Please know that this is not one of those self-righteous, narcissistic posts that shame people for not being as cool the author thinks he is. Promise. I learned long ago that you can’t get along with everyone. Even if you try. No matter how nice you might be, there will always be people with whom you don’t gel. That’s life. It’s cool. I also learned long ago how to let people go. Maybe it was my time in the USAF, before…
The older I get the more I see waves of young people in America come to terms with the reality that the dreams they have been chasing might be a lie. It usually starts in their mid-to-late 20s when they’re either passed over for promotion, are frustrated with their rate of professional growth, or are cut loose altogether for things outside of their control in the corporate world. And while this sobering realization could be a wake up call, for…
“See that mountain over there? Well, one of these days I’m gonna climb that mountain.” – Mountain Music, by Alabama This song came out in 1982, the year I turned 18. It must have been pretty popular because it seeped through the armor of the British metal I was wrapped up in at the time. And while the fiddle at the end of this song is pretty sweet, it wasn’t the song that resonated with me. Just that opening line above. Dude…
He took a long swig of beer, crushed the can, and discarded it in the yard. Then he lit a cigarette and motioned for us to get into the car. It was a summer afternoon. Sweat glistened on our skin as we rode in the back of the yellow car with the burning black seats. The man backed down the driveway and into the street with a thud. I studied the side of his grizzled face as he gripped the…
Is there anything more featureless than being a white, middle-class, heterosexual American male? There’s nothing controversial for us to fight for. Our job is to do our part to keep the species moving forward, and, thanks to religion and politics, we tend to screw that up. Our value has been reduced to our purchasing power. And when we don’t have much of that, we just fade away. Or we write books about raging against the machine that few read, and…
All young people should get a blog. I don’t care whether it’s a custom-hosted blog like this one, Medium, or Tumblr, teenagers should be documenting their ideas and experiences online in long form. A friend shared an unfortunate story with me this week about his son who was kicked off of a sports team at school. The reason for the dismissal was that he’d said something on Snapchat that someone misconstrued as bullying, and the school has a one-strike policy…
