Inside My Head

Forty-three

WHOAA-OHHHHH-OHHHHH-OH-OHHHHH…. OHHHH-OH-OHHHHHH-OH-OHHHHHHH… OHHHHH-OHHHH. This simple chant that serves as the chorus to MakeWar’s “Not Today” has been in my head all summer, and never more than when it’s 6:15 in the morning and I’m swimming laps outdoors against the backdrop of a rising sun on a beautiful Denver summer day. I rediscovered my love of…

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On Surgery, Recovery, and Confession

“Ok, see you in a bit, babe. I love you! Good luck!” That’s my wife standing right at the doorway that separates the area she’s allowed to be in from the one she isn’t allowed to be in. “Whoa, hey! C’mere and give me a kiss, bay-bay!” There’s no fucking way I’m heading off to…

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On Fear, Health, and Tomorrow’s Surgery

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”― Margaret Atwood Unless I had a herniated disk in my back that shot hot pain knives down both sciatic nerves or a cough that I couldn’t get rid of for over a month or something outside of maybe…

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Forty-two

A few days ago I saw this tweet: I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it because look at big ol’ Nikola. He’s the best player in the NBA and he’s just boogeyin’ and singin’ along to a song he obviously knows and loves, glass of wine in hand, and everyone around him is…

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Forty-one

In December 2020, Jason, Kristin and I bought two lockdown livestreams of musical performances, The Bouncing Souls and Less Than Jake. We all desperately missed going to live concerts, so we did our best to re-create the experience. We turned the lights off in the basement, stood behind the couch instead of sitting on it,…

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Thirty-nine

Former President Barack Obama is 59 years old. Every summer he releases an amazingly curated summer playlist filled with hot new shit, obscurities, deep cuts from legendary artists, and other stuff that for whatever reason tickled his fancy this summer. Like, what’s Sheryl Crow’s “All I Wanna Do” doing on the same list as Anderson…

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Thirty-eight

Every year I make a new playlist on my birthday to commemorate the year that was, and write about it. This year, I’ve broken the post about by song and written a mini-essay for each entry. Sometimes these will pertain directly to the song, sometimes I won’t talk about the song at all. I had…

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Blog: Back in the (office) saddle, and I launch a new series

People often ask me, “What’s your ultimate goal for Deft Communications?” which I suppose is an honest enough question, but never fails to make me laugh both because of how boring and seemingly unambitious my answer is. Here’s my honest answer: All I want is for Deft Communications to do well enough to where I…

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Adulting

I’m starting to wonder if anyone ever truly and fully grows up. I don’t know if adulthood ever completely takes in anyone because some of the neural pathways you set seem so irrevocable that you never change. Or perhaps it’s that the markers of adulthood are fixed generationally, so that once an older generation dies…

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Thirty-four

I’ll admit to not understanding the Taylor Swift thing in the least until very recently. Until that “Shake It Off” song stormed everyone’s consciousness earlier this year, I couldn’t even name you a single Taylor Swift song. In fact, outside of the aforementioned “Shake It Off,” and the song this essay is about, I still…

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