Four and a half years ago, I was thinking about someone I loved very deeply, who was suffering terrible pain that I felt I couldn't do anything to ease. And I was thinking about my own pain, past and present. I was thinking of losses I had experienced, and some of my darkest moments of doubt and despair. And I was thinking about many others I knew or had known, who struggled. And some who lost the struggle. Not knowing what else to do with my thoughts and my feelings, I wrote a letter to everyone in the world.

I keep meeting new people who need this message. I keep discovering I need to hear it again myself. So here it is, in the hopes that it reaches one more person who needs it.

I'm doing fine, by the way. But life is pretty rough sometimes, isn't it?

This one is short. Just a page or so of interchapter material from the novel. It's more an excuse for me to play with some editing techniques I'm learning, most (but not all!) of which will probably be lost on a listener who has no access to the original raw files.

And I'm ready to go forward.

Thoughts on hope, despair, laughter, living in the present, and planting gardens. (Also a tiny bit about Jeremiah 29:5-7.)

For those who actually DO read these notes, here is the cat reference as first seen on the wall in Act One:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxlPGPupdd8

James returns in yet another chapter of my novel.

This week's episode I take a break from fiction in order to bounce some ideas off of y'all. I've been wondering about the post-pandemic world we are currently building, and I've got some hopes and some concerns.

For a shortened, text-only version of today's musings, check out my blog:

To watch Justin McElroy's TEDx talk, "Bridging the gap between the job you want and where you are", go to YouTube:

And to read Derek Thompson's article, "Superstar Cities Are in Trouble", go to The Atlantic:

Having met two viewpoint characters and only killing off one of them, we now introduce a third character. A Noodle to our Bloom.

After last week's sudden and bloody murder of a viewpoint character, this week's chapter of the as-yet-untitled novel introduces our protagonist, James.

Objective vs. Personal Truth: are some people right and some people just wrong? Or are all viewpoints always valid? Why does this question matter? Is there anything wrong with judging people based on the correctness of their "truth"?

Original video at https://youtu.be/95aBzKjnY3U.

As a rare (so far) and weird (unless you were somehow expecting this) "treat", this week's episode of the podcast features the opening chapter of a novel I've been slowly writing for a REALLY long time. If you aren't interested in listening to fiction on this podcast, then go ahead and skip this ep. In a week or two I'll have something more "normal" for content, I'm sure.

Odds are, many unnecessary conflicts are happening in your life because of two things: your tendency to get stuck on being "right" at the expense of being "good", and the difficulty everyone has in understanding the perspective of others. In this video, I share some insights and some practices that will help you overcome these sources of conflict and improve your relationships with others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flhouDZYgg4