Category: life
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the things that last forever
The storm of life is raging for me at the moment, but maybe not in the way you’d expect. Let’s just say I’ve been thinking differently about what I want. Doing so has made me contemplate the temporality of things and shift my focus regarding what’s important. I finished Alan…
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bravery and stupidity
Once upon a time, I was at a wedding. As the reception started, one of the guys at my table got up and made his way to the dance floor. He didn’t have a date, but that didn’t stop him from dancing by himself the entire night. He danced to…
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learning my lesson
In The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho uses the titular character to give voice to confronting the lessons we’ve learned: “…before a dream is realized, the Soul of the World tests everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in…
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an open letter about an election
As we in the United States continue to grapple with the impact of our last presidential administration, I thought I’d share something personal. Prior to the 2020 Election, I wanted to engage in dialogue with people whose opinions were different from mine. Many of extended family and my parents’ friends–people…
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on the go
Between August of 2015 and September of 2018, I moved ten times. From my childhood home to my first apartment, from a rundown house with squirrels in the walls to a rented room in a lake house, from a commune in Cincinnati to a cabin in the middle of a…
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within and without
I’ve been in a men’s book club for about two years now. This time last year, we read Parker J. Palmer’s A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life. Much of the book is spent exploring how to draw out one’s soul in a world of compartmentalization. Palmer makes…
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the face of rejection
I’m recently submitted a few applications to grad schools. I got my first rejection yesterday. When talking with an old friend last night, he said, “What else can you do in the face of rejection but sing?” He immediately brought up Amy Grant’s “Hopes Set High,” one of the songbook…
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point of entry
The other day, I had a conversation about what it’s like to live in Los Angeles. The man I was talking to said he thought LA was too big. “I haven’t spent much time there, but I wouldn’t even know where to begin,” he said. “If I was going to…
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where we come from
In her episode of Abstract: The Art of Design, Es Devlin makes the claim that, “the systems and influences of one’s childhood are inescapable.” While peering down on a model of her hometown, she says, “My work is as much a reaction against this as it is continuing to perpetuate…
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why editing is important
A few years ago, I was working on a film set. I started a conversation with one of the camera operators, who claimed that editing is one of the most useful skills a person can possess. The editor is responsible for putting the whole film together. As this camera operator…
joshua chamberlain 