May 30, 2024

Giveth; Taketh Away

In middle school, I had a Super Nintendo. And then I didn’t. Here’s a short story about poverty, property rights, and the things we wish when we don’t know any better.

April 30, 2024

The Impermanence of Our Creations

Thousands of user-created levels in Super Mario Maker disappeared on April 8th, but not before a worldwide push to complete each and every final level at least once. Now that they’re gone, was any of it even worth it to begin with?

February 29, 2024

The Songs I’m Embarrassed By

The embarrassments in our musical history helped shape our taste. (Doesn’t mean anyone every wants to talk about them — or act like they ever existed in the first place.)

January 31, 2024

Contextualizing the Ten Weeks of Darkness

We’ve just exited the “darkest ten weeks of the year.” But, as with anything relating to time, we need a little context to understand why that matters.

December 30, 2023

A Clumsy Metaphor About the Sioux Falls

It’s always easy to look back at a hard year and to be happy to let it go — but, it doesn’t really go anywhere. It’s always there.

November 30, 2023

Eight Paragraphs about Grand Jury Duty

I’ve been on grand jury duty for the past 13 months, with five more months to go. It’s boring, exhausting, and challenging — often, all at the same time.

October 31, 2023

Crisis as Building Blocks

Crisis is a natural and ordinary part of growing, despite our hope as parents that we can keep all crisis away from our kids.

September 30, 2023

Poptimism

A little bit about poptimism, and about finding good news when we’re already pretty tired.

August 31, 2023

I Organized My Records

I reorganized my record collection, which means I spent somewhere between four hours (active) and two weeks (planning) bouncing back and forth between whether genres are valid categories or if they’re just rough approximations of context and feelings.

July 31, 2023

The Frequency

Not every creative endeavor hits. But, thanks to the perils of grind culture and our own (sometimes) self-loathing, we often find ourselves feeling like we’re falling fast behind.