for one loss.
My favorite angel card app — ...
This week, life doubled down on an already uncanny synchronicity.
I’ve recently begun writing a new screenplay, something I haven’t done in several years.
The day before my haircut with my barber Mitch, I’d spent the night researching movies where one role is played by more than one actor at differen...
It was a twist in the conversation I never saw coming.
Interestingly, it began with every author’s fantasy:
An incredibly sweet email from a total stranger saying how much she and her friend loved my novel.
After several perceptive comments, she concluded with a question.
She and her ...
It was almost — quite literally — a Freudian slip.
Except it was my trunks I’d left behind, something I only discovered when I got home.
It was around a decade ago, during another cold winter, when the same impulse hit me:
An intense longing for heat.
Imagine my delight when I found an exc...
Our attitudes were remarkably different.
Mine: reluctant and begrudging.
His: eager and anticipatory, as though he were suddenly ushered into an awesome party he’d just heard about.
I’m writing, of course, about Vlad’s first visit to the Apple Store, days after the 14 inches of snow that...
It’s not that I didn’t believe the stories I’d heard.
It’s just that I witnessed only two instances of such destruction.
Specifically, I got my chocolate lab Belle from my sister when she was just past puppyhood and therefore less inclined to chew everything in her path.
During the first fift...
