This post relates my journey of self-discovery as I cleaned out and organized the boxes in the basement of our house.
I’m decluttering my life; going through all the boxes in the basement I’ve been moving around for years. It’s part of an idea I’ve had about simplifying, organizing, streamlining. Maybe I’m just ready to move on and I can finally let go of my comfortable security blanket of possessions.
It started with the boxes and ended with me going to Barnes and Noble and buying five copies of The Night Circus. It’s not something I wanted to do, but I had to.
I should begin by telling you my friend Angie likes to read in book stores. She likes the feel of books in her hands, the smell of ink and paper. Angie likes to do nice things for other people. And Angie likes a pleasant surprise.
Angie’s the kind of person who will take a book off the shelf, turn to the last page and write, “Great book, huh? Love, Angie.” She will do this to random books in a bookstore including books she’s never read and doesn’t intend to read. This is what irritates me about Angie.
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This post examines the line between eccentricity and insanity.
I enjoy talking to crazy people. They’re the only ones who make sense to me. People with big ideas are interesting, but people who are always talking about big ideas and never accomplishing anything are intriguing. These are the ones people give up on. These are the ones relegated to the fringe of society.
My buddy Bill is constantly talking about big projects he’s thinking about doing. I love talking with him, I love hashing through ideas and figuring out problems. It’s like a game, a hobby, a sport in which the ball is constantly in motion but never reaches a goal line. You see, Bill doesn’t actually do much of anything.
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This post is about discovering failure isn’t so bad and about how liberating that knowledge can be.
I grew up with hard-working parents who never had enough money to survive. We lived on the edge of starvation and it wasn’t beneath my folks to find dinner in a dumpster behind the local grocery store.
People cringe when they hear that but really, it sounds worse than it is. Once you get dumpster groceries home and cleaned up, they’re just like all the other expired groceries in the cupboard. And frankly, some of the most fun I had with my dad growing up was finding salvageable stuff in dumpsters.
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This post is about finding happiness in whatever we are involved in and overcoming psychological weakness.
My favorite job was working for a restaurant called Frontier Pies in Provo, Utah. As the name indicates, they were known for their delicious pies and had an extensive bakery to keep the refer stocked with their soul-satisfying goodness. I worked in the bakery as a pie maker.
I was in my early twenties and once again working my way through college, still hacking away at an associate’s degree. To save money I was living out of my car and needing to be at work at five in the morning was a good excuse for being caught sleeping in the parking lot.
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This post is about the many different forms art can take and about forgiving ourselves.
My earliest memory is of visiting my great-grandmother. She lived in a trailer on my grandfather’s farm in Cheboygan, Michigan. It sat behind his house where the grass grew waist high until the stalks bent under their own weight. Their dark green length appeared to be bowing in deference to the silver, egg-like throne around which they gathered. Her home was a remnant of a travel trailer she shared with a long-haired white lap dog who had a hard time keeping her hair.
The air inside was stale and pungent, the unventilated accumulation of lost dreams and sorrow. Though it was the middle of the day she was lying in her bed at the rear of her home.
“Come here,” she said. Her voice raspy and quavering.
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