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This article is by staff writer Honey Smith.

Recently, I wrote about networking strategies that can help advance your career, and that got me to wondering what a “typical” career looks like these days. How have careers been affected by the Great Recession? Are people able to stay in a job and retire if they love it, or is the job market more chaotic than that? And what does it say about you either way? For instance, are there certain features of someone’s resume that might identify them as a baby boomer, Gen X, or millennial? Could that even pose an advantage or disadvantage for them?

This article is by staff writer Kristin Wong.

Every now and then, I get an email from a fellow writer who’s just starting out and wondering where to begin. “How did you do it?” they ask. “How did you make freelance writing your career?”

It’s flattering, but what do I say? First of all, I’m still working to reach my own writing goals, so I’m not even sure I’d be the best person to ask. But also, any success that I may have had as a freelancer has at least a little to do with luck. True, it’s mostly hard work, but auspicious timing and lucky breaks have also helped my career along the way.

This article is by staff writer William Cowie.

My mom passed away a little less than a year ago. All her life she was the picture of health: She walked every day and ate super-healthy. The extended family dreaded going there, because they knew there would be no sugary goodies, only healthy (boring) eats. We used to joke and say she was so healthy they’d have to shoot her on the Day of Judgment … because she was never going to die. What took her in the end was breast cancer, and the fact that she didn’t notice it until it was too late. You just can’t account for everything in life, can you? October, as you may know from the pink shoes football players wear this month, is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. As one of the slogans says: “Big or small, let’s save them all!”

This article is by editor Linda Vergon.

The small, rectangular ceramic flower pots I kept in the two window sills of my bathroom had never budged an inch in the 14 years I owned the home, but one day I saw that one was close to falling out onto the counter below. I wondered if a small earthquake had caused it to move as I pushed it back in place. About a week later, I came home to find that the pot had actually fallen completely off the little ledge and onto the counter. This time I stopped to understand why, and I discovered that the small window was separated from the sill. I went outside. From there I could tell that the window had been pried from the house and someone had left a hacksaw on the ground. Evidently, I surprised whoever was trying to make their way into my home.