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.A To-Do and Not-To-Do List If You Have Preteens.

As you may know, I have an 11 year-old son. Yikes! Preteen material! I think I am doing a great job raising him but sometimes I worry about losing the connection with my funny, vulnerable little boy as he gets older. But then, as time…

.The Big Inner Sadness.

Move across the country and hope the Sadness won’t find you, won’t follow you like a stray dog from country to country. Hope the Sadness isn’t just a dog on a leash, shadowing you always. Hope the Sadness can’t be as exaggerated as you are, hope the Sadness is more rooted. Perhaps the Sadness has friends, and a family, and can’t just pick up and go. Look at all this stuff the Sadness has accumulated wherever you are currently living. How’s the Sadnessd going to survive without all this stuff? Hope this isn’t one of those any-place-I-hang-my-hat-is-home-type situations where the Sadness hangs its hat on you. Hope that you are not the Sadness’s home, anywhere you go, no matter how far, no matter how quickly – the Sadness lives in you.

Move across the country, to another country and start a new adventure. Always big adventures. Create a brand-new life, buy a new set of furniture, a fresh autumn coat. Fill your day with distraction. Take a class, learn an instrument, visit your local library and crack open one of those books you always meant to get acquainted with, anything to make the days pass faster, to accumulate distance, to get you as far away as possible from the place that you left. Move across the country and watch the road signs shoot past you along the street. See the city recede in the distance behind the taped-up boxes obstructing your rearview. Settle somewhere fertile, plant a new you and watch you blossom. You can barely remember that old you now, the you who lived in that other place and was Sad. The old you wasn’t you; this is you. This is the you! The new you! The you always wanted to be.

You have friends now, a routine, a coffee shop where someone, as you saunter in, smiles and says, “The usual?” One night at a bar, late, you pick up a person that somehow grows into a habit – a person who gets to know not just the you you sometimes show, but the you you truly are; a person who – when you weren’t looking – slipped a naked, wounded heart into the pocket of your jacket with a bow and a note that said, “handle with care.”

One night, you will wake with a start in this person’s bed, you will discover yourself in this person’s arms, and you will disentangle yourself for the hundredth time and dress yourself for the hundredth time and try to leave this person’s apartment, but when you get to the door there will be a sticky note over the knob that says, “but what if this time you stayed?”

And you will turn around and get back into that person’s bed, and you will get back into that person’s arms, and you will stay there for a year and a half. And you will learn how to be very, very tender with that person’s naked, wounded heart. Or is it your heart that is wounded? That was wounded all along? What are you searching for? What are you running away from?

And when the Sadness catches up, tracks you down – when you return home one day, arms full of groceries, to find the Sadness sitting at the kitchen table, casually reading a paper as if it never left, eating a muffin as if this were all perfectly natural- when the Sadness looks up at you and says, “What did you think, buddy? What did you think was going to happen?” – when the Sadness smirks at you and says with a wry insistence that unravels you in an instant, “This is the real love story here, buddy, you and me”. When the Sadness reiterates that, sure, certain smaller sadnesses dull, but this Sadness, the Sadness has never stayed from your side, not really, this epitome of stability in an inconsistent world? The sadness will always catch up to you and when that happens, you can put your groceries down and walk back out the door again to close the door behind you. And run away. As you always do. Off to a new adventure.

You can keep driving until you hit a HELP WANTED sign dangling off the edge of the new country you want to explore. You can take the new job and get all your stuff shipped out to you or throw it in the river or burn it in a fire or donate it. Go for the hike along the water and breathe in the fresh sea air. Move across the country and start again someplace new or just stop and simply look within. The answer might be right there. Just look and listen. No need to go anywhere.

.Fun Facts on Kellog’s Cereal Boxes.

Dear Customer, Thank you for buying a box of Kellogg’s Cereal. We value you as a customer. Unfortunately during the time of manufacture, our computers were down. Since it is our goal to attract as many customers as possible, we rely heavily on the layout…

.Translation of Common Job Descriptions.

“Minimum of 2 years of experience in a similar role” Ideally, you will have at least 45 years of experience in this exact role. Though, we do want you to be fresh, hip, and innovative. So maybe you can be, like, a clone of Frank,…

.Super Specific Yoga Classes.

January. New Year – new me. This is the time when people have New Year Resolutions. One is for many to work out, sign up at the gym or finally take this yoga or pilates class. Here are some courses to sign up for. Enjoy. I hope you had a good start into 2025 and didn’t forget to laugh.

Yoga for Adults Who Did Something Weird to Their Backs After The Last Party

Fifteen-Minute Yoga for the Modern Woman Who Spent the First Ten Minutes of Her Free Time Having a Panic Attack (Actually Only Five Minutes of Yoga)

Cat Yoga Bring Your Cat

Yoga While Being on the Phone the Entire Time

Breathing Exercises Yoga for Anyone Who Did Not Get the Promotion

Cooldown Techniques Yoga if You Want to Resign But Are Not Sure Yet

Benji Dog Yoga (Yoga with your dog)

Naked Beer Yoga (yes, the instructor is naked and hands out beer to all the participants)

Yoga Video Where Instructor Loudly Says, “Wow, Good Job on All Those Planks!” to Impress Passersby (No Actual Planks)

Seven Hours of Corpse Pose, Which Is Definitely Not An Excuse to Take a Nap

Standing Warrior Pose Flow for the Empowered Woman Who Just Learned She Was Supposed to Be Cleaning Her Yoga Mat This Whole Time

Using a DIY Mat Spray You Looked Up Online That Doesn’t Clean Your Mat but Does Slick It in Tea Tree Oil, So Every Time You Do Downward Dog, You Sort of Just Slide to the Floor and Regret Your Life’s Choices Yoga

Yoga for Shamefully Giving Up on the Whole Cleaning Your Mat Thing and Just Buying A New Mat (Use Code BENJI for 20 Percent Off at Checkout)

Yoga to Survive a Packed Subway Car Ride During Rush Hour

Calming Breathing Exercises for the Moment When Teens Walk by, and You Can’t Remember If the Jeans You’re Wearing Are Good

Mindful Meditation for Remembering That When You Were a Teen, All Adults Were Basically Invisible to You, So You Have Nothing to Worry About but in a Very Sad, Non-Reassuring Way

Yoga for Grappling with Your Impending Irrelevance, but Make It Something Inspiring About Being Humble and Present Because Otherwise, You Can’t Live with These Uncomfortable Feelings

Yoga Where You Turn Around All the Time—Not Creepy but Just to See What the Others Are Doing

Yoga Where Instructor Reminds Us That Someday, Many Years in the Future, She Might Not Want to Practise Yoga Anymore, but Not for a Very, Very Long Time, So There Is No Point Worrying About It Yet

Yoga with Instructor, Where You’re the Instructor, Because You’ve Body Swapped in a Freaky Friday Situation to Learn an Important Lesson About Life and Love

Yoga Where Instructor Moves to Your Town and Decides to Be Your Friend In a Very Natural and Organic Way

People Can Bond over All Sorts of Things—It’s Best Not to Overthink It Yoga

Maybe you Start a Small Business and Brainstorm for Ideas Yoga

Full Brunch on your Mat Yoga

Yoga Where Instructor Lets You Sit on Her Mat and Pet Benji (His Fur Looks Very Soft)

Try to Avoid Touching Your Neighbor’s Pelvic Floor while we do this Yoga

Allow the Siren to Wash over You and Become Part of Your Inner Peace Yoga

If you Fall Over, you’re Just Building Muscle Memory Yoga

If you Fall on your Face give me a Wave and I can Come Over with a Chemical Ice Pack Yoga

Let’s not and say we did Yoga

.Happy New Year 2025.

To round up this year I want to say that 2024 treated me really well. It was amazing and loaded with changes – good and bad ones, sad, painful, inspiring, loving, stressing and relaxing. My son and I are healthy which is the most important…

.Home Alone.

In my house, Christmas Time means cuddling up on the couch with hot chocolate to watch Home Alone and Home Alone 2 on repeat. My son and I love it so much and it has become our tradition. And obviously we love Kevin. The other…

.What City Balcony Designers Think.

DESIGNER 1: The investors want us to make extremely small urban apartments more enjoyable. Got any ideas?

DESIGNER 2: Yes. Extremely small balconies.

DESIGNER 1: That’s genius. How small are we talking?

DESIGNER 2: Just big enough for one person to stand.

DESIGNER 1: How about half as big?

DESIGNER 2: That’s the best idea I’ve ever heard. But isn’t that still too big?

DESIGNER 1: Yes. Let’s make them smaller.

DESIGNER 2: I’ve never lived in the city, but it feels like we’re onto something.

DESIGNER 1: Me neither, and I completely agree.

DESIGNER 3: Hey, I heard you’re working on an extremely small urban apartment project. Do you need more help from someone who has also never lived in a city?

DESIGNER 1: Yes.

DESIGNER 3: Perfect. Let’s put some balconies in complete shade and some in direct sunlight. Never anything in between.

DESIGNER 2: And there should always be something dripping from the balcony above, even when it’s dry outside.

DESIGNER 1: You know what would be great, too? If the exhaust vent from the neighbor’s dryer was positioned at eye level on each balcony so you have to smell your neighbor’s clothes.

DESIGNER 2: Outstanding. But which apartments should have a balcony?

DESIGNER 1: Only the ones facing a major street. It’s my understanding that people who live in cities like seeing, smelling, and hearing traffic at all times.

DESIGNER 3: I couldn’t agree more. I have a cousin who visited a city once, and he said that everyone there does traffic as a hobby. Also, they hate privacy.

DESIGNER 1: Terrific. We’ll put all of the balconies really close to each other.

DESIGNER 2: Wait, we forgot to enclose the balconies with the strongest metal railings ever made. The whole reason people move to cities is because they yearn for strong metal things and hate things that are soft and natural.

DESIGNER 1: Plus, they need something to tie their clotheslines to, which is a thing they all use.

DESIGNER 3: Just make sure there are wide enough gaps between the railings to accidentally drop things through.

DESIGNER 1: Great idea. What’s the point of having an extremely small balcony if not for exposing yourself to the possibility of killing a passerby with a small household item?

(All designers nod in agreement.)

DESIGNER 3: Hey, I have a question for another project I’m on: Do city people like access to parking?

DESIGNER 1: Only if it’s underground, extremely difficult to use. And smells like pee.

DESIGNER 3: You’re not gonna believe this…

.Survival of the Fittest.

Look, this place needs to be administrated, and I’m the guy to do it. I know you’ve been doing your best, but you’ve been held back. You haven’t been given what you need to be successful. And I’m not talking about money. I’m not talking…


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