During my six years with The Ecphorizer, my life underwent a sea change. I got married, started a family, and traded free-lance consulting for a steady job. It was these occupations that ultimately forced me to give up the editorship.

Evidence of my life’s transformations appeared from time to time in the magazine—most notably in the narrative “Story of a Wedding,” which is printed at the end of this section. Other personal pieces constituted a miscellany of reminiscences and unsolicited advice. In some cases they were “casuals” whose primary purpose was to flesh out a particular issue.

So this section is something of a mixture. These pieces in it are personal in the sense that they primarily record my own experiences. Reading a raw account of someone else’s doings can be unrewarding—witness the soporific effect of most Christmas newsletters—so I have tried to emphasize incidents that I feel have some universal validity. If they strike a chord in the reader, then my job as writer has succeeded.