Check Out These Blog Posts From Steve McEllistrem

Being out of work for a couple months (or possibly longer – not sure when I’ll be going back) is a strange experience for me. I always knew my job as a writer wasn’t essential, however valuable it is. Sure, I can entertain and enlighten readers, but I’m not putting bread on their tables. I’m not manufacturing medicines or delivering necessities or assisting with healthcare. I get it. I’m not essential. And I’m okay with that. But it’s weird to ...

We tend not to believe things we don’t want to believe. For example, most of us believe that when this first wave of the novel coronavirus passes, we’ll be through the worst of it. Of course, we don’t know if that’s true, but that’s what most of us want to believe. Yes, many doctors say there’ll be a second wave in the fall that could be worse, but they’re basing their predictions on past outbreaks of the flu, which is ...

People talk about wanting to get back to normal but going about business as normal is part of what got us to this point. We delayed the proper response in order to keep our economy going normally and now we’re paying the price. Already we’re getting pressure from our government to get back to normal, to prevent the cure from being worse than the disease, to get money flowing back to the wealthy as soon as we can so that ...

Getting married, having children, landing a better job: contrary to popular belief, these don’t guarantee happiness. They can produce a temporary high, but over the course of years, they don’t tend to produce happier people. Happiness, however, can be learned. Studies have shown that there are multiple ways to make ourselves happier. Most of them are quite simple, which isn’t surprising when you consider how many people go about their lives with happiness in their hearts. They don’t seem to ...