Miscellaneous

Last week I had a long, late-night phone call with a friend. She called, she said, because she wanted to help calm down my racing mind at the end of a long day – which worked for the first thirty minutes or so, but soon had me unearthing memories and thoughts I had left unturned…

What do you do when you go through life being told you are weird, too much, and not what you should be? That you have no chill, you are trouble and you cause trouble, therefore you should not do what is different or difficult or unclear? That it is dangerous to think so much and…

If I could live 2025 again, I would. It would take an extra year, but it would have been worth it. 2025 has been a good year — one I am glad and proud to nod goodbye to. REFLECTIONS More than six months of the year were straight-out horrible — vague depressive states that seemed…

Ownership is seductive. It promises control, security, assurance. Something through which to assert one’s self, gain a sense of competence, boost one’s false sense of pride. After all, the strong have more than the weak; the intelligent can do more, own more than dullards; those who can acquire and keep what they acquire have status…

Sometimes it is easier to figure out how you do not want your life to turn out than to outline what you would like it to be. So here is my anti-vision: I do not want a life spent… In places where presence matters less than prestige With complaining, complacent people who take life for…

The limitations of our options, cognitive awareness, and practical capabilities make defaults in decisions, responses, and actions almost necessary. Sometimes we simply do not have the time or information required to do otherwise. But when defaultness becomes all they are — where actions become reflexes and “oh, that’s nice” is but a hollow exhaled reaction…

It fascinates me how easily we live as if certain things are real, whether or not they actually are. These could be presuppositions about life, reality, and the way things work, opinions about how situations work themselves out, learned reactions to the flavors of happenstance — all of which we inevitably collect through life and…

Certain conditions must be met before you could enjoy even the most intense and personal of your interests. When the cost of entry and maintenance exceeds the substance you have placed into a ‘passion’ — all that you have developed it into, the structure and content and space you have afforded it to become something…

When a friend told me the rhetorical question “why so serious?” is basically his life motto these days, something in me flickered into darkness — then burst into flaming light ten times brighter than before. (That is, the serious part of me. What else?) I wanted to write a thousand-word essay in response, arguing for…

“Live out what you understand” seems to be a solid outline of what living honestly requires. Being articulate and speaking your mind is one thing. That alone is a high standard — you must first think, then know your own thoughts enough to express them in ways understandable to other minds. But what if what…