In the summer of 2018, as my family left Seattle and started making our way to Indonesia for our year-long adventure there, I sent Eva an email with the subject, “Heading your way, sort of!” Australia would be practically next door, after all. We eventually met up in person and ended up reconnecting over much more than geography. In 2015, Eva had launched The Life I Want storytelling project—in her words, “to celebrate those who are living the life they want, and to inspire others to do the same.” In 2017, I had quit the job I’d been working toward my whole career, wondering whether work was c ..read more

Serena Bian is on a mission to end loneliness. Since her freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania six years ago, where feelings of isolation led to depression, Bian has gone deep to understand how to fight loneliness and forge meaningful connections. In doing so, she has learned timely lessons about how to heal individuals and communities, and may well be on a path to heal our nation. Human beings are wired to seek connection; we need community to live the lives we want. But loneliness was a widespread problem, even before the pandemic trapped us in our homes. Bian worked as a researche ..read more

Every time I have ever left a job, a colleague has caught me on my way out, flush with excitement to tell me about their own secret escape plans. When I left a magazine job in New York, a fellow editor stopped me in the lobby to say she was orchestrating a move to Portland. When I left a nonprofit job in San Francisco, a colleague joined me in the elevator to share his dream of starting a sustainable spirits brand. It’s like they were projecting their fantasies onto my experience: I was leaving, and they were imagining the better life they could have if they quit, too. When I left my last full ..read more

In season four, episode four of The Double Shift, the podcast’s founder, Katherine Goldstein, and cohost, Angela Garbes, bantered about the glimmer of hope they were feeling. It was April, Americans were getting vaccinated, and the country had begun to open up. Goldstein: “I don’t want to jinx anything, but it feels like we’re coming out of some very, very dark times.” Garbes: “Yeah, this strange feeling of hope that I have, that I actually am able to trust a little bit. But I also think part of the transition right now is also coming to terms with what’s happened to us in the past year. Just ..read more

It’s smokey on Lummi Island, in the San Juans, off the coast of Washington state, where Anne Helen Petersen and her partner, the New York Times opinion writer Charlie Warzel, and their dogs, Peggy and Steve, are getting away for a while. It’s smokey all over the West. Portland is registering the world’s worst air quality. Ten percent of Oregon is under evacuation alert. The top half of The Oregonian’s homepage is filled with harrowing stories about the wildfires, the bottom half with stories about the pandemic and racism. On Twitter people are issuing their takes: The fires are worse thanks to ..read more

Like many adults who grew up during Peak Divorce in the U.S., I have more parents than are technically necessary. My mom and dad both remarried, gifting me with two stepparents, two stepbrothers, and two half-siblings. Alongside the joy of my blended-and-extended family come the trials and tribulations of watching all four parents, my in-laws, and all of their siblings and peers, age. By next spring, all but one parent will be in their 80s. Knock on wood, they are all in relatively good spirits and health. But time is starting to take its inevitable toll on their bodies and minds, and doctors ..read more

Last year, Donovan Ervin started a job search that left him feeling paralyzed. A few months out of graduate school—he received dual master’s degrees from Yale in business administration and environmental management—he knew he wanted to help shift the systems of power, influence, and wealth that benefit the privileged few at the expense of equality, justice, and the environment. But he had a lot of questions: What kind of job would allow him to make the most impact? What kind of workplace would let him apply the full weight of his talent, skills, and perspective? Then there was the tension betw ..read more

In April, Cyrus Habib decided not to seek reelection as lieutenant governor of Washington state in order to join the Society of Jesus, the largest order of priests and brothers in the Roman Catholic Church. He’ll move to a Jesuit novitiate in Southern California, where he’ll spend the next two years in prayer, service, and community. During the two years he’ll do a 30-day silent retreat, and a pilgrimage where he’s sent out with a one-way bus ticket and little else but a directive to return, meant to teach him “to trust in the providence of God and [become] comfortable with uncertainty.” This ..read more

Once you’ve spent time with Chloe McKenzie—activist, educator, academic, self-proclaimed “wealth equalizer,” and founder of the brand-new Center on Financial Trauma and Wealth Justice—the shame, oppression, and even violence in our financial system become all too clear. The dark side of finance shows up in explicitly discriminatory practices of redlining, illegal but persistent racism in lending, and policies like overdraft fees that most often penalize those who can least afford it. But it’s not just banks that can cause harm. Modern cultural narratives about wealth ignore systemic oppression ..read more

Photo of the June 2 Black Lives Matter protest in McMinnville, Oregon, with organizer Cecilia Flores at center, by Marcus Larson for Yamhill County’s News-Register. We cannot create the lives we want in isolation from the world around us. First, COVID-19’s contagion forced us to acknowledge our interdependence. Now, the global protests against police brutality and racism in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police are showing how many people embrace that interdependence. The current Black Lives Matter protests are no longer just Black people; unprecedented numbers of white peopl ..read more