There’s nothing like success to make you a loser magnet. A friend of mine recently won a pretty prestigious writing award. He was excited, but then a week or two later when we were talking he was feeling kind of bummed out. He was shocked at the amount of criticism and pettiness and envy he was getting about his win. I reassured him that the negative reactions were a sure sign he was a success. Nobody hates you unless they see you as a competitive threat. Being attacked for standing …

I called a friend of mine over the weekend to see if she wanted to have lunch this week. I waited until after dinner because I know weekends are their time for the kids. They usually eat dinner, watch a movie, put the kids to bed and then each of them head off to their respective computers about 8 or 8:30 to answer email and whatever before heading to bed around 10 p.m. I know this because that has been their routine for more than three years.
When she answered she …

I’m fat. I know it. Most fat people do - especially if they’re kids. We don’t want to be fat, and we struggle with how we got that way and how to change our lives. We aren’t usually loved or wanted because we don’t fit the model for “cool” or “fun” and we don’t feel good being out in public or hanging out with other people. That fuels the comfort food, which in turn fuels the weight gain. It sucks.
In recent months I’ve learned what many people don’t realize about …

A friend of mine (Richard Davis) from my newspaper days sent me a photo today. Perhaps you’ve seen one similar to it before. The story is usually the same - a duck or goose family gets stranded somewhere and has to cross a busy highway to get to a water source. This happened in Danville, VA recently and Richard stopped to photograph it.
The Humane Society was called, and responded and as Richard tells me soon all eight ducklings were soon on their way. People are quick to rescue the …