Five words of gentle advice — They told me she hadn’t eaten in a week. That she’d just said the day before how much she’d love a bagel, of all things. I didn’t know that last August when I bought a dozen and left them, warm and fresh, in the community kitchen at hospice one morning…

They just understand this one thing — He loomed over my shoulder, silent behind his dark, full beard. My high school art teacher, Mr. Baucom, had a habit of strolling among our desks during class. He’d assess our work silently, only sometimes offering advice: try this color, change your brushstroke, your perspective is off. I could feel…

It’s all about “U” — The midlife crisis is barely middle-aged. It’s the same age as Apple Jacks and Honeycomb cereal, and no older than the buzzing board game “Operation.” It came along around the same time as Gatorade, Yoplait, SpaghettiOs, and Kevlar. It’s basically a GenX-er. But unlike GenX it’s remembered, year after year…

When you’re overcome by a sense of “what if?” — I was underneath my desk, on my back, working to assemble furniture by flashlight. What was left of the evening sun slipped through the sliding glass door, as I balanced the desk’s top panel on my knees and fumbled with the flashlight and a screwdriver to attach one side straight…

5 quotes to live on, when things get dark — Somewhere in the darkness, one of my two dogs snored. Distant lightning strobed through the window blinds, still too far away for thunder. Sometime during the long, limbo hours between midnight and 3am, I began to dread the tired work day ahead after a sleepless night. There are countless reasons…

What if you’re letting the wrong thing lead you? — No one was looking. Grey afternoon light filtered through the windows on the far side of the museum room. The rain outside turned briefly to hail that tapped on the glass. I glanced around again: no one. And so, before someone could appear from around a corner, I reached out…

The sci-fi secret to keeping readers (over and over) — It had no structure and no bones. It had neither head nor tail to its gelatinous body, and no organs inside. All it had was an insatiable, malicious hunger to absorb the Earth and everything on it back in 1958 — starting with the old man who first poked it…

(and what it says for your creativity) — You don’t need to be a Ted Lasso fan to get it. You don’t need to have watched the show at all. Because if you write, or create, you’ve either learned this lesson — or you’re in the process of learning it (whether you know it yet or not). It’s…

Because you totally are — My son has no idea how good he’s gotten at Lego. He’s been practicing for years, ever since his busy, chunky little fingers could hold a Duplo block. But since he’s never kept many of his assembled creations there’s no record he can compare himself to. He has no trail…