It's absurd how aspirants to designer-label colleges become obsessed with perfection so they can get into one. I'm not convinced it's worth prostituting yourself for that.

You need to create a 30-minute buffer between the end of your work time and sleep time.

If you don't know what career you'd change to, I've come to believe in starting with your values. What do you care most about: producing a new product, a cause, health, something unpopular but important, whatever. Next, get expertise in that, perhaps not at State U let alone private U but at You U: self-study, articles,, webinars, volunteering, etc. Then use your network rather than answering ads to land a launchpad job in that career.

Some parents let kids "learn on their own skin" and many of those kids end up, as adults, languishing on their parents' sofas.

A half-hour before bedtime, I remind myself that I now deserve to prepare myself for a good night's sleep. You can't focus on your work if you're sleep-deprived even if you have a fascinating job.

If you have an ability, you want to exercise it, not anesthetize it.

Liberalism's key principle is to redistribute wealth from the haves to the have nots. That takes money from the entities with the greatest potential to improve society (for example, corporations that create jobs, invent life-saving medicines, etc.) and redistributes it to the people, whom on average, will never contribute more to society than to hold a menial job.