As a parent, it's sometimes difficult to know which of life's hard knocks are appropriate for children to know about and when it's time to introduce them.

I myself came under considerable criticism a few years back when I spoke to my then five year-old daughter about the...

A while back on Facebook, my friend Sharon Hyman -- of Neverbloomers fame -- posted the following status update:

"If you could go back and Etch-a-Sketch away some part of your life, what would it be?"

Wow. What a great question. I've always believed that regret...

Amid the many changes in my life of late, I've recently joined the advisory board of a company.

It's a small company in the education/journalism field, one that I came across during my job hunt. And although they didn't have a job for me, I really got on with the...

I've always loved weddings. When I was younger, I saw them as a giant, free party.

And I still do. But as I age -- and move out of the wedding phase of life and into the era when everybody starts getting divorced -- I don't go to...

Once, when I was just out of college and living with three friends in Washington, D.C., I told one of my friend's mothers that my roommates and I were going to throw a party.

"Oh?" she asked. "What will you serve?"

I paused, unsure how to answer.

"Um... beer?" I...

Well, it's arrived. My first week in my new job.

After working for myself out of my home for five years, it's been really strange -- and exciting -- to re-immerse myself in an office culture. New people! A new building! New snack options!

I've spent most of the week...

On Monday I start a new job.

Alongside the relief that comes with accepting a job offer, there are inevitably a whole new set of concerns that crop up as well. In particular -- at least if you're like me -- you fear that once you embark upon...

As I intimated a few weeks back, I'm shortly to curtail my freelance career and go back to work full-time.

I've been looking for a job for a while now, so this turn of events is a huge weight off of my shoulders financially, emotionally and...

It's no secret that computers have changed our lives completely.

In the personal realm, we are more connected than ever before. We are sharing more ideas, "chatting" more with friends, and performing our lives out loud via constant status updates, even if, (paradoxically), we are also lonelier than...

Amid the flurry of research on happiness these days, it's easy to lose sight of another side of adulthood: Many of us all suffer from loneliness.

As a recent article in The Atlantic noted, various studies have shown loneliness rising drastically over a very short period...

Having just spent five days hiking up in England's glorious Lake District, I've got a newfound commitment to exercise. True, we spent a fair bit of our holiday touring pubs, napping and watching movies. But it was really invigorating to wake up every day and take a long...

I'm teaching a bunch of classes on blogging later today at a local university.

So I've spent the past 24 hours immersed in "the art of blogging."

One of the great things about teaching is that it forces you to reflect on all that you've learned about a...

I spent this morning at a cross-country race at my daughter's school, watching kids aged seven to eleven run their hearts out on Hampstead Heath.

I've had a change of heart recently about sports. As a die-hard drama geek growing up, I neither played a lot of sports...

Over on See Jen Write, blogger Jennifer Taylor posted a list of jobs she'd have if she couldn't be a writer. They included a forest ranger, a meteorologist, a TV news broadcaster, a librarian and a water slide tester. (Yup, that last one really does exist...

I read a great post yesterday on the online magazine The Tribe about why adults ought to read more children's books. The author argues that great children's books share much in common with great adult books in terms of plot, character and pacing. The difference is that because...

I've always been fascinated by attempts to document personality types. Part of that fascination surely stems from the fact that in another life, I'd be a psychotherapist. And part of it is that as I go about the networking process that is part and parcel of looking for...

One of the hallmark features of adulthood is believing that you have the means to better yourself. As you step outside the comfort zone of the home in which you were raised, part and parcel of your newfound freedom and responsibility is harnessing that independence towards making something of yourself.

Shortly after my son was born 11 years ago, a friend of mine -- the father of three much older kids -- asked me how I was doing. At that point, I think we'd moved safely into that phase where I was no longer feeding my son every three seconds,...

Well, it's that time of year again. The New Year rolls around and my inbox/RSS Feed/Facebook page is inundated with the resolutions of friends and strangers far and near: Lose five pounds! Run a marathon! Write that #$%@ novel!

I'm a big fan of making resolutions. (As those of us...

For the last four days, I've been down for the count. A horrible stomach virus swept through our household, claiming first my daughter, then my husband and myself (simultaneously) and then, finally, pulling my son down with us.

Unlike my daughter and my husband, who suffered a shorter, more violent...