Words Are Filters

I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about words. Not as a formal study, but as playful explorimentation. At random moments, my brain seems to naturally re-examine words I’ve spoken since I was a little kid. I’ll try to guess their etymology and...

How Big Is Your Now?

This one time at bandcamp. we were playing around with the size of our nows. Ok, to be honest, “this one time” was yesterday. And it wasn’t at bandcamp. It happened in ​the dojo​. It’s just that—as an elder millennial—I find it really hard to...

Is It a Virtue or a Handicap?

Imagine the following scenario for a moment: You invited all your friends to be the test audience for your new theater show “the 24 hour monologue”. This show means a lot to you, so you informed them it’s important to you that they sit through the...

Truth Therapy

A process that has helped me a lot these past 6 years is something I call “truth therapy”. The cool thing about truth therapy is that you don’t need a therapist for it, and you don’t even need to know the truth. It’s a practice, a skill...

What Is a Real Boundary? (Use, Misuse and Purpose)

A tricky thing to navigate in the field of relationship advice is that most of it centers around concepts instead of energetics. What’s the difference? Concepts are definitions pointing at what’s happening, while energetics are what’s actually...

Seiryoku-Zenyo

From age 6-16, I trained extensively as a judoka. On the walls of our training hall, there hung two long banners with Japanese phrases on them. For whatever reason, I spent a lot of hours of my life transfixed on one of these banners. So transfixed, in fact, that I...