Journal Entries
-
TotTM – Chapter 3: Follow the Beauty
September 10, 2026 Today, I’m back at Chattahoochee Food Works, sitting at a more secluded yellow table outside the building. It’s 12:24 p.m., which means I have about an hour before I need to return to my place and get ready for work. I usually leave my room between 2:10 and 2:20 p.m. My commute…
-
TotTM – Chapter 2: The Boy Who Left Home
May 26, 2025 Saying goodbye to my mother is the hardest part. In a fourteen-year span, she birthed three sons and one daughter. Though my sister took away the title of youngest in 2001, I am still my mother’s baby boy. It’s a rather cruel prank, considering that she’s the one who introduced me to…
-
TotTM – Preface & Chapter 1
I’ve wanted to write a book for years, but I can never seem to finish any of the more ambitious projects I start. Lately, I’ve been binge-reading Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl series, and it’s given me a newfound inspiration for how to approach this lifelong ambition. As I understand it, Dinniman began publishing chapters…
-
Reclaiming the Old Magic
Nostalgia is a fucking scam. I’ve been going through a phase of watching old films like Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused and Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, both of which have helped me articulate a feeling I’ve had lately: why has my adult life lost some of the magic of childhood? Nostalgia is booming among Millennials like…
-
Is America too Cultured?
What does it mean to be cultured? This question has been on my mind for the last couple of days for two different reasons. The first is that I have been called “cultured” by numerous people in response to my wide and seemingly random array of knowledge. The second is that a coworker of mine,…
-
There is Too Much Cheese
My manager recently gave me a book to read titled Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson. It was a quick read that succinctly explains how we humans tend to become complacent because of our aversion to change. Many of us would rather avoid a loss than pursue a gain. Once we become comfortable, the…
-
The Silent Truth
I must admit: I find myself in a strangely unsettled season of life. I’ve neglected this blog for far too long, and tonight—of all nights—I watched The Housemaid, starring Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried. For reasons I can’t fully explain, that was enough to loosen something in me. I feel compelled to write. I don’t…
-
The Illusion of Self and the Ever-Presence of Love
What first drew me to Buddhism was the idea of non-self—the insight that the “self” as we know it is an illusion. At first, this concept can feel deeply counterintuitive. From the moment we’re born, we are flooded with the markers of identity: our name, our birth weight, the exact time we entered the world.…
-
Thoughts on Death 1.28.24
Fact: You have one less day today. It is never an easy feeling to hear someone is dead. What do you mean they are gone? Then how do they live rent free in my mind still? There has to be more to the picture then alive one day, and then dead the next day, forever.…
-
1.21.24
At this pivotal moment in my life, a month after my 29th birthday, I find myself in a state of introspection and growth. As a professional athlete might be at their peak, I, too, feel at a prime of sorts, albeit in a different context. This period has been marked by a profound connection to…
