Posted on April 19, 2026
Wonder Is the One Frequency That Requires No Translation
My car sped down the hill, my eyes darting from the speedometer to the road as I debated how much I could get away with. Over the car speakers, NASA flight control officers worked their way through the launch sequence. Artemis II was minutes away from making history, and I was running behind.
Iâve always been jealous that I didnât get to see the Apollo missions live. Ever since I heard the initial announcements of the Artemis program, I prayed Iâd have my equivalent experience. And thanks to years of delays, a new opportunity aroseâmy son could join me, too. My son who was currently at home, while I was having to stop to let a pair of cadets saunter across a crosswalk as though they werenât an obstacle disrupting a relationship-defining father-son bonding moment.
Itâs roughly four minutes from the gate leaving base to my garage, but the announcer hit the one-minute mark right as I crossed through. I debated flipping over to sport mode and gunning for it, but I knew Iâd still fail to make it back in time.
I clenched my jaw, then pulled over. The livestream was already going on my phone, so I propped it up on the steering wheel and watched as the countdown I had dreamed and fantasized about so often in my younger days happened in real time.
3âŚ2âŚ1âŚLiftoff.
1,700 miles away and right in front of me, the rocket started its journey to take humanity back to the moon in person for the first time in fifty-four years. I sat on the side of a road Iâd driven a thousand times, and the hair on my arms rose for a rocket lifting off a smudged six-inch screen. It was almost everything I dreamed it would be.
A few minutes after the cameras lost sight of Artemis II, I pulled into the garage and headed inside. My wife and two kids were in the kitchen and as I dropped my bags, I asked my son if he wanted to see the astronauts go to space. He sprinted overâno hesitation in his stride, no three-year-old hostage negotiation tactics.
So it was there in my kitchen, me on a knee still in my Space Force uniform and my son bouncing on his toes next to me where we watched the launch togetherânot live, unfortunately, but the next best thing.
His face lit up in a way that only a young childâs can. He smiled with pure joy, his expression enchanted. One of his small hands held onto my arm to steady him as he leaned as far forward towards my phone as he could, his other outstretched with a finger following the rocketâs path on the little screen. The whole time he kept up a litany of questions: Where are the astronauts? Where are they going? Is that a rocket? Are there astronauts on there? Are they going to the moon? Why did those rockets fall off?
I rattled off answers, watching him more than the video. The rocket captured me on the side of the road. His enthusiasm captured me now.
After it finished, he asked to watch it again. And then again, after that. None of the repeats diminished the experience for him. Each rewatch, the smile came right back on his faceâone mirrored on my own.
Thinking back on the experience with the space of a few days, I appreciate it even more. A three-year-old and his father share almost no common languageâdifferent vocabularies, attention spans, understandings of appropriate speaking volume while indoors. There are days that gap feels like a canyon, and Iâm yelling across it hoping my voice carries.
And then, a rocket leaves the atmosphere.
The gap disappears and none of that matters; weâre the same age, pointing at the same thing.
We donât build enough things worth being collectively awestruck by anymore. We manufacture outrage at scale; wonder, we leave to chance.
Artemis II is the rare exception, something that worked on a three-year-old and his father equally, simultaneously, without explanation. The canyon between us disappeared. And for a second, I could see forward across itâpast the three-year-old on my kitchen floor, to who he could become.
Later that evening, my son kept asking questions about the astronauts. Hints of that smile from earlier played at the edges of his mouth as I tried to explain orbital mechanics to a kid who routinely still walks into doors. It didnât matter that it was going over his head. It wasnât about the mathematics. It never was.
Wonder is the one frequency that requires no translation.
Posted on April 6, 2026
Stoicism Has Borders
I am the rock upon which my household sits. While I donât usually boast in these pages, itâs important I make an exception today. Last time I was sick, I was not nearly as pathetic as I usually am. The Man Flu is real, and when it comes for me, my body shuts down in protest. With two kids and a host of uncovered outlets in the house, however, I donât have the luxury of tapping out for the day anymore.
So when illness last struck, I rose to the occasion. I got out of bed multiple times so I could curl up on the couch, staring at a child so we could truthfully say in a court of law that they werenât unattended. I got my own water, something immobile trees manage every day. I even managed to do the dishes while only making three self-pitying comments to my wife.
In sum, I was a hero.
My wife is blessed with a strong immune system. Generally, that means only I catch whatever lab leaked biowarfare agents my children bring home from daycare. However, it also means that when she goes down, she goes down hard.
She was hit by what appeared to be plague recently, and it took her out of commission. Weâre talking fever shakes, body aches, and a longing for the comfort of the grave level of sick. Finally, I thought, my moment to shine. I would handle the kids, she would have the opportunity to rest, and all parties involved would award me with a sincere and unironic âWorldâs Best Dadâ mug.
Unfortunately, no one told my wife the plan. As I sat wrangling increasingly feral children, she shambled out of the bedroom like a plague victim looking for a dark corner to curl up in and die. She looked at me, blinked slowly, then held out her arms to our children who immediately abandoned me in favor of the walking corpse.
I sat there on the ground, now without purpose. But at least I had my health.
In our relationship, Iâm considered the stoic one. My keels are even and my pace is steady. My cucumber cool runs the show almost everywhereâeverywhere except when it comes to illness.
For whatever reason, sickness short circuits my rational side. It doesnât matter if itâs my own or someone in the family, sickness makes me catastrophize like a citizen of Pompeii when the nearby hills start to smoke. Whatâs worse is I know this is happening. I can walk through the logic in my head, but the end result is still a certainty that if we donât go to the ER right now, everyone is going to die.
As I watched my wife man up better than I ever have, it struck me how our roles reverse when it comes to sickness. She becomes Cool Hand Luke, while Iâm the manic hypochondriac doomscrolling WebMD articles on all the reasons why our children having a 99.5-degree fever means they now have cancer-lupus.
The gap here isnât the philosophyâitâs the practitioner. Stoicism has borders. Like spreading cold butter over rough bread, the spread isnât even. Iâm great when it comes to finances, crisis moments at work, and dealing with bad drivers. Not so much when it comes to physical vulnerability.
My wife serves as a useful counterpoint. As evidenced by her ability to drag herself out from a shallow grave to help with the children without a word of complaint, she clearly has stoicism in spades when it comes to handling illness. But if she gets cut off in traffic, she starts eyeing matchboxes and considering arson. I keep my head when the world falls apart. She keeps hers when our bodies do.
Too often, self-reflection ends up as self-congratulation. When I sat on the living room floor left behind by my children, however, I learned something new about myself. Turns out Iâve had an incomplete self-assessment, but thatâs an important thing to recognize. Finding the edge is the prerequisite for the work.
Everyone has a boundary. The question isnât whether you have oneâitâs where does yours stop?
Posted on March 22, 2026
Why I Asked AI Instead of My Dad
My wife looked at me and uttered the words I most dread in our relationship: âWhen are you going to hang those frames?â
Pinned like the frantic rat I was, I looked for a limb to gnaw off to escape the trap. Manage the children? No, they were already in bed. Pay the bills? No, she knows thatâs all automatic now. Yelling âlook over there!â and sprinting in the opposite direction? No, Iâd already used that to get out of folding laundry.
I accepted my fate and trudged into the hallway for my ritual humiliation. I laid out the frames, my tools, and my dignity, then started measuring.
My father taught me a truism in my youth: measure twice, cut once. I would offer a slight variation to that when it comes to hanging frames: measure as much as you want, it doesnât matter. Regardless of how I pin the measuring tape or how precise I make my marks, my frames inevitably have issues. Itâs never by muchâa quarter inch here, an eighth of an inch thereâbut itâs enough to notice and slowly drive one mad. Iâve lost sleep thinking of the set of three frames in my sonâs room that are just slightly unleveled.
I sat there and stared at all the materials, then up at the wall, then back to the materials. There has to be a better way, I thought. And as is usually the case in scenarios like this, my next thought was to call my dad and beg for his wisdom. Being the all-around handy man that he is, I knew heâd have some trick to make me seem competent in front of my wife.
The phone was in my hand, finger swiping through my contact list, when I stopped. I am a grown man, an adult in the eyes of the United States government, and someone who hundreds of thousands of people who are objectively more useful than me are legally required to salute. It was time for me to man up and take this bull by the horns.
So instead of hitting dial, I swapped to an AI app on my phone and asked it for tips on hanging frames.
Thatâs how I learned the tape trickâslapping a piece of masking tape across the back of the frame, marking where the holes need to be, then putting it on the wall to use as a reference for your holes. A few minutes later, the frames were up, my wife was happy, and I basked in the glory of my rugged frontiersman can-do spirit.
As I packed up my tools, I thought about how information gathering has changed for me over the years. Asking parents for help. Asking Google for help. Asking an AI for help. Each step got called progress. Iâm not sure thatâs the right word.
To be clear, Iâm not arguing with the results. Those frames are dead-on straight, right where my wife wanted them. I have not lost a wink of sleep haunted by a tiny imperfection that scrapes at my soul like a knock-off cheese grater on high-end parmesan. The issue is wondering when I shifted my understanding of what it means to handle something.
One could argue that this is no different from calling my dad. After all, he may have told me the exact same trick. I think that misses the larger point, however. Had I called my dad, there would have been other elements tied to the experience: the social interaction, the strengthening of a father-son bond, the inevitable shame my father would feel knowing his mid-30s son has six frames in his house right now that could be hung better.
What did I get when I asked the AI? An answer, and a lack of friction. I used to ask people who didnât always have answers. Now I ask something that always answers but canât know me, no matter how well the math equations running under its hood pretend to.
Thereâs a decent chance Iâll remember the tape trick, but this may be the exception, not the rule. I use AI for a wide range of efforts, from lesson prepping undergraduate level classes to working out what I actually think about strategy. There are dozens of cases now where I just ask and get an answer. Iâm still lifting the box, but something else does all the work. The sum of all those exchanges is quietly reshaping what Iâm capable ofâor think Iâm capable ofâwithout me noticing. I used to ask and get more than an answer. Now I ask and get exactly thatâan answer. The frames are straight; no one can argue that. But I still feel a sense of discomfort every time I look at them because now I have to wonder: what else have I quietly stopped asking?
Posted on February 9, 2026
Not Broken Enough to Fix: My First Real Lesson in Accepting Limitations
I slid inside the off-white cylinder of the MRI machine, feeling an odd kinship with my infant daughterâs diaper cream. The anticipated claustrophobia never materialized, but the technician forcibly reminded me of our age gap when the classic rock I requested came on as music from the early 2000s.
This scan had been 16 years in the making. I have had shoulder issues that entire time, possibly from a boxing injury in college unless I made that up. For over a decade, I have bounced around the world on military assignments and brought my issue up to doctors on four continents.
16 Years of Temporary Fixes
In Germany, a doctor prescribed the oddest stretch Iâve ever done. It worked until it didnât. In Korea, another doctor gave me the highly specific and thoughtful medical advice of âjust go YouTube shoulder physical therapy videos and try those.â In Hawaii, my physical therapist said sheâd done all she could do and the next step would be an MRI. I refused, thinking that since the MRI office there had a three-plus month backlog, there were a lot of folks who needed it more than me.
Now here I was, lying in a plastic tube like store brand toothpaste as the MRI machine clanked its way through imaging my body. I still donât know what tipped me over the edge this time, but I was excited. Maybe now, after dozens of appointments over a decade and a half, Iâd have an answer. Iâd know what was wrong, and then my doc could give me the magical exercise that would fix things and take me back to a time I canât even remember nowâone where my shoulder didnât hurt.
The Scroll of Prophecy Unfurls
A few days later, I sat in my docâs office as she went over the results with me. She immediately jumped into medical terminology, using more syllables than a Scrabble expert with an ax to grind and vowels to burn. I understood nothing she said, but this was what I wantedâspecific knowledge of my issue, backed up by centuries of medical data going back to the first time some crazy Italian guy cut open someone else to see the squishy parts on the inside.
âAm I going to make it, doc?â I asked. âIâm only 35, thereâs so much life ahead of me.â
âNo,â she said. âThe small tear in your rotator cuff isnât going to kill you.â
Victory. Finally, after so many years of appointments, guesswork, and endless YouTube videos, I had an answer. No longer would I have to muddle my way through life with a perpetually aggravated shoulder. Now we could make real progress in fixing me. I felt like a man at the end of a quest, the Scroll of Prophecy in his hands slowly unfurling to reveal its divine contents.
The Verdict That Fixed Nothing
âYou could go see the orthopedic surgeon if you want,â the doc continued, âbut theyâll advise against surgery. With where it is and how small it is, theyâd end up doing more harm than good trying to fix it.â
The soundtrack to my ascendant triumph collapsed like a breathless tuba player falling over into the rest of the orchestra. âSo, what do we do?â I asked.
She shrugged. âSame as you have been. Keep doing physical therapy exercises, hopefully that prevents any further damage.â
Same as I had been, I thought. Status quo. Back to rolling my shoulder out every few minutes as I pretend to type on my computer at work. Back to cracking my neck with the sound of a fully automatic fifty-call as family and friends look on with horror. Back to taking calming breaths as my shoulder hurts when I cut chicken on a cutting board.
I finally knew what was wrong, and it changed nothingâmodern medicine at its finest. The Scroll of Prophecy unrolled in my hands, only to show the untalented scribbling of an angsty middle schoolerâs attempt to draw a one fingered salute.
Square One, No Path Forward
After thanking the doc and making follow-up appointments, my new knowledge rattled uselessly in my skull. I got in my car, feeling the grinding, dull ache in my shoulder as I grabbed the steering wheel. This time, though, it felt different. Not the physical sensationâthe emotional accompaniment.
I had returned to square one, but now the board had no path forward. This ache in my shoulder as my fingers gripped the steering wheel? This was the best-case scenario. What might worst case look like? Would I be able to keep mountain biking as I got older and my shoulder got weaker? Would I be able to pick my kids up and put them on my shoulders? The answer that fixed nothing still broke something.
This was justâŚit.
The Only Rebellion Against Permanence
I think this hit as hard as it did because itâs my first tangible brush with aging. We all know intellectually that our bodies start to fail us later in life, but thereâs a difference between seeing it happen to others and feeling it in yourself. Where my shoulder pain was an annoyance I planned on getting around to fixing someday, now I realize that someday will never come. Some things canât be fixed, only managed.
So tonight Iâll do my exercises. Tomorrow Iâll do them. Next year Iâll do them. Each repetition protecting what remains, preventing what could come, the only rebellion against permanence I have left.
Not broken enough to fix. Not fixed enough to forget. But not so broken I stop trying.
Posted on December 24, 2025
Small Tests, Big Rot
I stared at the slow cooker, vexed. The mishmash of seasonings, broth, and chicken bubbled away, ignorant of the tragedy it unwittingly participated in. I looked at the clock and frowned, hoping daylight savings had struck early this year. No matter how I tried to rationalize the situation, the facts remainedâI had left the chicken in its cauldron several hours longer than anticipated.
Three options sat before me. The first, close my eyes and soldier through. I could make a reasonable assumption it wouldnât be the worst thing Iâve eaten, given that the government fed me at the quality of the lowest bidder for four years. The second, make my kid eat it. I soon remembered heâs going through his food critic phase where everything is, and I quote, âBLEEGGHHHH.â I put a pin in that option anyways, just in case.
The third, however, whispered in my ear like a snake loitering around fruit trees. Why not throw the chicken out and go buy another package to start over with? This was my meal prep for the week, after all. Isnât it worth a few bucks to prevent five straight days of suffering?
I discarded this as heresy. The $5 Iâd have wasted could sit in an investment account for the next forty years and give me a bounty of $74.87 (assuming 7% annual returns). Given that I could get his and hers do-it-yourself taxidermy kits for that much, I couldnât possibly justify the waste. And the time investment! The hours of life going to the store and recooking this meal would cost? Unconscionable.
No, the only way out was through. Iâd made this bed with the concerning smell; Iâd lie in it. I unplugged the slow cooker and shredded the chicken, only somewhat concerned with how porous and gelatinous it felt. Into the Tupperware it went, and I tried my best to think of other things for the remainder of the night.
The Week of Reckoning
Monday afternoon, I took the Tupperware out of the microwave and returned to my desk. It looked like chicken, at least. Perhaps a touch stringy, but isnât that a sign of good pulled chicken? I lifted the fork to my mouth, eyeing the quivering mass with slight concern.
I took a bite and chewed. Actually, let me correct myselfâI attempted to chew. What happened instead was what little structural integrity the chicken still had vanished like tears in the rain, leaving me with the mealy texture of soggy newspaper dipped in a lemon-soy mixture and left on a roof through an Arizona heatwave.
Again, the options floated before my eyes. Again, I made the decision to endure. The marinade may have failed, losing me the dayâs battle, but hope approached just on the horizon. Given my spotty cooking record, I have come to know the power of condiments on a spiritual level. Barbeque sauce covers a host of sins. So as the remnants of my semi-slurried chicken slithered its way down my resisting throat, I thought of better days and my future triumph.
Tuesday afternoon, I stared down at my chicken. What had been an unhealthy yellow color the day before now took on a vomit like hue as the Japanese barbeque sauce swirled like an oil spill on a colony of plague-ridden seabirds. Surely this couldnât be as bad as yesterday, I thought to myself. Surely.
It was.
The Japanese barbeque sauce labels itself as carrying deep umami flavor. I donât know what that means, but it umamiâd into this chicken like a Zero piloted by someone who never thought to ask why his flight instructor always told him not to worry too much about landing.
Wednesday afternoon, I fell back on old tactics. In the early days of my cooking career, I failed to recognize the value of things like herbs or salt when preparing food. After realizing plain baked chicken is awful, I started relying on what became my personal Old FaithfulââMurican barbeque sauce. Packed with high fructose corn syrup and more chemicals than a fertilizer factory, this culinary coronary keeps the flavor flowing in our country. If you want to smother a bad taste with no mercy, buy American.
Unfortunately, flavor does nothing to mask texture. Instead of day-past-its-prime citrus flavored rotting mulch, I now had tangy mesquite flavored rotting mulch. My teeth grinded against each other, convinced that something should be between them but finding only disappointment and regret.
This was my true point of no return. At any moment, I could have tossed the vile concoction into the trash and saved myself from the horror of choking down each additional bite. But pride is a terrible thing, the root of all sin and despair in this world. Pride drove my fork back into the Tupperware holding what once was chicken. Pride brought the fork to my mouth and stopped my ears from hearing the sound of a chunk of the mash sliding off into the pile below. Pride drove my molars together as some small part inside of me screamed.
Hope died on Wednesday. My mindset shifted from âI can fix thisâ to âI will endure this.â
I could go on and tell you of Thursday and Friday, of how in my increasing desperation I turned to other condiments like hot sauce and mustard in the vain hope of finding palatability. But you, dear reader, know the answer. There was no expectation of success, no retreat from the battle I brought upon myself. I may have endured the siege, but it left behind a broken man whose world will forever be that much dimmer.
The Real Test
I wrote this off as an absurd week, easily forgotten save for the occasional nightmare. Then I heard about a student cheating.
The assignment meant nothingâa percentage of a percentage of the overall course grade. Had the student just typed âIâm here so I wonât get finedâ until they hit the word count, they wouldnât have noticed on their final grade and would have a great story to tell. Instead, they used ChatGPT in such a glaringly obvious way that even Doubt knew it didnât need a benefit. It was completely unnecessary, and hearing about it bothered me more than it should have. I couldnât stop thinking about it, picturing the student staring at a blank document and its blinking cursor before giving up and outsourcing their thinking like it was a New Delhi call center.
Something about failing a test that didnât matter felt worse than failing one that did. Cheating is never acceptable, but the act still exists on a spectrum. I can understandâif not condoneâwhy someone might cheat on a final exam. Desperation has a logic to it. But cheating on something worthless? Thatâs not weakness under pressure. Thatâs who they are.
Cheating on a five-point assignment in a thousand-point class isnât giving in to temptationâitâs a complete failure to recognize the action is a problem to begin with.
Cheating for everything is temptation. Cheating for nothing is rot.
Rotting from the Inside Out
The true tragedy of this situation is that the student in question is a cadet at a military academy, someone who may soon graduate to commission as an officer. To me, that takes this from sad to dangerous.
With enough time in the military, you learn to ask a simple question about those you meet: would I want to go to war with this person? If I ever find myself in a trench, I need to be able to rely on the people next to me. Failing that is one of the quickest ways to take a situation from bad to worse.
Someone who cheats on a meaningless assignment is someone who cuts corners on maintenance checks, intelligence reports, or the rules of engagement. Thereâs a rot there in the truest definition of the wordâwhen something becomes weakened or useless because of decay.
Rot is reliable. It doesnât discriminate between critical and trivialâit just spreads. When you let it into your character, it doesnât stop at the edges. Integrity isnât a switch you can flip on and off for convenienceâs sake. You either have it or you donât, and itâs a hard thing to regain once lost.
The Tests Nobody Sees
Life is full of little challenges that test major commitments. The student faced one and failed. I faced one and passedâthough Iâll spare you the victory parade for surviving self-inflicted bad chicken.
But passing one test doesnât clear the ledger. Throwing out food triggers my principlesâfrugality, efficiency, and an aversion to needless waste. Those principles kicked in without effort. Do they trigger when Iâm struggling to handle a screaming toddler? When Iâm deciding whether to work on my writing versus tuning out to mindless entertainment?
Small tests matter, yes, but rot stays hidden unless you peel back the floorboards to look underneath. I can point the finger at this student like a frontier judge, but is my house in order? I donât know, but Iâd like to think me asking the question is a step in the right direction.
We all have tests no one else sees. Ones where no one is watching and nothing is at stake. But low stakes expose what high stakes conceal. Which test is in front of you right now?
Posted on October 15, 2025
After Action Report: The Long Night
The first rumble comes at midnight, that witching hour when nothing good ever happens. My stomach clenches like a fist, and I know what’s coming.
I’ve been here before. Decades of motion sickness have made me intimately familiar with porcelain and regret. This is an old acquaintance, an unwelcome reunion. But those were training exercises. Food poisoning is differentâsharp, fast, over quickly. I’m a parent now. I’ve been elbow-deep in biological warfare. This is manageable.
My wife appears in the bathroom doorway, tired, eyes concerned.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” I say, waving her off with the confidence of a man who has no idea what the next six hours hold. “Just something I ate. Go back to bed. I got this.”
She hesitates, but exhaustion wins. The door closes.
I got this.
12:17 AM
The first engagement comes swift and violent. A precision strike, tactical in its efficiency. I barely have time to position myself before my body executes its opening salvo. The enemyâfood poisoning, definitely food poisoningâhas been identified and is being expelled with prejudice.
I remain clinical in my assessment. This is a single-front conflict. Contained. The body has identified the threat, neutralized it, and normal operations will resume shortly. Textbook response to a foreign agent.
I flush. Rinse my mouth. Wipe the sweat from my forehead.
The bathroom falls silent. Mission parameters: achieved.
One and done.
I return to bed, confident in my body’s decisive victory.
1:03 AM
I wake to my stomach staging a coup.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
The banner might as well be hanging over my toilet as I stumble back to my post. This wasn’t supposed to happen. The war was over. We’d won. I’d told my wife I had this handled.
But the enemy has regrouped. Adapted. This is insurgency warfare now, asymmetric tactics I hadn’t prepared for. I tear off my jacket as heat floods through me, the bathroom suddenly a sauna. Sweat soaks through my shirt as my body launches its second offensive.
This is still food poisoning. Has to be. Norovirus works faster than thisâI’d be done by now, right? This is just… aggressive food poisoning. Bad chicken staging a fighting retreat.
When it’s over, I sit on the cold tile, jacket discarded, breathing hard.
Fine. Two engagements. But THAT was the surge. Maximum effort from a dying adversary. I’ve broken their will. Democracy has been restored to my digestive system.
I leave the jacket on the floor and crawl back to bed.
I have won the hearts and minds of my internal organs.
2:14 AM
My organs have rejected democracy.
The third wave catches me halfway to the bathroom, and I barely make it. This time there’s no clinical assessment, no tactical evaluation. This is desperation. This is the Alamo.
I am Travis drawing a line in the sand, except the line is made of stomach acid and the sand is bathroom tile. My body has surrounded me on all sides. There will be no reinforcements. No cavalry cresting the hill at dawn.
The jacket goes back on as I shiver violently, then comes off again thirty seconds later as heat surges through me. My body can’t even agree on what temperature this nightmare should occur at.
…could be norovirus. The timing fits. Doesn’t matter now.
This is my final stand. I will hold this position or I will die here. There is no middle ground. History will remember this momentâa man, a toilet, and the courage to face impossible odds.
I flush. Rinse. Try to stand.
Remember me. Remember the Alamo.
This is where I fall.
3:02 AM
I make a strategic decision. This is not a limited engagement. This is a full campaign, and campaigns require logistics. Supply lines. Hydration.
I take three small sips of water. Careful. Measured. These tiny swallows will sustain me through whatever remains of this long night. I have adapted. I have learned.
Ten minutes later, my body laughs at my planning.
The fourth wave brings something worse than painâthere’s nothing left. Just dry heaves, my stomach contracting around emptiness, offering up viscera that isn’t there. I am a sacrifice on an ancient altar, my body wrung out like a sponge long past dry.
Surely this is enough. I have given everything. Every scrap, every molecule. The gods must be satisfied.
But these are gods you cannot pray to.
The jacket is back on. Or off. I’ve lost track. My body cycles through temperatures like it’s searching for the right setting to end this. There isn’t one.
Norovirus. Definitely norovirus.
When the heaving finally stops, I collapse against the tub. The sacrifice is complete. The altar runs empty. There is nothing more to take.
I close my eyes.
Surely.
4:11 AM
Here we observe the human male in his natural habitat: the bathroom floor. Having been stripped of higher cognitive function, the specimen now operates on pure instinct.
The fifth wave takes what isn’t there to take. I have moved beyond the realm of tactical planning, beyond bargaining with ancient powers. I am a creature seeking the most basic of needs: a position that doesn’t hurt.
I rotate. Left side. Right side. Back. Stomach. Each new configuration somehowâimpossiblyâfinds the healing wound on my elbow. A bike crash from five days ago that my body decided must be incorporated into tonight’s comprehensive suffering.
Like a Costco rotisserie chicken, I turn myself methodically, testing each angle. Surely one of these positions will provide relief.
The specimen’s optimism, while admirable, is fundamentally misplaced.
There is no such position. My elbow ensures this. The tile is too hard. Too cold. Now too warm. My jacket is off, then on, then off again, the temperature controls of my body now operating on some frequency I can no longer interpret.
Food poisoning orâ
I can’t finish the thought. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except finding one moment of comfort that will not come.
The creature continues its rotation, driven by an instinct that cannot accept there is no solution. Remarkable, really, how hope persists even as the body fails.
4:47 AM
Tactical. Religious. Animal. All of it mixing now.
The sixth engagement. Or sacrifice. Or rotation. I don’t know anymore.
Jacket off.
The enemy advances. The gods demand. The specimen convulses.
My elbow. Always my elbow.
Democracy. Altar. Tile. Mission. Gods you cannot pray to while you’re praying anyway because what else is there?
Jacket on.
One and done. The Alamo. Nothing left to give. Still giving.
Surelyâ
5:03 AM
Five AM. The void stares back.
The seventh wave is gentle, almost kind. There is nothing violent left in me. No military precision, no ancient sacrifice, no animal instinct. Just a body going through motions it no longer has the energy to resist.
I don’t return to bed this time. The tile has become my home. The bathroom, my tomb. I think about the grave and find the thought comforting. At least the dead don’t dry heave.
The jacket stays where it falls. I stay where I fall.
The war is over. Not because I won. Because there’s nothing left to fight with, nothing left to fight for. I have achieved a kind of peace that comes only through complete and total defeat.
The silence stretches. Minutes pass. Maybe hours. Time has lost meaning.
Finally, mercifully, the sun begins to rise. Light creeps under the bathroom door.
I survive to see morning. I’m not sure this counts as victory.
Later, my fitness watch delivers its assessment of the night’s events:
“No sleep detected.”
Mission Accomplished.
Posted on October 9, 2025
Llamageddon: Why Toddler Bonding Trips Always Go Wrong
My son and I whipped down the Utah freeway at exactly five over the limit, and I knew that I was about to take the crown as the favorite parent. Since birth, he has made it clear he prefers his momâfirst through crying, later through actual words.
He wails and gnashes his teeth like a professional mourner every time I put him down for bed. Anytime I ask if he wants to play outside, he immediately looks for his mom to take him. Today, after I told him I loved him, he replied that he loved the crackers on the counter next to me. That one doesnât specifically relate to his mother, but it hurt all the same.
But hereânowâwas my moment to become the favorite. I had strategically left his mom with her mom for some much-needed girl time, and my ace in the hole waited a few miles up the road: a llama farm.
While my son goes through book phases like a prepubescent boy goes through favorite construction vehicles, Llama Llama Red Pajama has always been a hit. He loves the voices I use, the catchy rhymes, the chaos a small child can bring to a parentâs night, all of it. So logically, seeing real llamas was a guaranteed hit. This was my bonding moment, and I planned on making the most of it.
My wife, sensing an opportunity to have a toddler-free afternoon, happily agreed to the outing. My son, however, had other ideas.
The Perfect Plan
âI have a surprise for you,â I said, kneeling down so I could look my firstborn in the eye. âDo you want to go see some llamas with me?â
He looked back at me with narrowed eyes as his toddler brain went to war over the competing desires of furry mammals and doting mothers. âI want mommy to take me,â he said, neatly splitting the Gordian knot.
After some placating actions made to a thoroughly unconvinced toddler, we loaded up and took off. My plan was in action and nothing would stop me from finally having a bonding moment with my son. I could already picture his face lighting up when he saw the llamas, hear him telling his mom about how amazing his day was with that enthusiasim reserved for truly special experiences. This was itâmy time to shine as Dad of the Year and secure a beachhead in the Normandy of his heart.
As we drove, a gleaming white building caught my eye. At first, I thought it was a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saintâs temple. We were in Utah, after all. Further inspection showed its architecture to be all wrong, though. I thought little of it until Google Maps helpfully told me to take the exit closest to the odd building. Maybe weâll see what it is as we drive by, I thought to myself.
A few minutes later, I rolled to a stop looking directly at the white building as Google Maps happily pinged that we had arrived at our destination. This confused me, because instead of a field of frolicking llamas, I was instead staring at Buddhist temple. As for animal life, the selection appeared to be a plethora of peacocks. Not a llama in sight.
Temple Trouble
A quick address check off the website showed that we were at the right location, with the text âopen to the publicâ clearly displayed both online and in-person. I looked through the windshield and saw a definite lack of public. Or workers. Or any living being apart from the peacocks.
âDaddy,â my son said from the backseat. âAre we going to see the llamas?â
We had come for llamas, and I was going to deliver llamas. Nothingânot peacocks, not abandoned temples, not my growing suspicions that we were trespassingâwould stop me from giving my son this moment.
I turned the car off, collected the toddler, and strode through the temple grounds like a member of the public it was theoretically open to. In the distance, a peacock shrieked.
Our effort was soon rewarded, as coming over a small rise revealed the promised pasture with its llama inhabitants. Two dozen of the long-necked camelids grazed in the field below, a particularly majestic specimen with black and white markings standing at the peak of a small hill like a sentinel. We had found our promised land, and beheld that it was good. This was premium dad territory, and I could taste my victory.
As we came closer, however, the oddness of the situation sank in. While I saw llamas, I still had yet to see another person. We made it up to the fence without a soul in sight, and only a small sign hanging off the livestock gate gave me any context: âplease close gate behind youâ. Next to this gate, however, was a human-sized switchback entrance like the line for the worldâs worst amusement park ride. Nothing blocked this path, so I threw my son on my shoulders, buried my increasingly certain trespassing guilt deep, and walked into the enclosure to the sound of screaming peacocks.
My sonâs happy babbling and frantic waving at the llamas rapidly dispelled any concerns. This is what I had dreamed of, a moment of pure joy radiating from his childlike heart as his fatherâhis dadâbrought him the closest heâll ever get to seeing a unicorn.
First Contact
As we walked into the field, the llamas turned to face us. To my extreme pleasure, the black and white llama I had spotted earlier started walking towards us. Not only did he get to see the llamas, but heâd likely have the opportunity to pet one as well! I pulled out my phone to document the wonder of the moment so my wife would know what an amazing a husband and father she had found, which is why I now have photographic evidence of my sonâs joy turning to terror in mere seconds.
In the first of three pictures, the llama is ten feet away and my son is leaning towards it, entranced. In the second, the llama is five feet away and my son has visibly leaned back towards me. In the third, the llama is a foot away and my son is attempting to crawl over my shoulder like a shipwreck victim who canât swim clawing his way to air over the bodies of his shipmates.
At this moment, I admit, I still thought I could salvage the situation. A few deep breaths, a demonstration of petting the llama, and weâd be back on track. Then I saw the second llama approaching. The third. All hunting for food we didnât have. When I noticed the rest of the herd approaching, I knew the battle was lost.
This wasnât the bonding moment Iâd envisioned. No gentle petting, no core memory of delight, no photographic proof of my sonâs face lighting up at his literary heroes comes to life. Just terror, retreat, and the distinct possibility to explaining to my wife how Iâd traumatized our child with the very animals meant to enchant him.
Unsatisfied with its victory, the black and white llamaâthe Sentry, Iâd come to call himâchose to hound my steps the entire way out of the pasture. It paced behind me, its teeth inches away from my now exposed neck. I knew that science says llamas are herbivores, but can we really know what they do in the high mountain valleys of the Andes? The thoughts of triumphantly returning to my wife fell apart, replaced with a new vision of her confused expression as two somber police officers tried explaining that her husband was the first documented victim of a fatal llama attack in the state of Utah. Yet through her confused expression I saw a glimmer of acceptance, as though she thought, âOf course it would be him.â
More pressing than death: the image of returning to my wife a failure, her unsurprised expression when our son inevitably chose her for the next adventure. Thankfully, we made it back through the switchback entrance without incident. The Sentry paced along the fence line, stymied but not yet defeated.
No Prob-llama
Distracted by the relief of avoiding certain death, it took me a moment to realize that where fate had snatched away one victory, she had offered another. Behind the gate, past some large bushes, sat a small playground complete with salvation in two forms: a swing set and a slide.
This was itâmy pivot. Iâd survived llamageddon, now came redemption. A playground with a llama view? Thatâs the kind of creative problem-solving that wins favorite parent campaigns. I hadnât lost yet.
My son pulled another one-eighty, going from terror back to joy when I asked if he wanted to slide. I convinced myself I had pulled victory from the jaws of defeat. There are few feelings as pure as catching your smiling child at the bottom of a slide, and when they run up to do it again and again, you touch a dash of the joy you felt at that age through their smile.
This was what heâd tell his mom about. Not the terrifying llamas, but the slide. The playground dad found. The laughs we shared. For five glorious minutes, I felt the crown settling onto my head. Iâd done it.
Then, as I stood at the bottom of the slide waiting to catch my son again, I happened to glance over my shoulder. The Sentry had decided it wasnât done with me. Weaving through the switchback gate like a shaggy snake, it stood on the human side of the fence and stared at me. Like high noon in a John Wayne movie, the two of us locked eyes. I wasnât sure how effective my decade-old boxing skills would be on a llama, but I was prepared to find out.
Before I could start any llama drama, however, the Sentry turned its nose up and ambled towards the temple, dismissing me entirely. Beneath consideration. I was already beaten.
Fate, having given me enough of her charity, chose at that moment to withdraw her favor. A peacock hiding in the bushes a few feet away let loose the most tremendous screech we had heard up to that point. My sonâs eyes went huge and he sprinted into my arms. I gathered him up and comforted him as best I could, but the damage was done.
âI wanna go home,â he said.
And just like that, my salvage operation collapsed. The llamas had broken him first, and now the peacocks finished the job. Iâd brought my son to a Buddhist temple to be terrorized by livestock. Father of the year, indeed.
What was I to do? Bowing my head in defeat, I hugged my son tight and carried him back towards our car.
As I carried him to the parking lot, I spotted the Sentry once again. It stood casually chewing on a tree outside the temple entrance, exactly where any visitor would walk through. No longer pursuing, no longer threatening. JustâŚoccupying the space. Claiming it. The creature had won its war and driven us from the field. Now it stood sentry over territory I was actively fleeing.
In the distance, another peacock shrieked. I picked up the pace.
From the Ashes, Victory
As we drove away from the temple, I glanced in the rearview mirror to check on my son. I saw the Sentry still standing guard, surveying its domain. I fought the llama, and the llama won.
Then my sonâs voice cut through my defeat. âDaddy, horse!â he pointed excitedly at a field we passed. Then another. âMore horsies! Two horsies! Daddy, do you see it?â
I smiled and caught his eye in the rearview mirror. âI see it, little hawk.â
âAnd we went on the slide!â he continued, his enthusiasm building. âThe big slide! And the peacocks were SO LOUD!â He made an exaggerated screech that bore zero resemblance to an actual peacock but conveyed the essence of it perfectly. Then he laughed.
I watched him in that mirror, this tiny person who had moved from terror to joy to terror to joy again in the span of an hour, and was now excitedly cataloging every momentâexcept the llamas.
We made it back to my in-lawâs house, and my wife asked us how it went. Before I could get a word in, my son launched into a detailed account of how much fun he had on the slide, interspersed with dramatic recounting of how loud the peacocks were. When she asked if he saw the llamas, he briefly acknowledged their existence before jumping right back to the slide and peacocks.
I smiled as I watched him, realizing the black and white llama might have won its war, but Iâd somehow won mine. Not through a meticulously planned llama encounter, but through catching him at the bottom of a slide. Through spotting horses with him on the drive home. Through being there when peacocks terrified him and slides delighted him in equal measure.
My wife looked at me, reading something in my expression. âSounds like an adventure,â she said.
âIt was,â I replied. And meant it.
Turns out favorite parent isnât a crown you win. Itâs being there when peacocks shriek, when slides save you, when terror turns to laughter in the space of a breath. You canât manufacture the perfect moment. You can only be present for the real one.
So even though I know it will sting tomorrow when he makes his preference for his mom blatantly clear, Iâll know that he and I still have our momentsâthose in the past, and those still to come.
But Iâm absolutely not mentioning my recurring llama-themed nightmares. Some defeats are better left unshared.
Updated on September 12, 2025
Introducing “Interim Management”
Hello! I’m back from an extended hiatus with something new–the first chapter to my current work-in-progress. This is a draft chapter from my novel Interim Management, a mash-up of Weekend at Bernie’s, Office Space, and good old fashioned dark lord fantasy. I’ll periodically post bits of this as I go, so let me know what you think. Without further ado, please enjoy this snippet from Interim Management!
Chapter 1
Meridian Ledgerborn hurried back into his office, arms full of scrolls. He stumbled at the last stretch and the scrolls flew everywhere as the sharp edge of his desk caught him in the stomach. The ochre elf curled over himself, trying to catch his breath.
âHe expected you five minutes ago,â a voice hissed from the upper corner of the room.
Meridian scowled up at the speaker. âI am well aware, Cordelia,â he huffed. âPerhaps you could make yourself useful as my assistant and assist in picking up these scrolls?â
Cordelia shrugged and lowered her hulking form down from the ceiling with six of her eight legs. Her talons clicked in a discomforting way as they found small crevices to latch onto, and the host of eyes on her massive head spasmed in every direction at once, save for the largest in the middle that fixed on Meridian even as the arachnoidâs body rotated completely around.
Most sentient races ran in terror when an arachnoid approached, but Meridian had more experience with them than most. Plus, good work was hard to come by in the Midnight Tower, and Cordeliaâs filing skills would impress even a High Elf magistrate.
âCareful with that!â he said, jerking a scroll away from a trail of amber liquid dripping from one of the arachnoidâs fangs. He knocked over a plate of scones as he didâBertram must have dropped by earlier.
âMy apologies,â Cordelia said in the hissing tone of her people. She dropped her crochet supplies into a tray tied to her thorax and used her forelegs to adjust the acid cups hanging under her fangs.
âThe last thing I need right now is a massive hole in the middle of my presentation,â Meridian said. âGrab that one over there, next to the goblin work order bin.â
One of Cordeliaâs legs hooked out and snagged the scroll, bringing it over to the growing pile on Meridianâs desk. âYou do know that bad news rarely improves with time,â she said.
âThere is no such thing as bad news,â Meridian said, putting the scrolls back in proper order. âJust poorly explained opportunities.â
âYour previous four predecessors died thinking similar things,â Cordelia noted. She cracked open a scroll and scanned it with a jittering eye. âWell, three of them. The other tried to flee rather than deliver bad news. I donât think he thought much of anything after what the Dark Lord did to him.â
Meridianâs hands started to shake, jostling the precarious scroll pile. He glared at the arachnoid. âUnlike those charlatans, I am a trained elven administrator with the finest certifications offered by the Conclave of Oversight. There is no bureaucratic impediment I cannot overcome.â
Several of Cordeliaâs eyes rotated to stare at Meridian. âI donât think heâll use bureaucracy to kill you.â
Meridian let out an exasperated sigh. âFine, what would you recommend then?â
âBribery.â Cordelia gestured to a box to the side of Meridianâs desk overflowing with gold, weapons, and enchanted trinkets. âTake something from the tribute pile and hope it distracts him enough from what you have to tell him that you make it out in one piece.â
Meridian scoffed. âAs if I need tricks like that. You have so little faith in me.â
âI have plenty of faith in you,â she said. âI just have more in the Dark Lordâs aim.â
Meridian made shooing motions with his hands. âYour input is noted. Go work on the latest requisition forms from Warchief Deathmaul for her battle preparations. Iâll want to verify them after Iâve met with the Dark Lord.â
Cordeliaâs sighed, a sound most found similar to that of a soul getting ripped from a body by a feral banshee. âAs you wish,â she said, her tone making it clear she had no expectation of any verification from Meridian.
The elf closed his eyes, assumed a power stance, and recited his mantra to himself. I am prepared, he thought. I am precise. I know the protocols. He opened his eyes and gathered his scrolls, then paused. He glanced over at the tribute pile, then down at the pile of scrolls in his arms.
âVoided contract,â he swore under his breath, dropping the scrolls. Meridian walked over to the pile of treasure and rummaged through the bin. His eyes caught on an iridescent amulet, and he tossed it into a robe pocket not filled with spare quill tips.
Meridian collected his scrolls, arched back his shoulders, and took a deep breath. Then he walked past the braziers of demonsoul fire into the Dark Lordâs throne room.
The Dark Lord Maleficus, Dreadlord of the Wastes, Slayer of Hope, and Shepherd of the End Times slouched in his throne at the far end of the massive room. Trophies from his conquest littered the space around him, and a haphazard pile of skulls still sat off to one side where an orc work party had left them after the Dark Lord had killed them for a lack of progress on their sculptures.
The elf cleared his throat and announced himself. âGreat One, may I approach?â
The man had on his draconic armor without the helmet, letting his burning eyes bore into Meridian. Clawed gauntlets gauged grooves in the onyx throne, the sound making the elf fight not to wince.
âCome,â the Dark Lord said after an interminable wait.
Meridian tried to maintain a stately pace, but he quickened his step after the first twenty strides. Silence poured in from every direction, and shadows crawled from around pillars to reach for him. He had to swat one away that got too close with a scroll, nearly upsetting the entire pile again.
Meridian came to a halt at the customary distance from the throne after the long walk, heart pounding. Up close, the Dark Lord radiated menace. This man had ruled a moderate sized corner of Valdris up until a few years prior when he launched the Consolidation Wars, a ruthless struggle to bring any race and power not aligned to the Light under his rule. He forged the orcs, goblins, humans, and ochre elves under him into a sword, one aimed squarely at the Lightâs High Council in Auralisâjust as the Sundering Prophecy foretold.
âGreat One,â Merdian started, but his voice broke on the second word. He coughed again to try and clear his throat, but his dry mouth fought against him. He hadnât been this nervous since his disastrous presentation to the Conclave of Oversight. âI come with news and an opportunity.â
The Dark Lord stared at Meridian as he continued to gauge a series of lines in his throneâs armrest, a flare of crimson in his eyes the only indication he had heard.
Meridian plunged forward. âWeâve had a report from the treasury. It appears that our previous estimates of liquid funds erred on the higher side.â With a practiced flick of his wrist, Meridian opened a scroll with a series of lines on it labeled in his neat script. âWhile at first glance current projections paint a somewhat dim picture, I am confident that my rectification plan will set things aright with minimal loss of productivity.â
The Dark Lordâs fingers went still. Meri fought not to choke on his own saliva as it suddenly poured into his dry mouth.
âWhere,â the Dark Lord said, his voice like steel drawn from a sheath, âis my gold?â
Meridian let the first scroll drop and unrolled a second one. âThe more important question is how much more gold will you have after we implement some of my recommended changes. I think youâll be quite pleased with the answer.â
A crack echoed through the throne room as the Dark Lordâs gauntlet crushed the onyx arm rest into powdered gravel. âWhere,â he repeated, âis my gold?â
âAh,â Meridian said, rifling through his scrolls to find one he had hoped not to use. âAre you familiar with the term âembezzlement,â Great One?â
The Dark Lord shot to his feet, his hulking form pushing the solid stone throne off its dais to crash against the floor behind. âSomeone dares steal from me?â he roared, magic giving his voice a painful resonance. Flames arched from his eyes and the shadows along the edge of the throne room whipped into a frenzy.
Meridian took a step backward, eyes wide as he scrambled to find a scroll to fix the situation. He mentally shot through his list of options he had made prior to entering the throne room, only to realize he hadnât considered vengeful demigod as one of the potential outcomes.
âI will flay their skin from their bones!â the Dark Lord screamed. His body levitated from the ground, a maelstrom of darkness swirling around his armor. âI will rend their flesh! They will know endless agony on my racks of eternal torment!â
Meridian had dropped his scrolls and frantically searched through them on the ground as the smell of sulfur assaulted his nostrils. With a gasp of relief, he picked up the one he knew would get his presentation back on track. âGreat One,â he said, coming to his feet and proudly displaying the chart he had painstakingly drawn over four hours the previous night. âHave you heard of the magic of compound interest?â
The Dark Lord let out a wordless shout of rage, and darkness exploded from him in a shrieking wave. The force of it blew Meridian off his feet, but tendrils of shadows caught him and jerked him back toward the Dark Lord before he hit the ground. They slithered around his body, whispering madness in his ears as he floated closer to his now incandescent boss.
âYour head will be the first to adorn my walls on my pursuit of vengeance,â the Dark Lord intoned, pointing a clawed finger at Meridian. Sickly green energy glowed around the gauntlet, dark magical essence dripping from the draconic steel.
Execution method 3C, Meridian couldnât help but think as he saw it. Bone magic, poisoning. He could at least be grateful it wasnât a Category 4 spell.
âDie!â the Dark Lord howled, and a lance of dark magic shot toward Meridian.
A moment before it struck, Meridian felt a burning warmth from one of his pockets. Rippling light sprung forth around him, coalescing in front of Meridianâs chest. The dark magic hit the radiant light, then rebounded right back at the Dark Lord.
Meridian had an excellent view of the surprise on the Dark Lordâs face as his own spell hit the man between his eyebrows, launching him backwards off his throne pedestal. The shadows holding Meridian dissipated, dumping him on his back and knocking the wind out of him. He curled up into a ball and fought to breathe, waiting for the final blow to strike. Certainly category 4 this time, he thought between gasps.
After ten seconds of cowering, Meridian felt a growing terror. The delay could only mean the Dark Lord had something truly horrific in mind that needed time to cast. After a minute, he let out a quiet sob. Even his predecessor who tried to run only got fifty seconds of silent dread before the Dark Lord started siphoning off his soul.
Five minutes later, Meridian found himself growing indignant. There were fear tactics, then there was being rude. Time was not so much a luxury to be squandered in such a way. Meridian was prepared to die, but wasting his time? That was offensive.
He risked a quick look around, and his indignation shifted to confusion. It took him a moment to understand whyâthe shadows had vanished.
Meridian lifted his head higher and scanned the throne room. No flicker of motion caught his eye, no cursed whispering drifted into his ear. The throne room seemed to be just a room.
âGreat One?â he said. Only silence came back in return.
His dread at the earlier silence felt like nothing compared to what he felt now. He could only think of one reason why the Dark Lord had yet to kill him, and it was unthinkable.
Meridian got to his feet and crouched low, not wanting to see what laid behind the throne dais but knowing he had to anyways. He inched forward and arched his neck, peeking over the edge.
Two armored legs hung over the toppled throne. Meridian noted how incredibly still the Dark Lord managed to hold them, not a twitch or any swaying whatsoever.
âSire,â Meridian tried again. The legs remained quite immobile.
Meridianâs lips pressed into a thin line, and he moved to the side so the throne wouldnât block his view. The rest of the Dark Lordâs armored form laid sprawled out across the onyx throne, his head tilted away.
Hesitant like a mouse nosing toward a suspiciously convenient piece of cheese, Meridian approached the Dark Lord. He found himself standing next to the armor with no clear idea of what to do next. Shouting seemed both ineffective and inappropriate given the distance, but touching the Dark Lord?
Meridian took a series of breaths and closed his eyes, then darted a hand forward to nudge one of the gauntlets. He braced himself for the inevitable rage, then cracked an eye open when it failed to materialize. The Dark Lord remained distressingly stationary.
Seeing no other options, Meridian shuffled his feet and worked around the Dark Lord to look at his face. There, between two eyes still open with shock, he saw a neat hole burned through the forehead with a trail of gray fluid oozing toward the floor. As he watched, a glob of it broke free and fell to the floor with a gentle plopping noise.
The Dark Lord Maleficus, Dreadlord of the Wastes, Slayer of Hope, and Shepherd of the End Times was dead.
Meridian Ledgerborn, administrative aide to the Dark Lord and semi-banished ochre elf of no renown, had accidentally killed him.
Posted on July 22, 2025
Seven Layers Deep: Understanding Your Life Through Bean Dip
Youâre trapped at a mind-numbing party, and itâs as exciting as listening to your spouse retell the same story for the 389th time. The guests bore you more than reading your friendâs fanfic, the 2010s-era playlist grates like zesting a lemon onto an open wound, and there are odd noises coming from behind the bathroom door thatâs been locked since you arrived.
Then, you see it. Across the room, next to a strategically placed bag of chips, salvation. Seven. Layer. Bean. Dip. Hope is kindled.
You make your way over, ready to immerse yourself in its depths of flavor and mouth feel. But then you notice something. Why are there scrapings off the top? Itâs as though someone took a chip and only got onions on it, maybe a drop of salsa juice.
You watch in horror as one of the stock fish posing as guests does just that. A chip dabs at the surface of the dip like an astronaut bouncing off the atmosphere on reentry. The offender walks away, ignorant of the missed flavors waiting just below the surface.
That flavorless philistine is you, dear reader, and the party is your life. You have been scraping the surface of true depth, but I am here to show you the way. To truly live, you must plunge deep into the layers of lifeâs bean dip, coming out the other side a more complete person.
What separates a tasteless life from one swimming in flavor is the dip of the mindâthinking. Far too often, we splash in the shallow puddles of instinctâthe chopped onions and sliced olives, as it were. We leave behind the meat and beans only earned through the hard, pure sweat of the mind. Surface scrapers get surface lives.
Going just one or two layers deep with our thoughts is a recipe for disaster. Instead, one should approach important topics just like one would a delicious bean dipâseven layers deep.
I wrote recently on the critical thinking crisis, but this Wandering will goâdare I say itâa little deeper. Up front, this is not therapy or academic naval gazing. This is a simple technique you use to understand your own thoughts, or complete lack thereof. It takes you from a reactive life to an intentional one. A few minutes of thought, some existential angst; now youâre off to the races.
Come, friend. Plunge into the depths with me and taste the flavors of life you have yet to realize youâve missed.
Putting the Critical in Thinking
Thereâs an old joke about how 50% of Americans are dumber than the most average person you know (thatâs right, statistics jokes!). We can leverage that point further. How many deep thinkers do you know? Iâm going to guess not many.
So if we did that same 50% judgement, where do you think the average American lies on the shallow to deep thinker scale? Something tells me itâs not a nice, even bell curve. One step further: if the majority of folks are on the shallow side, statistically, where do you think you are?
This isnât entirely your fault. We live in unprecedented times, where you are expected to always be connected, always be moving, always be hustling. We dance on the strings of algorithms run on supercomputers, and our 1.0 version brains still identify the sugar in Twinkies as a survival boon. Is it any wonder most of us live in a shallowness of thinkers?
That said, we make a lot of decisions that have major impacts. Itâs worth knowing that the information and beliefs feeding those decisions are well-informed and not slopped from some algorithmic feeding trough.
Questions like what career to undertake, qualities that matter in a partner, political beliefs, life goalsâthese deserve your time. But if your response as to why you believe what you do on any weighty topic is âThatâs what Iâve always thought,â then youâre doing yourself a disservice.
Donât just take my word for it. The psychology field is littered with papers talking about how people with deeper self-reflection make better decisions or how shallow thinking leads to superficial life outcomes. Harvard Business Review even wrote a whole piece on how reflection is what separates great professionals from the mediocre masses.
If we donât ask ourselves why we think the things we think, we sacrifice our agency to external forces. Maybe itâs your parents, or your instagram feed, or that one coworker that never shuts up about turmeric. Whatever the source, if itâs not you, that comes at a cost. And my friend, that cost is rarely one we enjoy paying.
The Seven Layer Technique
Hereâs what weâre going to do. I will go spelunking with you through all seven layers of the bean dip. Weâll blow past the surface levels most people pretend to be satisfied with. Then weâll move into the layers where you start uncovering inherited beliefs versus personal convictions. After that, thereâs the zone where you discover uncomfortable truths and core values. And finally, we reach the bottom of the bean dipâyour authentic foundation.
Are you ready? You look ready. Hereâs the technique, in all its complexity and glory:
Ask yourself âwhyâ seven times
Thatâs it. This is dipthinking at its finest. Just like losing weight, thereâs no need for fancy fads or photoshopped Instagram modelsâcalories out must exceed calories in, period dot. As Bruce Lee said, âthe height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.â Youâll walk away from this with a practice tool to use on any important belief or decision, and the confidence that comes with knowing your thoughts are your own.
One warning, before we begin. Just like how a proper bean dip will lay waste to an unprepared digestive system, this process may cause some discomfort. You will likely discover that some beliefs youâve held close you donât actually own, and that can lead to some hard questions. But those are questions worth asking to discover who you are, so lean into the struggle.
Now grab your chips and letâs dig in.
How to Dipthink
As we begin this journey into the dip of lifeâs greatest questions, we must remember to start at the beginning: the question. This is your chip, the conveyance upon which the flavor of the dip is transported to your taste buds.
The most important aspect of your chip is that it has heft. Youâre about to load up seven different layers of meaning on itâthat requires significant tensile strength. A weak chip will snap under the pressure, just like a weak question will fail to pull as much from the process as a strong question would.
Running the question why you wanted a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch is like expecting a translucent potato chip to hold anything beyond a thin layer of oil without snapping like a twig. Asking why you canât stop eating those potato chips even though they go against what you think are your weight loss goals, however⌠now weâve got a solid tortilla chip ready for serious spelunking.
Letâs pick a chip we all might relate to as an example: why do I want this job? Onto the first stop on our journey, the surface scrape.
Layers 1 and 2: The Surface Scrape
As our question chip submersible begins its voyage, we start at the first layer: the onions of instinct. Like when you cut into an onion, this is what slaps you in the face and turns you away. Itâs instinctive, with little thought behind it if thereâs any at all.
In our example, letâs say the instinctive answer as to why you want this job is because it pays well. Simple, clean, and shallow. It fakes doing the job of real thought well enough that many people would stop there. Woe unto such misled souls. Deeper we go.
We pass the onions and find ourselves in the olives of false security. For most, this second layer is what passes for deep thinking. They have taken things one step farther, and thinking they now have the giant shoulders others might stand on, pat themselves on the back and call it good. Again, woe.
Continuing our example, this second layer of why might return the answer âbecause I need financial security.â Answers like this give false security by appearing deep without having any actual depth. Yes, financial security is important, but literally everyone needs that. Itâs why we need that individually where things get interesting.
These first two layers consist of the shallowest thinking. Theyâre hard to dig through because a) thinking is hard, and b) shallow thinking reinforces itself in the mind (if you have an hour, this video does a great job explaining it). It costs less energy for us to react instinctively, so the brain prefers to save those calories for running from lions and avoiding awkward social encounters.
But you are ready to feel the burn. Buckle up as we dive deeper into our dip, to the layers of inheritance.
Layers 3 and 4: The Inherited Zone
The third layer is the first with some heft to it: the cheese of inheritance. Much like how certain dairy products can produce blockages, this layer can be hard to push through. Itâs the first indication that your thoughts arenât yours as much as you once thought.
As you question your own desire for financial security, âI need financial securityâ morphs into âBecause I feel like I need a certain level of wealth to be happy.â Suddenly, weâre in territory that challenges you.
But enlightenment waits for no one, so deeper we go. We pass the cheese and move into the salsa of recognition. Like cartographers scrawled on the corners of maps when they got poetic, here be monsters. This layer often opens us up to reflections like a fun house mirror, only when we do a double take, we realize we actually look like that.
Your fourth iteration of asking why on a potential career choice now takes a turn. Suddenly, you realize that your linkage of happiness to a certain level of wealth stems from how much your parents stressed about finances in your childhood and your desire to avoid that. This could spur a whole separate string of questions, but weâll leave that aside for now.
The inherited zone questions help us reach the first real drivers in our lives. We dove under the surface and started identifying root causesâin this case, a desire to not end up like our parents financially. This is akin to Toyotaâs lesser Five Whyâs technique, one designed to help identify root causes in corporate processes.
But we arenât building cars here, weâre building lives. Why stop now when the juiciest layers still lie before us? If you thought the inherited zone was uncomfortable, just wait for this one. Onward, intrepid explorer of the internal psyche!
Layers 5 and 6: The Discomfort Zone
Ahh, layer five: the sour cream of conflicting values. That slightly acidic taste that somehow compliments all the others. This layer takes the revelations of the external forces from the last two and plunges into our internal values.
Now you realize that itâs not a simple âwealth equals happinessâ equation. No, the understanding about your parents twists that previous answer on itself. Itâs not happiness, itâs self-worthâsomething deeper. You now recognize that you have tied the number in your bank account to your worth as a human being. Ouch.
Sometimes the only way out is through. As the sour cream fades behind us, we cross the border into the meat layer. Packed with protein, suffused with grease, this layer has real flavor for those brave enough to probe its depths.
For you see, asking why a sixth time in our example makes you realize something. You donât want to be that person that layer five showed you. It conflicts with who you think you are as a person, or at least who youâd like to be. Youâre on the cusp of internal revelation that might lead to external revolution.
The research on this is clear: deep reflection leads to more conscious decisions and authentic living. Self-worth and satisfaction come from aligning our actions to our values, which is a hard thing to do if you donât understand what those values are. The discomfort zone shows us those, for good and for ill.
There is but one layer ahead of us now. The penultimate layer, the bottom of this undredged lake just waiting to be explored. Cry havoc and let slip the refried beans of enlightenment!
Layer Seven: The Foundation
One cannot have seven-layer bean dip without beans. They are its cornerstone, the pillar upon which the dipâs entire flavor palace rests. It is the congealed, gummy glue that brings the whole package together, and you have reached it. Bravo.
You reconsider the job offer. A seventh why interrogates the thought of why this job goes against your values. And thenâenlightenment. You recognize that while it may give you wealth and security, it fails to accomplish something more important to you, helping others. You thank the job offerors for their time, politely decline, and resume the search with a clear North Star to follow.
Putting the Layers Together
Hopefully this example shows the power of the technique. Like water pressure, it gains strength the deeper you go. Also like water pressure, if youâre not adequately prepared before plunging into the abyss, youâll get crushed. Thatâs why you need both a proper question and the right mindset.
There are a host of questions useful for this process, far more than I could ever list. The career example we went through is likely one of the more common ones, but there are plenty of others.
You could assess what you want out of a romantic relationship, moving from âtheyâre hotâ to âwe share core values.â Alternatively, platonic relationships work as wellâless âtheyâre hotâ and more âtheyâre amusingâ on that one. Of course, thereâs always politics, moving from âmy family votes this wayâ to âwait, that politician voted for what?â Your mileage may vary with that one.
Point is, this technique benefits from having legitimate questions as its target. But hey, if you want to run your latest fan theory about bad television through it, you do you.
As for mindset, you need to go into this beanstorming process with one word at the forefront: humility. Any layer below one or two requires you to recognize that you have something to learn, which is hard to do if you come into it thinking you know all the answers.
You also need humility to recognize that itâs ok to change your mind about things. Despite what every teenager feels, you never truly have all the answers in life. Itâs a constant game of back and forth, and if you arenât light on your feet, youâre liable to get crushed under the steamroller of reality.
Side Effects May Include Indigestion
Now, I know what youâre thinking. âSeven layers? Isnât that overdoing it a touch?â That depends entirely on whatâs more important to youâfast decisions, or better decisions.
Toyota is one of the worldâs largest car companies with whatâs probably the best reputation for dependability. If you donât believe me, look at what brand is slapped on the side of trucks insurgents used to drive around Afghanistan. Hereâs a hintâit wasnât a Ford or Chevy.
Do you think Toyota uses their Five Whyâs process for kicks and giggles? No, my friend. They use it because some steely eyed Japanese businessman with the iron will of a 17th century Shogun has determined it is the most efficient way to ensure their products reach the market in the best possible condition. To do otherwise would bring dishonor on the dojo, and the same holds true for your life.
âThatâs all well and good,â you counter, âbut I trust my gut.â Friend, I havenât trusted my gut since the first time I got food poisoning, and neither should you. Research consistently shows that going with your gut tends to result in confirmation bias, unconsciously going with the status quo, a lack of critical thinking, and overconfidence.
Intuition has its place, but itâs generally with snap decisions. Anything that isnât along the lines of âhow best to run from this tiger presently chasing meâ would benefit from additional thought.
âYeah, sure,â you say, growing increasingly irate. âBut what if I find out everything I thought I believed arenât really my thoughts?â That is exactly the point. If you havenât put in the effort, youâll never know. Can you live like that? Sure, most people do. But is that the best way to live? I donât think so.
This also isnât me saying everything you believe right now is wrong. You can absolutely go through this process, realize you have multiple inherited beliefs, and decide you still believe in them. We can inherit good things, too! The idea is to make sure your beliefsâwhatever their sourceâultimately come from your decision to believe in them. That leads to authenticity, and authenticity leads to a better life.
Dipthinking to a More Flavorful Life
Return once more to our imaginary party. You watch as person after person approaches the seven-layer bean dip, grab a chip, and scrape along the top without a care. You, however, know that flavor town lies beneath the surface. These others⌠they donât know what theyâre missing.
Every decision you make in life is a step on a path. Major decisions serve as forks on that path. If you donât analyze why you think the way you do, youâre letting external forces choose your path for you. You have one life to liveâshouldnât you make sure itâs yours?
This isnât about perfectionâitâs about intention. You can choose right now to live a more authentic life. Pick a question today you care deeply about and set aside a few minutes to dive into it. I promise youâll find it easier than you think, and more impactful than youâd imagine. The deeper you dig, the higher you rise.
Donât settle for a surface life as a surface scraper. Thereâs a world of flavor just under the surface of your mind, and all it takes is having an appetite for it. After all, the authentic life is only seven questions away.
Posted on June 25, 2025
Turf War: Defeat and Resurrection in Suburban Lawn Combat
Itâs late winter. I stare out my glass door to the backyard, looking at the grass as it starts to stir from its winter hibernation. Signs of life pop everywhere. Everywhere save one spotâthe Patch. My nemesis, my personal Vietnam, the Patch is a quagmire of suburban defeat that grew into an obsession threatening to destroy me from within.
I stare at the Patch, sipping water like a commander surveying enemy territory. Last yearâs campaign yielded only sadness, rage, and a burning desire for revenge. It wasnât just dead grass, it was dead dreams with a mortgage.
Lawn care is not my forteâI am a suburbanite out of necessity, not choice. My dream yard maintains itself, yet here am I with a gauntlet thrown.
The stakes? My right to be an American man. This country was founded on the principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of low-key flexing on your neighbors by having the better lawn. The Geneva Convention does not apply to lawn care. This would be total war.
I swore on my fatherâs Craftsman tools that I would fix this Patch or die trying, and if I died, my final wish would be that they use my corpse to fertilize that patch of dirt so that even in death, I might emerge triumphant.
The Enemy Revealed
Now it is spring, a time of new growth in foliage and war. I knew this moment was coming since turning off the sprinklers in October and watching the grass fade to brown.
We inherited an âA for Effortâ sprinkler system that I blame for the Patchâs emergence. Since I know even less about irrigation systems than I do about lawns, I bit the bullet and put money down on having the system upgraded from âMaginot Lineâ to âactually functional.â This was the point of no returnâif I didnât fix the Patch, Iâd have been better served shredding up the cash using it as turf instead.
I surveyed the frozen battlefield like Washington at Valley Forge, but with worse results. I noted enemy positions: the weeds had established forward operating bases, dandelions ran special ops along the fence line. But these were merely proxy forces, easily handledâthe Patch remained the enemyâs center of gravity.
Even the noncombatants recognized the threat. My wife briefly commented on the Patch, demonstrating her awareness of my failure as a suburban male. More worryingly, my son was thrilled to have his very own dirt patch to play in. I had not known the Patch dabbled in information operations, but it had already subverted one family member to its cause.
Much like the abyss, the Patch stared back into me as I stared into it. I would restore it to life, and by doing so restore my honor as an American suburban male. It was time to let slip the sod of war.
Operation Green Thunder
Operation Green Thunder commenced with a three-pronged assault consisting of air strikes, chemical warfare, and boots on the ground. For those not up to date on lawn care terminology, I poked holes in the dirt to aerate it, fed the lawn some fertilizer, and spread out new grass seed like cluster munitions. I looked about, saw that it was good, and rested from my labors to await the Eden soon to come.
Alas, it was not to be. I checked the patch dozens of times daily, like a POW counting days on his cell wall. While the rest of my lawn sprung into glorious green life, the Patch remained as barren as my knowledge of horticulture. It mocked my efforts, grassassinating my hapless seedlings. Iâd sown hope and reaped humiliation.
This is when I realized something important. The Patch was not as dead as I once imagined. Not that any grass had taken root, of course. It had a malignant will of its own, one it set against me with malicious glee. It had not hesitated to embrace scorched earth tactics, and it had its eyes set on green pastures. For the first time in this war, I felt fear.
Day by day, I watched the Patch fester while the rest of my lawn grew around it. I couldnât even pretend I made progress because the Patch was the closest section of lawn to the back door. It sat there like Luciferâs doormat, taunting me. An old song echoed in my head with a twist: I fought the lawn, and the lawn won.
Things came to a head when I couldnât put off mowing any longer. The Patch sat in smug defiance as my mower blades passed harmlessly over it, mower blades in fruitless search for blades of grass. The line between the Patch and grass was as clear as a DMZ, and contained just as much latent hostility.
I knew I needed a change. Something to shake things up, my own personal Operation Overlord or Inchon landing.
I needed a reinforcements. I needed tactical support. I needed someone who had fought this war before, a veteran, a survivor of the Great Dead Patch Campaign of 2007.
I needed my dad.
Calling in the Calvary
When calling for aid, itâs important that the calvary has the Right Stuff. My dad is a true suburban warrior. By virtue of growing up in the middle of nowhere and working with a constellation of family members involved in general contracting, heâs picked up a wide array of useful skills.
Unfortunately, most of these skills missed the generational hop to me. In his defense, he did try to teach me, but I was more interested in memorizing Lord of the Rings quotes or giving myself concussions in multiple contact sports.
Regardless, when I have a home maintenance problem the internet fails to resolve, heâs my guru. In this particular instance, however, it went beyond the normal interaction. Thatâs due to my dadâs own version of Stalingrad at our house in California.
Just as I had a Patch in my backyard, he had one in the front. I recall months of trial and error on his part trying to fix it, which I observed with casual indifference, unaware of the poetic symmetry life would inflict on me 20 years later.
Truly, I have never felt closer to my dad than the moment I called him to ask for his help with my lawn. In that moment, the Patch became our family crestâtwo generations united by horticultural failure. It was beautiful.
Once I had him on the line and explained my situation, our discussion went something like this:
Him: âHave you tried laying down sod?â
Me: âYou can just do that? On your own, with no landscaper orâŚtractors, or whatever?â
Him (internally): Maybe all those contact sports werenât the best idea.
Him (externally): âYes, they sell it at Home Depot.â
This was it, the intelligence I needed to turn this war around. Operation Sod Drop was a go, my invasion plan set. I would get the sod and carpet bomb the Patch into submission. There would be no survivors. Except, you know, the grass.
The Final Battle
After wandering around Home Depot far too long, I found the sod and returned home to deliver my coup de grace. I plopped the sod down, unrolled it like a magician for his final reveal, and squinted in consternation at what I saw.
If life moments had a soundtrack, this would have been a âwhomp whompâ played on a dented tuba. Instead of lush, green grass lovingly cared for by turf professionals, my sod consisted of a scraggly brown mess more appropriate for a witchâs receding hairline. My carpet bombing campaign now looked like the charge of the light brigade.
I debated going back to get a different patch of sod, but time was not on my side. We had a road trip planned (a multi-day trip with a toddler and an infant; do not recommend, 0/5 stars), and my wife conveyed her slight displeasure with my unpacked luggage via subtleâthen not subtleâthreats.
So, we loaded up the car, pulled out of the driveway, and left the lawn to its own defenses. As I looked into the rear-view mirror, I heard the Patch cackling. But what could I do? A general goes to war with the army he has, and sometimes you have to roll for the hard six.
What followed was two weeks of trial and tribulation. Not due to the screaming children in the backseat. Not due to the inherent madness that comes with visiting family. Not even due to having to skip our go-to ice cream spot because the line was too long.
No, my trial came from not knowing how my sod warrior fared against my nemesis. Every lawn we drove past reminded me of the battle happening on a distant front. Like a general before radio communication, I could only wait for dispatches from the front. Had my green troops held the line? Had the enemy counterattacked?
The nights grew long. My confidence faded, and only the guttering flicker of faith kept me going.
Triumph Through Tribulation
Then, at long last, my time came. Two days and an unfathomable amount of driving hours later, we made it home. Like McArthur splashing back onto the shores of the Philippines, I strode through the house to the backyard and said, âI have returned.â
At first, I couldnât believe my eyes. The grass had grown to knee-height in our absence. I half expected to see one of those Japanese soldiers who refused to surrender decades after World War Two ended come tearing out of the foliage in a one-man bonsai charge.
Given the height of the lawn overall, the shortness of the sod made me think all my worst fears had come true. The power of the Patch could not be denied, and I would forever bear the stain on my honor as a suburban male.
But then I looked closer, surveying the battlefield with a commanderâs eye. Where brown desolation once ruled, green battalions now held every inch of contested ground. The Patchâs regime of terror had fallen. Victory was total, my revenge complete.
I turned to find my wife standing behind me, hair frazzled and nursing a thousand-yard stare. She had the look of a soldier who had fought through the enemyâs line, only to be told to do it again. I took her in my arms and swept a hand out towards the yard, wordlessly allowing her to share in my triumph.
She looked at me with eyes that had seen too much, and said, âGo unload the car before I stab you.â
Reflections on the Turf War
There are times when a plan requires constant adaptation. When a tactical genius proves their merit by snatching a smoldering ember of victory from the ashes of defeat. These are great stories, made all the better for their rarity.
Less potent yet just as satisfying is the feeling of when a plan comes together. I felt this as I looked at the Patch (after unloading the car). Iâve always appreciated the phrase vini vidi vici, but this moment brought home its true meaning to me.
As I look at the Patch today, sometimes I recall what Iâve read in books or heard from stories. How one might have a bittersweet respect for a worth adversary, a nostalgia for the fight.
I have none of that. What I do have is a feeling of righteous judgment as I laugh over the ruins of the Patchâs ambitions. I have fought the battle of the lawn warrior and emerged triumphant, and my verdant grass will see me to the Valhalla of Suburban American Men.
Some men are defined by their lawns; I was refined by mine. I am become Lawn, bringer of life.
