I'm glad. I'm pretty much always attempting to rectify the habit I have of falling out of the habit of keeping in touch--it's fairly pervasive.

It wasn't the context of the article, but specific language inside it, e.g. "Pollyanna is not an icon of manliness." Which seems to be beside the point, for me, as the basic ideas within it don't seem to be gendered. I had to look again at where it came from, which made it make a little more sense. I'm not offended, I just thought it was interesting. I'm often stuck in that trap of what do we call feminine/masculine qualities when they aren't really related to gender? Is it really "manliness" we're talking about, or integrity/self-sufficiency/self-actualization?

Which is all totally beside the point, sorry. The actual point ties in with something I've been thinking about which is that while I find any sort of "magical thinking" useless and potentially damaging, there is an aspect of positive thinking (or whatever you want to call it) that does have an effect on the world by reordering your reaction to it. To some extent, we cannot have or be the things we want unless we believe they're possible.