Archive - The Next Thing

The Next Next Thing: The Lady Takes the Cure

In which your correspondent negotiates the post-COVID hellscape of healthcare and gets serious about radical self-care

Oct 21, 2024 •

August 2023

On the Utility of Metaphors for Disasters

Aug 3, 2023 •

February 2023

On the Nature of Understanding

A reminder that we live in the blurry spaces between domestication and chaos

Feb 9, 2023 •

January 2023

Warrior Bunny says The Next Thing was here all along

A look back at my first year of The Next Thing

Jan 29, 2023 •

November 2022

Writing Lessons: The "Lowering Medicine" of Community

"We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane...."

Nov 21, 2022 •

October 2022

"Fatuous navel gazing," lowered standards, and the art of the graceful return

I've been gone for a while and now I'm back. That's as graceful as it gets and I'm trying to lower my standards and be okay with that.

Oct 3, 2022 •

March 2022

Let go or be dragged: A Zen proverb for March

Mixing metaphors, homilies, horoscope advice, and one theorem from statistics

Mar 17, 2022 •

February 2022

Stalking needs a #MeToo movement

What's happening to Kim Kardashian is nauseatingly common; just ask me; just ask anyone.

Feb 17, 2022 •

Old Dog Energy and the Optimism of Puppies

Puppy school, a lovely beach, and wisdom from Bull Durham

Feb 16, 2022 •

The North* Remembers

Forecasts of "wintery mix" for the Central Texas region are giving us flashbacks of a very bad week last year. (*North Austin)

Feb 2, 2022 •

Ask a Smart Person: An Interview with Melody Warnick

Talking about loving where you live, making friends as adults, and the motivational power of misery with the person who literally wrote the book on the…

Feb 1, 2022 •

January 2022

Grief Counselors have Arrived and I Can't Focus

On the word "cremains," lumpy timing, my mind's tendency to wander, and a couple of puppies currently raging through the front hallway with what may be…

Jan 26, 2022 •

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