I try not to spend too much time worrying about the dystopian hell I fear is approaching: recession, mass unemployment, full-on economic collapse. I gave notice at my job just before Thanksgiving. About a week later Open AI released ChatGPT. In the few months since then, AI technology and the “intelligence” part of AI has…
Category: Life
Limbo Doesn’t Last Forever
Yesterday, I wrote a long and whiny piece about having too many of the “wrong” options for how I spend my time. I was feeling bored and cooped up and I didn’t want to be productive. The cold, gray day didn’t help. Underpinning not wanting to be productive was this emotional shrug that asks, “what’s…
Toxic Friends and Virtuous Victims
One day, whether you are 14, 28, or 65, you will stumble upon someone who will start a fire in you that cannot die. However, the saddest, most awful truth you will ever come to find – is they are not always with whom we spend our lives. -Hunting Season by Beau Taplin How should…
Reflections on April 11
The dog was already in my room when the alarm went off at 4:45. I lazed around for a few minutes before getting up and making breakfast. He spent the next hour and a half next to me pouting. It’s difficult to concentrate when he’s needy like this. Today is an anniversary of sorts. I…
Attachment and Erasure
This morning I cleaned out some emails from my gmail account. I didn’t get rid of many, at least not compared to how many are sitting in my inbox. My goal was to get to under 100 unread emails. Most of the unread ones are poems that are delivered daily. I succeeded in getting it…
April Comes Like an Idiot…
“April is the cruelest month…” So begins T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. There has been nothing particularly cruel about April so far, but it’s early in the month and there’s plenty of time for the sledgehammer of life to take out a few load-bearing walls. Despite a few cold mornings, it’s beginning to feel a…
Bolognese and Sacred Spaces
The best Bolognese I’ve had was at an Italian restaurant facing River Road near Trenton, NJ. I think it’s still there but maybe under new management. It’s a stand-alone building next to an auto repair shop. It is dark inside the way Italian restaurants can be dark inside. The bar is black and shiny, the…
Power Outage
Strong winds passed through and the power was out for hours. Today I have food to throw out. There’s a type of anxiety that happens when storms hit. Once the power was out, I became aware of all the things I wanted to do that required power. Sure, it’s been days/weeks since I’ve submitted poems…
National Poetry Month 2023
Today begins National Poetry Month. Each year, during the month of April, I try to set some poetry goals. Usually I try to write a certain number of poems (and fall short) or submit to a certain number of magazines. I don’t think I’ve set reading goals, which I might do this year – I…
Essay Camp: Day Whatever
I’m staring at the flashing cursor and a blank screen. For all of my talk about this process by which writing elicits more writing and practice allows words to flow more easily, I still have days where that is not the case. I’ve been trying to write something about wonder and novelty. I’m also trying…
Essay Camp: Day Two
I woke up at 4:30 this morning. I’ve gotten up between 4:00 and 4:30 the last two days. Ever since the time change, I was struggling to get up at 5:05 (when my alarm goes off) or really any time before 6:00… Then something clicked, and now I’m up at 4:00-something. It might just be…
Essay Camp
Today is day one of Essay Camp. A few months ago I began following a writer on Twitter. I don’t know much about her other than she seemed cute and was living in Paris and was writing. She has something like 10,000 followers or more. On her substack, of which I’m a free (unpaid) subscriber,…