The pain doesn’t simply go away. Samantha did leave. After the loss of her child, she relocated to paradise. Beaches, sun, and waves. But she returned a few years later, and settled back into the city. “There are people committing…
I really just wanted a coffee that Friday evening, not a sermon. The sign read, “All welcome,” so I assumed I was part of “all” and entered. A conscript’s first three-day pass is sacred. That seemingly trivial reward marked the…
Despondency is that shit feeling that resides in a post-apocalyptic crud-hole between hopelessness and apathy. As an emotion, it’s legit, and it’s a signal, but it’s a faint signal that can lead to horrible stuff if left unchecked. Rage, ironically,…
The language of conscription is glossed over with words like duty, service, honor, and sacrifice, but beneath the shine, it stinks of rotten bureaucracy, drafting people into the meat grinder. Politicians say, “the nation calls,” but never admit to coercion.…
Do you know people who wander into a restaurant, glance at the menu, comment on every item, and then leave, telling everyone outside what they saw? Worse, some post it online, and the echo chamber churns out dozens of hollow…
As a youth, my hair was routinely massacred by Adventure Barbers. A couple of middle-aged gents operated a lucrative gig on the outskirts of my community. No matter what style you requested, you always got short back and sides. School…
The dirty secret of side-hustle culture is that if your life is already crammed with stress and chaos, your creative hustle isn’t going anywhere. You can romanticize the beauty of the escape plan all you want, but creativity needs oxygen.…
Brad was flushed with rage. The veins in his forehead pulsated. “I can work for a tyrant, but not a narcissist who needs a performing monkey.” Brad resigned a week later, found a great job at a competitor’s firm, and…
“You will listen to your corporals. Their instructions will give you a better chance to survive.” I reckon the other rookies scoffed at those words, like I did. I was fresh out of university, and conscription had caught up with…
Kris Kristofferson released that song To Beat the Devil. It boils down to not believing that nobody is listening. That stuck with me. We do still listen. But not the way we used to. There was a time when a…