I’m Writing Fiction Again
I’m writing fiction again. Or at least dabbling. I don’t know why or for how long or what my goal even is, but the change of scenery is sure nice. I’ve missed this realm.
Read More I’m Writing Fiction AgainI’m writing fiction again. Or at least dabbling. I don’t know why or for how long or what my goal even is, but the change of scenery is sure nice. I’ve missed this realm.
Read More I’m Writing Fiction AgainI watched Boy Erased the other night, and it messed me up more than any other movie has. Unlike countless others I’ve encountered over the years, I never attempted ‘praying the gay away’ as a kid and have largely experienced more struggles with my masculinity than my sexuality. Until now.
Read More I’ve Never Not Wanted to be Gay. Until Now.I don’t know. I’m in a season of not knowing. Which means I’m doing a lot of listening these days. But I hear the whispers. I’ve been unintentionally heeding them these last 8 months as I’ve turned over stone after stone. I will rummage through this rubble until there are no more boulders or pebbles left to turn.
Read More I Will Stay in This RubbleWhen real life gets hard and messy and not as it should be, I have an inner sanctum I return to, again and again. One rotted by dopamine-laced falsities.
Read More This Isn’t Real LifeI don’t know where this particular tune in time is taking me. I hear a lot of silence right now. Resolution feels far off. The last note lingers, and I want to hear the final sound.
Read More Nothing Makes Sense (And the C Chord Lingers Still)Jesus won’t calm the storm with a single word. His way is a way of work. Of picking up crosses daily. Of lugging said crosses up mountains. Of taking the narrower way of all the broader ways available to my wanderlust.
Read More Do Not Calm This StormAs 2018 winds down, I find myself in my most emotionally raw, volatile state of the year, probably ever. The North Carolina skies opened with a blizzard this week, and how I wanted this snowy downpour to cleanse it all away.
Read More End of Year Emo BlizzardYes, Jesus loves me. For the Bible tells me so. But does he like me? Does he find me enjoyable? Why? Does he only “have” to love and like me because he’s Jesus? Furthermore, does his Church love me? Do they like me? Because so often I feel that they do not. That they just don’t have time for me. For my struggles and emotions.
Read More Jesus Loves Me. This I Know?I know, I’ve already sworn and I’m not even past the first line. Please don’t be turned off. Please stay with me. When I worked in wilderness therapy a couple years ago, everyone made such a big deal about feelings. For example, you’d never answer “How are you feeling today?” with “I’m feeling good.” Because […]
Read More Fucking Feel ItUpstream, of course. I’ve always been swimming upstream. Against the current. The current of sexuality. The current of introversion. The current of inferiority. The current of separation. The current of brokenness and deficiency. The current of not being quite enough of a man, if even at all. Let alone a man of God.
Read More A Man of God I Am NotToday I learned that my church died. Not my current church. Not my previous church. Not even a church I’ve attended in four years. But the first church that felt something like home.
Read More Death and Death and the Coming Tide of DeathLike, this is actually my life now. Meeting folks from the Internet wherever I go. Near and far and down the street. I mean, I’ve lived this life for years now. I’m not oblivious to it. I’m just feeling it really strongly today. Realizing I hardly translate my weird little introverted Internet life to others.
Read More My Weird Little Introverted Internet LifeBeing present. I find it so difficult. Perhaps my greatest challenge. I entertain a thousand fantasies on any given day. Many of them “harmless.” Or maybe not. A move to this city. A quick wandering to that one. Staying here in the Blue Ridge the rest of my life. Leaving tomorrow. Old friends, new friends.
Read More Waking Up from a Thousand What Isn’tsAll we have is this moment. The key is being present. It’s always being present. Not giving more weight to the past or more to the future but just enough weight to all three. Whatever that perfect ratio is, I have no idea. I do know the present must get the largest piece of pie.
Read More I Want This Plane to CrashI entered Charlotte with gargantuan hopes. Hopes that wherever I landed after #RunningTo would be the city I’d call home the rest of my life. A city of dreams fulfilled that simultaneously kept adding new ones. I stare at this Queen City skyline with kind of a hopeless sigh. I failed this place.
Read More City of Macaroons and Broken DreamsHe is God. He is here. He has shown up. There is nowhere we can go, be it among the Biltmore sunflowers or on a lonely college road, void of God’s presence. Are we blind? Are we just not seeing him?
Read More Gravity Is Pulling You and Me and All of This DownThe slate is wiped clean. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. Nothing makes sense anymore. Except for ten minutes every morning.
Read More I Don’t Know What I’m Doing Anymore ExceptWriting Struggle Central five years ago was absolutely the path God intended for me eons ago. My path as a human, my path as a writer. The gateway to my wildest dreams as an author. Also, a nightmare. A foreign world with implications I’d have never otherwise encountered.
Read More 5 Regrets After 5 Years of Struggle CentralOn High School, Deep Dark Secrets, Coming Out, Asexuality, My First Kiss, Longing, Commitment, Separation, and the Eternal What-If? I tracked along with 95% of Love, Simon. The deep dark secrets. The longings for other boys. The conflict between self and persona. The thrill of realizing you’re not alone.
Read More A “Love, Simon” Pseudo-ReviewBack in the height of my wandering (have I reached the valley yet?), I read a blog about the importance of traveling. I have no idea who wrote it or where the link stands today, but there’s one tip from the post I’ll never forget. I’ve implemented it ever since I read it, and it’s […]
Read More Where (and Why) I’m Wandering NextFor the next two weeks, I’m embarking on a body cleanse. I’ll be taking fiber supplements along with liver and digestive supplements every morning. And every night. I’ll finally be scrubbing out my insides after thirty years. I’ll probably be pooping a lot. But don’t worry. This post goes beyond my bowel movements. That part […]
Read More CleanseNow that Running To has run to Amazon and other online booksellers, I find myself with a lot more free time. More free time to practice guitar and work out. More time to post on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook and engage with my following. Engage with my friends. More free time to read. More […]
Read More Some Days You Have A Lot. Some A Little. Others Nothing.I completed writing my second book in September — a mammoth project three years in the making. For weeks and months and, yes, years, I legitimately wondered if the thing would ever get finished. I faced a lot of demons during the writing of this book: Despair that my epic journey was over, a reality […]
Read More When Writing a Book Isn’t Worth ItA year ago, I was blogging every day of the month as part of my #MakeNovemberTolerable campaign. I’ve long despised November for all the negative things that seem to converge upon this month, and last year’s effort was to see the beautiful things among memories of my dog dying, my Internet friend dying, and the […]
Read More Back Before the Darkness Found MeI’ve long been drawn to the wise old figures in story — “the mentor,” as the archetype goes. The Yoda crawling around Luke Skywalker’s lunchbox. The Gandalf showing up at Frodo’s round door. I’ve always wanted my own mythical mentor to show up when I least expect it, breaking my tedious present, leading me into […]
Read More Like a Lost and Groaning GandalfOnce upon a new year, I promised I’d blog here weekly all year long. I also made a short list of other so-called resolutions, and ten months into this new year I realize I’m only hitting with about 50% success overall. I am so great. At least I still have two months to finish the […]
Read More Who Am I Now?Sorry for the lack of blogging lately. Travels and book-writing have kept me busy. Here’s a Snapchat story of my tour through Langhorne, Pennsylvania — my hometown. Some of you may have seen variations of this tour over the years; newer followers may not be familiar. Enjoy! #TMZroadstache
Read More Introducing my hometown!At long last, I join forces with Steinbeck and find a fellow wanderer. Anyone else relate? Thoughts from my third day of #RunningToo:
Read More The Virus of RestlessnessRather than write a verbose post about my next adventure beyond quitting my job, I figured why not just tell you face-to-digital-face?! Check out my video below for all the scoop on what I’m calling #RunningToo. Well, not all the scoop. Gotta leave some room for mystery, don’t I? In any case, comment below if […]
Read More Introducing . . . #RunningTooIn third grade, my music teacher told us the story of Beethoven. I think it was Beethoven. I’m too lazy to google it now. When Beethoven first started losing his hearing, he inserted a metal tube into his ear to help him drown out the excess noise and focus his hearing. As his hearing worsened, […]
Read More I Need to Hear Again: or, Why I’m Quitting My Job and Hitting the RoadI moved recently — four whole doors down to another unit in my complex. It wasn’t ideal, but life rarely is. My roommates and I had hoped to move into a house — an eclectic one with a porch, a balcony, a big yard, tucked into the hills over Asheville, perhaps with a long driveway […]
Read More To be still, yet still movingMy grandfather celebrated his ninetieth birthday last month. Family from coast to coast — West to East and North to South — converged upon Langhorne, Pennsylvania for our biggest family celebration since my grandparents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary in 1998. A lot’s happened in the last two decades. I’ve written previously about the one I call […]
Read More Old Life and New Life and the Life in BetweenSix months ago, I decided to be reckless. I was out running by a lake near my home in Asheville as that all-too-common feeling of stuckness squelched my every step. I needed a change — what else is new? — something to plan, somewhere to run. As I literally ran in this moment of desperation, my thoughts latched […]
Read More I Love/Hate CaliforniaMy twenties are gone. Forever. I’ve often been accused of being too dramatic, both on this blog and in “real life.” I’m too emotional. Too heavy and melancholy and not enough amounts of light-hearted and sunny. So, in an effort to balance out my being, I’m going to reminisce on my greatest hits as a […]
Read More kill the twentysomethingFor the better part of a year, I’ve been compiling video footage from a road trip that took me from California to the Carolinas and practically everywhere in between. I’ve been editing a hybrid retrospective / book trailer for days and weeks at a time, and I’ve also forgotten about it and left it to collect dust […]
Read More Running To: The Book TrailerI’m the kind of guy who compares anything to everything: my favorite TV show (Survivor) to my least favorite (The Bachelor), the best month (April) to the worst month (November), the greatest year of my life (2012) to the very worst (2006). I can’t help it. I compare. It’s what I do. It’s why I […]
Read More The Best Worst Year in the Blue RidgeI traveled to Chattanooga over the weekend for a conference on sexuality in the church (you can read my recap on YOB; another post of mine premiering today). I packed up Jude in a pretty rotten headspace on Friday night, and then I hit the road home for Asheville two days later singing to the Backstreet Boys. […]
Read More A Broken Record with Yellow LinesI’ve watched approximately seven Boy Meets World episodes in their entirety, though plenty of passing clips. I’ve blogged about this show in the past, including its spinoff, because my younger sister would watch it after school, and the strong friendship between Corey and Shawn always kept my eyes craning. Lately, life circumstances have again caused me to […]
Read More Love is Not the GreatestI’m a sarcastic fellow. A dark fellow. A sad and sickly fellow with a twisted sense of humor that must often be tempered among the sunny masses. The older I get, the more cynical I’ve grown — or devolved. However you look at it. More and more frequently, I tell myself there’s just no point in reaching […]
Read More You’re just gonna leave me, so what’s the point?I recently went home to celebrate my mother’s 60th birthday (she doesn’t look a day over 38). It was a weekend of laughs and meals and car rides that reminded me how blessed I am to be a Zuniga. And yet part of that weekend pricked a wound still in me. As part of our […]
Read More That Boy is Dead2016 introduced me to not one but two seasons of carlessness — my first bouts without a vehicle since becoming an adult many moons ago. These seasons without wheels humbled me. Most of the world lives without cars, after all. I was still among the 1% wealthiest people, even without a car. Walking to work […]
Read More Hey, JudeI still remember sitting in that YMCA conference room last March, my third day of training for this new job and just my fourth day living in Asheville. I stared out the giant bay windows, mesmerized by flaky snow drifting downward from a vast gray expanse. This city I’d only ever known for summer camps and […]
Read More Snow That Traps and BeckonsI hate new years. I hate resolutions. I hate the assumption that just because the calendar changes from one month and one year to the next, the past is wiped clean and anything is possible — well, for about two and a half weeks. And then it’s back to tubs of ice cream and pornography. […]
Read More Another disaster of a year begins . . .As the grotesque mass of space garbage we call 2016 hurtles toward oblivion, people everywhere are cheering the prospect of a new year. Myself included. We’ve proclaimed this the worst year ever, what with a most bizarre election cycle, the deaths of numerous beloved celebrities, raging wildfires and natural disasters, and the opening of the […]
Read More And to All a Good RiddanceI watched the Gilmore Girls revival over the weekend. There. I said it. Laugh at me. Deride me. Label me with your sharpest effeminate nicknames. It’s not like I have masculine issues or anything. I grew up with a little sister who loved Gilmore Girls, and as such, I saw more than a few episodes. I was […]
Read More I Watched Gilmore Girls and Now I’m Thinking Too MuchYour bike chain breaks. The rains pour down. But still you soldier forward into the crosswalk and down the sidewalk. Because inside your wallet is a coffee shop punchcard with 16 holes, the magic number, the promised land, and you’re power-walking toward the place wiping raindrops from your brow. You step inside and reveal the punchcard with […]
Read More Shackles and Freedom and the Space In-BetweenBefore November could unleash her usual dread upon me, I decided I’d take a proactive approach with this month. Blog every day, I thought? Would that do it? Would that do the trick and make me somehow look forward to this month instead of loathe it every day? Some days were better than others. Some […]
Read More Why I Hated Blogging Every Day This MonthI can’t believe I’ve been blogging every day for four straight weeks now. Like. What? How have I even done this? How have I actually trained myself to sit down for an hour or two every day and simply say whatever came to mind without ever going back and changing what just erupted from my […]
Read More Some Days Are Like Gnomes With No LegsWould you ever buy a book without knowing the title, the author, or even the plot? I did. The independent bookstore downtown is a quirky little place. It’s where I take all my visitors for the tradition of taking their “YAY!” magnet pictures, and beyond books in genres like yoga-gardening and nude watercolors, you can also […]
Read More When I Paid Seventeen Bucks for a Book with No NameI sold my car last week. T’was already the second time I said goodbye to a vehicle this year; unlike the first, I couldn’t have been more thrilled to sign over this title. The reasons for selling were many — impatience, finances, the government — and, ultimately, I went with my gut. My gut said […]
Read More Carlessness, Homelessness, and a Sea of Golden ButterfliesWell, I missed a day of blogging. My dreams, dashed. My hopes, crushed. My legacy, tarnished. But I have a good excuse. I took the students on a campout last night, my first overnight excursion on the job, and I couldn’t exactly blog ‘neath the stars. So, I cheated with this Instagram photo yesterday afternoon: […]
Read More I Peed in the Woods This MorningI’m an angsty guy, I’m realizing — shocker of the century, I know you’re screaming. I’m rarely ever content, but I do experience contentment. However fleeting. Holidays help ground me. They remind me where I came from and they tell me I’m not alone — even though I try to convince myself otherwise the rest […]
Read More A Heart That Can Always Come HomeDo you ever wish you could transplant the essence of your being today into the shell of your being yesterday? In other words, do you ever wish you could take what you know now and live in that mindset back then? I drove to my parents’ place in Georgia last night and went strolling through […]
Read More If the man I am now were the man I was thenLast weekend, I returned to one of those pivotal places of the past. The city: Gatlinburg, Tennessee. My last official #RunningTo stop before retreating to a cabin in the woods for 36 solitary hours to figure out whether I’d move to Milwaukee or Gettysburg or Charlotte to round out my 9 months on the road. […]
Read More Don’t Ruin the FutureAs somebody increasingly drawn to living an epic story, I often catch myself living in the fantastical “what if.” What if I lived in Seattle? What if I did another, longer version of my #RunningTo road trip? What if I owned a rustic VW bus? What if I backpacked around Europe or South America or New […]
Read More What If I Went to My Grave?I don’t want to do this. But here I am. Blogging. Tonight. Late. After 10pm. Hardly an hour or two to spare until midnight. Just in time for Day 20. Today’s a great example of doing something I don’t want to do after an entire day of doing what I live for. This morning, I […]
Read More I Don’t Want to Do ThisI’ve been a Christian for as long as I can remember. My Christianness predates my Phillies fandom, my Survivor-mania, even my innate wandering spirit. Seems I’ve always known about God and Jesus and the cross and how I’d be nothing without Him, nothing without those two coarse beams of wood. And yet something about the […]
Read More When I Hate the CrossTonight I hopped on my bike not knowing where I’d be riding it. The further away I rode from my house, the more the pieces fell into place. A street here. An uphill climb there. A brand new coffee shop where I’d yet to sit and sip and ruminate. This place I found downtown is […]
Read More Hello, Mr. Moose Head with the Hookah: or, Escaping the StalenessThe vortex of my loathing for November stems from this date a decade ago. The day I lost my dog, Annie, to a freak accident. An accident I was convinced was connected to my first bout with pornography and God’s judgment. A decade later, I’ve laxed on the whole God punishing me thing; a decade […]
Read More A Decade Without AnnieEarlier this year, I lost my beloved Mitsy to old age and a fuming engine on I-81S. I cried over her (wept, really), I memorialized her, and I spent the next two months of my life walking around Asheville until my sister’s old car became my new car — Des. She’s a 1998 Toyota Corolla, […]
Read More You and I Will Be OkayToday I’m halfway through my 30-day blogging challenge. It was fun and novel at first, blogging every day. Like I’d put on skinny jeans or a trendy scarf for the first time or decided to “go vegan.” 15 days later, it’s still fun. It’s become automatic that after work every day I come to a […]
Read More Will the Words Still Come?A year ago, I knew nothing about recovery. Phrases like “twelve steps” and “Alcoholics Anonymous” may as well have been as foreign to me as “World Champion Chicago Cubs.” But then I started working with teens in recovery, both in the woods and in a beautiful building, and I’ve learned I’m not that different from […]
Read More Why I Do What I DoThe first time I used a laundromat was in Milwaukee the summer of 2011. I worked at a missions camp for three months, and every weekend my team and I would venture to the laundromat down the road to take care of our dirty clothes. I’d always had a washer/dryer wherever I’d lived, so this […]
Read More We’re All the Same HereI’ve said it many times before, and I’ll probably say it time and time again: God bless Panera Bread. It’s a microcosm of society. From coast to coast, I’ve seen Christians unite at Panera after church and homeless people sit by the fireplace and little old ladies knitting and playing Scrabble. I’ve also seen students […]
Read More God is Good, God is Great?Sometimes you fall asleep in the Starbucks parking lot after a long day and a long week and you climb out of your car to find the sky ablaze, swirling with the comfort that a new night is here, a new weekend dawns, and rest is already among us. If we’ll only wake up to […]
Read More Sometimes a sunset . . .Back when I worked in wilderness therapy last year, I learned an important lesson: the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection. I had to think about it for a while. Absorb it. Reflect on it. Think back on the times I’ve experienced addition — pornography, promiscuity, a poor self-image […]
Read More The Opposite of AddictionOne more political-ish post. And then hopefully not another until (at least) the next election. I’m so glad it’s finally over. Give us at least a couple weeks to recover, media. Please. People are feeling stuff today. It started at sunrise as I drove to work and interacted with a coffee barista and fellow coworkers […]
Read More One Word to Sum Up Our New Future:I am so weird: I’m obsessed with politics. I can’t get enough Daily Show and John Oliver and SNL sketches and debates and polls, and I’ve navigated onto clickable red- and blue-colored maps admittedly more times than any human should these last few months. And yet for all my endless fascination for politics, you cannot […]
Read More Who I’m Voting For TodayWhen I was a kid, we went to the hospital a lot. My mom had some health issues, and on these hospital visits my dad would take me, my brother, and my sister to the top of the parking deck to run around and look out and otherwise pass the time. It’s not something you’d […]
Read More Why I Park On Top of Parking DecksOne of the perks of living in Asheville — a big one, really — is the opportunity to escape to the mountains anytime I please. Growing up in eastern Pennsylvania and then eastern Georgia, I never knew about daily life with mountains. My vision and expectations always encompassed a flat horizon preceded by fields and […]
Read More What to do when you’re lost and lonely and sadI’m dogsitting this weekend. Before I moved to Asheville, I never dog-sat or cat-sat or any-other-animal-sat a day in my life. Now, it seems I do it every other weekend. At last count, I think I’ve kept ten different animals alive since moving here. It started with one pet-sitting request at work, and it just […]
Read More When I’m Getting a DogWhen my roommate left for a trip a couple weeks ago, I determined I’d dive back into Couchsurfing again. I’d hosted 10-15 folks going back to my move to Asheville in February, but only one in the prior four months. I stopped hosting for various reasons. My roommate and I had lots of friends visit […]
Read More I’m Hitting the Road Again“Weekend Tom” returned to “Weekday Tom” at school today. One kid struggled with recursive sequences. Another kept falling asleep learning about dear sweet Pythagoras and his most beloved theorem. Yet another needed my step-by-step guidance, only to fizzle out of patience by hour’s end. It wasn’t the flashiest of mornings. No inspirational artist studio visits […]
Read More I Got Triggered TodayThe last two days, I’ve taken our students to the River Arts District here in Asheville to visit with local artists in their studios and even do some painting on canvases and walls alike. It’s rare that I get to go out with the students, as I usually aid them with math or writing in […]
Read More And the Message is FunBack when I launched this blog in 2011, I blogged all the time. I was like a kid on Christmas, every day, waking up so jazzed to have his own fancy domain with pages and pictures and posts aplenty. I probably blogged 5-6 times a week for those first few weeks. And they felt like […]
Read More Make November TolerableYou guys. When on earth was the last time I wandered on a Wednesday with y’all? I can’t even tell you. (I mean, I could just look it up on YouTube — it’s right there — but that’d defeat the purpose of such a hyperbolic statement.) A lot has transpired since I last wandered on […]
Read More Wandering Wednesday #18: Great Smoky Mountain RailroadSome friends recently visited me, and now I almost wish they hadn’t. Almost. It’s still a shiny, new thing for me to host people in my home and city. A couple folks visited me back when I lived in California, mostly my immediate family. But nothing compares to these last 8 months in Asheville. I’ve had […]
Read More Goodbye, Chunks of My SoulI wore a sweater to work the other day. I climbed half-naked out of bed with a shiver and noted the morning temperature a brisk 49 degrees. So, I grabbed a light sweater from my closet — the first time I’ve worn one since March or April. Since I first moved to Asheville. Winter. Spring. Summer. […]
Read More Four Seasons LaterEvery now and then, Twitter messes me up — a 73-character lightning tweet of conviction or a common hashtag stirring genuine conversation. I’m a thinker, I live in my head, I get lost in my head, and if something sparks a thought, I’ll likely be embroiled in a mental forest fire by eventide. Twitter recently […]
Read More Unpacking My 3 Fictional Selves“If anyone needs prayer, I invite you to speak with someone at the back of the room before you leave our service today. We’d love to pray with you.” I do need prayer, I think to myself from the back row. I need prayer very much. I need freedom from passivity. I need courage. I […]
Read More When the New Man Looks Like the Old ManWe’ve been raising monarch caterpillars at work for the last month. A woman we affectionately dubbed “The Butterfly Lady” came in with an aquarium full of milkweed and caterpillars the length of your pinky nail — dozens of them. You’d have never noticed them from afar. Most of those poor things died. It wasn’t our fault. Apparently […]
Read More All We Like Butterflies…Before moving to Asheville six months ago, I ventured into an independent bookstore here with a friend. Malaprop’s, the place is called — a play on “malapropism,” a term for a comedic way of misspeaking. Think Michael Scott of The Office. Said the well-meaning Dunder-Mifflin manager: “I am not one to be truffled with.” Anyway, I’d visited Malaprop’s […]
Read More Tradition Doesn’t Have to SuckI launched my first podcast a few weeks ago. I’ve wanted to be an author since first grade show-and-tell, but I never dreamt of being a podcaster — if for no other reason than I hated my voice. Although I suppose not knowing what a “podcast” was until just three years ago is another significant factor. After discovering […]
Read More Why I Share My StoryA man recently approached me at a gas station. This doesn’t happen often; in fact, I only remember one such other occasion, and it wasn’t particularly pleasant. My initial reaction when anyone approaches me while I’m busy doing something goes something like this: I’M UNDER ATTACK. WAIT, NO I’M NOT. AT LEAST, I DON’T THINK. WAIT, WHAT […]
Read More We Are Not Forgotten or WastedFriends, You might have heard I started a podcast. It’s called Your Other Brothers Podcast, a show about faith, sexuality, masculinity, and brotherhood. I’m increasingly stirred by this content matter, of helping struggling people escape loneliness and abandonment in the Church. To share my story in the company of my dear brothers is a surreal dream […]
Read More I Have a Podcast!I read many tweets in the 48-hour aftermath of the Orlando shooting that claimed fifty lives. One jumped out at me most. It said: Christians: your silence is a deafening roar. I read the tweet, felt sobered by the tweet, grew annoyed by the tweet, and then pondered my own “role” or “responsibility” with regard to Orlando and […]
Read More I Have Nothing to Say About Orlando“I know you’re asking for $6500, but would you consider going down to $6000?” my grandfather says considerately. He has always been a good talker. The middle-aged woman from the ad, Karen, looks back at him, then down at me, then nods her head. “The brakes do need replacing. I can settle for 6.” My grandfather […]
Read More Goodbye, MitsyI’ve been living in Asheville for over two months now, and it’s been a mid-range roller coaster with moderate ups and downs. The new job and the Couchsurfing; the church-searching and the solitude; newfound stability versus my inner nomad. I’ve been attending a local support group twice a week for the last month, and I’m learning how to take care […]
Read More Re-Learning How to Take Care of MyselfWhen I first made the switch from Couchsurfing surfer extraordinaire to Couchsurfing hoster, I figured I’d ease into the transition. Host one or two people a month for one or two nights each, and that would tide me over, remind me of the road without having to leave for so long again. I’d cook my […]
Read More That Time I Hosted the Same Couchsurfer for Two WeeksA couple housekeeping notes to start. First off, you might have noticed I’m starting to write more regularly with my awesome blogging brotherhood, Your Other Brothers. It’s becoming tedious to continue linking my new posts on that blog back to this one, so if you’d like to continue reading my posts over there, go ahead and subscribe to YOB! […]
Read More 29.I don’t consider myself a videographer. I’m an artist first, a writer second, and somewhere within my inner swirl of creativity there’s room for music and painting and photography and even a little film. I have a YouTube channel, and I’ve shot/edited/published several videos over the years. Most of them are carefree and spontaneous and wandering-induced […]
Read More The Hardest Video I’ve Ever MadeLast week was among my hardest weeks in many weeks. I’d said goodbye to two fantastic Couchsurfing guests, and I endured yet another week of training and work prep as my new organization continues to pass inspections and certifications and acquire total clearance for student admission. Even then, we will acquire students one at a time until we […]
Read More Staying Through the HurtI’m approaching my one-month anniversary of moving to Asheville and manning my very own dwelling place, and I’m slowly figuring it all out, from living room arrangements to cooking my own meals. For the life of me, I can’t figure out how to hang things on walls without puncturing said walls, per my lease, but […]
Read More When a Handshake Becomes a HugPrior to now, I’ve only ever lived alone once — and even then, it was just for six weeks while studying abroad at Oxford University. I was only 21, and it was the strangest thing to walk to the grocery store and purchase some Coco Pops (Britain’s monkey-adorned version of Cocoa Krispies) among other nutritious items, and […]
Read More Why Would Anyone Want to Visit Me?Last week I “celebrated” the one-year anniversary of my cross-continental road trip’s conclusion. And by “celebrated,” I mean to say I cried multiple times by day’s end. No dramatic gasping wheezing weeping sessions, but I dabbed my eyes throughout the afternoon and evening as I looked back at some images from the road, including that final one of […]
Read More I’ve Never Been More Hopeful and TerrifiedOn March 9, 2015, I concluded a 9-month road trip around the continent with a relocation from southern California to Charlotte, North Carolina. “Why Charlotte?” many people asked, including several Charlotte residents. “It wasn’t my favorite city,” I told plenty. If I wanted to start over in a “favorite city,” I’d be donning a year-round beanie in […]
Read More Goodbye, CharlotteRemember Jonas? The wintry storm that buried vehicles and tiny innocent dogs alike? Well, I lived Jonas. I survived Jonas; somehow, I made it out of Jonas alive. Heading into my ninth work shift, I knew there’d be some inclement weather that week. But I had no idea this weather would include a winter storm with its very own […]
Read More Surviving JonasI’ve got a post up today at my collaborative blog, Your Other Brothers. Here’s a snippet below! In the fascinating personality model of the Enneagram, I’m a Type 4, the individualist. Type 4’s are generally introverted, introspective, creative, and — best of all — deeply emotional. Everything profoundly affects us 4’s, from sunsets to dog movies to every single word everyone […]
Read More I’ve Always Wanted a Big Brother10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 HAPPY NEW YEAR! Cheers fill the brisk 39-degree square, a woman with a microphone starts singing “Auld Lang Syne,” dancing ensues, and fireworks shoot over the historic Gettysburg Hotel. 2015 has fallen into oblivion, and I’m wondering how my life got here. ~ ~ ~ […]
Read More The Life I Could Have LivedI’m not blogging as much these days; believe me, I’ve noticed. I feel the words escaping me the longer I sit here, and I find myself eager to ditch my computer and let this blinking cursor flash all Christmas Day. Perhaps the new year will bring new inspiration for blogging, like old times. But for now, I can only offer […]
Read More My 3 Favorite Christmas Songs