It’s day 3,000 of the winter of 2014…
I’m trapped in my house, suffering from a knee injury and severe underemployment.

Outside my window is the ever-expanding pile of WHITE. If I look out my window at just the right angle, I can see color – the neighbor’s house, a pine tree, the blue sky – but I know the white is lurking below… The white is everywhere.

Slowly. Going. Crazy.

Last weekend I swear I saw the “White Walkers” heading for the wall. Maybe it was just my neighbors with snow blowers. Can’t be sure, my brain has frostbite.

There’s a whiny, panicked toddler inside my head. It’s 3am and I am jolted awake by a massively painful leg cramp. The kind of sudden, unexpected pain that makes your eyes water and throws your whole body into a panic – even more so when you were deep in REM sleep just seconds before. I get up and put my foot flat on the floor to stretch the calf muscle. I’m a grownup; I know what to do. The pain is excruciating, and in the back of my mind there’s this toddler whining “make it stop, it hurts.”

Applying for a job has always been a demoralizing and intimidating proposition. It’s a dance with a scorpion, but in days that have now apparently gone by, it was fairly civil. Today, I notice a trend toward downright hostile job postings. “Apply if you dare” seems to be the latest edgy new-age banter. The want ads throw down the gauntlet and challenge you to...

In the wild, I’d be dead. Some predator that looked to me like a friendly dog would turn out to be a hungry lion. My distance vision has been limited since I was in grade school, making life without prescription eye wear just one messy blur. But, with easy access to strong specs, I go about my business like I can actually see. At 40, I began to notice that...