Summary: Scott Barry Kaufman and Jordyn H. Feingold’s Choose Growth is a direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In an effort to transform our collective trauma into an opportunity for reflection and posttraumatic growth, Kaufman teamed up with Feingold to expand and operationalize the research from his previous book, Transcend, which upgraded Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs using a [...]
Greetings, dear friends of the present and curious citizens of the future. It’s been almost two and a half years since the pandemic began, and most of the people I know have quit the “COVID dance.” We’re done sheltering in place, done with social distancing, done with masking, and we all got vaccinated and boosted. [...]
We’ve Come So Far and We’re Right Back Where We Started What a strange year this has been! In some ways, 2021 felt like a time of incredible progress. COVID vaccinations became widely available, most schools and businesses resumed normal operations, and many people became more social and started reentering public spaces. There are also [...]
Greetings, dear friends of the present and curious citizens of the future. When I got vaccinated back in the spring, I thought I was done with the COVID-19 pandemic, at least personally. Well, as it turns out, the pandemic wasn’t done with me! The vaccines, we were told, were our ticket out of the months [...]
Greetings, dear friends of the present and curious citizens of the future. For my first pandemic journal of 2021, it’s hard to know where to start. I published my last journal about two months ago, and the pileup of news since then has been overwhelming. In just eight weeks, the pandemic got a lot worse [...]
Greetings, dear friends of the present and curious citizens of the future. No fancy language or poetic notions as I open today’s pandemic journal––just cold, hard facts. After about eight months of successful suppression, COVID-19 has finally come to Humboldt in earnest. November was by far our worst month since the pandemic began, with our [...]
Greetings, dear friends of the present and curious citizens of the future. It’s still dark out as I type these words, but a few minutes ago I heard a sound I’ve been longing for since June: raindrops pattering on the roof above my head. It’s probably just a momentary shower, but it’s the first earnest [...]
Greetings, dear friends of the present and curious citizens of the future. It’s been nearly three months since my last pandemic journal. I wish I could say the interval has been uneventful, marked only by the steady progress of sensible folks coping with inordinate strain. But this is 2020 America, where we blend flavors of [...]
Greetings, dear friends of the present and curious citizens of the future. On this gray May morning, I’m trying to articulate the best lesson I’ve learned from the pandemic thus far. There are so many things we are learning––as individuals, as families, as communities, as nations, as a species––that it’s impossible to huddle it all [...]
Greetings, dear friends of the present and curious citizens of the future. I come to you this morning in a difficult mental state––one with which I’m not very familiar. Nothing particularly eventful has occurred since my last journal, and yet my perspective has shifted in a way that I’m struggling to understand. I am feeling [...]