Fall Cleaning
For many people, the dawn of Spring triggers a desire to clear out the closets and tidy up the home; to get everything nice for the arrival of better weather. Fall is my Spring, because I have an abundance of…
Focus Focus Focus
At the most macro scale, focusing on where we are in life and where we’d like to go next can help us make calendar-level decisions. Thinking at this scale can also help us make choices about what habits and rituals…
Light a Candle, Paint the Walls
We can worry about rot and horribleness and still tend a beautiful garden. I try to remember this when I feel myself drifting into a helpless “what’s the point, everything sucks” mindset. There are a lot of things in the…
The Actual Thing
Any suitably aspirational goal will require we complete a bunch of steps before we can cross them off our list, and the stair-step nature of these paths can cause us to lose sight of the actual thing we hope to…
Creative Agency
When I was a child, I would often envision an incredibly rich, detailed image (usually something related to monsters or robots or superheroes), but I would be incapable of translating that envisioning to graphite and paper. That inability to draw…
Horizon Scanning
There’s a term of art, “horizon scanning,” that initially emerged from the world of futures studies, but which has since been adopted by tech-oriented businesspeople, politicians, and even folks working in legal fields who hope to stay ahead of the…
Concrete and Nebulous
Different types of work demand different sorts of fuel. You might be primed and ready to write an essay, but completely incapable of cleaning your bedroom. You may be all set to orchestrate a complex social event, but slog through…
It’s Temporary
I’ve got hair on my head, but hair isn’t guaranteed for anyone at any age. At some point, maybe tomorrow, maybe in a few years, it could all fall out. Or enough of it could fall out that it may…
Surface Areas
I’m curious about pretty much everything, and I’m prone to falling into rabbit holes and picking up previously unfamiliar hobbies on a whim. I try to be more intentional with the work and responsibilities I bring into my life, though,…
Honing Stone
I write every single day. I often write for pleasure and exercise, but I also write essays and books, podcast scripts and speaking notes. And that’s alongside the countless emails and texts and other sorts of text-based communication most of…