I'd like to add that work environment is very important. Having spent too many years working for bosses that would make Michael Scott look good, I can vouch that a bad work environment is very damaging to career advancement.

But I don't think that's what P-C's asking. He's asking whether he should stay on the track he's on or try to shift to what he really wants to do.

(And P-C's uncle is tangential to that issue. While I have definite opinions on P-C's family issues, I've expressed them before, and they aren't central enough to this question for me to repeat them now.)

It sounds like the drug safety niche is something you can live with but not what you really prefer. In this economy, having a job that pays the bills and that you can live with is nothing to look down on. It also sounds like you have options to make the job closer to what you want -- look into them. Re-assess when the economy picks up and the option of going elsewhere becomes realistic.

Which, of course, makes the fact that she's dating him again beyond my ken and my Barbies too, but that's a whole other psychiatrist's couch.

Barb, I wonder if part of the reason they separated is the expectations that he had/way he was treating you and your sibs, and now that that's not an issue, she can justify being back with him.

Since the storms between Nashville and me are being described in increasingly apocalyptic terms, we have decided to declare next weekend Easter. I am relieved. Now I have to track down the two remaining crucial pieces of information for my taxes. I had this information in a folder that has apparently been sucked into another dimension.

As long as the dog didn't eat your homework ....

There's always the chance the dog ate my tax information. He prefers shoes, though.

re: life plans in general.

Hubby had a plan. He was going to put in some years as a Forest Ranger, then move back to Germany and get a job taking care of the Black Forest and live happily ever after in proto-Wagnerian bliss. I suspect he would have stopped cutting his hair and started carried an axe around. (I wish I'd seen him when he was 19 with nearly 300 pounds of muscle and a 30-inch difference between his waist and his chest.)

But anyway, he decided to haul a burning tree off a co-worker one day, ripped up his body, and was fired in his hospital bed when California had the great property tax rebellion that everyone swore would not result in any loss of public jobs and services. So the medical care that would have put him back together properly was not there, and the rest is what it is.

Make plans. Work towards them. Do not be surprised when fate picks up your timetable and laughs hysterically, and for god's sake don't feel bad if the life alarm clock rings and you're not near where you thought you should be.

(I wish I'd seen him when he was 19 with nearly 300 pounds of muscle and a 30-inch difference between his waist and his chest.)

There are just too many jokes to make.

Make plans. Work towards them. Do not be surprised when fate picks up your timetable and laughs hysterically, and for god's sake don't feel bad if the life alarm clock rings and you're not near where you thought you should be.

Yeah, I feel like that if I'm generally happy where I work, there's no reason to shake things up? I think I'll consult with my medical writing brethren at the conference in a couple weeks. Especially since I'm speaking on a panel about being a medical writer in drug safety, which isn't really a position that exists.

OK, I'd like to run something by the hivemind.

There had been something I'd been getting a feeling about but it never really cohered until a while ago I read this article.

I've been sensing that people in general have made being "healthy" into a virtue - eating healthy, exercising, etc. And that for some people this virtue - being "healthy" - has eclipsed any other virtue.

I've noticed that the bus line I ride, which is almost always packed in the evenings, picks up people who've just come from a gym/health club. And that a lot of these people get on this overcrowded bus, sweaty, smelly, carrying large bags, often with equipment sticking out of them, and will push onto the bus and generally be unpleasant to be near. They'll slam people with their oversized bags and stuff (yoga mats, shoes tied to the outside of the bag, raquet handles and so on) and generally be inconsiderate of everyone else.

A few years ago one of the fancier hotels in town asked that people using the health club not go through the lobby in their (sweaty, smelly, often ratty) exercise clothes. The targets of this request were outraged - they were being healthy and exercising and how DARE the hotel suggest that they were unpleasant to see (or smell).

I've seen people running, running out into traffic, often right into the path of a car or bus, running down crowded sidewalks, expecting that everyone will get out of their way. I've seen bicyclists ignoring traffic rules, endangering themselves and others. There's one family that has a big old bike that has an extension on the back for their son (7 or so, I'd guess) to ride on and a little trailer that their daughter (4 maybe) to ride in. They'll ride out into heavy rush hour traffic, often without checking. I've seen people try to talk to them, saying that it would be safer to keep the kids on side streets (the trailer is well below the sight line of a diver). The people's reply is that riding the bicycle is "healthy" and environmentally conscious.

I don't know - are these the sour grapes of an exercise-averse fatty? Or have we reached a stage where a lot of people think being "healthy" (I'm using quotes because I think some of this behavior is not terribly healthy) is the only virtue they need to practice? Or are these the same self-centered jerks who'd be doing inconsiderate/dangerous things anyway?

Input?

I'm'a vote self-centered jerks. But whatever it is, I share your bleh.

As for the article itself, I got as far as the comparison between the hypothetical 1950s "Betty" and her granddaughter "Jennifer" before wanting to stab my eyes out. The logic, it has left the building.

So I'm going to stick to just the issue you raised, Todd.

I absolutely think that the concept of "health" as a moral achievement to be sought at all costs is hugely prevalent in our society. It's quite obvious from the opprobrium that is heaped on overweight people, based on the assumption that "failure to fit into the government's charts of 'healthy weight' [which were redefined as recently as the 1990s so as to make millions of people "overweight" overnight]" equals "poor overall health." (Which is simply untrue.)