DRS. DOUGLAS W. OTA

Have you ever wondered how your kids know exactly what to do to drive you nuts? As if they know precisely where your “buttons” are, and how to find the ones marked “irritate” or “explode”? In my work as a psychologist, I frequently joke with parents about their dismay at not receiving a user manual at each child’s delivery. As with most ailments in life, parents derive assurance from the realization that they are not alone in their occasional sense of being utterly, well, l

​ We see each other in the distance, but we act like we don’t. We just keep walking, gradually approaching one another. After all, we don’t know each other. But it’s also true that we don’t not know each other entirely. We’ve done this before, every day for nearly the last week. Twenty meters to go. I betcha he’ll stop this time. Ten meters to go. I betcha he’s thinking the same thing. Two meters. Eye contact. “Good evening.” “Good evening!” “Gorgeous isn’t it?” he smiles, pa

Writing a book is hard. People warned that the publication process is harder. They were right. Strangely, blogging in my mind seems the hardest. What is “blogging”? What am I signing up for? Where will this lead? Books are at least bound, their narrative arcs nestled reassuringly between a front and a back cover. Blogs offer no such reassurances. The very word “blog” suggests some dark concoction of “blot” and “smog,” something spreading towards the future horizon, like Los