Here comes spring, and I’m eager to get outside. There’s nothing I enjoy more than Central Park on a sunny weekend afternoon.

I go for the fresh air and sunshine and pretty surroundings and exercise. I bring a book and I sit on a bench by myself and read…

…which is the sort of behavior that leads extrovert pals to frown in concern and ask me questions like this: Why don’t you socialize more? Why don’t you take a break from the books and get out and make some more friends? 

And it casts a shadow of self-doubt. Is there something wrong with me?

In the fall of my senior year of high school, I applied to one college. I was accepted. I attended.

This was waaaay back in 1977, and many of my peers report similar experiences. Most of us somehow wound up attending institutes of higher learning. “Choice” doesn’t necessarily feel like the right word to describe the processes that got us there.

In the abstract, I can imagine having searched more thoroughly and located  a school that would have been a better fit for me. But, I can’t actually name that school. And this is despite my being in a line of work that acquaints me with the features of hundreds of colleges and universities.

For better or worse, I truly never thought in terms of selecting the “right” college.

Ana Homayoun describes the angst that I and my similarly clueless peers were spared:

We just got back from a trip to Barcelona, one of the foodie meccas of Europe, and I was very glad that I had just finished reading The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz.

Otherwise, we might have been overwhelmed by the riotous quantity of eating options. We could have spent all day agonizing over the restaurant choices and trying to decide which one was “the best.”

Instead, we did what Schwartz recommends: we limited our options. Each day, we perused the menus of two or three eateries, and we selected one of them.

We wound up having wonderful, memorable meals. Truly, in Barcelona it’s difficult to dine badly. And we felt satisfied and happy about our choices…happier than if we had invested hours researching and deliberating.

One big problem with having too much choice is that the human brain hates the feeling of loss, more that it enjoys the experience of gain.

[On Saturdays my topic of focus is A Small, Good Thing, inspired by one of my favorite Raymond Carver stories.]

Some people like to make large, dramatic life changes, while others aspire to gradual, incremental improvements. (Personally, I’m of that second camp.)

Joel Fuhrman’s excellent book, Eat to Live, contains valuable nutrition advice for everyone.

[On Saturdays my topic of focus is A Small, Good Thing, inspired by one of my favorite Raymond Carver stories.]

A big part of my identity is rooted in thinking of myself as a kind, caring, gentle and optimistic person…one who says supportive, positive things…a Tigger, not an Eeyore.

I’m uncomfortable saying anything that might come across as negative or unnice.  I hate the thought of hurting someone’s feelings or having them get angry at me.

[I'm devoting my Sunday blog posts to the topic of Learning Through Experience. This will very often mean Learning From Mistakes, and talking about mistakes and errors in general, including my own. It will also include the reflecting upon and valuing of all sorts of experiences.]

When I think “psychoanalysis,” my mind conjures a Woody-Allenesque caricature of a “neurotic” patient spending decades of his life lying on his analyst’s couch, endlessly rehashing every real or imagined detail of his childhood, in a fruitless internal quest for The Answer to his psychological distress.

I’m going to devote my Saturday blog posts to the topic of A Small, Good Thing, after my favorite Raymond Carver story by that title (you can find the story in Raymond Carver: Collected Stories). I plan on sharing with you some of the small, good things that I come across as I live my days and weeks…and to invite you to do the same.

I have two offerings for you for this week. The first is this tiny, charming, Mary Oliver poem, from her collection entitled The Truro Bear. (So many of you seemed to enjoy the last Mary Oliver poem I posted, about her little dog, Percy).

I’m going to devote my Tuesday blog posts to the topic of Psychology, Human Behavior and Relationships. What makes people tick?

When I have the time, I like to do book reviews. For one thing, yay! I get a free book! And I get to read about and learn something I wouldn’t have necessarily found on my own.

This last go-round I was feeling especially adventurous, so I told the book-sending folks to Surprise Me!…and here’s what arrived in my mailbox:

I’m going to devote my Wednesday blog posts to the topic of What I’ve Been Reading. This is going to be easy because I’m always reading something.

I’ve been reading The Truro Bear, a lovely little collection of poems and essays by Mary Oliver. She writes about her encounters with animals in Truro, MA, a very special place for her (as well as for me!)

I’m going to try devoting my Saturday blog posts to the topic of A Small, Good Thing, after my favorite Raymond Carver story by that title (you can find the story in Raymond Carver: Collected Stories).

I plan on sharing with you some of the small, good things that I come across as I live my days and weeks…and to invite you to do the same.

And my first offering is Carver’s story itself. I read it as a tale of human nature, of the human tendency to fear and hate what we don’t know, and then the relief and solace knowledge provides.

That’s my own take on it; what is yours?