joshua chamberlain

Category: life

  • time we didn’t know we needed

    I’ve said many times this last year that quarantine was time we didn’t know we needed–almost as if God put humanity as a whole in time out. (“Go to your room and think about what you’ve done…”) As a society, we’ve been forced to pause and reckon with many of…

  • kick-start your day

    Buy a real alarm clock. Set it on the other side of the room. Turn off your phone before bed. Plug it in somewhere far away from where you sleep. Don’t turn it on again until you’ve been awake a while, until you’ve finished your first cup of coffee, written…

  • changing your tune

    I’ve been a Bayside fan long enough to follow them through quite a few changes. While so many of their contemporaries have fallen by the wayside and disappeared from my music collection, I’ve stuck with Bayside because they’ve managed to grow alongside me, both musically and as individuals. With recent…

  • gorging on forbidden fruit

    In this age of colossal cinematic crossovers (thing such as The Avengers or Godzilla vs. Kong), perhaps the one that beats all the others is Austin Kleon’s appearance on Andy J. Pizza’s Creative Pep Talk. In a conversation that ranges from setting creative rules for yourself to following your disgust,…

  • Obama on cultural appropriation

    I just finished listening to Renegades: Born in the USA, a series of conversations between Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen, with topics ranging from race and gender to the myth of the road to fatherhood. As far as podcasts go, it counts among my favorites. There are a million and…

  • one bite at a time

    I’ve been trying to practice being more present, to varying degrees of success. Lots of breathing and trying to center myself in my body. Single-tasking has been helpful when reading, writing, or watching TV, but I tried to take this a step further tonight. A few years back I remember…

  • the joy of not doing

    A few years back, I decided to put myself on the hook and record music to send out with my Christmas cards. The first record came right after moving to California. I was alone in a strange city and only had my guitar to keep me company. The result was…

  • the importance of public space

    I recently watch The Last Blockbuster on Netflix, which was both magnificent and a little bit sad. But more than anything, it made me think a lot about Jenny Odell’s reflections on public spaces in her book, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. Odell writes, “True public spaces,…

  • inflection points

    I’ve had a variety of creative pursuits: writing, drawing, music, photography. I’ve dabbled in a lot. But very few creative endeavors were much more than hobbies. It seems there’s always a roadblock when pursuing something creative, that hump that require practice to overcome. It’s the obstacle that separates the amateurs…

  • average

    When I was in high school, I brought home a “C” on a report card. My dad was livid. “It’s fine,” I said. “C means average.” This launched him into a tirade about being average. “Are you content to be average?” he bellowed. “Do you want an average life?” The…