I've spent my entire life in situations where the consequences were real and the answers weren't obvious.

As a kid, I learned to read a room before I knew that's what I was doing. My family was, depending on the day, hilarious and chaotic and a lot to handle. You figured things out or you didn't. Nobody was coming to help.

That turned out to be useful.

I started my career at Manhattan Theatre Club, moved to MTV Networks in the nineties, and spent the next two decades as a copywriter and creative director in advertising, working across entertainment, health, wellness, and personal finance. I've written global campaigns, executive presentations, song lyrics, and a Modern Love essay in the New York Times.

None of it was planned, exactly. All of it makes sense in retrospect, which is the only way life ever does make sense.

Along the way I've been through the kinds of things that either break you or teach you something worth passing on. I've loved people through impossible circumstances. I've held everything together when falling apart wasn't an option. I've also learned, later than I would have liked, the difference between enduring your life and actually choosing it.

I work with people who are good at everything except knowing when to stop. I speak about what it costs to hold it all together — and what becomes possible when you decide not to. And I write about the strange emotional calculus of being human, specifically the Gen X version of it, which involves a lot of competence, a lot of unprocessed feelings, and a striking lack of anyone asking if we're okay.

If any of that sounds familiar, you're in the right place.