On the ninth of March 1974, a man walked out of the jungle on a small Philippine island carrying a rifle, five hundred rounds of ammunition, and several live grenades. His uniform was patched almost beyond recognition but his weapon was clean and oiled. He was fifty-two years old. He had been fighting the Second…
Every article about making friends as an adult answers the same question: where do you meet people. Join a club, take a class, say yes to things, try the app. And meeting people is genuinely easy. It’s also, mostly, not the problem. I should say up front that I haven’t made new friends as an…
I am a man in my forties, and I will openly admit I don’t have a whole pile of friends. I can feel insufficient in saying that. But it is what it is. I’m sure you’re not clueless on the topic. Statistics about men having no close friends. The Surgeon General on social disconnection being…
If you’re trying to find yourself, there’s an assumption buried in the phrase. That there’s a self already there, fully formed, that got mislaid somewhere, and the job is retrieval. You find things that exist and are lost. What’s usually underneath it is more ordinary. A lack of fit with your life. A sense that…
So the chances are that if you’re reading this you’re in your forties and at least thinking about a career change. There are probably two questions in your head. Should you? And if you should, can you? At this age there’s a sense that changing career is risky. With a mortgage, possibly kids, other commitments,…
A friend of mine studied marketing with me at university. When we graduated, I went in-house as a marketing executive at a software company and he went to work at an advertising agency. A year later he quit and went back to study law. I remember thinking: wow. All that time and energy put into…