Category: life
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“when did life get so real?”
Some of the defining moments of my life took place almost exactly ten years ago. It’s amazing how this both feels like yesterday and a million years ago at once. I was nineteen and was stupid, but had no idea how stupid I was. I knew so little and was…
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you are not replaceable
You are not a cog and this is not a machine. If you’re doing the work in a meaningful way, in a way that’s of service, there’s not anyone else who can do what you do, the way you do it.
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every song ever
It occurred to me yesterday how much we’ve lost in regards to the experience of the media we consume. As a teenager, there was something special about sitting in my car and peeling back the plastic on that new CD, leafing through the liner notes, slotting the disc into the…
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sharing what you have
I just published two new stories on my Medium page, where I keep all my fiction. One is the story of two childhood friends who suffer the pains of outgrowing one another and the other the story of a suburban teenager who learns the housewife he pines for isn’t what…
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let your unconscious do the work
I’ve been trying to take a page from Jennifer Egan’s book lately and allow my unconscious do the work. This means writing by hand, following characters where they want to go. I wrote a scene this morning I thought was going to end with a character forcing their way onstage…
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swapping good habits for bad ones
My Dad told me a story once about going for a run every day. He’d just broken up with his girlfriend, moved to a new town, and started a job he couldn’t stand. To get out of his head, he’d go for a run. He managed to run something like…
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building a house of cards
Yesterday, I inadvertently broke a 150-day streak of writing on this blog. It was a busy day, filled with work and getting coffee with friends and conversations about storytelling and faith and Lil Nas X’s music videos. It wasn’t until the middle of the night, in the fits of a…
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work to do
Not all victories are worth celebrating. Sometimes, victory means acknowledging there’s still a lot of work to do…
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the main thing
My roommate and I have had many conversations about keeping the main thing the main thing. In other words, staying the course, being committed to the craft, to the art. But recently, my definition of what constitutes “the main thing” is shifting a bit. I’ve come to a better understanding…
joshua chamberlain 