The Status of Safety
Hi friend, At every opportunity since a room full of students—children, really, from my increasingly salt-and-peppered perspective—were gunned down by some...
Because you're Not Writing, sweetie.
Hi friend, I've wanted to write you again for some time now, but I've been a bit out of breath, creatively-speaking. Not because I'm exhausted from running...
Because YEESH
Hi friend, How are you? Hopefully employed, if you were and still want to be. As Pavel hilariously noted on LinkedIn recently, the layoffs are coming faster...
Adding onions to the unreality soup
The author launches a budget-friendly workshop on product writing while battling delivery mishaps and tech fatigue.
Do you think a depressed person could make this?
Hi friend, Hit a bit of a rough patch in ye old mental health garden these past few weeks. Trying to work through it. It can be hard, when I’m low, to work...
Fallen off the face of Design Earth
Hello friend, When I started as a user interface writer at Wolfram Research in 2012, I was coming from a small startup/agency shop where the designer used...
Aesthetic consistency is not branding
Hi friend, Under neither oath nor threat of death could I recall for you the sleepy, still-in-bed sequence of taps and swipes this rainy Monday morning that...
Lest I draw the Eye of Sauron
I’ve been writing more. A successful “Dry January” probably helped, as did deleting Reddit and other telephone time sucks a while back, and sticking with it....
Wealthy dirtbags with shitty politics
Hi friend, Fucking Trump, man. What is even left to say? Shitty way to start a year. It’s not a good time to be on Twitter anymore. It wasn’t 5 years ago,...
These final days of a long strange year
Thanks to neepernu, Michael, Tegan, and svcseattle for their recent support. Hi friend, Grades are turned in. Assorted reports have been filed. January and...
You will find that I am the pig
Hi friend, I’m avoiding the news and yet it all still finds me. (Brain worm. The man had a lit-e-ral worm in his brain.) The problem with only sending these...
New old music
Hello friend, “Life is good.” I get why people buy t-shirts that say that, or put smiley face pins on their jackets, or buy flowers for themselves. Life is...
Sam is going to see that star
There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart,...
I’ve expected very little of it all
I checked in at 3:45. I’ll be checked out by 5:30; less than an hour from now as I write this. Nothing’s wrong with the room. It’s spacious, by Manhattan...
My Norah Ephron levels
Hi friend, How are you? I asked an IRL friend that the other night, too. Hadn’t seen her in weeks, hadn’t caught up for a couple of months. She gave an...
My toothless condemnation
Hi friend, How are you? People talk about whether good ends can justify bad means, or at least they used to. Why do the math if you know the answer is null?...
Or I can *not* do those things
Man at work. Hi friend, How are you? You may or may not have noticed my professional absence of sorts these past many months. Not writing to you, not...
A borrowed pencil on the bus to school
Hey friend, Lamott’s shitty first drafts (PDF) are a good approach to writing, but they don’t work quite as well when, instead of writing one bad thing...
Fine, fine, let’s do all that
Hi friends, Historically, you all seem to like when I'm miserable. “Like” as in “engage heartily with the newsletter when”, not “am happy when”. So I’m sorry...
There's no one else at the party
I had hoped, today, to work from the new coworking space I’ve been part of for a few weeks now. It’s a 40-minute walk (or 40-minute bus ride, because transit...
