I have not had to date for most of my adult life. So coming back to it now, in my fifties, post-divorce, has been a study in how much the language around it has shifted. It has been four or five years. I have dated four dynamic women in that stretch, and what has helped me most is being okay with not trying to force everything to work…
Read MoreWe crossed paths at the corner. Me with a cold brew from the local spot, a little honey—honey. Her, aimed at the Starbucks counter like a moth that already knew the light.
“What's the difference between the two?”
I paused. There’s an elitist answer to that question, and I went with the gentle one.
“The beans,” I said. “This shop sources their own. Roasts them too.”
She nodded and kept walking, and that was the end of us…
Read MoreWe cut through the cemetery on the way, haze off the streetlights pooling on the far side. She watched the ground like it might open. I spoke to it instead: we come in love and want to leave in love. Leave you where you are to rest. The ground stayed where it was. So did we, moving.
Read MoreWhat I'm rebuilding isn't a business or a bank balance. It's a way of being in a room. A way of staying when something gets close.
I've been making notes on what helps. Here are six…
Read MoreThe original format of this post has existed on blogs since roughly the invention of wi-fi. I've always found the framing a little odd. Guilt implies wrongdoing and should probably be reserved for tax fraud and texting your ex during mercury retrograde. Not enjoying soup in peace…
Read MoreI used to post this on social media a lot…
I am a builder of beautiful defenses.
It read like a flex back then. Half admission, half wink. The kind of line you write because it’s true and you’ve made peace with it being true.
Read MoreName the good thing out loud. It holds better that way.
What Friday set down
It started with the session. The kind of hour where you put things on the table and they don't get heavier for being looked at. Then a friend, a drink, a small plate. Nothing that needed to become a whole evening. Light food and light talk can do real work. I left both rooms lighter than I went in…
Read MoreIt's one of three questions I've been carrying around since my first session. A small practice. Sitting with what I notice and not doing anything about it.
Which, for me, is the work.
Read MoreThere are weeks where life just stacks itself. Work pulls one way, family, and friends pulls another, and somewhere in the middle you're supposed to show up fully present for all of it; clear-headed, emotionally available, not running on fumes and a protein shake. Some weeks that works. Some weeks you're just moving between rooms, between roles, trying not to drop anything.
I've been in one of those stretches…
Read MoreFive from the library. Two from the shelf. A free building down the street that hands you novels by writers you’ve never heard of. If reading does any good, that’s where it starts. Smile, learn, return the books on time.
From Here…
Read MoreWhat the Night Left Behind
Flour on the counter. Two glasses with wine rings at the bottom. A kitchen that smelled like butter and thyme and something that only exists when people cook together without dividing the labor. The girls were loud in the best way. Then they weren't. Then it was just us, and the kind of quiet that doesn't ask anything of you…
Read MoreAt some point I started signing my emails that way and nobody said anything, so I kept doing it.
It started as a joke. Or at least that's what I told myself. But jokes have a way of being more honest than the stuff you actually mean to say. Somewhere along the way it stopped being a bit…
Read MoreI’ve been saying this for about fifteen years. Half joke, half insurance policy.
It started in meetings, watching people perform thinking instead of actually doing it. Say something broad, let it hover, nod like it means something, and move on before anyone asks the obvious question. The theory sounds smart. The explanation is where the curiosity begins…
Read MoreThe recursion is doing real work. It doesn't resolve anywhere. You just keep falling through floors.
"The disappointment you keep experiencing isn't a bug, it's a feature" is so sharp that I cut myself. I've thought it but never said it out loud. The do/don't list at the bottom is perfect too…
Read MoreI’ve been thinking about pace lately. Not in the way people talk about productivity or momentum, but in a quieter, more honest way.
Just…
Read MoreTen things I'd write about if I had the energy.
Today it's four.
Charlotte traffic has lost its mind.
I don't know what happened or when, but something shifted. It's not rush hour anymore; it's just... hour. The merge on 277 alone has taken years off my life. There's a longer post here about infrastructure and growth and what a city owes its people, but I'm tired, so: it's bad out there. Drive safe…
Read MoreI've been sitting with something.
It shows up at work when someone says let's grab lunch and what they actually mean is I need to think out loud and I need a witness. It shows up in family, where Sunday dinner was never really about the food and everyone knew it but nobody said it. It shows up in friendships that only seem to exist inside restaurants, and in romance where cooking for someone is one of the earliest ways we say something we're not ready to say out loud yet.I've been sitting with something.
It shows up at work when someone says let's grab lunch and what they actually mean is I need to think out loud and I need a witness. It shows up in family, where Sunday dinner was never really about the food and everyone knew it but nobody said it. It shows up in friendships that only seem to exist inside restaurants, and in romance where cooking for someone is one of the earliest ways we say something we're not ready to say out loud yet...
Read MoreI found myself looking into La Marzocco espresso machines today, not because I’m about to run out and buy one, but because some things feel worth studying before they ever become yours. This feels like one of those things…
Read MorePeople have been peopling lately. I'm not sure if my antennae are just up or if the behavior is genuinely escalating, but either way I've started writing things in my Things I give a fuck about notebook…
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