Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of March 23, 2025
Emotions are the greatest challenge we face as a people. Sociopaths have it easy.

Hiding Behind Alf: Masks, Work, and the Death of the Real Self
You are not your real self at work—you’re a character version of yourself with all the edges sanded down.

Deep Exhaustion
I Believe… [Balancing Anxiety & Grit]
...that anxiety and grit are like two characters in a dark comedy—each one flawed, but when they work together, they can create something powerful.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of March 16, 2025
The descent to hell is easy when the road is paved with alcoholic tolerance.

We’re All a Bit Body Dysmorphic, Aren’t We?
body dysmorphia isn’t about what you look like. It’s about what you think you look like.
I Believe… [Nudist Freedom]
...that being naked in your home is liberating and suddenly makes you feel better about your body.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of March 9, 2025
A Montessori education is child-led and parents shamed. And judging by the classroom toys and décor, it’s an education opposed to color and joy.

She’s Not My Type, but She’s Totally My Type
She probably has a twenty-something daughter. Her daughter is stupid hot. A spitting image of mom twenty years ago. She was a teen mom. Divorced. Never remarried. Has had the same boyfriend for fifteen years. He’s a UPS driver or a dock worker. She can change a tire but can’t tie a tie. She definitely snuck backstage and blew the Puddle of Mud frontman. She got a butterfly tattoo a week after her dad died because, “life’s transitions.” She loves Adam Sandler films and the poetry of Mary Oliver.
I Believe… [The Reward for Bad Behavior]
...that if you reward people screaming at you by giving in to their demands, you train them and others to scream at you with impunity.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of March 2, 2025
There’s no S in “Daylight Saving.” But there is one in “You’re all idiots.” Why is this so hard for people?

When the Babysitter Becomes the Bully
A former reality TV star, a former best selling author with Netflix money, and a former actor famous for playing an actor with ambitions to become president walk into the Oval Office and all hell breaks loose.
I Believe… [Spring of Deception]
...that the fake Spring (always around the end of February or beginning of March) in Chicago is something special. All of sudden people are out in shirt sleeves and walking the lakefront. A week later, it’ll be like a dream we all had but a really good one.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of February 23, 2025
Is it misogyny that I get nervous speaking to women who are taller than me? Because I feel the same way when that person—of any sex or gender—is younger than me. So, am I an ageist-misogynist? Or am I just self-conscious about my very dull, very average height?

America is Exceptional (Even Though Most Americans Aren’t)
But America itself is exceptional precisely because it does not need the majority of its people to be exceptional. It only needs enough of them—just enough—to keep pushing forward, to keep inventing, to keep driving the story of human progress forward.

MOSTLY LIVE FROM NEW YORK
I was reminded of a quote attributed to Lorne Michaels when he was pitching the show—it should feel like the television studio had shut down for the night and had been taken over by a bunch of kids. As the show unfolded, I started to notice that the ‘bunch of kids’ are as old as dirt.
I Believe… [The Stink of Neighborhoods]
...that one can make a lot of assumptions about the neighborhoods in Chicago but there is no escaping the fact that the Red Line smells like piss and weed and the Brown Line does not.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of February 16, 2025
Hell hath no fury like a bored housemom who experienced a microaggression.
I Believe… [Special Purpose]
...that there must be a purpose of living beyond simply surviving despite the fact that survival is a heavy lift for most people. To find your purpose, look to the things that bring you the most joy and pursue.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of February 9, 2025
We’ve abandoned Freud. Nothing is nurture, it’s strict nature. Who we are is no longer defined by our experiences or our relationships with our parents or friends, but by our neurodiverse ailments. It’s no longer survival of the fittest, it’s survival of who has the most diagnoses. And with all that, so goes accountability out the window.
The sign of a good relationship is a sore, slightly bruised pubic bone. (Heh, heh… bone…)