Essays

• Kitchen drawers and laundry baskets: On metaphors and data

  “Metaphorical thinking half discovers and half invents the world it describes."

• Productivity app or futile bargain with the universe?

  I fell again for the idea that if I restrict what I can do, I’ll magically become a better me.

• Maybe online writing is like squirreling away acorns

  "Practice telling and retelling your story. Over time, it will clarify."

• It wasn’t writer’s block. I needed a new workflow.

  What had seemed like a willpower issue—(why am I not writing?) or an intelligence issue (am I not smart enough?) or a time issue (when can I write, I have a baby)—was really an issue of workflow and tools.

• Learning to exist in public

  My public existence was not an equation to be solved to other people’s liking.

• What does a good nonfiction book do (and how does it do it)?

  What does a good nonfiction book do?I’m thinking about this while considering Andy Matuschak’s essay, Why Books Don’t Work, the book Write Useful Books, and my own experiences reading...

• I want a /quit page

  What can we learn about ourselves from what we have chosen to quit?

• 🌱 Interruptibility is a superpower - Workflows Before Rainbows

  "You can have it all, just not all at once." But what is someone in the thick of things to do with this? Stop wanting it all?

• Lessons from the Cisco Icon Set

  If you designed an icon set from scratch to diagram something important about your world, what would it look like?

• Maintenance as a Creative Act

  Why did I never question my desire to "grow my newsletter"?

• Interview: Taking Our Desires Seriously

  A conversation with Shea in the Catskills, creator of Tarot as Questions

• I Do Not Wish to Become a Better Me

  Feeling unprepared is not a problem to be solved.

• Don't Get Invited Into Narratives That Don't Serve You

  As a pregnant trans man, I'm learning to find the stories that serve me, and to let go of the rest.

• "Everything extraneous has burned away": An Interview about Love Alone--A Solo Play for World AIDS Day

  A conversation with the director and actor from Love Alone, a new staging of Paul Monette's 1988 poetry collection grieving the loss of his partner, Roger, to AIDS.

• Trans Ancestor Frank Woodhull and the Stories That Come From Necessity

  How do I make sure to separate the stories that I tell from necessity—for advocacy reasons, for example—from those that feel most personal, most true, most alive?

• What Does It Mean to Be Believed?

  Ever since I became a pregnant man, I have ceased to be believed about certain basic facts.

• There Are No Rules for a Pregnant Trans Body

  On learning to be a pregnant man in public.

• Against the Linear Narrative of Pregnancy

  The shapes we give our stories matter.

Book Notes

• The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control by Katherine Morgan Schafler

  "Perfectionism is a phenomenon, not a disorder."

• Duly Noted by Jorge Arango

  "Producing a major work like a book entails revealing a curated path through a space of ideas."

• Fables and Spells by adrienne maree brown

  "if you can’t see the small you will keep leaping from built thing to built thing"

• Hospicing Modernity by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira

  "We are living off expired or expiring stories. Stories that expire can no longer dance with you. They are lethargic or stuck, they can’t move things in generative ways anymore, but we often feel we cannot let them go."

• Influence Is Your Superpower by Zoe Chance

  "In almost any negotiated agreement the key ingredients will be similar: dreams and data."

• Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg

  "There are innumerable ways to write badly. The usual way is making sentences that don’t say what you think they do."

• Start More Than You Can Finish by Becky Blades

  "It turns out all my unlaunched businesses, unhung art projects, never-assembled clubs, unthrown parties, unpublished essays, and assorted unfinished beginnings each served a completely complete purpose."