What do you do when you’re stressed and need relief? There are quite a few options, from meditating, enjoying relaxing music or tea, all the way to exercising or hugging a friend or a pet. But one surprisingly powerful tool turns out to be writing poetry. And here’s something potentially even more powerful: writing formal poetry.

Breast cancer and treatments

I discovered that when I had breast cancer some 25 years ago. I feared for my life, and I was also afraid of the treatments that loomed in my immediate future. What a catch-22.

I’m a wimp when it comes to medical procedures. I…

Do you have a small, local business? Then you’ve surely noticed that local business marketing has changed. Due to the pandemic, there’s a lot less foot traffic for those who have stores or local offices. Networking events are rare these days, and if they happen at all, they’re online.

But pandemic or not, all local businesses should be taking advantage of the plentiful tools the internet has to offer. You probably already have a business marketing website. But there are always things you can improve to get better results.

In fact, those results can easily beat those you got from…

At first sight, affiliate marketing seems so simple. You don’t need your own product, your own sales page, or even your own website. All you need to do is recommend products you like, send people to your affiliate link and rake in the cash.

Some of that is true. You really don’t need your own product and sales page to get your start in affiliate marketing. …

If you write, especially fiction, you may recognize yourself as someone who plots their story or article carefully before writing it like we‘ve all been told in school. Then again, you may not…

Clearly, the predominant and “official” approach, especially to fiction writing, seems to be plotting. Either you do it, or you wish you could. Only much more recently, I discovered that there was another option. It’s called pantsing: writing by the seat of your pants. That’s what I tend to do, and I didn’t know there was a name for it. …

Have you tried intermittent fasting? Or does the mere idea of fasting turn you off? It seems, that lately, a lot of people talk about intermittent fasting, and some of them promise incredible results. Well… Those might be an exaggeration.

Here’s how I got involved, and some of my key learning lessons.

I have diabetes. And one of the most powerful diabetes eating plans (or should I say not-eating plans) is fasting. Not that everyone agrees.

But when I came across it in Dr. Fung’s Diabetes Code, I paid close attention.

Of course, there was another reason I was attracted…

When I first tried to buy face masks to protect myself from Covid-19, I couldn’t find any. I asked at every pharmacy I came across, and they just said, “Sorry.”

Even my go-to place, Amazon.com, had not a single mask-related product available with Prime shipping, They would all take weeks to arrive. And I needed them yesterday.

I tried a bandana, but it kept falling off my face. Besides, bandanas seemed to be sold out as well everywhere I looked.

Finally, I snagged a pack of the generic blue masks on eBay. Hurray! They arrived within “only” a week.

But…

The rules about sheltering in place and social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic have a lot of side effects. Some of these were unexpected — I saw firsthand how quickly American culture changed to prioritize personal health. Life has become more challenging than it used to be. And it has become a lot sadder too. There is so much we took for granted that we just can’t get anymore.

More than anything, I miss hugs!

If you live with someone you love, you can get regular hugs. And if you have a huggable pet, you can too. But what if…

When I saw myself for the first time
in the bathroom mirror through my new
reading glasses (cute expensive frames,
bought in Germany), I thought

Oh my God! What happened
to my eyes? Where did those
wrinkles come from?
For years, I’d believed my fancy eye creams —

Christian Dior, Capture Rides Yeux,
and especially Capture Essentiel Yeux
(Serum Reactivateur Jeunesse) —
were really working, smoothening

wrinkles away over weeks, months, years.
In fact, I looked better than I had
five years before, I thought. Now I see
what I couldn’t without my glasses,

not even with the ones I…