In a few weeks, Small Answers will turn three years old. It started as an outgrowth of our career group, and turned into a place to talk about the personal backstories behind big life choices. We've devoted hundreds and hundreds of happy hours to it in that time, writing pieces, recruiting and editing guest authors, and making it into a site we were proud of. And now we have some news to share, this is that we’ve made the decision to stop publishing Small Answers (at least for now).

This was a big decision, and one we’ve given a lot of thought to over the last few months. We decided to record a conversation about why we're doing this, because Small Answers is place that, first and foremost, has been about sharing the backstory behind significant decisions. We want to let you in on this choice, to tell you about the things we loved the most about running the blog (as well as the things that we loved a little less), the times we might have overshared, and the reason we’re turning our attention, at least for the near term, to other things.

Music: "Springtime" and "I'll Become Everything" (Podington Bear)

"I've always felt weird saying this, but I never really liked Allen. Going to see him wasn't fun. It was boring and depressing. But after you spend enough time with someone, you start to feel responsibility for them."

Tim was just 13 years old, and doing tech support to make spending money, when he met Allen, a 70 year old retiree with no money who needed help getting his computer set up. What Allen needed more than tech support was, though, was someone to talk to.

Tim found himself in a one-way relationship with a very lonely, sad man who taught him an unexpected emotional lesson that was 15 years in the making.

Music:

Podington Bear, "Serenity" and "Grebe"

Kai Engel, "Mist and Clouds"

Nick Jaina, "Mississippi Turn-Around" and "I'll Become Everything"

When you grow up witnessing your dad beat your mom, does that shape what you do with your life? Saeeda Hafiz focused on school, going to college and landing good job in banking… only to realize that this wasn't for her. She has started taking cooking and yoga classes, and was captivated by the power of holistic living to nurture and heal her.

Potlucks can be a polarizing, love-them-or-hate-them events. In the world of librarians, however, potlucks are serious business. People got to great effort to create ornate, complicated, and time-consuming comestibles. They are the currency of connection and celebration.

This, however, is a story of a potluck dish that went very wrong - and the hilarious effort undertaken to spare the guilty party from ever knowing about it.

Image: Oscar Schlemmer

Music: Martin-Eero Koressaar via SoundCloud (Eero – Day-3-page-95)

In the late 1960s, Lucy was working as a cashier at Chubby and Tubby, an army-surplus store on Rainier Avenue in Seattle. It wasn't a particularly nice neighborhood at the time, and the work was backbreaking; she was on her feet all day. But she had to pay for college.

It seemed like an ordinary day.

Even on ordinary days, though, there was usually a policeman on duty in the store, because all the cool little gadgets and items it carried proved an attraction for shoplifters. The crime could have happened to anyone. But what unfolded afterward could only have happened to Lucy.

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Album art: Sean O' Neill / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Sound effects: turtle lg, zombiechaser3, congito-perceptu, bassboybg, sophiehall3535

What do effective negotiation strategies and making lasting change in your own life have in common? You might be surprised.

Craig moved a lot as a child; he was in his eighth school by the time he was a freshman in high school. All this moving meant he could reinvent himself constantly - allowing him, for example, to try to be cooler and better liked by his peers without being dragged down by a shared past.

Later, Craig became a negotiation coach - someone who helps others change and tweak their behavior to get certain outcomes. Craig's methods combine traditional corporate negotiation techniques with behavioral research. Listen to understand how those two seemingly disparate disciplines are interconnected - and how negotiation is a primarily emotionally-driven interaction that can dramatically change how good you are at making lasting change in your own life.

You can read more about Craig, and sign up for his newsletter, at his website (www.craigdossantos.com). Sign up to receive Small Answers posts every Monday at www.smallanswers.us.

Music: Music: Page 95 (Quirky) by Martin-Eero Kõressaar

Image: Monkey Riding a Four-Headed Beast - Maria Primachenko, 1982

When Sam was a little boy, he had a passion for small things - so when his mom made him a dollhouse as a gift, he was enthralled. Together, they created furniture, landscaping, decorations, and a rich life for the dollhouse's inhabitants, which were mice and bears (no regular humans allowed). They even entered competitions, which Sam won three years in a row at the ages of eight, nine, and ten years old.

Later, on the basis of his love of design and the influence of his grandfather, a respected architect, Sam decided to get a Master's degree in architecture. But his expectations for what being an architect meant and felt like - which were based on his grandfather's experience as the Harvard Graduate School of Design in a heady, modernist, post-war environment - didn't match up to the reality.

"I wanted to be someone interested in and capable of changing the world," Sam said. He found that a much more complicated goal than he originally thought.

"I scare you, don't I?" Stories from the 3rd female reporter at the Wall Street Journal by smallanswers

Tim's mom, with whom he had a difficult relationship, died when he was 17. At 18, he fell in love for the first time. Three years later, when his relationship with his girlfriend ended, suppressed feelings of his mom's death came back powerfully: "It was like going through mom's death again - only worse this time."

(You may notice that the audio quality changes slightly at times; this is because the podcast encompassed a series of recorded conversations).

Is direct and honest communication more difficult in close friendships?