Playing sports taught me that if you don’t have confidence in your ability to do a thing, you won’t succeed at it. You have to believe you’ll catch the ball, bring the runner to the ground, or land your sword against your target. If you don’t believe you can do Read more…
I really, really love Halloween. As a kid who didn’t get to eat much candy the rest of the year, it was like… hedonism itself. I would panic and fuss about costumes, and made myself some pretty terrible ones. Yes, I was that teenager wearing face paint and an inner Read more…
I started keeping a journal in sixth grade English class. I still have that much-doodled yellow folder. There’s a certain lack of candor in it, not knowing how to say exactly how I feel yet. It was a dark time in my life, but you wouldn’t know it from the Read more…
You want to look cute. You also want to not freeze to death. Strangely, women’s clothing seems to be designed to either be cute or not freezing but never both. Maybe it’s an obsession with showing the skin, but whatever. Women’s clothes are categorically made of thinner material than men’s. Read more…
Ronald Reagan figured out a way to develop support for the right among the working class. It was brilliant in its simplicity: Lie. Pretend you already did. He spoke in his speeches about a silent majority of conservative Americans who wanted fewer social services, lower taxes, and a dogwhistle in Read more…
1. When I was nine, I almost drowned a girl. We’d met that day, at the falls, and were instant friends in the way only nine-year-olds can be. Neither of us could swim. The river was shallow, all except that one spot at the base of the falls, which we gravitated toward like filings, Read more…
Volunteering. When I see a call for volunteers, there’s a near physical pain if I don’t answer it. Why is that? Why do I feel like a rude bastard if I don’t agree to do EVERYTHING? I’m not even just talking about Official Volunteer Positions. I used to jump up Read more…