“Do people your age suffer from FOMO?” the twentysomething panelist asks the older audience members. YES, I tell myself—and WE’VE got the original kind! My hand shoots up, pumping as if I were in a classroom of 5-year-olds. “I’ve had FOMO all my life,” I tell the group. “I was the kid who never came in from playing outside because I didn’t want to miss anything.”

By Julie M. Danis

Mom was mobile but unsteady. Getting in and out of a car was an act of faith on both our parts. We often waltzed our way out of a potential disaster into a waiting seat.“Would you like to dance?” I asked, turning our swaying into a dip. “Oh, yes,” she said with a smile.

By Julie Danis

I married at 48 years old, for the first time; to someone I had known, off and on, for 13 years. The most interesting question asked after my wedding was: “Why did you get married at this point in life?”

By Julie M. Danis

A daughter recalls a final farewell to her father.

Santa opened the trunk of the Cadillac and removed the presents. I watched him from my bedroom window, looking down through the branches of the big oak tree that was home to the flying gray squirrel. I was supposed to be asleep, but it was Christmas Eve, and a bright moon lit up my room [...]

Special work assignments usually offer special experiences. Like the time I cooked and test-marketed new hamburger sandwiches — mushroom Swiss and pizza barbecue — as part of a promotion for a fast-food chain, or when I ran catering triage behind the scenes of a professional golf tournament. These out-of-the-office jobs opened my eyes to real [...]

Writer, commentator and humorist Julie Danis is a Chicago-based strategic marketing professional, and a consumer insights lecturer at Northwestern University. She’s worked for Frito-Lay, Inc. and held senior level strategist positions at J. Walter Thompson/Chicago and Draft/Foote, Cone & Belding advertising agencies. An editor and contributor to The Works magazine, Danis wrote a column called [...]

All the doctors sang the same tune, “You’re getting older.” Generally, I didn’t think I looked or felt like I was approaching 50, whatever that is suppose to look and feel like. But it’s difficult to feel young when the diagnosis is “old.” I did feel sweaty at night, hot during the day and generally [...]