Author: Jon

What really is there to say, at this point, that hasn’t been said already. I could go into all sorts of analysis. How healing it will be for Trump to be gone. The catharsis of repudiating him, albeit not nearly as heavily as we would have all liked to see. The mess of legal battles…

Video games. What do we think of when we think of those words…Childish? Silly? Stupid? Military shooter? Have I got some news for you—things have changed. Yes, we still have our Mario and Zelda games, and yes they are still wonderful experiences in their own right, and no they haven’t started featuring a deeper story…

My last two blogs both discussed habits, including how we form them and how they can be damaging or helpful. Today I’m going to discuss a habit that I’ve developed that I’m regularly working to dissolve, and it’s one that you may have developed as well. But, like many long-term habits, this one has been…

Last month I wrote about addiction, a prime example of a bad habit. This probably seems obvious; if you are addicted to something, you are using it or doing it without control, often to the deficit of your well-being. But what about other habits? Are they always bad? The truth is that habits can be…

Addictions. We all have them.  Coffee. Television. Soda. Video games. Working. Self-deprivation. Sports. Gambling. And of course, drugs and alcohol.  To discuss this important and sensitive subject, I figured it would be useful to relate some of my own experiences.  I majored in psychology in college. One reason I did this was because I didn’t…

Most of us will have a moment in our life when we realize that we were wrong about something. Hopefully, we’ll have many of them. Not because it’s good to be wrong, but because it suggests that you’re mindful of your inability to always be right. Despite our very best efforts, despite our past experiences,…

I recently completed a 5-day silent retreat offered by the Insight Meditation Society with Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzberg. It was a virtual retreat, which made for an interesting experience, some pros, some cons. This retreat was particularly dense with dharma teachings, so I figured I would share just the tiniest bit here on this…

People have a lot to be angry about these days. While it’s true that we’ve made incredible progress in reducing some of the worst afflictions of poverty and disease over the past few decades—acknowledging that of course we still have far to go—there are countless other ills that we experience or hear about every day….

By all accounts, I shouldn’t be feeling good today.  Yesterday, I was supposed to complete a written project assignment from a prospective employer. Instead, I submitted a request to withdraw my application. March 2020 marks five months that I’ve been unemployed and out of school. I had applied for this position after being informed that…

Burnout. We’ve all heard the word, and we probably have some general understanding of it—it’s what happens when a person works too hard or too much—but unless you’ve experienced it yourself, you probably don’t fully get it. And if you have experienced it yourself, well, odds are that you waited too long to recognize the…