Maybe it won’t look catastrophic from the outside. You might not even see it coming, either, but there will be a moment when you’re hyper-focusing on not losing your balance, and you’ll know in an instant you’re about to get bucked.

Your eyes bulge nearly out of your face as you realize, despite your very best efforts, any ounce of balance you thought you’d wrangled is actually a farce. You’ve given it every single bit of your energy and, still, there’s nothing you can do now… you’re just going to have to watch every second of the impending crash in slow motion.

I don’t know what this says about me, but I’ve been swept up in that chaotic spin-cycle plenty of times, and at very different stages of life. Go through it enough, and you’ll inevitably find yourself starting to recognize when you’re on the other side of one, but not yet in another.

That’s the in-between kind of place where I found myself this week.

Maybe balance isn’t the noun we’re told it is.

I’m rounding the corner on my bike and looking over my shoulder in the opposite direction. No cars is a good sign since I’m coming up on the intersection and I need to cross. On the other side of the street, I notice a guy pushing a stroller with one hand and holding a cup of coffee with the other. He’s waiting to cross, but I can’t see his face because he’s bent down behind the stroller. Still, I’m thinking he looks a lot like my neighbor.

The light changes, we each start to cross and, sure enough, it’s my neighbor after all.

“oh hey!”

I see the flash of recognition as his face bursts into a smile. Then, we each go our own way. It was just a quick encounter, since it’s not like we could stop and chat in the middle of the road, but running into him truly made for a pleasant surprise. I’m still smiling as I head off toward my local coffee shop.

It’s a cool day; damp but not wet from rain the day before. It still looks like it might start raining again, but I figure the worst that happens is I get wet. While pedaling a bit absentmindedly, I’m reasoning I could just wait it out at the coffee place if I had to. Life as an athlete might have taught me that the best defense is a good offense, but life as an outdoor guide proved that anything which can go wrong, will go wrong.

That, and there’s no such thing as bad weather if you have the right clothing.

Juggling everything seems like it should never have been the goal, anyway.

As I’m walking into the coffee place, it dawns on me that I used to run into people I knew everywhere, and that I’d been going through a bit of a self-inflicted dry-spell there for a while. About five years’ worth, actually... give or take.

Once upon a time, my chance encounters even became sort of a running joke among my close friends. If we went out somewhere, they’d place bets on how long it’d be until I bumped into someone I knew that they didn’t. Then, they’d try to guess how many other times it was going to happen the same day. I was involved in a lot of stuff across many social groups back then. I never sat still, always bopping between them.

I just can’t imagine juggling that much now. Truth be told, I think I needed to let everything fall apart before I could learn how to hold a few things together well.

I’m ready to admit that, now, after having already watched the slo-mo crashout that landed me in rock-bottom and led me, very willingly, into sobriety. Since then, though, I’ve actually been afraid of maintaining too many moving parts in my life at once. I think, for a while at least, isolating felt safe because limiting social interactions meant fewer moving parts. Not to mention, it seemed like fewer things that could break if I lost my balance and crashed out again.

I was wrong about that, though.

That’s definitely not balance.

I work remotely, so I’ve been making a point of dragging my butt to local coffee spots like this. In part, I knew the change of scenery would be good for my overall mood, but I also knew that venturing out into my community regularly would be one more domino in the effort to rebuild my social life.

Settling into a table along the brick wall, I realize I’ve been running into folks again quite a bit. I literally ran into someone I went to high school with last week on the sidewalk while I was out jogging. And another friend from college biked past me by the water a few days ago. I even ran into an old coworker at a concert recently that I haven’t seen since leaving that company.

My spirits lift.

I’m feeling like I’m “back.” Back to being the more outgoing “me” from before I got sober; without the social training-wheels I feel like I’d adopted since. And I’m even thinking it’s time to tell my friends to start placing their bets again…

Leaning forward, I perch my elbows on the table and rest my chin between my thumb and index finger; right in the crook of my hand. With regard to balance, social or otherwise, Albert Einstein seemed to think life was like riding a bicycle. Basically, he said you have to keep moving if you want to keep your balance. For years, though, I’ve gone back and forth on whether or not balance is actually something you can keep at all. I recently read something from and Adam Moss about how “art requires a balance of play and rigor in almost equal measure.” That, I like. It makes sense to me.

I let out a slow sigh and shake my head.

I’m someone who’s always had a wonky relationship with rest, so I never really figured out how to rest before I absolutely needed to—regardless of whether I was focused on play or rigor. Staring into the coffee mug in front of me, I’m thinking of the first time I went on a winter backcountry trip as one such example. I’d been the only snowboarder, so I was hyper-aware of not doing anything that could slow down the group. We snowboarders have enough of a PR problem as it is without giving folks more reasons to be prejudiced against us. So on this one particular day, we’re hiking up to take another lap and I’m in front. And I’m absolutely hauling ass up this ridge. Keeping an extremely quick pace, my lungs were on fire and I had sweat pouring down my back. Still, when I hit the top of the ridge, I didn’t rest. Like, not at all. I remember grabbing layers from my bag, flipping my board and bindings from hiking mode to riding mode, and making sure I was ready to go by the time the last person in the group popped through the trees and plopped down on the ground next to us. That was when I rested… while everyone else was getting ready to move.

And here I am, sitting in this coffee shop, realizing how much I still have to be mindful of not doing that. I guess I used to see play and rigor sort of like opposite sides of the same teeter-totter, where the whole point of the teeter-totter is the back and forth—the up and down in constant motion. So in that regard, maybe Einstein’s right. But, as I’m shifting in my seat and leaning up against the red bricks beside me, I’m now thinking a boat makes more sense as a metaphor for balance than a bike.

I mean, bikes fall over when the effort stops, right?

Boats drift.

The tug-of-war between pushing through and letting go.

The next morning, I’m thinking more about my own teeter-totter relationship with play and rigor these days, and I’m starting to doubt all the confidence I’d felt in the coffee shop. So much for being “back.” It’s five past eight, I’m late, and I don’t want to keep getting ready to go meet my friend.

UGH.

Ok, fine. Yes, I do.

But I’m in my kitchen, still trying to finalize a game plan.

This friend of mine had called after I’d left the coffee place. We’d been playing a multi-week game of phone tag. It’s actually the same one we’ve been playing for almost 15 years, so I answered to end this round. Without preamble, he’d asked “what are you doing tomorrow?”

He already had plans for us by that point. I was sure of it. It was in the way he asked it. That’s what always gives him away... so I was well aware I’d just been ensnared in what would probably turn out to be an incredibly fun last minute plan. For a guy who lives and breathes procedural integrity as a med school student, he does incredibly well with spontaneity.

“Wanna go skiing?”

Um, what?

My mind starts racing. That hadn’t been what I was expecting him to say at all. Truthfully I’d already accepted the end of the snow season and was actually excited to go for a longer run in the sun by the lake. But then I realize we never got to go together this winter. Still, I briefly thought about countering with a proposal to grab coffee instead. But then did some quick math: car ride there, gearing up in the lot, time on the chairlift, car ride home. And that’d be a lot more time for us to chat and catch up.

So here I am, running late and scrambling between the closet and the kitchen while somewhat reluctantly getting ready to go. I slept like shit, I’m irritable, and I’m seriously considering just un-making the bed and crawling back into it. Of course, it’s a stunningly beautiful morning. The sun’s out, and I already know that if I go snowboarding, I’m going to be dripping sweat if I wear my hoodie.

In the kitchen, I hear the coffee brewing.

My heart’s beating, my jaw’s clenched, and I’m wondering if it would’ve just been faster to stop for a cup on the way. Probably. Too late now, though. I still need to fish my boots out of the closet and I should probably grab my board while I’m thinking about it so I don’t forget that either...

He’s lucky I love him.

Balance finally seems to show up once you stop expecting it to.

I catch myself and force a deep breath into my nostrils. I know this’ll be fun. Pushing myself to get my things and get my ass out the door is the right move. Especially because he and I don’t get to see as much of each other as we used to. So, sure, I’m tired, but I decide I’m going.

Besides, the thing I’m actually worried about is whether or not snowboarding will still stir up a bunch of messy shit for me. Spending time with my friend feels worth the gamble, though. In recent years, I’ve been feeling this gap between how much I’m supposed to love snowboarding and how much I actually do. And that has a tendency to, well... make me sad. Making it my job ruined it for me and I’ve never quite been able to get it back. Sometimes, I tell myself I’m supposed to love it because the me before burnout did. And, if I can love snowboarding again, maybe I can find my way back to playing around in life instead of holding myself hostage on the rigor side of the teeter-totter. But, since I’ve become aware of all this, I’ve been resisting more and more opportunities to go snowboarding at all.

Like right now.

So when I finally climb into my truck to go meet my friend, I’m wondering if, maybe, liking snowboarding’s not really what I’m afraid of anymore, anyway.

What if…

What if all this has just become a fear of... fear?

We find what we look for, after all. And I’d been so hyper-focused on getting ready and getting out the door that I never saw that coming. It hadn’t looked catastrophic from the outside but, in an instant, I found myself, once again, in the in-between kind of place on the other side of a crash, but not yet in another.

For now, at least, I know damn well I’m not about to get bucked.

onward.

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One day you’re going about your daily life, just as you normally do, when, seemingly out of nowhere, you become disturbingly aware of how your version of “normal” doesn’t feel all that normal anymore.

Moments of reckoning like this have actually happened to me a few times throughout my life. One of them took place earlier this week.

It sort of feels like when you realize your fingernails are much too long. Without warning, the itch to cut them becomes almost unbearable. At least, it does for me. And when I think back on the times where these unannounced paradigm shifts have shown up, it’s because there was something important going on that I blatantly ignored, actively tried to avoid, or missed entirely while overwhelmed by the many moving parts of life.

If I’m honest with myself, they were probably avoidable and, at the very least, they were predictable. All of them.

But I’m human…

I wanted to protect my ego, despite knowing full well that Aldous Huxley was right when he said, “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”

Emotional safety needs the kind of honesty that’s willing to face things head-on.

Facing hard truths can be learned, but getting comfortable with it takes time. We all just want to belong. That’s what makes us feel accepted, valued, and safe. For me, the fear of not fitting in was especially powerful as a kid.

It was paralyzing.

Feeling like I didn’t belong felt like having to choose between being accepted or being myself. And, yes, of course I recognize that now as an ultimatum of my own making. But, at the time, maybe the hard truth I found myself circling was that it was up to me to decide if belonging and being unapologetically myself could be one and the same. The scary part was wondering which I’d choose if they couldn’t… and whether or not I’d be ok with that.

This is what I’m thinking about as I stand on the basketball court in the park near my house this week. I recently got a new ball, on a whim, because I thought maybe it’d be fun to shoot around here and there across the street. As I’m taking a layup for having missed my last shot, I’m picturing my step-brother, Danny, and a specific game of one-on-one we played together growing up. He was on defense, and, in a rare moment of graciousness, was trying to teach me something instead of just kicking my ass. He wanted me to drive to the hoop and finish strong, rather than drifting off at the last second for a fade-away shot, like I was prone to doing. Danny was older, taller, and unequivocally more skilled than any peer I’d play against in a game with guys my own age. And I’m still not convinced he wasn’t just doing this with me because it let him body me back and swat every shot I took.

So, here I am on the court as an adult, dribbling toward the hoop for my layup after a miss, and it’s Danny’s voice I hear taunting me “to go up strong.” But then I do. Somehow, my body still remembers how to do that, even after all these years. That was the strangest part of this whole thing: shooting with adult muscles and limited shoulder mobility. I think my form was ok, but I had no idea how much oomf to put into shooting at first. A few bricks off the backboard and just a couple of air-balls helped to recalibrate things.

Facing things head-on means embracing discomfort.

It’s cloudy, but bright enough that sunglasses help. There’s a chill, but I’m fine in my shorts and my T-shirt, so long as I keep moving around. I’d been wearing a hoodie, too, but I took it off after it was messing with my shot by tugging on my arm. Which, yes, is embarrassing; especially since I started shooting better without it.

While I’m playing around, I’m listening to the Finding Mastery podcast, where Sam Harris and Michael Gervais are talking about honesty. It feels timely. I wouldn’t have described my approach to honesty as “radical” until recently. Sometimes, I suppose I still think of myself as the kid who fibbed to avoid getting in trouble... even though, rationally, I know I’ve grown into a far different person as an adult.

This past winter was a rough one for me. They always are, to some extent. As a lifelong snowboarder and mountain sports enthusiast, I always wind up living in places that get dark, cold, and snowy for a solid chunk of the year. Some turn out better than others.

I guess I just wouldn’t have called myself depressed.

Or, maybe I just didn’t want to believe it.

I’ve been depressed before—I’m no stranger to doctors, meds, journals, meditations, or happy lights. My upbringing was spent almost exclusively in fight-or-flight mode, complete with suicidal crises, substance use, and underdeveloped coping skills. I’ve ridden my fair share of highs and lows, and this wasn’t like the ones I knew to look out for.

For starters, nothing was catastrophically wrong.

In fact, so much of my life is going extraordinarily well, it took quite a while to accept that depression could be high-functioning. Roof over my head, loving relationship, amazing friends, almost 5 years of sobriety… only by facing some hard truths did I come to realize I’d stopped tending to the basics that made all of those things possible.

Honesty’s a prerequisite for (re)connecting with life.

I’m dribbling, albeit slowly, alternating between left-handed layups and right-handed ones. Back and forth. One, then the other, across the empty court. Cracking a smile, I begrudgingly admit that, in a weird way, Danny’s beatings had worked. In basketball and in life, knowing when to go up strong and face things head-on is a skill I’m grateful to have learned.

After my low winter, and (finally) admitting I was depressed, I made exercising a priority again. So I got back into running and started noticing glimpses of my old self re-emerging within weeks. It was basically the first domino that led to visiting friends, joining a rec soccer team, and making a point to play more in everyday life. Hence, getting myself a new basketball.

It’s all adding up.

I realize I’m doing it; having fun again.

The avoidance we recognize in others says a lot about how we handle ourselves.

Later that night, I’m watching something on TV when, instinctively, I start turning down the volume before anything out of the ordinary even happens. At first I’d hit pause, but I’m trying to be better about withstanding awkward, embarrassing, or otherwise confrontational social situations on TV and in movies. I’m watching “Gary,” an unannounced episode of The Bear. Apparently, it got released as a surprise ahead of the show’s upcoming fifth and final season.

It’d taken a second to register what I was looking at when I first opened Hulu. Seeing the name “Gary” didn’t make me think of The Bear, and it wasn’t until I saw Jon Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach pictured side-by-side that I even thought to connect those dots.

Did they star in something else together?

Wait...

Hold on, is this a spinoff?

Reddit solved the mystery for me. “Gary” is a flashback episode, referencing a roadtrip to Gary, Indiana, involving Mikey and Richie (Jon and Ebon). Honestly, it could be a standalone short film. Maybe that’s why they listed it as a different show? I think that, after the marketing splash subsides, this choice will seem incredibly clunky.

Talk about confusing for a first-time viewer. And, even if they wanted to change it later, it’s not like they could just transfer it into an existing show-listing without losing all the streaming data...

I catch myself.

What kind of dork starts thinking about software system governance when faced with a new, surprise episode of a show they love, anyway? Not my problem... So I’m sitting there on my couch, leaning forward with my arms in my lap, and I’m cradling the remote while toggling mute on and off. Jon Bernthal’s character, Mikey, is just completely zooted and being an asshole to his best friend.

I’m watching his facial expression dip in and out of vulnerability and fear—between belonging and being himself. I see self-protection flash across his eyes, disguising itself through hatred and animosity.

My heart’s racing now and I’m squeezing my thumbs between my pointer fingers and middle fingers on each hand like I’d do when I was a kid before I ever had this stupid fidget ring. Somehow, my chest is hollow and tight all at once. For a guy who can’t make it through five minutes of The Office without cringing, I’m thinking I’m doing pretty good.

It’s just a TV show.

It’s not real.

It’s not yours to hold.

This show has spent four seasons making us fall in love with Mikey. We knew going in that the entire premise of The Bear is Mikey committing suicide and leaving his just-about-bankrupt Chicago restaurant to his younger brother, Carmen (Jeremy Allen White). Season after season, we’ve been given breadcrumbs of an abusive family environment and moderate glimpses into the insufficient coping mechanisms of everyone involved.

So I’m staring at the TV and I’m grinding my teeth, trying to remember to take deep breaths. I knew Mikey was an addict. I knew he was sweet, and kind, and deeply afraid of facing hard truths. I love The Bear for making him so undeniably human.

And I hate how much of it I recognize.

onward.

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We teach boys to hide their shame, and then wonder why men struggle with loneliness.

I’d been talking with my mom over coffee.

We’re in her kitchen and we wind up reminiscing. Perhaps it’s because we live in the same place again, relatively speaking, after more than a decade spent with hundreds, even thousands, of miles between us.

Somehow, we land on the topic of how I wasn’t that great a student as a kid.

Well, ok... we’re recalling how I was “very capable,” as my high school teachers would’ve said, and how my grades maybe didn’t always reflect the true level of that capability. I know now that there are plenty of legitimate reasons for that, my neurodivergence chief among them (undiagnosed at the time). Still, back then, I carried a lot of shame around those less-than-stellar grades and their, seemingly unexplainable, incongruence with my abilities…

That shame would later impact my friendships, relationships, career, and livelihood.

We teach kids to hide their shame—especially boys.

Mom’s sitting across from me at the head of the table. It’s mid morning on a Saturday and we’re fully down the rabbit hole now.

This whole thing began with a joke... one of those half-truths that isn’t so much “ha-ha funny” as it is ironic. We’re talking about that past shame of mine with a light-hearted fondness that only arrives after years of distance and some intentional reflection. So, I’d said, a bit hyperbolically, that maybe my calling was in academia as a psychological researcher. Mom then shoots me a knowing look with a half-grin to acknowledge my half-truth.

We both know why thinking of high-school-me as an academic is funny, even if we’re not laughing. She tilts her head with the weight of a fresh thought, and says in a more serious tone “That would really be something…” After a quick pause she added, “if you could help teens learn about how to have a healthier relationship with shame, that would be amazing.”

Boys are taught that their value depends on approval.

Shame; that’s what catapulted this whole discussion of ours in the kitchen to scenes from decades past. Now, Mom and I are both drifting in and out of daydreams, asking one another if we remember certain ones.

It’s innocuous enough but, still, I get stuck.

I’m replaying one very dreadful first day of Fall soccer from when I was a kid. I’m 5 years old and I’ve never played soccer before. It’s a new school year, but I’m new here altogether. Mom and I are walking along the edge of the school’s parking lot and I can feel my heart picking up speed, as it sometimes does, but I don’t say anything. In fact, I’m trying very hard not to. Up ahead, there’s a blur of kids all wearing shorts with socks up to their knees. The soccer fields are side-by-side and there are too many to count. I’m already overwhelmed by the cacophony of shrieks, thuds, and whistles.

And I don’t recognize anyone.

This big, green, grassy amusement park of people are bunched up into various clusters separated by orange cones. We’re shuffling alongside one of the clusters, when we reach a kid I don’t know and his dad talking by the cone closest to us. They’re all riled up—waving, pointing, shouting. I have no idea what they’re talking about, but I’m really hoping it’s not about the game.

I don’t even know how to play.

Slowly, I’m realizing that everyone else out there does. They clearly all know each other from school, too. In a moment of sheer panic, my tough, silent, and confident exterior crumbles. How come they all know what’s going on and I don’t? Am I supposed to? I don’t think I can fake this… They’re gonna know, and then I’m going to feel even lonelier than I do now.

The weight of it is suddenly too heavy—too extreme—and I burst into tears, hot with shame. Immediately, I wish I was anywhere else.

Sitting there in the kitchen with my mom, I absentmindedly crack the knuckle of my pointer finger with my thumb. Managing to pull my gaze away from its scan of nothing in particular among the countertop cabinets, I turn toward her and find a kind of “now what” expression looking back at me.

Boys full of shame become men full of fear.

I’d been thinking about how, as humans, our relationship with shame seems to play a major role in how accountable we become. When I was a teen, I hid the fact that I struggled to get assignments done in school because I was ashamed of it. I continued to struggle like that until, eventually, I learned how to talk about it with other people.

Male friendships are, at their core, steeped in competition.

I’m not sure I was ever shown how to make or maintain friendships; male, or otherwise. If I’m honest, most of my early friendships were place-based. They formed in school, through sports, or at work. Some of those environments—if not all of them—are centered around competition. It makes me think of how boys grow up being told, shown, and pressured to be of use. I know at least I felt like I was being judged on that. Constantly. My sense of self felt tethered to my ability to do things of worth for someone else—that my value as a person depended on the say-so of others.

As far as I can tell, that’s the same kind of thinking that perpetuates our culture of oneupmanship and peacocking. That, and the many harmful tropes plastered across the movies kids grow up watching. You know, like needing to save the damsel in distress, or that bravery means beating up people who disagree with you. Oh, and can’t forget the insidious bologna that “nice guys finish last.”

These things, among others, seem at least part of the explanation for why boys full of shame become men full of fear… Guys around the globe are dying by suicide, at an alarming rate, without ever having revealed their pain to anyone.

I was almost one of them.

Competitive interpersonal relationships breed defensiveness.

My eyes drift to where the sun’s shining in through the kitchen window. Mom’s still watching me gather my thoughts.

It wasn’t until college, perhaps even my twenties, that I worked to decouple my self-worth from the output I could create for others. For many of the men I know, those things are tightly interwoven, still, well into their adulthood. I have to believe this plays a role in the male loneliness crisis we’re facing.

Despite the competitive lens through which I was raised, I feel incredibly lucky to have forged some seriously strong friendships. A while back, one of my friends from college sent me a pretty lengthy text out of the blue. We used to be very close, but our get-togethers have, admittedly, grown further and further apart. It’s been trending that way for a few years now. That’s also something I’ve written about quite openly. What’s more, I’d been wrestling for a bit with how much of myself I felt comfortable sharing with our friend group. But I hadn’t realized this friend was regularly reading my writing.

Oh... oh shit.

Like it or not, I played a prominent role in our drift, and I was harboring quite a bit of shame around it, too. In that text, this friend called me out. And I’m so glad they did. They told me directly that they cared about me and sensed my distance—that they wanted to talk about it and were all ears if I was comfortable enough with doing so.

I’m so lucky.

SO, so lucky.

Having met in college, we’ve been through plenty of fun times together, but we’ve also been there for each other during breakups, cross-country moves, and existential conversations about what to do with each of our wild and precious lives. We’ve long been vulnerable enough with each other to be truly honest.

So I told them what was bothering me, and the shame I felt about it.

We starve ourselves of collaborative connection when we compete.

What I realized is that every interaction amongst our friends had starting feeling like a contest. And, once I was aware of the pattern, I couldn’t unsee it.

At a group get-together a while back, I watched it happen time and again when someone would strike up a conversation. They’d kick things off, and then another person would link whatever was said to a movie quote or reference. The next person would do the same, adding on a call-back to someone or something else.

Round-and-round we’d go.

It wasn’t even a new pattern… it was one I’d long participated in, too. Maybe I just couldn’t see it, or maybe I hadn’t had the language to label it for the contest it was. But once I did, it made me uncomfortable. And realizing that made me really sad.

During that group get-together, I’d noticed the usual references and reminiscing had evolved, verryyy subtilely, into a version where the call-backs became put-downs. That’s the part that really sucked, actually. It felt like hanging out together had just become a game of who could come up with the sneakiest insult.

It’s only because of the strong, foundational dynamic of trust this friend and I built up over years and years of flubbing our way through the fear of sharing our feelings with each other that a conversation like this was possible.

And, via text no less.

Relational repair is the antidote to ridicule, shame, and isolation—so why aren’t we teaching it?

Something similar actually came up between my partner and I, back when we first started seeing each other.

Movie quotes and the like were the way I best knew how to connect with people. It’s what we’d done on my sports teams growing up, at summer camp, in high school, during college, and even at various workplaces. Not her—her approach was different. So we talked about it. And what it helped me to realize, was that I’d been using pop-culture references as a social crutch… as a way to bond with people without sharing much information about myself, if any at all.

That was early into seeing each other, but I really liked her so I challenged myself to put the references down and start sharing more openly. I thought of it kind of like how a writer might try to avoid clichés by coming up with their own descriptions for things. Doing that required a lot of vulnerability and a willingness to be seen that I wasn’t very good at because I’d never practiced.

I later discovered that this choreography was pretty similar to how Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at Wharton, approaches relational repair. He advocates for leaning on a strong, empathetic foundation, and a willingness to be vulnerable, as a way to avoid blame and defensiveness in relationships. To do that, he suggests using Beth Polin’s 5 Rs of an apology:

1. Regret - sincerely share that you’re sorry for the harm caused.

2. Rationale - explain why it happened without deflecting or justifying your role.

3. Responsibility - take ownership. No “buts.”

4. Repentance - acknowledging a commitment to doing things differently.

5. Repair - collaboratively seek to restore trust.

Most notably, this philosophy of repair requires owning the impact of your actions, rather than clinging to the intent behind them. That’s so important. And as uncomfortable as it is, it requires leaning in and engaging instead of pulling away and isolating.

That’s something I was never shown as a kid. It wasn’t until I was trained to facilitate conflict resolution as a wilderness guide that I started to grasp its importance. Ironically, somewhere around the time I first got sober in 2021, I forgot this pearl of wisdom and began pulling away and isolating from my friends. It was hard to admit that my journey of wanting to like myself more came at the cost of straining pretty much all of my relationships. But, one of the mistakes I made was thinking I could achieve it by avoiding the possibility of feeling any shame at all.

What I really needed was to lean into my trusting relationships, so there’d be a place to talk about shame when faced with it.

That’s why I was so excited about my friend reaching out, because asking to talk things through is what led to the open and honest conversation that followed. Multiple of them, really.

We’ve even started emailing each other more regular life updates. In the time since, I feel like our conversations offer something they never did before: named intimacy, rather than inferred closeness. I get to hear about the latest with this friend’s kiddo, the funny thing that happened after work, and their actual feelings toward making life happen every day with their spouse. It’s not small talk or once a year banter—we’re not even catching up anymore, really, because we’re collaborating more in real-time through short, no-pressure snippets.

Showing up without shame requires the presence of trust.

Across from me, mom shifts in her seat. The mid morning brightness is now highlighting an expression of deep curiosity on her face.

I tell her that releasing my shame from its hiding place required a level of trust I hadn’t been willing to participate in back then—that learning how to go about it differently is something I’ve been curious about ever since my teenaged struggles all those years ago. So, that’s when I started absorbing, collecting, and experimenting with different ways of doing things.

“Some of it,” I explained, “comes from Brené Brown’s work, some from Andrew Huberman, Gabor Maté, Carol Dweck, and Adam Grant. Some from Angela Duckworth and Richard Schwartz...” I trailed off.

Mom’s eyes were glazing over.

I leaned forward.

“I’ve accidentally been working toward my PhD in Cognitive Psychology all these years... without getting any credit for it!”

Sure, it was a joke. I’d delivered the line with an air of faux incredulity and we’d smirked at each other. But my half-truth kept hanging there, lingering, in the air between us.

Our relationship with accountability depends on our response to shame.

Last summer, I finally admitted I was lonely.

I wrote about how I was among the many men who feel this way. I’d noticed my friendships had fallen off a cliff when I stepped away from social media a few years ago. Between that, getting sober, and a handful of other factors, I’d felt more and more like I couldn’t communicate effectively anymore. So, I set out to do something about it. I challenged myself to learn more about storytelling and started telling stories at The Moth to keep myself accountable. I even began writing a daily column to further hone my skills.

Nine months later, I heard my name get called over the speakers to go up on stage at The Moth. Then, I swallowed the mouthful of water I’d been holding onto.

The theater was dark, and my mouth gets dry when I’m about to speak in front of an audience. I rose from my seat and made my way to the front while taking a few sharp inhales through my nose. Climbing the steps, I let out a slow exhale as I walked into the spotlights and took my place in front of the mic. Sue, the event host, adjusted the stand, gave me a smile, and then disappeared stage-left.

I looked out at the crowd, peering into the darkness beyond the stage-lighting. With my feet firmly planted, I relaxed my shoulders and reminded myself to stand up straight. I gave myself a silent “you got this”, then smiled and began telling the story of how I chose to save my own ass instead of helping someone else because of the hidden shame I carried.

After I finished, I moved out of the spotlight and could finally see the faces in the crowd and hear their thunderous applause. Descending the steps to return to my seat, I clenched my jaw and felt my throat swell as I walked past tearful smiles and nods of appreciation. In a culture where ridicule runs rampant, we expect people to conceal their shame in perpetuity. All I know, is that collaboration and contribution, not competition, is what helps me offload mine.

This wasn’t the first time I told a story at The Moth, but I think it was the first time I felt like I truly belonged. I missed first place by just a fraction of a point, coming in second (again). One of these times I’m going to win. Maybe. Or, maybe I won’t…

Either way, I’m just going to keep showing up.

Because I’m tired of seeing boys full of shame become men full of fear.

onward.

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We desperately need role models of healthy, secure masculinity. I can’t believe it’s controversial to say that, but apparently it is.

You know how sometimes it seems like the world doesn’t value the things you value… like, at all? That’s what happened to me when I opened Substack on my laptop this week. My eyes floated to the right side of the screen and lingered there for a minute before glazing over completely.

That’s the spot where the leaderboard showed that Andrew Tate—a proud, self-proclaimed misogynist, currently facing charges for human trafficking, rape, and organized crime—had become Substack’s latest number-one bestseller...

At first, I was furious. I was incredulous, angry, and riled-up. However, all of that was quickly replaced with a deep and profound sense of disgust.

Substack is supposedly the anti-slop, emotionally-literate platform for writers.

With over 50 million users on the platform, I was disappointed, bordering on betrayed, to see the likes of Tate get enough support to land atop the leaderboard.

I just… ok, um…

I’m sitting there gawking defeatedly at the screen, wanting to scream at the top of my fucking lungs. I couldn’t take it anymore. For the most part, I try to stay off of social media these days because of shit like this. I didn’t even log on to Substack to scroll, either. I went to write. And then, there I am faced with the dumbfuckery staring back at me.

I just kept sitting there. And then a mountain of thoughts came flooding in. I felt extraordinary disdain and total dejection at the same time until, suddenly, I was back in high school watching a fight break out.

One I could’ve stopped, but didn’t.

Fear of rejection keeps men quiet when bad things happen.

I was fifteen years old, and the person who threw the punch was on the football team with me. Everyone was gathered in a circle just outside of our school’s library in the space between the end of lunch and the start of the next period. I remember trying to understand why the crowd was forming, and then feeling like my feet were stuck to the pavement once I figured it out.

Across from the football player stood someone about three times smaller than him. This person had a reputation for pissing people off, but they also had a learning disability where they struggled to recognize social cues.

The more boisterous things became, the more stunned I felt.

This can’t be happening.

I desperately wanted someone to do something, I just really didn’t want it to be me. We went to an all-boys school and it was the kind of place where social status relied on put-downs disguised as witty banter, and where sameness meant acceptance. Anything that made you different was fair game to be used against you. And I’d been picked on as a kid. Mostly, for being artsy. While it’d taken a lot of work, I finally managed to shed that persona by the time this fight took place. It’d required years of careful engineering to earn a social status that was both flexible and neutral—one that let me fit in without standing out too much.

So I’d watched from the edge of the circle outside of the library, panicking, while that football player raised his arm to strike. Intervening felt like I’d be throwing away the social safety I worked so hard for. And, as ashamed as I felt, the fear of losing that safety kept me quiet while things continued to escalate. Yes, I’d managed to embed myself within the jocks’ social group by then, but I was very much still struggling with my queerness.

I hadn’t come out yet.

My closest friends didn’t know. At times, I tried very hard not to know either.

So, standing on the edge of that circle outside of the library at school, I remember thinking there was no way he was really going to do it. This teammate of mine was not going to punch this guy.

But then he did… he punched him directly in the center of his face.

Immediately, I thought he broke his nose.

At first, none of us did a thing.

Then, suddenly, I’m standing between them—nobody tried to stop me. Everything grew quiet directly after the hit, anyway. Next thing I know, I’m at the school nurse’s office telling the guy with the bloody face he’s going to be ok. Before I could leave, he reached out and hugged me; thanked me even. And I walked out of there completely full of shame for having saved my own ass at the expense of his. I didn’t go to the principal or tell anyone about it, either. I just went to class.

And I still regret it.

Healthy masculinity requires vulnerability, empathy, acceptance, failure, and accountability.

After a while, I’m scrolling the Notes feed on Substack and it’s clear I’m not the only one who’s aggravated by the leaderboard. All I could do was shake my head. I hate that healthy masculinity is such a faux pas thing to talk about.

Seriously, I’m sitting there wondering how insane I must be to hope more people agree that vulnerability, empathy, acceptance, failure, and accountability are behavior patterns worth endorsing. These are the basic elements of secure, human connection—regardless of gender. And I still can’t believe how controversial they are.

Shifting uneasily in my seat, I’d wondered if there are just too many people out there in the world who dream of punching a bully in the face, but who haven’t yet realized that they’ve become the bully. And I know I could be wrong, but I also know that kind of pain, without an outlet, ferments into really something sinister.

Shame is a breeding ground for insecurity.

Unfortunately, I also know a thing or two about that. I turned 32 this week and I never expected to make it this far.

Recently, a couple close friends and I talked through that very topic during a conversation about “life milestones.” We were sitting across from each other in a triangle in their living room. As soon as the topic popped up, I knew I had a decision to make: be honest, or deflect. For years I chose the latter, but this time I decided to go with the former.

The line of questioning bopped unceremoniously from “how’d you picture your career” to “what’d you want to be when you grew up,” and then over to “how did you choose which college you went to” and “wait, did we all feel super pressured to go to college in the first place??”

From my seat on the end of the couch, I’d kept my eyes on my friend while she explained her answers, fidgeting incessantly with my hands in my lap. When the invisible sharing stick finally made its way over to me, I inhaled slowly and prepared to let the honesty out.

More calmly than expected, I explained that my upbringing was spent predominantly in fight-or-flight mode. Moving past the details, I stated quite plainly that all of that had led to an arduous game of tug-of-war with both my mental health and masculinity as a teen. Before continuing, I’d braced myself in what I hoped was a subtle way. I’d uncrossed my leg from its perch on my knee and swapped it for the other one. Eyes flitting back-n-forth between my two friends, I then told them how that chapter of my journey ultimately led to a suicidal crisis and how a phone call to a friend saved my life.

And, with all of that in mind, I explained how I never pictured what my adult life would look like—no ideal career, house, hobbies, hopes, dreams, or schemes. No role models. I didn’t think I’d be here for any of it.

My friends didn’t recoil. Their eyes were a bit wider than usual, sure. But they already knew the raw truth of what I’d shared. Granted, this framing was a bit different than I’d ever really gone into with them. But I was glad I did. To me, it didn’t feel harsh, or triggering, or upsetting. It just felt... matter of fact. Sort of like a clean slate. I see a lot of hope in that from where I’m sitting.

So, what did I want to be when I grow up?

Happy.

Which is why, every year, I find myself more and more grateful for my clean slate.

Curiosity is the antidote, but connection is the cure.

I’d finally clicked away from the Substack homepage and into the draft I’d gone there to work on. Blinking cursor and blank background in front of me, I let out a big, long exhale. More calmly, I started thinking about all of this from a different angle.

It wasn’t until my twenties that I learned to talk to the men in my life about pain, so I can empathize with those hoping for a way to resolve their insecurity and loneliness.

And male loneliness has truly become an epidemic.

• 30 years ago, 55 % of men reported having at least six close friends.

• Only 27 % of men have six or more close friends today.

• 15% of men have no close friendships at all.

When I called my friend in crisis all those years ago, my voice wobbled but his didn’t. He was calm and offered advice that saved my life. I later asked him how he stayed so level-headed during that phone call, since it was his clarity that made the difference. What he said in response is something I’ll never, ever forget.

He told me that when he answered the phone he was terrified, but he knew he needed to find a way to keep calm. So he asked himself: “What would Derek do if roles were reversed?”

And then, he tried to act like me.

That’s something I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life. My throat still catches thinking about it. It’s one of the most profound mindset shifts I’ve ever come across, too. I use it all the time now.

Asking for help is the second bravest thing you can do.

The first is asking someone else if they’re ok and meaning it.

When I finally reached a place in my life when I was ready to stop searching for masculinity to guide me and, instead, try steering myself by pointing toward the kind of person I wanted to be, it was clunky at first. But that’s the thing that actually helped me get rid of any fear of being quiet when bad things happen. Defining what I value, and making decisions based on those things, helped me build accountability. Vulnerability, failure, and acceptance led me to develop empathy and nurture a sense of security.

That’s what it took to get here.

It’s why I’m confident in who I am and what I believe in.

I want to be someone the people in my life can have honest conversations with—even, and especially, when they don’t have their shit together and/or they’re dealing with pain. To do that requires a level of empathy only found by helping people learn to make space for themselves and others.

For me, that’s about as masculine as it gets.

onward.

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For the past few years, I’ve dreamt of finally getting back in shape. Winning the never ending game of tug-of-war by visualizing the type of person who can do it and just… willing myself to do what they’d do.

“Fake it till you make it” they say.

“What does that even mean??” I say back, before just making stuff up and hoping for the best.

I fantasized of wrestling work-life balance into submission, getting enough sleep, and waking up motivated to exercise. I visualized healthy eating habits that felt easy again and tried to figure out how to be someone who looked forward to doing fun things with their partner—rather than watching another movie on the couch.

The want was there, I just couldn’t find my way to the actions that would actually make those things, ya know, real.

Yet, I like to think of myself as a pretty resilient guy.

Willpower is a scam we try to sell each other.

Willpower is the modern snake oil that promises to make all your insecurities disappear. Recently, I managed to start running again. But I don’t think willpower had anything to do with it.

I finally put on the running shoes I laid out over two weeks ago. If they hadn’t already been there, I probably wouldn’t have gone looking for them. It was 6pm, which is right around the time I usually go for a post-work walk. Outside, it was gray again; cold and drizzling. Stepping out into the rain, I took a deep breath in through my nose. At the end of the block, I stretched for a bit and then I began to jog.

Having once been a very avid runner, something in me clearly still knows what I’m supposed to do, even if that part of me has been dormant for quite a while now.

At my two-mile marker, I came across two middle-aged women sitting on a bench along the path by the waterfront. Small waves lapped gently between the ice, rocks, and sand, up-and-down the shore. Rather than slowing down or turning around, I kept going. One of them was sobbing, and it seemed kinder to let them have their space without accidentally implying that their grief made me run in the other direction.

I tried not to look, focusing instead on my breathing, but I managed to see the unmistakable posture of someone trying to console another, very defeated looking person.

Maybe a layoff?

Divorce?

Death of a loved one?

My mind started guessing what might have brought them to the waterfront. After jogging past, I became aware of the guessing game I was playing and was both fascinated and disappointed with how quickly I’d constructed the possible scenarios. Then I thought about my own decision to go running along the lakeshore and felt my head shake as I processed a thought: whatever it is they’re going through, we’re really not so different.

It wasn’t willpower that brought me to the lake, it was… acceptance. I could finally admit it: I can’t fake my way into feeling better about myself.

But, I was actually willing to do something about it—even if it had just been something small, like putting my running shoes by the door a couple weeks back.

Fear fuels willpower, environment triggers action.

Getting back into running is one of the ways I’m trying to take better care of myself. It seems like the first step in my tug-of-war match with the kind of life I want.

Six years ago, I sat across from someone who’d agreed to grab a networking coffee with me. I’d been living in Jackson, Wyoming at the time. After years of trying to piece together a life I could sustain in that mountain town, I felt I’d reached a crossroads. I pictured what my life would look like in 5, 10, 15 years if I didn’t change a thing. I figured it would probably look the exact same as it did in that moment, despite my exhaustive efforts to try and get ahead instead of just scraping by.

The person sitting across from me worked in the same industry as me, but they were a lot further ahead in their career. They’d started out much like I had. So I’d asked them, pretty much word for word, “how the hell did you do it?” We were sitting at their office—a company which they owned—with an unobstructed view of the Tetons as the backdrop for our conversation. I’ll never forget it, because the first thing they asked me was if I loved the town... and when I said yes, they nodded knowingly, looked me in the eye, and told me to leave.

huh?

“Come back in ten years” they’d said.

And, some time after that conversation, I did end up leaving. At first, getting ahead was the plan so that I could return. It’s not anymore, but some of the ingredients are the same. My actual plan has been to sculpt a life with the highest possible agency by finding the most effective leverage. And for the last six years, that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. I went all in on sharpening my skills and moving my career forward to increase my earning potential.

Deprioritizing my health is the cost I’ve knowingly been paying.

And, recently, I finally became ready to change that.

Instead of adding more willpower, remove what’s in the way.

For the last five years or so, I rationalized the idea of taking shortcuts with my health so that I could get ahead in my career. It sounds silly, but I reasoned the time saved each day seemed worth it. By not commuting to the gym and working out, or going to the grocery store and cooking healthy meals, I figured I could buy myself a few extra hours of working, learning, and doing.

The worst part is that it worked.

I say that even though I’ve spent the last couple years in and out of doctor’s offices dealing with health issues. So when it comes to overhauling things, my biggest goals are three-fold: better sleep, consistent exercise, healthier diet.

The real challenge, though, has been pursuing that without relying on willpower.

1. Right off the bat, I knew that meant cutting down on my caffeine consumption... but, you know, without eliminating it entirely. Between my current coffee intake, medications, and a persistent lack of sleep, it’s not all that hard to understand why my nervous system’s been red-lining for years; even after removing toxic environmental stressors and increasing my mental-health toolbox.

2. When it comes to exercise, I knew from my extensive training as a former athlete that my optimal mix looks something like high intensity workouts (popularized by CrossFit) 2x3 per week, and cardio (running or biking) on the days in between, with one or two days off out of seven.

3. Diet’s the biggie. Unfortunately, it’s become the most daunting of the three. So I’ve been starting with small, sustainable changes.

My goal here is to create an environment that prioritizes healthy habits, one step at a time, without having to fake it in order to make it. Right now, I’m focused on adoption (probably because I’m a marketing operations dork at heart). I just want to make it as easy as possible for me to do the things on that list. And I’m a firm believer in the wisdom of If You Give A Moose A Muffin.

Or, simply, the “if this, then that” ideology.

Since I walk at the same few times each day, using one of those time-slots to run doesn’t feel like such a big change after all. And if I put my running shoes by the door, then I’m much more likely to put them on and go do it. That’s how I’ve been thinking about this. For me, changes like these are about engineering the space to succeed rather than trying to will myself to master everything all at once.

That’s been looking like meal prepping, food shopping, walking, and getting up earlier in the mornings than I was.

Resilience isn’t willpower, it’s practice.

On my way home from running along the waterfront, I couldn’t stop thinking about all the times I’ve returned to this place—of all the times I’ve used this path by the water to put myself back together. Same jagged rocks along the shore, same beachy smell even though it’s a lake, same light gray cityscape above the path... wearing an aura of both sadness and joy.

I’d sat in almost the same exact spot as those women when I was a college student, having just learned of a friend’s overdose. Years later, I’d been running this same bike path along Lake Champlain almost daily to train for my first marathon. The race itself was in Portland, Maine, and after all that training, I showed up extremely hungover for it.

When I moved back to Vermont from Wyoming in 2021, this path along the water was one of the routes I used to get ready for the Boston Marathon, too. I was fresh off of a breakup at that point. Thankfully, I was also in the early days of getting sober, so I was not hungover for that one.

Running past the same women on the bench on my way home, I just mentally wished them well without inventing any backstories.

Make it as easy as possible to take the next step before you can talk yourself out of it.

If you want the first domino to hit the second (and then the third and so on), you have to set them up. Starting means placing the pieces for the chain-reaction.

It’s about small repetitions and making it as likely as possible that you’ll take the next step. Forget about willpowering your way to the “big thing.” Resilience is placing your running shoes in front of the door so you see them every day and have to step over them for two weeks—or however long it takes—before you finally put them on. Because, the key is that you did put them on, whenever that was.

Small actions that change broader behavior… that’s resilience.

It starts with intentionally adjusting your environment, plain and simple. We fail when we bank on willpower alone to solve our problems. Maybe instead of “fake it till you make it,” the answer is admitting we don’t have it figured out yet. Perhaps resilience is being willing to put your running shoes by the door.

Maybe finding your footing is just about rigging the odds in your favor instead.

onward.

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I’m rewatching the Ted Lasso series right now, and it got me thinking about recognition and response in a way I hadn’t expected.

Last night, I tossed on an episode without realizing which one it was. When it got to a hostile locker-room scene after a particularly bad game, though, I felt my body stiffen. I’d known it would. So I took a deep breath and forced my shoulders to relax. The camera panned across an entire team’s worth of uncomfortable faces while they watched an inebriated dad joyfully manipulate his adult son’s emotions. But that pano shot of the team was an intentional camera angle for the viewers—I wanted to see how the actors portraying the players responded when the camera was on dad and son instead of them.

That’s how I noticed the one player who recognized the aggressive tension immediately and stood up before anything even started to escalate.

I rewound.

He’d been sitting alert, facing the dad and son, his teammate, while they started talking. All of the other players had still been going about their business. I’d been very impressed with the director for including that. That same player, the one who’d stood up first, even moved to jump in when things got violent. Only someone who’d been through something like that before could’ve anticipated what’d been about to happen when the dad first walked through the door. He knew. While the other players reacted with dumbfounded expressions when the punch was thrown, that player was already responding; moving toward the situation instead of shying away from it.

That’s when I reminded myself to breathe.

It’s usually the son in that scene that gets to me, but this time I’d choked up for an entirely different reason.

Some people learn to detect danger earlier than others, but what they do with that skill varies. For some, they learn to respond by protecting themselves while others learn to protect those around them.

Unfortunately, I’ve lived through a lot of scenes like that father-son fight from Ted Lasso. Sometimes I’ve been the son, and sometimes I’ve been his teammate who stood up first. Once upon a time, I was even one of the dumbfounded guys in the back. I’m sure that’s why so much of how I respond to conflict is rooted in self-preservation—recognizing something that’s not working and making myself capable of withstanding its ripple effects.

When I was in elementary school, I started filtering the kind of details I shared about myself in class. Like, if I’d gone fishing with my dad over the weekend, I might talk about the best ways of organizing a tackle box, but I’d leave out the parts about why it’d been so important to get it right.

In college, while out at a dive bar, I’d casually yanked a group of friends up against the wall with me a good 30 seconds before a fight broke out next to where they’d been standing. “How did you know that was going to happen??” they’d asked. “I could just tell” I’d told them, leaving out any mention of the times where I’d been the guy who got hit in the face. Truth be told, plenty of those were my fault. Some even happened just like in Ted Lasso, with someone egging the other person on.

Something I’m always working on is recognizing the full picture of what’s happening and choosing how I want to respond.

Take this morning for instance—as I walked into the kitchen to make coffee, I spotted my neighbor in their driveway.

It was early, but not as early as usual. Cold but not frigid, you know? The light popped when I opened the blinds, revealing a bright but not sunny day.

Usually, right about then is when my neighbor Jason wheels his bike from the gate to the sidewalk—yes, even in snow and blizzard conditions—but this morning something was different. I heard no click-click-click from the wheels. I saw no helmet or reflector vest. Not to mention, he was coming up his driveway on foot instead of leaving it on a bike.

huh...

I kept watching with confusion.

Oh, right... coffee.

In addition to a black winter jacket, a wool hat, and thick gloves, Jason wore a smile, like he usually does, while casually pushing an electric snowblower in front of him. Maybe he was moving it? He’d cleared his driveway last night, of that much I’d been certain. I was there. So, I turned and squinted against the light shining through the windows and looked past Jason to where he’d been coming from.

That’s when it’d dawned on me: he’d just done the neighbors driveway across the street. He must’ve—that’s got to be it. Probably because they’re older and he’d noticed they hadn’t gotten to it yet. I’d been completely speculating, but it’d be a very Jason thing to do. A few minutes later, I did see a reflector vest and bike tire round the corner, and I smiled, taking a satisfied sip of coffee.

I really like where I live.

I really like my neighbors, and I really like the community, too. Because it’d have been just as easy for him to continue on with his day without helping out the people across the street with their driveway. And even though I’m new to the neighborhood, it’s so clear to me that he wouldn’t do that. I’m not sure what he’s been through that makes him want to build up his community, but it was a small reminder that recognition and response can turn self-preservation into contribution. Or even full-blown community. Especially for those of us who grew up using it to find danger and hide from it.

It’s taken a lot of work to get myself into a position where living in a place like this is possible. And now that I’m here, I really want to be like Jason.

From what I can tell, the men who stand up first are usually those who can spot a problem before there is one. And by then, they’ve already got a full enough picture to respond accordingly.

onward.

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The price of existing is going up and I’m not convinced keeping up is worth it.

This week, while working from the coffee place around the corner with the tall ceilings and skylight windows, I realized something and now I can’t unsee it.

We live in a world that expects constant availability.

Comments, replies, emails, messages etc…

Engaging back and forth electronically with everyone—all day, every day—has gone from an unfortunate cultural norm to an expectation (both in work and in life). Is anyone else completely frazzled by this?

Just me?

I’d been thinking about it while sitting at the two-top in the corner.

It’s wedged between two big windows that face the street, and it has a view of the whole coffee shop interior. I love that table. No one can come up behind you, or bump into you while shuffling past, and you don’t have to worry about intruding on anyone beside you, like when you’re the middle seat on a plane. That little wooden table in the corner makes it feel like you’ve got some privacy in an otherwise busy place. Which, to me, is totally worth it.

Sitting in my nook, I noticed the agitation of a guy at the table next to mine immediately.

Let’s call him Guy.

He had his dog with him and they both seemed miserable. The dog was some kind of black lab mix—we’ll call him Dog. He was cute, but in that older, more tired kind of way that has some gray mixed in with the whiskers. Guy was probably late 40’s or early 50’s, clean-shaven, wearing a blue-green quarter zip. He had short salt-and-peppered hair that was coiffed up and over like it was running away from his furrowed brow and clenched jawline. Dog was sitting on the ground by his chair, but was clearly trying to get as far away as the taut leash would let him.

Guy looked stressed.

He was scowling at his computer, which continued to ping incessantly. I was trying not to stare, but it was hard. This had, unfortunately, been a perfectly normal occurrence to witness. They weren’t making a scene or causing problems or anything... their glum aura was just sort of bubbling its way into my corner.

Did Guy have Dog with him today unexpectedly? Or did he choose to? Guy wore a ring—perhaps Guy’s partner had to take the kids and maybe Guy got stuck with Dog?

Who knows.

Maybe they were just having an off morning.

With both hands wrapped around the mug in front of me, I felt a pang of foreboding. I used to think of myself as a dog person. I still do, but it’s different now. I grew up around plenty of dogs, and for years and years I couldn’t wait to get one. When I’d finally started working remotely full-time, I went for it and adopted from a local rescue.

At first, training a highly energetic and anxious puppy amplified my nervous system dysregulation to a level I hadn’t felt since I was a kid at my dad’s house. It’d wound me up so much that I could feel myself dissociating like I’d done back then, blocking out the noises by shutting down and trying not to scream. Suddenly, as an adult on the hook for the well-being of another living thing, I’d found myself wondering if dysregulation like that had been the cause of my dad’s frequent outbursts. Where he’d made it known quite plainly how he was feeling, I’d learned to do the opposite by putting on one hell of a poker face.

Or, at least, that’s what I’d thought.

After spacing out for a minute, I watched Guy’s frustrated face contort with every new ‘ping’ while Dog lay there trying not to cause problems.

I could relate, wondering which of them was me.

And I hated both options.

So there we were, Guy and Dog, me and my coffee; the tightness in my chest becoming more and more noticeable.

Hypervigilance is “a state of extreme, obsessive alertness and heightened sensory attunement, often driven by a nervous system stuck in “scan” mode for potential threats.”1 As someone who’s lived most of their life that way, I can assure you it takes an enormous amount of energy.

I first learned the term “hypervigilance” in high school after my step-sister picked it up in therapy. She’d helped me understand what it had to do with always feeling exhausted by comparing it with battery percentages, saying something to the effect of, “Some of us wake up in the morning fully charged and ready to go. As we move through the day, different things deplete different peoples’ batteries in different amounts.”

Whoa.

It sounded so straightforward when she’d said it like that. So, for one person, maybe brushing their teeth costs a single percentage point of their battery, but for someone else, maybe it costs ten percent. At the time, thinking of it that way felt like an “ah-ha” moment for me because I was constantly feeling weighed down by things that seemed easy for other people. That had been really validating—understanding that my nervous system was always running a heightened version of danger radar, on top of just being a kid.

Existing in busy places, where there’s lots to scan, costs me a lot of battery to this day. Going out to dinner at a restaurant isn’t just an eating-and-chatting activity for me—that type of stuff can cost me a full day’s battery, or more. Which is why the expectation of constant availability that comes from existing in such a digitally-focused society feels so increasingly taxing. What’s more, in an effort to keep up, we seem to have completely forgotten that different things deplete different peoples’ batteries at different rates.

Yet we’re all supposed to stay plugged in and responsive…

Staring directly into the depths of the mug in front of me, I thought about what my life could be like if I spent it trying to always be available and online. Would I be Guy, or would I be Dog in that scenario? I still wasn’t sure.

Eventually, I turned my attention toward reviewing the print-outs I’d brought with me, scribbling and scratching away at the pages splayed across the tabletop.

Breathing normally again by then, I realized I’d felt... better? Great, even. Slashing redundant phrasing and subtly correcting mismatched verb tenses with my pen, I’d felt focused and sharp. Like, I was doing something I was good at—casually but with precision and finesse. My laptop remained in my bag, and I’d kept fighting the urge to check my phone. I’d left it on Do Not Disturb, but the impulse to reach for it still gets me more than I’d like to admit. I’m trying to to be better about it, especially in my personal life. That’s also why I want to keep carving out time to exist without taxing my nervous system so much.

In a world that expects constant availability, it’s things like walking to and from a coffee shop that recharges my batteries. Time spent with pen and paper, and without a phone or computer, helps, too.

If you’re someone who’s hypervigilant, the price of existing has become unreasonable. Keeping up is a mirage you’ll never reach. Which means, the question to ask yourself is whether or not you even want to. Seriously, is keeping up with the modern expectation of constant availability worth draining your battery?

Only you know the answer.

onward.

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Ski lodges have such a distinct smell.

It’s part locker room and part wool sweaters that have been stored in cedar closets. There’s a hint of hockey-rink entryway to them, but with a splash of high school cafeteria thrown in for good measure.

It was late afternoon, and Isobel and I had just grabbed a few snacks in the lodge. I haven’t snowboarded all that much in the last few years, so it was nice to get out.

After making our way to a table by the windows, we slid an assortment of hats, gloves, and goggles out of the way for our laptops. When I was a kid, my cousins and I would pile in through the door, goggles fogging up immediately, after racing from the top of the mountain. The race would continue to the cafeteria while taking off our gear. We’d lunge for those huge, paper-plate-sized chocolate chip cookies in the plastic wrap. Then, the real competition was getting the best seat by the fire. That’s when the boots would come off. Those cookies just tasted better when your feet were popping and fizzing like freshly opened cans of soda.

Sitting across from Isobel, a smile tugged at the corners of my mouth thinking about it. My laptop sat in front of me, unopened, as I thought more about all the ski lodges I’ve been in over the years… Wiggling my toes beneath the table, I looked around the room—at the kids crawling between bags and under tables with exasperated parents half-heartedly giving chase. It probably looked a lot like my cousins and I during those family ski weekends as kids.

It dawned on me that the chapters of my life can largely be marked by time spent around ski lodges: teaching lessons in high school, studying for finals in college, working throughout the Rocky Mountain West in my twenties. I even got to officiate and celebrate my friends’ wedding in a ski lodge. I’ve said goodbye to friends and mourned their passing in ski lodges. It seems like my mom and I have had our most memorable life-conversations in ski lodges, too.

Now in my thirties, I was sitting in a lodge across the table from Isobel with our laptops and a cookie between us. Feeling extremely grateful, I reached for another bite.

Earlier on the mountain, we’d split off from the others to tone down the pace a bit.

Since Isobel’s new to snowboarding, that gave us a chance to work on a few things. I’d agreed to help her (even though couples teaching each other how to slide on snow is known to be disastrous). She’d gone as a kid, but it’d been many years since she’d tried again. I like teaching, but it’d also been a bit since I’d done it professionally. In less than a day, she’d progressed from standing up to linking turns faster than any student I think I’ve ever had. That’s how we’d found ourselves lapping the upper mountain while the temps continued to drop.

Once she was carving confidently, and playing with different turn sizes and shapes, I let her lead so I could watch and follow, acting as a sort of body-guard to protect against anyone who might get too close or try to speed past. When there was no one coming, though, I also took the chance to play a bit. I’d scanned back uphill, over my shoulder, finding no one. In front of me, Isobel had been cruising without issue.

Feeling good, I’d swerved over toward the side of a roller at the last second and set my heel-side edge. My shoulders started to wind up out of muscle-memory. Everything slowed down and I’d popped off of the nose of my board into a miller flip 540.

I’d ridden away shaking my head and smiling. Snowboarding was still something I didn’t have to think about. Part of me needed to know that.

And, up ahead, Isobel was still carving smoothly.

Pulling my gaze away from the lodge window, I was surprised to see the crowd had died down significantly. Across from me, Isobel was still wearing her focused face behind her laptop. She’d let out a sigh of joyful relief earlier when taking off her boots, and a “yummmm” when taking a bite of chocolate chip cookie, too.

That’d made me really happy.

I’d been worried that snowboarding wouldn’t feel like it used to. Before my traumatic brain injury, it’d felt like I was more comfortable on a snowboard than walking down the street. Since then, it hasn’t felt the same and I hate it more than I let on.

Sometimes having it feel different is worse than just not going snowboarding at all. But that hadn’t happened this weekend, though; I’d had a lot of fun. Sitting there in the lodge, I couldn’t help but grin at the familiar things sprinkled within this new chapter. Like sharing a paper-plate-sized cookie. Or being gobbled up by cedar closet cafeteria smells.

For all those chapters of my life marked by ski lodges, I’d been avoiding the possibility of adding any new ones. Afraid of changing what shaped so much of who I am. Turns out, nostalgia was never the point… it’s getting to share bits and pieces of your favorite things with the people you love. And writing new chapters together.

onward.

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For years, sleep paralysis meant I’d wake up unable to move or speak.

Despite my immobilized state, my mind would be fully aware that it was awake and not dreaming. As a kid, I’d imagined it must be like getting anesthesia for surgery but then still being fully aware of everything that was happening, while it happened.

Terrifying.

Most days I wake up in a fog of confusion, but not today… today I woke up before my alarm. I was alert but not anxious. I felt light and unbothered. There was no dread, no dark cloud, no background level of perpetual urgency or fear.

Weird… but also, cool?

Honestly, it was so foreign I wondered what was wrong. So I thought back, recounting the ups and downs of the week.

A friend and I got together for coffee this past week, as we sometimes do, but it devolved into something else entirely; which, it always does.

Across from me in my dining room, he’d sat scribbling on the whiteboard between us. I’d watched with curiosity as he wrote, drumming the side of my coffee mug with my fingers. When he’d gone with the blue dry-erase marker, I’d been forced to swallow a cough-chuckle since I’d have picked the black one, personally, but then I’d wondered why something like that even mattered to me—like, why notice that at all?

Who cares?

Our conversation began with the innocent question “what’s new?” but, in the almost 15 years we’ve known each other, surface-level has never been our thing. Which is also why I’d started telling him about how I’d been feeling stressed lately, more so than usual.

Truth be told, I’d been having a lot of trouble sleeping.

One night earlier in the week, my brain would simply not wind down for bed. It’d been late but, since it was actually doing the total opposite of winding down anyway, I’d tossed the book I’d been reading onto the night stand, thrown on a hoodie, and shuffled my way to the couch. Then I’d plopped down with my laptop and wrote.

This is hard to admit, but I’d been writing about how I’d completely lost faith in my ability to flourish in life. Mostly, that I was worried about my ability to make money and live comfortably, long-term. That the job market was changing and the rat race was becoming a chatbot race, and that I had no interest in racing anyway.

I’d been avoiding actually saying that out loud for quite some time, but it’s been eating me alive… so writing about it felt good.

At first, I almost didn’t tell my friend about all I’d been wrestling with when he’d asked over coffee. It felt pretty doom-and-gloom and, while I desperately wanted to change it, I’m really struggling to feel like I can these days.

When I’d talked to my therapist about it, she’d helped me poke and prod at the whole thing a bit more. I’d sighed at the time, fidgeting with the ring on my left middle finger before looking into the laptop screen and blurting out that I suck at corporate politics and that I loathe self-promotion. She’d seemed somewhat concerned at first but relaxed into something more like amusement when I’d started babbling about how both of those things are prerequisites for climbing the corporate ladder.

“I used to be able to do it,” I’d told her. “And then it kind of broke... and I’ve never really been able to put it back together.”

Without missing a beat, she’d gone “... do you want to?”

Nope.

I sure didn’t.

Sometimes, it’s easy to let the voice in my head convince me that my way of seeing things ruffles feathers—that I’m too much. I ask why. I look for better ways of getting things done. I don’t promise certainty because I know it doesn’t exist. Pretending like it does bothers me a lot. I don’t like dishonesty or manipulation. Posturing and performance theater irk me immensely. And I get frustrated with those who refuse to acknowledge that there’s always more than one way to do things. Everyone thinks their way is the “right” way, which kinda sorta definitely means there is no right way by default, right?

Right.

Rest assured, I know I’m not everyone’s cup of tea. Trust me, I get that. I don’t need to be, either... I made my peace with it long ago. But it’s also just become incredibly difficult not to feel like a complete and total outcast altogether. Like, where the hell are my people?? There’s got to be somewhere that I fit.

That’s when my therapist cut in. She’d still looked amused, but perhaps she’d thought it best to corral us before I launched further down the rabbit hole. Before yielding my time, though, I’d admitted all of what I’d shared was chock full of limiting beliefs. She’d agreed with sort of a “well duh” expression, to which I’d nodded my appreciation.

All to say, I know these things can be untangled and defused. Logically, at least. But more and more it’s felt like I’ve completely lost the ability to believe flourishing’s an option for me. So, lately, it’s taking that much more effort to neutralize those thoughts.

And I’m fucking tired.

It’s not like my friend and I’d gotten together for coffee in order to chat about any of that stuff, though.

I’m actually pretty wary of foisting emotional baggage upon the people in my life these days. That wasn’t always the case, and I think I even overcorrected for a while by sharing too little of myself. But my friend had asked how I was doing and when I’d paused before saying “meh, I’m ok”, he’d smiled and followed up with whether I wanted to be heard, held, or helped. And after I’d responded with the truer depth of how things were going, he insisted we bust out the whiteboard to sort through all that I’ve been juggling. Which, by the way, is totally my move... but I hadn’t done it, even though I’d been meaning to for a while.

So when he’d finished writing and looked up, reflecting back all I’d shared with astonishing clarity, all I could do was exhale, smile, and feel grateful.

And this morning, while sitting by the window with a book in my lap, waiting for my coffee to finish brewing, I found myself contemplating whether or not the act of simply recounting all I’d been wrestling with—and naming it clearly— might be why I’d woken up with such ease.

Who knows. But, I trusted myself to share it with the people in my corner instead of tucking it away to fester, and that’s something.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that, actually, it’s everything.

onward.

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You know when someone does something that immediately makes you feel stupid for not thinking of it? Well, that happened to me today at a coffee shop while I watched a person settle into a table with their dog.

At first I was amused—the pup looked to be some sort of pittie mix with white fur, wearing a very fashionable, multi-colored sweater. And by my best guess, it’d actually been a human sweater once upon a time. From my spot against the back wall, I watched as the pair got comfy at the table in front of mine, facing the window.

Good view for the dog.

Smart.

This person seemed completely unhurried; but also, kind of like they were on a mission. They were focused, but nonchalant about it. After setting down their bag and wrapping the dog’s leash around the feet of the table, they went to get coffee. The dog surveyed the rest of us with a glance, but didn’t budge. When they came back, they took out their laptop and turned to hand a Kong stuffed with treats to the chill floof on the floor in the multi-colored sweater.

I think my jaw actually fell open.

Damn...what a pro.

They were aware of their environment, but not like how I am... they showed up and confidently set their own conditions. Even though I tell myself I do that, too, I immediately recognized the difference: I show up ready to respond, and that’s not the same thing.

It was a hard realization to wrestle with. Especially since I’ve spent years working on it. Beyond just trying to be more aware of how I show up and they ways I can respond, managing my neurodivergence and my mental health has involved medication on and off for over a decade now. At a routine doctor’s visit recently, I’d taken the opportunity to ask a question that’s been gnawing at me—what would it be like to taper-off? Like, could I get to a point of no more meds at all?

My doctor had looked at me with inquisitive eyes when I’d floated that idea into the space between us. Sitting against the wall in one of those blue plastic chairs, I’d wobbled my head left and right while considering what he’d asked me in return.

“I don’t really know” I’d told him.

His face broke into a subtle grin before he’d continued. “Well, you told me what the people in your life think... but I want to know what you think.”

It was a good question.

I’d managed to pull my eyes away from the framed photo of trees on the wall, but when I’d started to speak, I ended up coughing to clear my throat before I was actually able to say anything coherent.

“I’ve been doing well for so long now, that sometimes...

*sigh*

...I worry it’s the meds and not me.”

At first, his eyes widened when I’d said that. Then he’d sat back to gather himself a bit before leaning forward again and saying “that’s not really how they work—at least, not the type you’ve been on.”

I’d perked up at that, but quickly clarified, “I’m confident in my ability to self-regulate—you know, manage the moving parts of my life... What I guess I was wondering was whether the meds keep me in the middle too much? Like, from feeling too strongly or sliding too far toward either end of the spectrum—between joy and despair?”

He’d seemed more at ease by that point, unclasping his hands and leaning his elbow on that weird kitchen counter thing that exam rooms in doctor’s offices have. That’d actually felt pretty reassuring.

“Nope, not with your medication” he’d said again, smiling.

Wow, ok.

After taking a deep breath, I’d looked up just as he’d started to speak. “Maybe we keep an eye on things and come back to it in the spring?”

I’d felt relieved at that.

I’ve long been working to hone my awareness, sifting through all of the personal growth practices that come with it. Which means I know it’s most effective when there’s some discipline involved—rather than just always giving yourself a break.

The difference between those things always makes me think of a winter camping trip I went on in 2013. We were backcountry skiing in Wyoming’s Absaroka mountains and it never got above 0°F for the entirety of our almost three-week adventure. I’d learned the hard way that I’d brought the wrong sleeping bag... one meant for much warmer weather.

I remember one night, I’d been wearing almost every piece of dry clothing I had, plus a buff and a beanie, but I’d still woken up with full-body shakes. Trying desperately to will myself back to sleep, I’d keep rolling over—you know, like you do when pretending you don’t have to get up to pee but you really, really, really do.

Eventually, I’d clicked on my headlamp and begrudgingly pulled on my shells and jacket. After forcing my feet into frozen boots, I’d crawled out of the snow ramp of our quigloo and shimmied on my stomach through the frozen snowbank above. I’d been shocked to find it wasn’t snowing. And in the middle of the night, still shivering, I’d started doing jumping-jacks under the wind-whipped stars to warm up. My breath instantly froze against my eyelashes in the negative temperatures, but it’d worked.

Even so, that’s being able to respond. For one thing, bringing the right sleeping bag would’ve given me a better starting point.

The person at the coffee shop who’d brought the Kong for their dog had set their own conditions. I’m sure they’d be able to respond, too, but they clearly were trying to stack the deck in their favor first so they could get some work done. I admire the hell out of that.

Showing up for yourself isn’t always glamorous. It doesn’t look or feel particularly sparkly, either. But if you won’t show up for yourself to help stack the deck in your own favor, just know that nobody else will do it for you. And I don’t mean that in some platitude-laden, pick yourself up by your bootstraps kind of way… you don’t need to be a project (unless you want to be).

You can find plenty of things to fix if you go looking for them. There’s a time and a place for that, sure… but the best stuff in life seems to come from routinely doing a few very important things well, rather than from trying to fix everything you can find. That means both setting your own conditions, and responding to the ones you can’t control.

As far as I can tell, that’s how you create a path worth maintaining.

onward.

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2,000 miles away from Jackson, Wyoming, I drove through Vermont’s backroads feeling very, very far away from the only community that’s ever actually felt like home to me.

There’s no good way to get bad news, and the loss of a friend got me thinking about the kinds of people who can make a place feel like that.

On my way to nowhere in particular, I was wrestling with what it means to show up; about how I interact with the people in my life and the kinds of things I see them do for each other. I thought about how I spend my time and what I focus on.

Am I really showing up in this life the way I want to?

All I could do was gaze at the road ahead.

Last weekend, I’d been staring at my phone, completely dumbfounded, while getting ready for bed. At the top of my feed I’d seen a photo of my friends out skiing. They were standing still, cheesing for the camera. “Cute, I remember that photo” I’d thought to myself before almost clicking away entirely.

I’d been focused on doing one last thing before calling it a night, but then I got stuck trying to understand the words in the caption. Immediately, I’d noticed the tone was off. It didn’t match the photo at all, and I’d started searching for why.

That’s V and there’s Max.

Right, ok. And V posted this?

When, today?

“I thought I’d share these memories to help us all feel close to Max during this tough day” she’d written in the caption.

Fuck.

Oh no, something happened...

I’d started to register that the words were describing something bad, but I couldn’t understand. Did someone get hurt? Was there an avalanche? I kept reading, possibilities running through my brain. Then the next line really scared the shit out of me.

“We love you Max ❤️ you were one of the first friends I made in Jackson 10 years ago”

Were??

What do you m—

No... no way. C’mon, WHAT?

Mouth hanging open, I put my phone down and just sat there completely stunned. I went searching online for more info, trying to prove myself wrong.

Surely I’m misunderstanding something.

By morning, headlines appeared beyond the social media sphere, like this one from POWDER: RIP Max Martin: Jackson Hole Community Mourns Beloved Skier.

And so, without really thinking about it, I’d gone driving, hoping to make more sense of my thoughts.

“You seem quiet today.”

That’s what my therapist had said earlier that morning.

Fair point.

Light shining through the frosted windows, I’d let out a sigh and clutched my coffee mug a little tighter than usual. Sitting at the kitchen table, I’d glanced away from my laptop and my therapist’s face on its screen. Across from me, they’d let the moment linger.

It’d felt harder than normal to organize my thoughts. Usually I can at least do that, even if I’m not saying much out loud. As someone who grew up in more than one chaotic household, I’d learned to think and not speak by trying to blend in with the wallpaper and go unnoticed. For years, I thought I was being polite only to learn later that it’d made me come across as uninterested.

By mid-afternoon it was warm, and the sun even came out while I drove. I’d flipped between podcasts and music before eventually settling on silence. Thoughts about showing up still swirled through my brain incessantly. Thinking of Max, Jackson, and a whole bunch of people who’d helped the place feel so damned loving made me… sad.

I realized what I was feeling was guilt, and it brought back visions of the contemplative grin my therapist had worn during our morning session. So I found myself replaying bits of our conversation. I’d told them about my jumbled mess of thoughts best I could—about questioning my interactions with the people in my life. That’s when their smile had widened, especially so, when they’d said “Can you see how keeping your thoughts to yourself could feel like disinterest, and look like not showing up?”

Yes—yes I definitely could.

I kept driving. Looking out the window at the snowy foothills, I was shocked at how far I’d gone. Exhaling and leaning into my elbow on the door, I tried to gauge how I’m actually showing up these days... Because, truth be told, I didn’t know how to show up back then at all. Not fully. I’m not even sure I do now. That’s the part that really sucks, because I’ve spent years working to organize my life so that I can be present with myself and the people in it.

Results have... varied.

Eventually, I started smiling when a memory of Max popped up.

It was from back when we’d run in similar circles, but didn’t know each other all that well yet. I’d been in a bit of a pickle: the night before a snowboard competition, I’d realized the rules had changed and athletes were now required to wear back protectors or they couldn’t compete. It’d been optional before, and I didn’t have one. So I started texting friends, frantically looking to see if anyone would lend me theirs.

At that point, Max and I had recently started training together at the same gym, along with some mutual friends, but it was still kind of a long shot to ask. When I did, he responded immediately.

“Sure, no problem. Come by whenever!”

I actually don’t recall much about the comp itself, but I still remember Max smiling big and asking me about it when I’d gone to return his back protector. Later, I’d realize it’d been the same smile he’d flash to friends around the mountain, wanting to know what they’d skied. He’d stare directly at them as if nothing and no one else mattered. “So how was it??” he’d want to know, with wide eyes and a smile that radiated belonging.

When he did that, it was impossible not to smile back.

Still driving through Vermont’s backroads and feeling far away from a community where snowy smiles were currency, I felt my head shaking as I realized that I was grinning. And I think it’s pretty cool that being friends with Max still means smiling unexpectedly and feeling like you belong.

onward.

P.S. Read the beautiful tribute to Max that Izzy Lidsky wrote. If you’re able, there’s a fundraiser to help bring Max home from Japan and support his wife, Eliza.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about how people used to tell stories and how that’s changed.

Stories were just how we communicated with each other, but now they feel incredibly different. At least, to me they do.

I can’t tell you the last time I heard someone tell a story or write something that sounded anything close to how my grandfather would’ve told it. He told stories you could see. And he always sounded like he was setting up a punchline, so you had to make sure to listen so you wouldn’t miss it.

“How’s it going, Norm?” someone would ask.

He’d reply with, “Can’t complain... wouldn’t do much good anyway”

*ba dum tss*

That would be his icebreaker, but then he’d follow it up with more substance. He’d tell you he ran into someone recently and then set the scene. He’d describe the person, maybe use a few hand gestures. Then he’d get to the part where he’d interacted with this guy, and he’d take you through the action.

“now this fella, he turns to me and says...

“and I finally get a good look at him...

“so then he goes...”

He was a remarkable storyteller and I simply can’t do him justice. But that type of story with its back-n-forth dialogue and an energy that moves… it was just how everyone seemed to communicate.

Thinking back, it’s easy to write it off as a generational thing. Especially since my sample here is my grandfather and his friends. But I’m convinced it’s just because they were the product of a world that operated a certain way. I don’t feel like ours is really the same world anymore. Not like the one they lived in, at least. And that kind of bums me out.

This whole thing’s been bugging me. Then, recently while grabbing lunch at a local cafe, something finally clicked.

I’d situated myself at a table along a wall of windows, and pulled out my laptop to read the latest from , a writer I like for her contrarian commentary on literature—new and old. What I really like about reading things from Linda is that she regularly references literary icons to contrast the modern group-think of social media. Her essays feel like a little history lesson, disguised as a coffee chat between friends.

While I ate, I read what she wrote about Bukowski, and it got me thinking: a lot of the classic wisdom that gets shared online now comes from authors who sound like they’d been thinking out loud to themselves.

I’ve watched swarms of people try to be prolific like that on social media. They declare and claim. Convince. They state without story. The pendulum feels like it’s swung so far toward presenting expertise, that it’s landed us in a world where people only try to create scarcity and gain authority with their words.

But there’s nothing to picture from what they share, you know?

Sitting in that cafe lost in thought, I’d watched as two young kids played tag by using the rest of us as shields. Their mom looked tired… hair a little ruffled, jacket only halfway on, arms full of things and nowhere to put it all. Her expression fell slightly while her toddlers scrambled between the tables. But when I smiled, she did too, and we didn’t have to say a word. As I’d sat back in my chair, smirking to myself, I tried to label the feeling that settled into my chest.

Later when I’d glanced at the kids and their mom a few tables over, she gave a small nod and this time I got to return the gesture.

I’d found the word I’d been looking for...

Acceptance.

Stories used to be a way of co-creating acceptance with the people around us. Without phones or social media, people talked while moving through their day. Not through a set of AirPods, either, but to the people IRL walking past them. Just chit-chatting about things with total strangers. They’d tell each other stories. And all those stories, it seems, were about something other than the hottest new tips for how to be a functioning person. No, they’d tell you about something from their life or about the people in it.

Everywhere I look now, it feels like it’s only people, profiles, and pages trying to tell me and everyone else what to do.

But, um… hello??

I do not want gurus and spam?
That’s why I stay away from Instagram.
I do not want them, day or night.
Not in my ears or in my sight.
I do not want gurus and spam...

It’s... it’s become completely ridiculous, right? Is it just me? Like, honestly, I just want to hear stories from people about someone they ran into throughout the day. I want to read more things that aren’t self-promotion poorly disguised as hyperbolic life-lessons. Real stories, with people I can see with my eyes closed.

Maybe a punchline or two? Some scenery? I can’t seem to find much of that at all these days. Not like how my grandfather would’ve said it. Sometimes, it makes me feel quite alone. It’s times like that when I says to no one, I says “bahhh; fine. I’ll write my own.” And I have been. But even I have to admit I get pulled by the world around me into patterns of storyless communication.

Still, how cool is it that while everyone’s trying to be prolific on social media, there are folks out there who can remind you of just how human we are? The kind who share what’s going on in their life; without the gurus and spam.

Thank goodness for those who tell stories—who create acceptance with icebreakers, scenes, and interactions. And people you can picture with your eyes closed.

onward.

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It’s the beginning of January and I’m sitting on the edge of my bed, staring down at the phone in my hands. I’d purposefully not let myself lie down; this was to be quick. If only it were ever that simple.

Looking at the phone hurt and I hated it.

I’d downloaded Instagram. Again. I just needed to see how a campaign I’d helped with came out. You know, gauge how the message came together, check how it landed. Super quick. Log in, log out. I even tried to skip the lure of the feed by clicking straight to my profile.

I knew I shouldn’t scroll, but I did.

What I found made me sad. The guy looking up at me seemed… happy. I know he wasn’t, but damn he must’ve been a little to be able to act like that, right? That wasn’t the worst of it, though. The part that stabbed me in the gut was when I began scrolling through my feed after finally managing to tear myself away from my old posts. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing—the style of it, the content, the people, the aesthetic… all of it was outdoorsy and lifestyle-driven. It was like a time capsule full of faces I haven’t seen in years, names I haven’t heard from. Still sitting on the edge of my bed, I looked up at the wall and felt my head start shaking.

What... what the fuck am I even doing anymore?

Why???

Looking back down at my phone, I noticed how easy it was to scroll myself into feeling like shit. Grateful for the distance I’d created between myself and the feed over the past few years, I exhaled and picked up my book.

The next morning was full of rain. And that felt… fitting. I was still thinking about my Instagram-induced identity crisis from the night before. Drops fell with thuds on top of mounds of half-frozen slush, forming craters and puddles in the sidewalk. Things have been frigid recently, so every square-inch of ground outside was covered in thick, clear ice.

Holding my umbrella, I surprised even myself when I smiled. I’d gone out begrudgingly. Then I almost immediately ate shit on my front steps.

That tracks.

For a second, I felt a lot like Harry and Marv from the movie Home Alone. I slipped, grabbing the railing, feet still running in place on the frozen concrete below. So I went back for a pair of nano-spikes.

Then I went for a walk.

That’s what I usually do first-thing in the morning; walk. I started doing it as a remote worker before COVID, as a way to mimic a commute. I get up, shower, make coffee, and take a lap around the block. There’s typically a podcast involved, sometimes music, but when I get back, I grab a mug and get to work. Then, at the end of the day, I do another lap for my “evening commute.”

My therapist calls these little rituals “bookends.” I like to think of them as anchors. But I haven’t been doing them lately. I know they’re good for me, I just kind of... fell off. So, this morning while pulling the studded, spikey straps over my boots to keep from slipping on the ice, I thought of a conversation I had with a friend over the summer. It was about getting comfortable with starting something over. Like going back to the gym for the first time after not going for a while. It’s so much easier to keep going than to start at day one again.

Cinching my hood in place before setting out, I made my peace with starting over again.

As I walked, I thought about the other parts of myself I’d let fall by the wayside. Like running. After recovering from a mental health crisis about 10 years ago, running had become a staple in how I’d learned to show up for myself. I remember when I first moved across the country to Wyoming in my early twenties, it was a new coworker who’d offered to take me on a local run. She’d pulled up Strava to show me the loop we’d be doing. After that, I started running it religiously (same with using the app).

For years I treated the activity descriptions in Strava like journal entries. That’s why I kept my account private back then. It’s more social now, I guess, but it used to be far more focused on tracking personal stats. At least, it was for me. Eventually, though, I unlocked my profile so I could connect with other people—but not before going through and clipping out all of those journal entries.

I felt myself sigh. Walking along the sidewalk, I stepped squarely on a patch of ice with my spikes. Firm, confident. Then, my foot punched through into the water.

You’re kidding me…

I thought it to myself before realizing I wasn’t even upset. I actually laughed because, sure I was walking around my suburban neighborhood in the rain… but there were so many times when my mornings had been spent wet and cold from dark walks up big mountains. Those memories came flooding back, no doubt aided by my Instagram scrolling the night prior. And now, here I was, standing in a puddle on the sidewalk on day one of going on morning walks again…

At the time, I’d called my little Strava diary series to myself “Run On Thoughts.” It felt clever, since I’d been known to ramble about big ideas and meaning—especially in those old Instagram captions. Turns out I’ve been a writer this whole time...

Arriving on the corner of my street, I carefully dodged a puddle while thinking about how distinct the chapters of my life have felt. I can so clearly see their bookends in hindsight. The transitions, though bumpy—and even downright blurry—at the time, seem perfectly proportionate now. My grin widened as I walked. Much like a good book, I realized, each one had moved the plot forward.

I stuck with that running/Strava-journaling habit for years; through career transitions, injuries, breakups, and all the miles of coping with getting sober. I remember cities I’ve traveled to for work by the running routes I snuck in there. When I think of the last decade of my life, I chunk the chapters and memories by countless trail runs, mountain biking trips, backcountry snowboarding days, and frontcountry wanderings by the waterfront.

I trained, gained, and sustained a lot of life that way.

Yet, through it all, I wrote those little journal entries in the activity descriptions on Strava. I distinctly remember back when those started—with that after-work-loop in Wyoming—I dreamed one day, maybe, that I’d be brave enough to start writing things like that publicly. Every single time, at the end of my run, and just before hitting “save.”

Back from my walk, I opened the door and gratefully stepped inside. Taking off my boots, it dawned on me: that’s what this chapter’s been about—the one thing that’s been in all of them. Writing. I suppose, these last few years, those “Run On Thoughts” became something else entirely. They evolved.

Given the right container, they’ve grown.

First, they unfolded into a weekly newsletter. Then, as I dared to share more of myself, they became essays. Most recently, though, my writing habit transformed again when I set out to publish a daily column. Today was day 133 in a row of writing stories like this one. And people keep reading, thanks to you.

Sometimes you can’t tell the difference between longing and languishing until you get to the other side. While you wait, walking seems like the best thing to do if you ask me. Because then it’s not really waiting at all… not when you can turn it into something else entirely.

Walking makes it a transition, and that’s how you arrive at your bumpy, blurry, perfectly-proportionate next chapter.

onward.

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Isobel recently borrowed my copy of Kitchen Confidential. She’d never read it, but it’s one of a few books I keep front-and-center on the shelf behind my desk. Like the others in the small stack, it’s there as a reminder more than anything.

Since Isobel was new to Anthony Bourdain and his work, I suggested that once she finish reading Kitchen Confidential, we watch the CNN documentary that came out in the aftermath of his death.

So we did.

After talking about their last exchange before Anthony Bourdain’s suicide, the voice of long-time producer and director, Michael Steed, began to trail off...

“I wish I’d said more.”

I watched intently as his expression shifted. His eyes looked like he was reliving the memory, then and there. We watched as a steady string of friends, family members, coworkers, artists, musicians, chefs, fans, and everyday people talked to the camera about how much they loved Anthony Bourdain. As Michael Steed recounted his last conversation with Tony, he looked... defeated. I could understand why—Michael’s solemn expression looked a lot like regret for the things he’d never said.

The way he described Tony’s side of that interaction sounded like he’d been angry, irritated, and defensive. He’d told Michael to leave him alone, so he did. Shoulders slouched and lips pulled back in a straight line, Michael exhaled through his nose and looked into the camera.

He wishes he told him he loved him.

Michael didn’t say that, but that’s what I saw on his face.

Like most decorations around the house, Kitchen Confidential and the rest of that small stack of books have been there by my desk for so long that, most of the time, they blend in with the background. I like knowing they’re there. In a strange way, those kinds of things offer assurance—the stories and lessons within, little keepsakes and mementos from tales mirroring my own life. Like street signs wending their way from where I grew up to where I am now. Among the collection are all the Wrong Ways, Dead Ends, and One Lane Road Aheads, too. Even the Turn Backs and Tresspassings.

Seeing that handful of books every day makes me feel more like myself, lest I forget.

Some signposts in those books are nostalgic. It’s the Do Not Enter signs I’m most grateful for, though. I get to plant those ones on the road ahead. It’s one of the reasons I tell my friends I love them every time I see them. It’s why I leaned over and told Isobel I love her, too.

A memento, for where we are now.

onward.

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I stopped at the top to enjoy the sunrise with a “breakfast beer” (I was still drinking back then), snowboarded back down, and returned to the house. My family had all piled in under the same roof for the week, so I’d slid into an open chair at an already-full breakfast table.

I used to worry about which parts of myself to share. The whole thing felt risky. In a setting where I never really knew what to say or how to say it, that morning adventure—and others like it—let me stop caring. I was content to sip my coffee in silence, surrounded by sound.

I’ve thought about that morning a lot over the years.

That version of me did not know how to cope. As a kid I’d earned the label “well-adjusted” by family members, teachers, and parents of the other kids in my class. I’m told they’d meant it as a compliment, since I’d seemingly been able to adapt easily to all the changes after my parents’ divorce… but all I’d really done was learn how to read a room—and the people in it—to determine what was expected of me. The rest was a performance.

Apparently, a good one.

I learned to only share myself in ways that wouldn’t invite criticism, etching a mantra of “don’t rock the boat” deep into my nervous system. Cope invisibly. Hide. That way of doing things stuck with me longer than I realized.

For years, I’d approach social settings as if there were an expectation to “show us something good.” It’s how I used to operate online, too. All those years ago, I’d taken a million selfies on the top of that mountain during sunrise on Christmas. Then I’d spent longer than I’d like to admit picking one to post.

I took some selfies this Christmas, too, but was struck by how differently I engaged with the whole process. My mom doesn’t like this photo but I do (sorry, mom).

I still woke up early because my body doesn’t know how to not do that anymore. But it wasn’t 4am and I didn’t then go hike a mountain. I sat and had coffee with my mom, chatted leisurely and earnestly, had breakfast, and went outside with Ava. We took photos with the tree and while exchanging gifts, but I like this one. We’re smiling. For real. Laughing, even. She’s holding a poop bag, and it shows us as we are—as it actually happened—and without presentation.

My goal isn’t to present perfection anymore, it’s to be present for all the imperfection. However you spent the holidays, I hope you were able to do the same. The best stories come from sharing how it actually happened.

To do that, you have to actually be there.

onward.

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I still remember the look on his face when I’d said, “Alright, give it a shot.”

With a snowboard strapped to his feet for the first time, this middle-aged father of two glanced at 16-year-old me, then at the slope in front of us. After a calculated pause, he looked me straight in the eye and uttered a defiant, “No.”

Um... what now?

I’d been working as a ski and snowboard instructor at the local hill near my house in Massachusetts. My boss had apparently seen something in me because I got assigned to teach adults, even though I was in high school at the time.

One of my first clients had been a dad who’d wanted to learn to snowboard as a way to connect with his son and daughter; both of whom had started taking lessons the year prior. Dad wanted to fast-track his learning so he could catch up with them. Over the next 12 years of teaching, I’d come to understand that skipping steps never works. But on that particular day, I’d thought I’d score some points with him by brushing past the basics and making up for it later in our lesson.

After very shakily taking the rope-tow about half-way up the ski slope, I’d had him strap into his snowboard and began to explain the mechanics of turning. That’s when he’d told me point-blank he was not interested in continuing.

“I’ll fall. I’ll get hurt... I can’t be hurt, I have to work. Who would drive the kids to school? No way, I’m NOT doing that.”

Shit.

15 years later, I’d been flying to speak at a conference when that memory came to mind. With my laptop open in front of me on the plane, I remember exhaling, grimacing, and shaking my head all at once. I hadn’t quite been able to comprehend what was on the slides I was preparing to present. They were bad and I was embarrassed.

The realization had been swift: in order to move myself up in the corporate world, I’d managed to erase my entire personality. Poof… gone.

It’d been my fault; that much had been clear. I remember feeling angry and upset. Then, just... sad. I’d tried to recall when exactly it’d happened, but couldn’t place anything specific. Without warning, my style had apparently just evaporated, and I’d never noticed. The words on the screen sounded stale. Boring. Dry, like a plain bagel from the discounted, day-old’s pile you’d find by the register.

After all those years as a snowboard instructor, guide, and writer, I’d learned first-hand that stories—not explanations—are what help people navigate fear and uncertainty. Yet, sitting on that plane and reviewing the notes for my presentation, I’d felt about as stupid as I had at 16 with that snowboarding client.

Trying to rationalize the deterioration of my… my joie de vivre, it dawned on me that I’d fallen into the trap of throttling my potential in the name of safety.

Again.

Years ago during a mountain-guiding clinic in Jackson Hole, I’d learned that lesson in a way I’d thought I’d never forget. Maybe I just hadn’t recognized it in its business casual, corporate-friendly attire. Thinking back, it’d happened during a training day. When our group got to a more technical section of the backcountry route, we’d gone one-by-one down to the next safety point. As I descended, I’d been focused on riding safely… rigid, uniform.

With the rest of us watching, the last person to ski down had taken a different approach… And they’d ski’d the shit out of that line. Truly, it’d looked fantastic. It seems obvious now when I think about it, but it’s because they were having fun. Our guide had even leaned over to say, “there are people who ski and there are skiers—now that’s a skier.”

I hate to admit it, but I remember being big-time jealous.

It hadn’t occurred to me whatsoever to kick up the throttle of my riding. In my head, we’d been in guide-mode; I’d thought that meant reserved and calculated. I hadn’t ridden the line the way I’d wanted—I’d ridden it the way I’d thought was expected.

And that’d made all the difference.

Sitting on that plane a couple years ago, looking at the presentation I was set to give, it’s like I’d completely forgotten that lesson. Not only was there no “me” in there, there was no fun, either… nothing for people to grab hold of. Just facts, statements, and data points.

Yuck.

Explaining things seems logical. In fact, it’s a super helpful way to organize your thoughts; but that’s why it really only sounds good to the person doing the talking. It might feel good to neatly corral what you think, but listeners need a way to picture what you’re saying. And I was apparently very out of practice, despite how often I was speaking. In watering myself down to try to fit in better at work, I’d fully clogged up my creativity.

That realization on the plane is what led me to start my newsletter two years ago. I’d hoped it would help me find my voice again by forcing me to write regularly. The only thing to do, I’d reasoned, was to get to it—open the valve and start flushing out the gunk. So that’s what I’ve been trying to do for a couple of years now. A year and a half ago, I told my first story at The Moth. Then, about a year ago, I took a swing and published a personal essay instead of my usual newsletter. The response was incredibly positive, so I kept doing it. Then, three months ago, I challenged myself to launch an email series where I write a new story every day. Completely by accident, I’d say that’s been the thing that’s forced me to reckon with myself more than anything else.

And, after all of that, this week I found myself sitting in the greenroom of a television studio in Boston. I’d been invited to share my story on national TV.

When you realize you’ve been throttling your potential because it’s made you feel safe, it’s important to ask yourself why. It’s even more important that you do it again if you lie to yourself the first time; which is something I’ve had to do quite a few times now. Only then can you start sharing a story all your own—one that really feels like you.

This week, I got the chance to try my hand at doing just that. Without taking all those steps to find my voice, I’m sure I’d have felt terrified when the producers reached out—and again once I stood in the studio and saw what was in front of me. Kinda like that snowboarding dad from when I was 16, but I wasn’t terrified. No, I was excited.

Reviewing my notes before the show, I’d thought about that plane ride where I’d discovered the loss of my voice, and then I felt myself smile.

The words on the page felt like the ones in my head. I didn’t sense myself reaching for any I’d thought might be expected of me. So when I went out on that stage, standing in those bright lights in front of that studio audience, I shared a story that felt totally and unequivocally like me. And I… um… I’ll be working on wrapping my head around that for a good, long while.

Check out my episode of Stories From The Stage.

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Your whole direction in life can change in a single week, if you let it.

My plan was simple. It’d even seemed straightforward. Back in September, where this baffling adventure began, I’d hoped to improve my communication skills enough to revive my dormant social life. That was the original goal. It’s important to keep that in mind, because that’s why I’d set out to write a new story every day for a full year. I’m only three months into this self-imposed challenge and it’s already upended everything.

A close friend and I got together for coffee this week. We’d been overdue for a good, long chat. I just hadn’t expected it to go the way it did; not really. Sitting across from me in his kitchen, he’d been peering over his mug while I’d looked down into mine. He’d just asked me a great question, for which I told him I didn’t have an answer.

Even though I did.

Working on how I delivered my thoughts had felt like something I’d be able to measure through this writing thing. You know, like: how long did it take me to form a story each day, how many views did it get, how many people responded etc…? I’d expected it to challenge me, but I wasn’t ready for it to open this new door.

Shifting in my seat, I withdrew my right hand from where it’d been cradling my mug and quickly replaced it with my left. I’d initially replied out of reflex; so after digesting what he’d asked, and confronting the real answer—the one I’d brushed past—I let out a sigh and looked up.

“Ok…that’s um… that wasn’t true” I’d told him.

While mining my own thoughts for the parts I’d been leaving out, I actually found comfort in how quickly I’d been able to call myself on my own bullshit. Just as quickly, I noted that I’d been able to find words to describe it to him, too.

Huh...not bad.

I searched his eyes, finding only curiosity and encouragement. I’d feared there’d be judgement or jeering somewhere in there. Which, was a total projection—he’d never given me reason to think he’d be anything other than accepting. It’s just that his question had struck a pretty big nerve. Naturally, it was me who’d been judging and jeering at myself.

Taking a sip of coffee, I’d chosen to face my insecurity and coax it into taking a break. I’d asked for my friend’s advice—keep in mind, that’s why we were having coffee in the first place. And he’d let me talk through what I’d been wrestling with. So, I’d finally managed to tell him about the career pivot I was considering—or, at least, that I was open to one.

Job, life, all of it.

I’d felt too close to be able to see things truly objectively but, still, I’d wondered where my skills could succeed beyond marketing and writing. Which is why his question had so squarely caught my attention. He’d surfaced a very wild idea, and I’d been unable put it back in the bottle.

“I think you’d make a damn good therapist” he’d said. “Would you ever consider switching careers to do that?”

I… um… wow.

Yes I would consider it, I’d told him.

In fact, I’m still considering it right now. Sitting back in my chair, and setting down my mug, I’d started to wonder: would a few more years of difficulty be worth it? Would going back to school allow for 40+ better, more fulfilled years afterwards? Kind of feels like a no-brainer when looking at it through that lens…

I cracked a smile, unable to help it. A writing challenge—my whacky decision to write stories every day for a year—that’s what’d led us to this point in our conversation. I’d found what felt like rhythm with my story structure. My ability to communicate my ideas felt sharper, and the way he’d been responding during this coffee chat affirmed it. Now we’d unearthed this thing I wouldn’t be able to unsee.

I’ve been noticing that I feel most aligned in life when using my strengths to help others. The part that I’ve been most resistant to, it seems, is acknowledging what I’m actually best able to share with them. Accepting my gifts for what they are continues to challenge me—but to do so is to truly set your heart on fire.

Reframing and restitching loose threads together is what sets mine ablaze. It’s what allows me to help people make sense of the world and their place in it. So I think I’m really doing this; embarking on the winding path of getting my master’s and becoming a licensed clinical therapist.

At least, for now, that’s where this story’s headed.

When your whole direction in life threatens to change in a single week, sometimes letting it is the only real way to find out what actually fills your cup. After all, those are the options, right? To grab a cup of what sets your heart on fire, or to ignore it and let it just sit there… taunting you, while you burn your dreams instead.

onward.

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I took this photo on a day when, like today, life seemed to snap into focus. I’d been tired a lot back then. Stressed about money. Worried about getting certifications I’d spent whole seasons prepping for. All the while, I’d also been growing more and more disenchanted with chasing “the dream.”

Something you should know about me is that I wasn’t always like this. Sitting at my old desk in my new home office this week, I couldn’t help but smile thinking about it—the afternoon light beaming in and out of the room seemed to warrant it.

It made me think of something called a “sun dog.”

I looked up when a sliver of sunlight danced across the room. The trees wiggled in the breeze, cascading the light softly through the windows. Taking a long, deep breath, I exhaled in-time with the coffee-house jazz playing through my headphones, absentmindedly fiddling with the ring on my left middle finger. Relaxing my wrists, I let them hover just above the laptop keys in front of me.

“Sun dogs” are these solar flare-type things that hang in the air like the Eye of Sauron; but you know, if J.R.R. Tolkien had gone for more of a snowy landscape in Lord Of The Rings instead of that fiery one.

Sun dogs are so cool. They only show up in the right atmospheric conditions. Think cold, snowy, overcast days that clear up just enough to let a column of light through. But then, add a rapid change of temperature and slow the wind speed way down all at once. This is the recipe I’ve seen work best. It makes the invisible pressure systems in the sky start acting like lava lamps, clumping and bumping against each other.

When those blobs part ways jusssttt enough—that’s when sun dogs shine through.

They’re elusive, though. I went digging through the archives to try and find an example, like in the photo above. It made me realize something pretty cool… and also, kind of heavy, but really inspiring at the same time? Tough as it is to admit, I’d made a habit of always agonizing over the next opportunity. One more, I’d tell myself, just to get ahead. Because for me, getting ahead really just meant getting “caught up”, or even just “staying afloat.”

For a huge chunk of my life, I kept myself busy by simply looking for more things to stack on the pile. I said yes to everything, hoping to learn my way into yet another new opportunity. The goal was money, but not because I wanted to be rich. Seriously, I just wanted to be able to pay my rent and have free time; to get paid enough where I could finally step off of the hustle treadmill.

Most days back then, I’d get up at 4:30 or 5am after pulling a closing shift at the brewery. During those early mornings, I’d diligently record weather data for avalanche forecasting, send out the snow report, and work on whichever web build, email campaign, or writing submission was due next. After that, I’d walk my coffee to the bus stop and catch a ride to work—to the job where I got to stand on a snowboard and help people live the best day of their year (sometimes, of their life).

Back then, sun dogs seemed to show up when I needed a reminder to slow down. But now, afternoon sunlight pouring in through my windows, I’m taking a moment to smile at how different things are. As hard as I can be on myself, I’m realizing just how far I’ve come.

What do you do when you realize you’re doing too much? Do you ever celebrate yourself for making it through the shit?

Now’s as good a time as any.

onward.

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All I could think about was acceptance while driving home from a Friendsgiving weekend in Massachusetts. In the passenger seat next to me, Isobel dozed with her head pressed up against the glass. She’d made a make-shift pillow with my sweatshirt, so I’d put on a podcast.

Through the speakers, I’d listened as Megan Falley talked about her relationship with famed poet, Andrea Gibson, who died of ovarian cancer in July. Andrea’s work pumped acceptance through the LGBTQ community. They spoke about mental health, social justice, and mortality in ways that felt approachable. I honestly don’t know what made me put on that podcast... I just saw Andrea’s name and clicked.

I’m so glad I did.

Listening made me think of the same thing as when I first came across their work in college: the time I’d had my heart broken in middle school while on a field trip.

Our school’s band had gone to compete in a state-wide festival. I think we messed up pretty badly, but that’s not the part that sticks with me. On our way home, I’d been sitting toward the back of the bus with a small group of friends, playing a game called Never Have I Ever. Everyone holds up 10 fingers, someone says something they’ve never done, and those who actually have done it put a finger down. The first to zero loses.

One of the other players was, by all accounts, really cool. He and I were friends. We played on the same basketball team and went to the same summer camp together. We even car-pooled and swapped music playlists. So when he said “never have I ever questioned my sexuality” and looked right at me, I froze.

He didn’t say it with curiosity. This was a smugly delivered statement—a devastating blow to anyone who’d dare put a finger down. Suddenly, I became very aware of the others. They’d shrugged nonchalantly while I’d been doing some hurried social math. I worried about lying, but I worried more about telling the truth. Because I had questioned my sexuality. Quite a bit, actually. It was dark outside during the bus ride, but still I wondered if anyone had seen my hesitation before I visibly kept my fingers up in denial.

Today, precipitation splattered the windshield, alternating between rain and a snowy wintry-mix, while Isobel and I made our way home from a weekend spent with a group of my old college friends. If I’m being honest, I’m still learning how to be comfortable around them again since getting sober four years ago. The first time I got drunk was when I was 12, not long after that game of Never Have I Ever. These days, social math looks like deciding whether or not to draw attention to the fact that we only ever swap drinking stories now.

When Megan read the words to Hold Down The Fort, I turned up the windshield wipers, to account for my now blurry vision. Andrea’d written it for Meg. The first time she’d heard it was in the final three days of Andrea’s life, after missing the chance to say the kinds of things neither had been ready to face.

I looked over at Isobel, still sleeping, while water droplets tapped the glass next to her head. She’s never seen me drunk, but she’s always always there to hold my fingers and talk about future hopes, dreams, and schemes.

Never have I ever felt acceptance like that.

Until now.

Where do you look for acceptance? How do you ask for it?

onward.

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These days I can spot when my nervous system is fried, which is objectively good; it means I can tell you quite confidently that I’m a tangled ball of tension today with nowhere to let it come undone.

It made me think of my dad. He always had a thing about people chewing with their mouths open. Not only did he hate it, but he’d become so completely enraged by it that I often wondered if he actually knew why he was so mad. Fists would hit the table. Plates would clink, clank, and clatter. If I watched closely, I could spot his effort to resist the inevitable boiling point. The giveaway was a throbbing vein that would magically sprout from his forehead. His posture would stiffen and then his face would turn red, like he was lifting something super heavy.

As a kid, it was both a terrifying and helpful warning sign. At least, that’s what I’d tell myself, my friends, and my therapists over the years.

So today, my stress made me think about my dad’s. And then about his dad’s, which had been a thing about wearing hats at the dinner table. It was a big no-no for us—I guess it was about manners—but I never fully got that one. At first, my siblings and I thought my dad’s issue with open-mouthed chewing was about etiquette, too. But it never explained why he had a problem with my step-brother scraping his fork on his teeth, or the egregiousness of someone talking while he was trying to catch the funny sound coming from the car.

I didn’t know why his triggers were triggers, I just knew that they were. For years, I chalked it up to him being an asshole. But then, as an adult, I got a dog.

Ava’s a four-year-old rescue who loves frisbee more than treats, and leaning against your leg more than ear scratches. A few months after getting Ava, she got giardia. That’s when we spent a couple of very long weeks going outside in the middle of the night. Like most dogs do when distressed, she would pant like crazy and anxiously lick her lips when she had to go out. My reaction to this was a crashing wave of rage I couldn’t explain—some primal, nervous-system-level response.

I was horrified, but I simply could not stand hearing the sound of her licking and panting like that... like fingernails on a chalkboard.

A few years ago when I talked to my therapist about it, she’d asked if I’d ever heard of misophonia. I hadn’t, so she went on to tell me it’s a sound sensitivity and auditory processing disorder known to impact some neurodivergent folks. Shortly thereafter, she gently informed me that I met the criteria.

Holy shit.

Today, Ava’s getting over a stomach bug. She’d been throwing up a lot, panting, and nervously smacking her lips. My nervous system still twists and knots itself at this so, after a few breathing exercises, I grabbed my earplugs, my noise-canceling headphones, and sat myself down at my typewriter. I love feeling the keystrokes, the control of the clicking sound, and the rhythm of the slugs slamming against the platen. It pulls me out of my head. Softly. Gently. I get to launch into the world of what I’m writing, even when listening for the indicator bell at the end of the line.

It made me wonder if my dad’s ever found better ways of coping… or whether he even listens for the sound of the margins at all.

How do you keep yourself in check? What do you look or listen for? Has it helped you learn to do things differently?

onward.

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