When B and I traveled, we would sleep side by side in the back of my Subaru. Road-side cornfields, suburban playgrounds and parks, abandoned farm houses, deceased gas stations with vine-laden fuel pumps underscored by split pavement: this was America, welcoming us one undesignated sleeping area at a time. The outer…

In December of 2019, B was in the throes of his “retirement.” We used that term loosely, half-joking, not yet knowing how correct the future would render it. Earlier that year, L and I had stumbled on, battled for, cried over, and inexplicably won and moved into our dream home. When…

When I first got him he was terrified of swimming. Along a cloistered bank of the American River, a ten-minute, one-stoplight-at-a-time Subaru drive north of the city grid where we scraped by each day, we would try over and over. I would hurl a stick overhand with a heavy woosh towards…

It’s time for modern wellness to evolve a little. Recently, at 40, I took up smoking. Don’t commit to a full scoff just yet; I am a functional adult and my habit is conservatively siloed. It happens a few times a week, when I take my dog — a sensitive…

A story about introversion, computer programming, and mistakes. — There are a number of things that don’t come naturally to me, but let me tell you — being an introvert is not one of them. I’ve faced a battery of Meyers-Briggs personality tests over the years, and am proud to say I consistently demolish my competition on the “happier-alone-than-at-party”…

Both Nikola Tesla and Albert Einstein outspokenly believed artists made the best technicians. Does this belief hold up for the rest of us? — Big transitions, no matter how clean or absolute, always leave a residue. In my twenties, my day job was being a musician. Half of my life was spent touring the country, and the other half was spent in California recording studios producing records. …