Alice Bradley

Want to get fit, eat better, or streamline a busy life? A coach may be just what you need.

The moment we’re handed another human being and told, “Here, you look like you could keep this alive,” many of us run to a book—or an entire library of them—to tell us all what to do, how not to mess up, and how to survive.

Mira Jacob's debut novel, "The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing," deftly spans decades and leaps continents, taking the reader from 1970s India to the modern-day United States and back again. It's no surprise that Mira was (as she puts it) "born traveling."

No matter where you are in the world or what sort of music speaks to your soul, there's a festival waiting for you. Here are some of the best for 2015.

I am an amassment of bad habits, all of them clinging together to crudely resemble a human female. I am a lady-shaped jumble composed of candy corn, terrible excuses, kitty-cat videos and wine.

For years I’ve told my writing students to value quantity over quality in their work: practice every day and don’t worry about the end result. When it came to painting, I forgot all about this. (For a while, anyway.)

“I’m going to be a HuffPo article,” I told him. I was picturing myself as a cautionary-tale news story. “Woman Dies From Pot Like an Idiot. World Laughs at Her.”

35 years after embarking on a fairly risky career, Stoll's love for his work is still going strong.

It’s so easy to forget that each of us changes the world. Think you’re insignificant all you want, but you’re wrong. Your influence stretches far and wide. Your soul is imprinted on your friends and family. You affect every person you meet, smile at, bump into, give the finger to; you leave them changed and they continue that effect on to the next person.

Around mid-July to late August, Brooklyn morphs into Garbagey Smellville, The Place Where Everyone is Angry. Anyone with an ounce of sense and/or disposable income escapes for as long as they can.

I like small talk. I don’t understand why it’s forever being maligned. “Make your talk big!” everyone keeps telling us. “Cease your infernal chit-chat! Your talk is disgustingly tiny. Stop your small talkings! Get to the big talks!"

Last year I turned 40, and I decided that it was time to gain confidence in the use of my limbs. To see a Frisbee being tossed my way and catch it, or at least try, instead of shrieking and throwing myself to the ground.

During one of my sessions with my psychiatrist, most of which were spent with my head deep in the tissue box, he asked me what I did for fun.

“Faaaahn?” I said.

“Fun,” he said.