For The Broken Hearted: A Post-Holiday Advisory
A significant chunk of my emotional power, my passionate heart had been all tied up with these feelings for this woman for close to a decade. Finding some sort of closure helped me to finally release her. This opened a tremendous amount of room in my heart for new love to be born.
Life After Hate
It starts as acceptance for someone who has felt alone and has never felt part of something greater than themselves. Someone who’s never felt a part of their family, their school community, society at large, well this is a person at their most vulnerable. And there are a great many individuals out there that feel this way right now as you are reading this. Acceptance into a group, no matter how hateful or backwards their ideologies may seem, is still being accepted. And if it’s for the first time, the euphoria is as powerful as any drug and ten times more addictive.
Don't Be A Biff
Regardless of what the actual reality is, all generations need to see the error in thinking this way and speak up to people that express sentiments such as these. Break the mold. Change the future. Create examples of compassion and kindness for younger generations, who may then escape unmarred by such outdated thinking.
He Was Born Of A Non-Virgin Non-Mary
He was born of a non-virgin non-Mary.
He was born a month prematurely, disrupting his mother’s plans for a large feast of Italian beef sandwiches, dipped, with all the fixings.
One Man’s Trash Is Another Man’s Treasure
Do you know the history of the White Elephant?
Oh, the storied tales of White Elephant Christmases gone by! The triumph and defeat! The never-ending variations on the tradition from family to family, office to office! I am giddy just thinking about it. But first, let me back up for those who know not of the White Elephant.
Punishment vs. Rehabilitation: Reprogramming Our Functions
I think most people agree that there is good in this world. But not all.
However, I am certain that we all can agree that bad shit exists in this world. And furthermore, I think that we all can agree, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that bad shit also happens to exist in our worlds.
Let's Talk About Teacher Burnout: It's Not the Kids
For the entire time I was a teacher in CPS I would ask why. I'd watch wonderful, inspiring people get beaten down by these frustrating hows and whys and the answers that eluded us. How can we prevent public education in Chicago from degrading any further? Why can we spend money on a new ferris wheel while school budgets get slashed?
American Online and the Dial-Up Generation
I know social media is here to stay and that people will continue to quite literally live their lives inside these forums, but let's all agree, if we're going to continue to make this virtual world the main place where most modern socialization takes place, let's do it with some manners and some grace.
Kaepernick Has Nothing To Complain About
I've heard people I love and respect say things like, "Colin Kaepernick has nothing to complain about. He's a freakin' millionaire!" at which point I'm thinking, "Wait a minute, he's not protesting for himself. It's for racial injustice. What you're saying makes you sound racist. I don't want to think of you as a racist. I don't want to think of you like I think of our president and vice president."
Really Tainted Love
You cross paths with some really messed people in your life, especially when you're a kid and don't know shit. It's best to remember the good times, learn from the lessons, and release the pain people cause you. You can't carry that garbage around.
Music Machine
In some ways, I am the luckiest guy in this fair city of approximately three million. I have had the pleasure & the honor of playing my music on some of Chicago’s finest stages. I have gotten to relish in this electric feeling surrounded by various permutations of the incredibly talented friends I keep so close.
Remember Minesweeper?
You step on one of those mines, you blow up. You blow up and your intended message gets lost, never reaching the other side of the divide, never closing the gap, even by a millimeter. It never had a chance.
Recovery
We're all a little bipolar. The fucking planet earth is bipolar. We all vacillate between happy and sad.
The Now Manifesto
There is a spectrum. a number line. upon which all of us exist, in some shade or gradient of human consciousness. Goodness, badness, plus and minus, ebb and flow, all rolled into one unique individual, built by an infinite series of genetic blueprints. Drastically complex nautilus shells. A geometric sequence at the core of all things. A natural algorithm.
My 3-year-old son walked around the house this morning referring to his penis as a volcano. That’s a new kind of B.D.E.