Day 36: I want this to be something else

I haven’t been very happy with this project for a little while now.

When I started, I eagerly snatched off all the low-hanging fruit: the stuff I knew I wanted to write about (as well as some things that were just easy to write…

Day 48: Climbing and hot tubbing

The drive between was that bottom point, where the slope is zero, of an x-squared parabola — the inflection point on which both our climbing of the day and our hot tubbing of the night would depend for it all to cohere in my memory these five and a half years later.

Day 45: You did what with a full weekend?

My life has far too few moments when that critical side of my brain turns off.

Which is maybe why I always liked General Conference so much.

Day 46: Let’s point some fingers

If you want someone to blame for my leaving the church, look no further: it’s my older brothers’ fault. Obviously.

Eight and twelve years older than me, Zack and Josh were, funny to say it, like gods to me. These figures passing down opinions and…

Day 37: Why hearing a nickname stops me in my tracks

Brother Joseph. Once upon a time, that’s what Mormons called the guy leading their church. Not Elder Smith. Not President Smith. Brother Joseph.

Day 29: The story I want to tell today

I never went out to a bar when I was Mormon — not really anyways. Except for once. And let’s just say it wasn’t exactly a straight bar…

No, this isn’t a coming out story. It’s just the story of two straight Mormons getting invited out…

Day 34: One day I’ll write “When I Was Anxious”

From time to time, more frequently now, I feel what it’s like to go without it.

There’s a sense of freedom, yes. And self-worth, sure (more like there’s no such thing and why you worrying about it anyway?). Its power, its…

Day 40: So I settle on an IPA

There’s this cocktail of emotions I never got the chance to try, a very particular blend I hear gets served up to a Mormon on his wedding day.

Expectant, not sure what the ceremony will entail — but he knows so many others, his friends and family and…

Day 30: Did I try to convert you?

Did I hand you a Book of Mormon? Or tell you what I just knew to be true, as though that’d seal the deal? Did I invite you to game night, ping pong, an ice cream social, with of course no agenda at all?