“It’s a failure of national vision when you regard children as weapons, and talents as materials you can mine, assay, and fabricate for profit and defense.”
― John Hersey

If you ask most people about their moral code, they will probably correlate it to a rule book, or some sort of platitude. I suppose my easy answer is usually some version of the Golden Rule, “love your neighbor as yourself.”

But what happens when loving your neighbor as yourself conflicts with some other hard and fast rule? Let’s take the 10 Commandments as an example. One of the easiest to…

A Stoic Approach To The Inevitable

“What really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves, but the way in which we think about them. It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance.”
― Epictetus

If you read my most recent poetry book you would’ve seen a section titled: What the gods sound like when you’re almost 30 and trying to practice stoicism and self-love but you’re afraid as hell.

So let me start there. The philosophy I’m about to describe makes a lot of sense to me, but it making logical sense doesn’t…

5 Takeaways From A Lucid Month

“It is not enough to be busy… The question is: what are we busy about?” ~ Henry David Thoreau

I just completed a “sober January,” and I thought I’d share some lessons learned with you guys. But first, let me tell you about the 3 moments that were the most tempting for me to cheat, in the least to most order.

3. It was restaurant week in the city I live in. Which means you can go to a fancy restaurant that you normally couldn’t afford, and get a good deal. …

2 Days Until Roll-Out

We are getting close folks. If you were to check right now, you would see that both the paperback and kindle are live in Amazon right now. So why am I claiming the roll-out is still two days away?

On Monday, Feb. 3, my book will be free on Amazon for 3 days.

That is also the day I will make a push through my social media channels. So for all intents and purposes, Monday is the release date. I will use the KDP Select program through Amazon to make the book free for the first 3 days, and then raise the price of my book to .99 cents for Thursday and Friday, and…

3 Days Until The Book Is Live

As I mentioned in the last post, the book is actually already live, at least the paperback version is. I broke down some of the reasons for that in the last post. The kindle version will go live tomorrow, and it will be priced at $4.99. Here’s a tip if you are thinking about buying the kindle version, wait until Monday. It will be free. So why did I price it at $4.99?

Psychology is weird.

The way Amazon markets its products is by showing two things:

1. How much cheaper the kindle is than the paperback. Well right now, I’d rather someone buy…

6 Days Until Air

Alright, I have 6 days left until my book will officially be live on Amazon, but I’m going to let you in on a little secret. It’s actually already live. At least in paperback form. Why do I already have it live if I’m not officially releasing it until next week?

Reviews, Reviews, Reviews

Think about most purchases you have made before you are sure about the products, especially on Amazon. What is the first thing you do? Check out the reviews. …

A Rant About The Over Protective Dad Trope In Music and Movies

N***** is savage, n***** is monsters
N***** is pimps, n***** is players
’Til n***** have daughters, now they precautious
Father, forgive me, I’m scared of the karma
’Cause now I see women as somethin’ to nurture
Not somethin’ to conquer — Kanye West, “Violent Crimes”

Yeah okay, that title was a little aggressive. Obviously I am glad that Kanye doesn’t view women as “somethin’ to conquer” anymore. But every time I hear this song (and others I’ll mention soon) or see an unimaginative show or movie depict an…

9 Days Until Launch

I have about 10 more poems to write in the next 9 days in order to fill out this book. So I obviously am spending all of my time writing and perfecting these poems right? Well, about that…