In today's New York Times, there's an article by Alisa Tugend on "Coping Skills and Horrible Imaginings." This section leaped out at me:

[According to] Professor [Robert L.] Leahy, who also wrote The Worry Cure (Harmony, 2005), people underestimate their ability to cope with a bad situation. "You can't just say don't worry and everything will turn out fine - people will think you're an idiot," he said. "But there's productive worry and unproductive worry. Productive worry is thinking about something you can do in the next 24 hours."

That could mean re-examining your investment portfolio, getting a real fix on your checking and savings balance or putting your resume together. Unproductive worry, on the other hand, Professor Leahy said, is fretting about whether the stock market and entire economy will decline by 25 percent - something you can't do anything about.

There are ways to keep your sanity even in a world that seems increasingly crazy. Don't obsessively watch television or check the stock market online because people who are already worried tend to overvalue negative information, Professor Leahy said. That's known as confirmation bias.

and

"Your portfolio is not simply financial, but a life portfolio," he said. Although it's easy to nod and tune it out when you're told that money isn't everything, it helps to really focus on what is important in life besides making money, like your family relationships, friendships and your role in your community.

"You are not just a consumer product," he said. "It will sound corny to some people, but if your life portfolio is greater than your financial portfolio, then you're diversified."

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On a far more shallow note, I am a little bit in lust with this photo of Daniel Nagrin, which appeared with his obituary in today or yesterday's print edition. (The days are a bit blurry at the moment, both from my having been away and from the cold that's had me asleep more than not this year so far.)

I am also half-enchanted and half-spooked by this bit from Joe Weil (in an article about Westchester-area poets:

Mr. Weil explained the long-gone setting of the poem [described but unnamed in the article], a seedy bar on the Newark border called Two Friends: "It was owned, literally, by two friends who then stopped being friends, but still ran the bar together for 25 years. We called them Surly and Surly. They were both absolutely bald and never smiled."

He added: "It's not just people who are in love with each other who start to look alike. Sworn enemies start to look alike after 25 years."