If she hadn’t already passed away

Ireland is not a good country when it comes to talking about death in a sensible way. In fact, in 2013, we’ve been having two national conversations about death - badly. One related to the death of Savita Halapanavar, an Indian woman living in Ireland with her husband, who died for the want of a timely termination of her pregnancy.

My mother died of multiple sclerosis in 2004, after a hideous decline in her health that gradually robbed her of all the faculties that had made her who she was. The latter stages of the disease are particularly cruel. …


Stuff is great!

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Pictures: Justin Veenema (https://unsplash.com/justinveenema), Lizzie Guilbert (https://unsplash.com/lizzie_g), Sebastien Gabriel (https://unsplash.com/sgabriel)

(Don’t be surprised: no tech, no startups involved. Just an “everyday” story…)

A friend of mine told me a story. Is it a true story? I don’t know. But I know it’s just too good — or too crazy — not to be true. Even in their wilder dreams, I doubt writers come up with stuff like this.

Here goes.

Some time ago, this friend accepted to take care of another friend’s dog — Jake — for a long week-end. …


Over One Year Later, a Personal Essay Continues… Part 1 Here.

It’s funny how memories work. I’ve always thought I couldn’t remember the next part of the story any clearer: Sitting at my desk in the fall of 2005 with the day winding down, I had just consummated a big sale by retrieving its signed paperwork from the fax machine. It was time to take a break. I loaded up my browser and began happily staring at a web page with a yellow background. True to Part 1, it was none other than ESPN The Sports Guy’s latest mailbag. As I read through it, I landed on an interesting question posed…


How I tried to romance one without knowing it was really her.

Well, I’m an idiot. At least I was. Let’s just be clear on that before we begin.

Ok, so — roller disco, birthday party, Los Angeles, lots of people, lots of people I don’t know, slightly dim lighting, and me.

We’re skating, we’re skating. The 80's are blaring, people are loving life. If you’re not having a good time you’re not here. And I was there, making laps and collecting helium balloons whose strings hung from the ceiling, tying them all to my back belt-loop and making a…


And I Feel Fine

That’s my brain! Without contrast, it’s tough to spot the tumor. Can you see it?

It all started about 4 years ago.

I was working at insiderpages.com and one day (it was a Saturday) I woke up and couldn’t hear very well in my left ear. At first I thought maybe it was just some congestion, so I took some decongestants and antihistamines and went about my day, only slightly perturbed by my new semi-deafness.

On Sunday I started to get worried. Just a tiny bit. But then I reassured myself, “You’ll see the doc tomorrow. No problem.”

On Monday I scheduled an urgent appointment with a doctor who was not my normal primary care…


How I and our startup ended up making a cameo on the hit show

If you’ve watched Silicon Valley lately, we’ve already met. That’s me in the picture above next to Erlich.

When I was younger, theatre was one of my favorite hobbies — though I was never one of those kids who loved to take center stage and broadcast themselves every given opportunity.

After countless summer camps and play rehearsals I gave up my dream of becoming an actress because I didn’t think I was good enough. I became a writer instead and ended up doing a cameo on my favorite TV channel without even trying.

Sometimes life is funny that way.


Photo by Stephanie Rice

My new roommate was becoming a friend — and then suddenly he didn’t exist anymore

I found out that my new roommate was dead from Facebook.

I was sitting at my kitchen table around lunchtime, scrolling through clever status updates and cute baby photos, when I saw it. Someone had tagged a recent photo of him grinning in a plaid shirt and written: “Taken far too soon. RIP Paul.”

I froze. I hadn’t seen Paul in about two days. I had assumed he’d been with his ex-boyfriend, whom he was still seeing. But not dead. Of course not dead.

As similar messages began to flood my news feed, irrational thoughts wrestled for control of my…


How a video I made in my bedroom on a webcam ended up changing my life.

As a group, we were very calm about the whole situation. Something had happened to the six of us that we could not explain and we could not comprehend and we could not properly come to terms with. So what did we do? We sat. We sat in the holding room of a television studio in Culver City for three hours and just talked and talked and talked. We sat there with absolutely way to prepare for the coming hours. We sat there and learned about each other’s lives and realized how much we all had in common. …


It’s a small world

There it was. A huge pile of mail. Colours everywhere. Drawings. Finger paintings. Scribbled crayons. Spelling mistakes. Glitter. Photos. Sign here. Visit our school. Write me. You’re my hero!

I was fresh out of college and had recently started a career in sports management, working for an Australian agency that managed some of the world’s best athletes. As the office junior I was tasked with handling all the athlete fan mail. No problem I thought, how hard could that be? Turns out extremely hard.

There was no process in place and the amount of fan mail was overwhelming. According to…

This Happened to Me

Life is made of stories.

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