Husband. Father. Writer. Entrepreneur. Maybe a bit crazy.
I met a man recently who was built like a bodybuilder whose work for the last 30 years has been maintaining the casted dies in an aluminum extrusion facility. His job: check the dies to ensure everything is within tolerance…
In my day job, I’ve traveled a bit for work of late. I’m accustomed to carrying a water bottle with me most places. On a recent trip, I went into the bathroom at the hotel to fill up my water…
Years ago, I participated in a graduate level course on sociology. There were only seven of us in the class. We met in a dusty, old room of the health sciences building on Wednesday evenings from 6:00 to 9:00 pm…
During the Korean War, Ensign Frank Blair served on a troop transport ship stationed in Japan. The captain appointed Ensign Blair to be the ship’s informal chaplain, as the ship was too small to have a formal one. One night…
I rarely get enough sleep, so when an opportunity arises to sit still and listen to someone speak, I struggle to stay awake. I know I’ve missed a lot of good seminar content as my chin rests on my chest…
I’ve been married to my best friend for twenty-three years. Being with your favorite person is a privilege I hope I never take for granted. Twenty-three years is a long time — longer than the years we spent apart. We…
Western culture embraces the notion that success is synonymous with having more money than you could ever spend or being nationally-recognized as the best at something. In sports, we find a measure of joy and satisfaction when our favorite sports…
I have a lower tolerance for pain, so I’m grateful we live in such an age where I can open a cabinet, take a couple of pills, and resolve a headache in 30 minutes or less. In 2017, I tore…
I’m a professional ruminator. No, not the kind with a multi-chambered stomach. I’m one of those people who can latch onto a thought — usually one that elicits difficult-to-deal with emotions — and hold onto it with all the intensity…
There’s a joke in my family that the sloth is my spirit animal. My kids use it liberally, ironically because I’m almost never still. I wake up at the absurd hour of 4:00 am almost every day (even on weekends)…
I love reading. When I was young, I read everything I could get my hands on. In my pre-teen years, that meant a lot of Tom Swift and Hardy Boys. Later, JRR Tolkien, Madeleine L’Engle, and Michael Crichton dominated my…
My paternal grandfather kept a regular journal. He also held onto things of particular interest to him. Some time after his passing in 2011, my dad was searching through grandpa’s things and found a time-worn piece of paper with a…
There are only two physical macro states in life: asleep and awake. Somewhere between one-sixth and one-third of life is spent sleeping. The rest of the time — between 16 and 20 hours per day — is divided into what…
I was born in 1978. There are a lot of characteristics from Gen X a few from the Millennial generation that describe me. Someone coined the term Xillennial to describe those born right at the end and beginning of those…
“I used to take care of my daughter, now my daughter takes care of me.” A dear, old friend used to say that to me often during the eight or so years I had the privilege of knowing her. For…
