Snuffing the Small Light — a field guide to staying lit when people try to dim you

 I’ve been thinking about joy the way you think about a match in wind. A tiny flame, imperfect and stubborn, doing its best impression of a sunrise on a stick. You cup your hand around it, lean your body to block the gust, and for a second it works. Then someone walks up—someone close, usually—and does the emotional equivalent of licking their fingers and taking a victory pinch. Sizzle.

Frustration: A Field Guide For When Your Brain Wants To Throw Furniture

 Frustration is the body’s “are you kidding me?” alarm. It’s the feeling that the world should be more bendable than it is. It’s human. It’s honest. And if we don’t steward it, it grows teeth—stress, anxiety, panic—the whole domino line. I’ve learned this the slow way. By breaking things I cared about (and a few I didn’t) and then having to clean up in the quiet afterward.

The Art of Failing Forward

 We don’t always sabotage ourselves on purpose. Sometimes we do it with good intentions—white-knuckling the steering wheel of “don’t mess this up,” which, ironically, is a great way to drive straight into the guardrail. The mind is funny like that. You say “don’t fall,” and suddenly you’re studying the floorboards.

When Brilliance Isn’t Welcome at Home

 Some relationships teach you how to think.

Others teach you when not to speak.

This is a story about growing up adjacent to intelligence — not starved of it, not denied its presence — but never fully welcomed into it.

I Plead an Innocence Plight — Under Duress

 There are phrases that arrive quietly and refuse to leave.

“I plead an innocence plight.”

The Art of Going Alone (On Purpose)

 I keep a running experiment with myself: if the floor drops out—money gone, people gone, phone a brick—I should still be able to sit in a quiet room and feel like a whole person. Not heroic. Not blissed out. Just… okay. Steady. A human with an inner pilot light that doesn’t flicker when the hallway goes dark.

Fail Forward: A Love Letter to Gravity

 I don’t trust anything that never fell apart first. People. Plans. Me.

If it’s still pristine, it’s untested. Museum-grade. Pretty, but useless in weather.

Failing has a smell. Like hot metal and rain on old pavement. It carries the sound of a hinge that finally gives, and the dumb quiet right after, when your breath remembers it’s mortal. That’s the moment I keep chasing. Not the crash. The learning that arrives wearing a bandage and a smirk.

I’m confident, not cocky. There is a difference

 Confidence is a house you build when no one’s looking. Cockiness is the lawn sign you shove out front and hope the neighbors read. Confidence is the quiet math of showing up, stacking small proofs, burying them under the floorboards, and knowing the structure will hold. Cockiness is a parade float made of cardboard and hairspray. It looks impressive until it has to turn a corner in the wind.

The Seed of Arrogance

 The seed of arrogance isn’t loud at first. It’s a whisper that says, you’ve seen this before; you’re right; they’re not seeing what you see. It feels like clarity. It feels like acceleration. And like most shortcuts, it doesn’t advertise the tollbooth until you’re already boxed in.

Arrogance gets a bad headline because its end-stage is ugly—domination, defensiveness, that brittle refusal to learn. But the seed is sneakier. It can look like conviction with good PR. It can look like leadership. It can even feel like courage. That’s why people who hate arrogance keep accidentally watering it. Myself included.

Fear, First Thing

 I keep meeting fear at the starting line. Like a hall monitor with a clipboard and a whistle, telling me I’m not on the list. It happens especially with new things. New means risk. Risk means story. And my brain—helpful little pyromaniac—lights the “what if” fuse before I’ve even tied my shoes.

Cart before horse? Try eulogy before first draft.

I know I’m not alone in this. Fear is a group project with perfect attendance.

When Help Turns Heavy-Handed: Office Power Moves, Petty Freeze-Outs, and How to Stay Human

 We’ve all met them. The “helpful” coworker who drifts into your lane like they’re checking blind spots for the whole company. They have history at the organization, a memory for how things “used to be,” and a habit of treating other people’s responsibilities like a buffet: “I’ll take a bit of that, and that, and oh—let me replate it for you.”

Then one day leadership draws a line. Ownership gets clarified. And like clockwork, your former helper turns… chilly. No “good morning.” No door-holding. Just quiet, precise disengagement. It feels petty. Because it is.

Let’s talk about that dynamic—what’s happening under the hood, how to handle it without losing your mind, and yes, the seductive itch to be petty right back.

On Telling Stories (and Jokes, and… “Antidotes”): A Field Guide for Human Connection

 First, the gentle correction: you probably mean anecdotes. Unless you’re curing awkward silence with penicillin—in which case, please share the dosage.

This is a deep thought tour through the messy craft of telling things that make people lean in. Stories. Jokes. Those quick, true moments you toss into conversation like a pebble and—surprise—the water ripples for hours.

I won’t pretend this is definitive. Storytelling is part muscle, part mystery. But here’s what I know from living inside my own head, where the narrator refuses to take a day off.

Self Outlook: Learning to Love Yourself (Without Losing the Plot)

 I used to think “self-love” was a bath bomb and a motivational quote in neon. Cute. Harmless. Then life handed me a mirror with no filter and said, “Look.” And what I saw wasn’t a poster. It was a person. Frayed in places. Braver than advertised. Tired. Carrying stories that never got a proper ending.

So let’s talk about Self Outlook—the way you look at you. Not the Instagram gloss. The honest angle. Because how you see yourself sets the ceiling for how you show up, love, heal, lead, and live.

I’m amused by my own muse, but here’s the truth I keep returning to: you can’t be the true you while auditioning for someone else’s approval.

The Quiet Math of Communication Etiquette

 vocal, physical, digital — pros, cons, and how not to implode a conversation

There’s a reason we remember how people made us feel more than what they said. Communication is body heat disguised as language. It’s posture and pixels and breathing. It’s the space between words. The unclicked “Send.” The apology that shows up late but still matters.

The One-Upper in the Wild: A Field Guide for the Rest of Us

 Some people hear your story like it’s their starter pistol. You say you ran a 5K. They’ve already finished a marathon uphill, in boots, carrying a refrigerator. You share a hard week. They’ve had a hard life. You mention a small win. They’re a walking trophy case with built-in LED lighting.

We call them one-uppers. I call them noise with a pulse.

How to Find (and Be) a Life Partner: A Field Guide for the Brave and the Tired

 Some people say love is simple. Those people either got lucky or forgot the messy parts. The rest of us have to actually build it. Brick by awkward, honest, ordinary brick.

This isn’t a fairy tale. It’s a blueprint with fingerprints all over it.

I’ve learned this the hard way: a “life partner” is less about butterflies and more about whether you two can carry groceries through a thunderstorm without turning on each other. Infatuation is an elevator; partnership is the stairs. You take it one step at a time. Some days, your legs burn. Other days, you hit the landing and catch your breath and remember why you chose this climb.

Below is the best of what I know—field-tested, occasionally bloody, and absolutely workable.

The Tax on Looking Rich — Ego, Image, and the Cost of Counterfeit Success

There’s a special kind of tired that comes from trying to be the glossy version of yourself. Not tired like “long day at the job.” Tired like carrying a mirror through a hurricane and pretending you’re not being cut by it.

We don’t talk about that kind of tired because it ruins the illusion. Image hates honesty the way mold hates sunlight.

This is a long look at what happens when ego and image-management start steering the car. How the chase for financial status can quietly rewrite your morals. How “wealth” becomes a costume you can’t take off without also stripping pieces of your integrity. And whether the trade-off is ever worth it.

I’ll spoil the ending: the bill always shows up. It’s itemized. And it wants interest.

Gaslighting: how to spot it, survive it, and stop apologizing for things you didn’t break

 Gaslighting isn’t a plot twist. It’s a slow leak. You don’t notice the hiss at first—just that you keep doubting your own ears. Your memory. Your pattern-recognition. Before long you’re living in a house where the lights “were never on,” and somehow you’re paying the electric bill.

I’ve dealt with versions of this in family and work. Wrote it down. Mapped the patterns. Drew some hard lines. (Receipts help: timelines, behaviors, where my head went sideways and how I got it back. )

Here’s the quick, honest field guide.

The Quiet Mathematics of Friendship: Know, Show, and Let Go

 Some people add to your life. Some subtract. A rare few multiply you. The rest? Divide you from yourself. Choose accordingly.

I’ve learned the hard way that friendship isn’t a vibe. It’s a practice. A series of small proofs stacked over time. Below is a field guide — how to spot true friends, how to be one, how to set boundaries without turning it into a courtroom — and how to walk away when someone makes a sport of eroding your peace.

When Love is Far Away: How Emotional Distance in Childhood Echoes Into Adulthood

 Some childhoods aren’t loud. They’re quiet in the wrong places. Parents busy or absent. Peers who look through you like smoke. No obvious villain, just a long, low hum of neglect—feelings that never quite find a landing pad. This isn’t drama; it’s drought. And drought has consequences.

Below is a cause-and-effect map for that quiet kind of hurt—what tends to happen when kids grow up with emotionally distant parents and cold peer groups, and how it often shows up years later. Then we’ll get into what actually helps.

How to Communicate (Like You Mean It)

 

The baseline (what “good” looks like)

• Clear: People don’t need to be mind-readers. Say the thing.

• Direct: Speak to the person, not about the person.

• Respectful: Attack the problem, not the human.

• Boundaried: “No” is a sentence. “Not now” is also a sentence.

• Traceable: Put important agreements in writing so memory can’t gaslight you later.

I know what happens when these are missing: back-channeling, silence-as-weapon, image-management over integrity. Communication collapses when we try to manage how we look instead of what we mean. (Ask me how I learned that the hard way. On second thought—don’t. Or read the receipts.)

 

Active Listening: The Quiet Skill That Changes Everything

There’s a particular kind of silence that heals. Not the cold kind—the silent treatment, the freeze-out—but the attentive kind. The kind that says: I’m here. I’m not trying to fix you. I’m actually hearing you.

Active listening is that silence with a spine.

Are You A Confidence Trickster?

Some people drift through life unaware of the turmoil their selfish choices cause. Others know exactly what they’re doing and do it anyway — because it works for them. Those are confidence tricksters: people who manufacture trust, then cash it in. They’ll lie, cheat, and steal with a straight face and sleep just fine afterward. If you’re willing to hurt people and feel nothing, that isn’t just a bad habit. That’s textbook sociopathy.