“Time sure does fly, doesn’t it?” It’s what I think just about every day. Time is flying faster and faster. There must be something about picking up speed once you go over the metaphorical hill.

When I was a new mother, utterly and blissfully over the moon for my baby, I imagined that I would never feel anything less than that all-consuming, perfect love. It simply wasn’t possible.

I sat down in a good mood on a sunny Sunday morning to look at my email and there it was, lying in wait. The email was from a colleague who is in every respect my doppelgänger: same age, same work, same writing style, same graduate school, hair color, sense of humor—same everything. And on this fine morning, she sucker-punched me.

I don’t mean to burst anyone’s romantic bubble, but I thought a little education about the heart and the origins of Valentine’s Day might be of interest. An alternative, if you will, to the commercial sentimentality foisted upon us February 14 by Hallmark, Inc. and the Rose Growers Union 671.

The other morning I sat in the pre-dawn darkness on my porch, wrapped up against the cold, staring at the stars with their piercing, distant magnificence. I listened to invisible raccoons running through the trees, saw the inky outline of the branches bending under their weight. I heard the soft clopping of deer hooves, and then the owl’s resonant, echoing call in the middle distance.

Sitting inside the Full Moon Woo tarot tent, I stared at the cards representing the state of affairs in my little world. In the center of the spread was the Hanged Man — my current situation. I read up on the Hanged Man, and the sum and substance of it is this: perspective. As in, get a new one.

Everyone I know is going through some serious suffering. I’m not talking about the suffering one feels watching a Tom Cruise movie, or hearing the phrase, “I know, right?” I’m talking about suffering chronic illness, staring mortality in the face, losing a loved one, being in dire financial straits: in other words, Hell.

I’ve collected some very sage advice over the years,  far more than a 500-word limit would allow.  As Mark Twain famously observed, it takes a helluva lot more time to write a short piece than a long one; it requires that one be succinct, a thing that no self-respecting, egomaniacal writer likes to be.

You’ve heard someone say it. Heck, maybe you say it. “I’m spiritual but not religious.” But what the heck does that really mean?

Imagine yourself on a beach on a lovely summer’s day. You have spent the past few hours lovingly and painstakingly constructing a fantastic sandcastle, complete with moat and protective walls. You stand back admiring your work when you notice that the tide is coming in.

You don’t have to be introspective or make any changes in order to feel better; there is an alternative. In my twenty-some years of practice and study, I have learned some valuable techniques for handling difficulties without delving into the depths.

I heard a small-time country singer on the radio the other day talking about the difficulty of hitting it big in the music business. He shared how one day, feeling tired and discouraged, he’d heard his phone ring and decided not to answer it. Later, when he listened to his messages, he discovered that it was his agent who had called. “Too bad you’re not there,” the agent’s voice said. “I have Garth Brooks on the other line and he wanted to talk to you.”

My eggs have all hatched. This is what I thought last week as I sat on the porch in the morning, my children back in school. I thought about them being gone, and about my book being finished, and my mother entering the last chapter of her life. I sat and I thought about a lot of things that have to do with the period of seemingly empty time between the end of one thing and the beginning of another.

Yesterday I grabbed The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, deciding that it was time for a refresher. I also thought that, energetically, it would behoove me to read his book, since I’ve asked him to endorse mine; it may generate some sort of karmic reciprocity.

I was out with a friend last night, enjoying a real manhattan in a real bar (at night no less, and mid-week! The stars must be in some rare alignment) and in the course of conversation my friend said in a rather Eeyorish way—combining wit, humor and severe cynicism—that he could see his future, and what he saw looked a lot like a trailer park.

The life of a writer is not as glamourous as you might think; it’s not all sweatpants and eating dry cereal out of the box and royalty payments stuffing the mailbox. This morning, for instance, I awoke from a spicy little dream and stared into the dark thinking about the dream and what it meant and trying to drag out the good feeling for as long as I could.

I had a boyfriend in college who knew from his first breath that he wanted to be a lawyer. I was hugely envious of this: he was so directed, his course so clear. I had no idea what I wanted to do, or who I was. This boyfriend used to say that I had a lot of stars in my heaven, a poetic way of saying that I was directionless.

I was very excited, at the beginning of this year, to welcome 2012. February would usher in the Year of the Dragon, an auspicious year, a year of power and dynamism. Having been born in a dragon year, I gleefully anticipated doubly good fortune with health, wealth, and a book deal raining down from the heavens.

Recently I met with a doctor who asked me what I did for a living. When I said I was a counselor he replied, “Thank you.” I must have looked at him quizzically because he immediately followed this by looking right at me and saying, “Thank you for doing that work. It’s so important.”

I love baseball. Okay, I love the San Francisco Giants. (I especially love it when they’re winning, which they are.) I think I most appreciate that, in baseball, each player has his unique style and contribution to make and his moment at bat, but his talent is only seen, is only really useful, in the larger context of playing as part of a team.