In a few weeks, I’m going to visit my mom for her 90th birthday. It will be the first time all of her family will be together in one place. I keep thinking about the importance of this, how rare it is, and how lucky I am. I’ve also been reflecting on the many lessons she taught me, one of the most important coming from when I was pretty young. I was nine years old when we took a trip up to Camp Danbee in the Berkshires. It was a place founded by my grandparents in 1950, and i

When I was in middle school, I was a second-string junior varsity guard on my basketball team. My older sister was on the starting lineup of our high school varsity team. She got a lot of attention, and I wanted some of that. So the following fall, I dragged myself to tryouts to see if I could elevate my basketball game. Fifteen minutes in, I broke my right pinky finger trying to catch the ball. I walked off the court holding back tears, both embarrassed and relieved. I knew

Some of you may remember that last year I popped into your inbox and said, “I’m back.” And then… you didn’t hear from me again. What happened? Somewhere between finishing my book and trying to reconnect everything on the tech side, I may have temporarily broken Google and my email system. Not my proudest moment. But the bigger reason is simpler. What I thought was the final stretch of finishing my book took longer than I expected. A lot longer. Five years, actually. Most of y