Jayson Blair

There are many signs that the Washington economy has experienced a resurgence. Unemployent is below the national average. Housing prices are better than they have been in recent years. Foreclosures here are happening at much lower rates than places like Baltimore, Las Vegas, South Florida and Phoenix. It’s a wonder with all the good economic news that we do such brisk business in career coaching in Northern Virginia. Some of our clients include high school, college students and college graduates trying to find where their aptitudes and interests align with their purpose and passion. Some of our clients include those returning to the workforce, like the stay-at-home dad re-entered as a budget analyst at a large government agency. Others are doing financially well but don’t have passion for their work, like the high-paid government contractor who was a rising star at his company who left to work as an entrepreneur in a gym business. But we have recently been seeing two new types ...

When I was looking toward this week, I didn't expect that I would be visiting a museum dedicated to national security and cryptology that I had written about more than ten years ago, attending a funeral for one of my favorite uncles or returning to New York to see a group of people that I had not seen since a wedding 16 years ago in Virginia or sitting at the beside of one of them in a Christian Science nursing home, where the only medicine on the menu is a healthy dose of prayer. I was actually looking forward to a relaxing week of bunkering down with my clients to help them work on their lives, but several unexpected twists and turns transformed the week into an exploration of my own life and history. I find that sometimes, when I take in too much darkness, its good to turn to the light. I often find it in the brilliance of the most intelligent and creative people around us. So, after my uncle's funeral in suburban Maryland on Thursday, when my girlfriend asked what I wante...

Sitting here waiting for my dinner date, I was thumbing through a copy of the latest edition of Vanity Fair when I came across an article about The Washington Post called " Post Modern." While thumbing through the well-written could-this-be-the-one-newspaper-that-survives stories because of my interest in journalism, I stumbled across this passage that made me think that Michael Wolff, the author, at least sort of got the tempo and the upsides and downside of the days untreated bipolar disorder ( née manic depressive illness). Unparrelled productivity, energy, ideas and risk-taking that pays off, followed by psychotic paranoia and sad consequences: He’s also seriously bipolar. He turns the paper into a powerhouse, consolidating its position by buying the morning competitor, the Washington Times-Herald, in 1954, trouncing the afternoon Washington Star, and adding Newsweek to the stable in 1961, as well as a group of high-profit TV stations, before turning on his father-...

As some of you know, my first overt, head-on confrontation with mental illness was not with my own bipolar disorder or inattention, but with the eating disorder of a high school classmate who anorexia nervosa. My friend, Erin, had been hospitalized at Inova Fairfax Hospital for Children , but her insurance company was refusing to pay for the more than 30 days of treatment recommended by her doctors there. She was a skeleton. She looked like she was going to die. Talking with her in her hospital bed was one of my earliest lessons in the fact that there are things more powerful than our own desire to live - Erin wanted to live, she knew she was dying, she knew why she was dying and, yet, she couldn't stop. Being the passive guy I am, I, of course, decide to coordinate some fundraisers for treatment, give some interviews to The Washington Post and paint that insurance company's transgressions on every figurative billboard I could find. Erin got here treatment. I was thinking of E...