A living hall of story and craft
A glimpse behind the curtain.
Personal updates, musings, and studio notes. Here’s where I share what I’m reading, listening to, or experimenting with — as well as the ups and downs of life as an indie maker. Think of it as a journal you’re welcome to peek into.
People sometimes mistake confidence for arrogance, or authority for delusion. I understand why. When someone writes with conviction, especially about their own work, it can sound as though they believe they’ve got it all figured out — as though they woke up one morning knowing exactly what to do. The truth is the opposite. Everything … Read more
Every so often I stop and ask myself why I write any of this at all. Why put private questions into public language? Why offer up my changing thoughts about religion, spirit, and the many worlds I move through? I know that writing about belief can make someone look like a teacher—or worse, like the … Read more
Why I Left Social Media and Still Beat the Algorithm I left social media for the same reason people stop feeding slot machines: I got tired of watching it eat my quarters and call it “networking.” For years I played the game like everyone else. Post a sketch at peak hours. Reply fast. Learn the … Read more
The Joke That Isn’t a Joke Here’s a hilarity I didn’t order: my long, carefully structured essays about precarity, value, and the quiet violences of “content” get ten times the traffic of my actual handmade work. Google, apparently, is a connoisseur of fury—so long as the fury is arranged in clean paragraphs with descriptive subheads. … Read more
Why Owning Your Own Place Still Matters—On AWS, the decentralized internet, the crashing of everyone’s platforms, and keeping the lights on through it all. The Irony of the “Decentralized” Web The day half the internet took a nap, I realized I’d somehow wandered into the decentralized-web conversation—not because I was chasing a new ideology, but … Read more
Here’s a story that shouldn’t be remarkable, but is. When I was a barista, people used to look me in the eye and tell me they didn’t believe in tipping. Not that they couldn’t afford it — that they didn’t believe in it. They’d say, “Tipping’s for people who actually do something.” Or, “You’re just … Read more
The first thing anyone notices about a handmade rosary is never the price. It’s the weight.Glass, stone, metal—each bead has a small gravity, each knot holds a decision, each decade learns to sit in the palm like an animal that trusts you. I made one on the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart, and as … Read more
Sometimes I wake up and want to time-travel — not to fix history, not to warn anyone about the future, but just to log onto the internet when it still made fun noises. You know the ones. The slow static roar of a modem connecting to something bigger than you. The little thrill when the … Read more
You can feel it in your bones some days — the quiet, humiliating grind of being treated like free entertainment, the sensation of standing in a room you built with your hands while strangers file through and take souvenirs you never agreed to give. You post the painting, the poem, the animation that ate half … Read more
At some point, every independent artist realizes that “freedom” on the internet comes with a checkout button.You start with one subscription, then another, and before you know it, you’re paying monthly rent to five different platforms just to exist. That was the day I stopped leasing my livelihood. Not because I hate technology — but … Read more