In the last couple of essays, I’ve been circling the same idea from different angles. What maintains us and what happens when we lose track of it. Internal.Relational.Cultural. But there’s a third part to this. A practical question – how can you actually maintain yourself? Personal. The lens from me matters. The cultural lens matters….
I watched John Candy: I Like Me recently. As you may know, I’m a child of the 80s and have loved all sorts of films for most of my life, but I have a particular soft spot for directors like John Hughes, Ron Howard and Chris Columbus and films released between the the 1980s and…
I’ve started to notice something uncomfortable about myself. I don’t just have “good days” and “bad days.” A cliche that doesn’t truly do justice to what happens when I’m uneven. I’m either maintaining myself… or I’m not. And when I’m not, everything feels off. My energy drops. My patience shortens. My creativity disappears. My ability…
Have you ever noticed how often you adjust yourself mid-conversation? It’s a subtle adjustment too. You soften a statement.You explain your reasoning twice.You reframe something you were already clear about. Not because you were wrong. Because you could feel the friction from the other party. And of course, it doesn’t feel like a loss when…
I finally finished Cowboy Bebop last week, (the original, not the 2019 live-action remake) and what stayed with me caught me off guard. It wasn’t the action or the music. It was the feeling that no one on that ship was moving forward. Spike is trapped in a past life he can’t let go of.Jet…
I was born in 1985, which means I grew up in a strange and wonderful pocket of Star Wars history. I was old enough to experience the cultural gravity of the original trilogy, but young enough that the prequels felt like my Star Wars. For a long time, the galaxy far, far away was defined…
Have you ever felt strangely haunted by versions of yourself that never actually existed? The entrepreneur you almost became.The artist you promised you’d return to.The disciplined version of you that only lived for a few months. Each unfinished identity leaves a small imprint. And over time, those imprints accumulate. It’s because every new interest, persona,…
You have to wonder. Did we really think removing every barrier between us and entertainment would make us more connected? Streaming promised freedom. Watch what you want. When you want. As much as you want. No schedule. No waiting. No friction. It felt like progress when it was first available to us. But progress toward…
After “Peak Curation” I’ve been writing in a public forum for over a decade. Sometimes I write purely from my internal head canon; other times, I have reference material to guide me. But every once in a while, I find inspiration in the world around me, and I go to work with that muse, placing…
A version of me stands at a platform. I’ve been drawing him recently. Not in a dramatic, table-flipping way. It’s really quite innocuous. More like a quiet recalibration. I’ve been trying to unearth some core beliefs (read: feelings) around identity, roles, grief and personal relationships. I’ve spent so many years of my life trying to…