Rethinking: Week One

This past Saturday, my wife and I returned to the King of Prussia Mall, and somehow, we survived. Frankly, it was a much better experience than usual, which isn’t all that hard, I suppose, considering the loathing I bear towards KoP. The difference? We came in with a plan, an agenda, and we pursued that

Changing Things Up

Over the past four years, I’ve found the hardest part of writing this blog is not the writing itself, but rather deciding what to write about. It’s not for lack of trying. I have a document full of ideas that have come to me throughout the course of writing. Most of them have become fully

Four Years and Counting

Holy shit. It’s been four years since I started writing this blog. Can you believe it? And for those of you whose first instinct is to say, “Yes, because I’ve felt every one of those long, painful years,” I’d kindly ask you not to say so out loud. For the rest, thanks for being along

Looking Back From the Finish Line

I started writing this blog way back in 2020, just after the world shut down in response to COVID-19. It’s something, then, that as I sit here at the commencement the year 2024, this little hobby of mine is still going, er…strong. Yeah, I’ll go with strong. A lot’s happened over that time, as anyone

And Another Makes Three

Well, well, well. Would you look at that? Somehow, some way, it’s been three years since I started writing this blog. For three years, I’ve published something every week in this space, from long, two-part reflections on growing up Lutheran to short pieces about midwestern cooking, with a healthy sprinkling of paragraph-length apologias mixed in. 

Dungeon Mister

The party stands amidst the bodies of their slain enemies, a bloody canyon filled with tiny lizard-like kobolds and their human commanders, cultists bedecked in worn robes and dragon-inspired masks. Doob, the monk with warlock powers, watches the final kobold escape down the path, having failed to hit his quarry with an eldritch blast. The

A Good Week for Writing

It was only a couple of weeks ago when I wrote about my goals, and how they weren’t producing the results I’d hoped. I realized that while I was checking off boxes every day, I wasn’t feeling fulfilled. I had constructed my daily routine to emphasize busy work, crowding out productive, useful effort. My end

How Nice is Too Nice?

I’ve been writing a lot about personal change lately. I’ve been thinking about how we determine where we are, assess what’s going right and what’s going wrong, and how I, at least, have gone about trying to make those in a way that’s both effective and sustainable. For the most part, those goals have been

Standing Still

I’m not sure what to say. There’s nothing wrong. Nothing momentous has left me speechless. There’s no traumatic occurrence that has rendered me unable to put word together. I’m not shellshocked by events in my life. Fate has not rendered me mute, the furies have not torn out my tongue, the gift of elocution has

Writing About Writing About

Writing this week is hard. It’s not that I’m racked with guilt or held hostage by deep inner pain. There’s no writer’s block gumming up the works, no creative impediment that’s damming up the flow of words. No, the trouble I’m having this week rooted in two simple facts. One, I’m on the road. And