November 25, 2024

Whitepaper is moving along, hopefully to more concrete stuff. I have a model in mind for this week’s email that I’m pretty excited about.

Other than that it’s been continuing what feels like a fighting retreat from a lot of the things that take up time so there’s more to focus on family and work. I mentioned that to my wife and she pointed out that there’s lots of growth happening in the family, both with the kids and with us as individuals and a couple. And that’s true, and easy for me to forget.

Some of the practices that aren’t getting the attention I’d like to give them are meditation, exercise, listening. I practice them when I can, but that feels like hardly a practice and it’s easy to look up after a week or a month and say, “wow, I haven’t done such-and-such for as long as I can remember.” Instead I’m trying to fit in a nap whenever humanly possible. And I still don’t feel like I get enough sleep!

One thing I am managing to continue committing to is my men’s group. If you’re reading this and you’re interested, check out the ManKind Project. It’s a wonderful organization and it would serve the world well if it continues to grow.

Blessings to you. With Thanksgiving coming up this week, I’d like to say I’m grateful to you for reading my words. And I’ll also say: what a crazy season of life!

October 31, 2024

I forgot to mention one project in my update from the other day: the Bringing Humanity to Tech Support whitepaper. I’m currently working through this in my weekly newsletter. It’s been fun, and challenging. I get prompts and pushback from my readers, and my knee-jerk reaction is to think I’m wrong, or overcomplicating things, or making it all about me, me, me. But after a day or so the catastrophizing and “this’ll never work” voices quiet down and I can start to see clearly again.

It’s a great practice in managing multiple perspectives, listening to other perspectives, and all the other skills I’m trying to practice. I don’t know what will come of the whitepaper. I hope it will help some folks in the tech industry, because the nascent version of the ideas seemed to help my teammates when I incorporated it into their training.

October 29, 2024

I wrote in my journal last night that I vacillate between telling myself “man, life is hard right now,” and “man, you’re just feeling sorry for yourself.” I shared that with a friend this morning and he sent me his daily reflection from The Language of Letting Go. It was all about acceptance.

On the one hand, it can feel dismissive to reply to someone sharing the difficulties of their life to say, “hey, just, like, accept it, you know?” On the other hand, there seems to be a kind of magical truth in acceptance. The skill of delivering the message with compassion seems valuable.

Anyway, more and more it seems that what life is asking of me right now is to slow down, pare back, take care of the kids and worry about the other stuff less.

On the other hand, it feels like any effort to keep projects and commitments moving forward (like, for instance, updating this page) is really good exercise for staying just enough in shape that when the resistance bands of life come off I’ll really be able to spring in to action.

It’s a delicate balance, though. It feels like there’s an ever-present risk of letting myself get pulled too far out of the moment by these dreams and aspirations of mine, murky and ill-defined as they may be.

Here’s something, anyway: I’m committing to developing the skill of listening. It doesn’t cost a lot to practice this. Every moment is an opportunity. In the last few weeks I got hit in the face a couple times by my own resistance to listening. I get uncomfortable, or irritated, and immediately pull back and make it all about my discomfort and irritation. What will happen if I instead recognize those moments as opportunities to listen to someone deeply, despite my discomfort?

I bet I learn something. And when I get really skilled at listening, I’ll be able to offer a gift that not a lot of people ever get. When is the last time someone listened to you, all the way down to the bottom of what you had to say?

October 3, 2024

Wow, a whole month gone. What even happened?

My manager got let go, the baby started crawling, my dishwasher broke (lots of puddles in the kitchen over the course of a week), a bunch of stuff came up with the HOA, had lots of conversations about income and career. All of it took time to handle, time during which I wasn’t really being with myself or paying attention. I’m not very clear on what all happened yet, or how I handled it. A lot of it’s just a blur.

In a way I just want to leave it all behind and move forward with a clean slate. In another way, if I don’t reflect on it, what can I learn?

Might be an interesting practice to just try letting it go and see what happens. It’s probably all I have time for anyway. Surely a single month’s worth of lessons can’t be that valuable.

August 29, 2024

The hours and days continue to feel full. When I get a minute, it feels like the last thing I want to do to update this page, or my website, or my resume. Yet I’ve made progress on all three.

Yes, things are changing! I’m working on growing my income this year, and if evolving my career is the way to do it, well let’s go. I don’t feel ready, but I’m ready. Just nervous about the time commitment, really, given all the other plates I have spinning.

Couple reflections:

• I’m starting to see the connections between this work with coming home and my career path of technical/customer support. I didn’t think about it before, but it really came out in my coaching and training: I realized I help customers best when I’m comfortable—and I can be comfortable even when I don’t know what’s going on. All the training I’ve ever seen done tries to teach people more about what’s going on, how to solve it, what to say, etc. But those things might be a distraction from the real work, which is having the experience that you can handle whatever gets thrown your way. That’s a practice, and one I think I can help people with.

• I only recently realized that my book, The Forest is the Tree, is for people who, like me, struggle with trying to integrate too many perspectives. Ken Wilber calls it aperspectival madness. Multiple perspectives are great, but when I lose sight of my own I suffer. Anyway, this is a valuable insight for me, and I hope it will help me identify and connect with people I want to help.

July 24, 2024

What a month. I seem to put myself through the ringer during the summers—or at least this summer. I’ll have to read through my journals from previous years to see if there’s a pattern. But when will I have time to do that?

In this case, though, it’s not just me. There have been a bunch of deaths recently, in our extended family, our friends’ families, and family pets. I’ve been feeling a lot of sadness lately. That’s also been an opportunity to reflect: in the past, I would have wanted to get through it quickly, to “feel better.” But I see there’s nothing wrong with feeling sad. It’s opened me up to a lot of important lessons the past couple of weeks. Here’s the biggie:

I’m starting to catch more frequent glimpses that what I want and what I’m afraid of are the same thing: awakening. (I’m a little squeamish about even using that term.) I want to be free from the suffering that comes with identifying with my ego. At the same time, I love my ego dearly and am afraid of letting go of it.

That’s it, put simply. There’s a lot of emotion in those words I just wrote. It doesn’t seem complicated when I write about it, but when I look at it and feel into it it feels like the scariest and hardest thing I could ever so. And that’s saying something, considering how much difficulty I’ve been through (and put myself through) in the past couple weeks.

Well. Enough for now. Time to get some other stuff done.

June 24, 2024

I got my reminder to update this page four days ago, and I’ve just managed to sit down to do it. Part of it has been business, and part has been avoidance. There’s some HOA business and some challenges around my calling that have been filling up my awareness. And I also see that I give more attention to those things than they likely need.

For instance, I committed to having an important conversation with a friend and spent the next five days fretting about inviting them to talk! I could see that it was ridiculous, and I could see that the conversation was super important to me. I passed up several opportunities to speak up and invite them, but over and over I chickened out. I just couldn’t get myself to speak up.

Meditation helped. I realized this conversation was, in the words of the tradition I was raised in, a “stumbling block.” Something that seems to be irritatingly in your way, but is supposedly a gift. That idea came back to me while meditating and I rediscovered the wisdom of it. How this precise challenge, as hard as it was and as resentful as I was feeling about it, was precisely the path I needed to travel to grow. On the other side of this thing was the new me. That helped put it in perspective, and I felt something inside me shift. What had been simply a verbal commitment to some of my teachers suddenly became something I knew I was going to do. Later that same day I took an opportunity to make the invitation and it went as smoothly as you can imagine. Almost no effort, no nerves, nothing.

I think I learned something from this experience. And I’ll have more thoughts next month after having the conversation.

May 21, 2024

It’s been a wonderful month. At the same time, I’m not sure I’ll be able to write about it without feeling totally inauthentic. Let’s find out.

I’ve been more consistently present in the last couple weeks than I can recall being, well, ever. It’s not 100% of the time. I can certainly feel the pull of my cell phone in my pocket. But I’m more aware of it than ever, and I’m choosing to put it away or leave it away to be with whatever is going on, even if it’s boring or noisy or chaotic kid stuff.

That being present is connected to the work I’ve been doing with my coach. I’m committing to living helping people experience coming home. That’s how I’m languaging my calling. It’s not perfect yet, and it hasn’t settled in. But there’s something deeply important to me about this idea of coming home.

I’m newslettering about it these days, so if you want to hear more you can do so here.

The Landmark seminar continues, and integrity is only a small part of it. There’s years of work to do here before I’ve mastered integrity, being peaceful, being right, and being powerful. And there’s more still to come. Maybe “master” isn’t even the right word to use. Maybe it’s just an ongoing practice.

I’ve also recently re-appreciated one of the commandments of the Christian tradition I was raised with: do not take the name of the Lord in vain. It’s wonderfully healing when I discover some of the wisdom of the tradition I was raised in—even if I’m no longer able to live within that tradition. I can see it’s not all bad. Maybe someday I will even arrive at the place where I see it’s all ok, a necessary part of what brought me to this place where I must be because I am here. In any case, I’ll write about that in the newsletter soon, too.

April 22, 2024

In my current seminar with Landmark, I’m creating the possibility of being a man of integrity.

Now, that doesn’t precisely fulfill the assignment because it doesn’t “knock my socks off.” In fact, when I think about what it means, it seems impossible. So I’m definitely not relating to it as a possibility yet. More as a concept.

But that’s a start. I’ve already cleaned up a couple places where my integrity had fallen short.

One pitfall I see with this that I experienced in a previous seminar (called the integrity seminar, actually), was that, when trying to have integrity I am liable to get neurotic and hypervigilant about where I’m out of integrity. That's an awful way to be and I don’t want to live my life like that. So I’m looking closely at going slow this time and not worrying about it like it’s a finish line. It seems like it must be a process, and ongoing commitment, rather than a thing to be cleaned up, buttoned up, and shut up.

It still seems like it’ll be a lot of work, and I continue to be very lazy. But we’ll see what happens. It feels like a deeper transformation than last time. Less “gotta do this” and more “beginner’s mind.”

April 4, 2024

My book was a finalist for an Award!

March 21,2024

Another update, shortly after the last.

We had a trip to my parents with the kids. It was challenging in some ways, relaxing in others. I think they enjoyed showing off the grandbabies. So that’s wonderful.

I am deepening my practice and experience of separating myself from my thoughts. I am not my thoughts, and in fact when I am stuck identifying with my thoughts my thinking is actually rather garbage.

No big updates on my calling yet. I managed to read one whole chapter of a book since the last update. Which is actually a lot. And I look forward to being able to move a little more quickly someday.

March 4, 2024

The natural tension to life now is that so much is happening that I should be updating more frequently, but so much is happening that it’s harder to update frequently.

In the last month I’ve encountered:

• upset at being alone while surrounded by friends

• some of the most powerful emails I’ve ever written

• the death of a friend and mentor

• my kids turning 18 months and 2 months old

• a first fumbling attempt at articulating my life’s purpose

• the realization that life has no purpose

• a commitment to get rid of my smartphone

• endless streams of baby poop

• irritation at my wife for not listening to me while she was irritated at me for not appreciating her

• some kind of allergies or something resulting in a 3-week sore throat

• some serious obsession with an old board game of mine

• a new bed and mattress

• a new sense of power and freedom at work

• way, way more work than I can handle

• the realization that I really care a lot about what people think of me

• the realization that I’m a walking contradiction and have no “correct” views on anything

• next to zero progress reading all the books I want to read

• oh yeah, and I was a guest on this podcast: https://johnpoelstra.com/landmark-forum-michael-marvosh-122/

That’s enough for now. And also not even close to as much as I want.

January 23, 2024

Currently meditating in the morning (this had lapsed after the baby was born), working with coach, weekly men’s group training, relationship counseling with my wife, writing a biweekly email, presiding over the HOA, taking care of the kids a lot. Meeting with my anti-echo-chamber group monthly. Meeting with people to discuss important topics as often as I can. All these things are spiritual work. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I have a strong sense this is all contributing to a structure that will serve me in the future. It’s a crazy time and a precious time and a time where it’s difficult to see and remember much of anything.

I may be addicted to my phone.

I’d like to start a nonreligious church. Whatever that is.

December 26, 2023

Life happened. Had a baby. Grandma stayed with us for a couple weeks to help. Christmas shopping and celebration. All wonderful things. Also fairly disruptive to the fulfillment of any desire to study. Well. There’s no problem here. Just things yet to be pursued. What would life be without that?

To follow up on last month’s update. Listening was a practice for a couple days, and then it became very easy to forget about it. I listen well. Probably better than average. But average doesn’t matter, that’s just a comparison. The point is to grow. I grew a little, and then it seems like I said “enough!” and regressed to my mean.

When I came to my site to update this page, I encountered my front page again, with all its words about truth and Truth. Truth has been a part of my personal mission for a long time, but I recently had a self-realization about this.

As a very quick context: Ken Wilber created a model of the stages of human cultural evolution. They are an oversimplification, of course, as all models are, but they are helpful (as some models are). His basic stages are Traditional, Modern, and Postmodern (followed by Post-postmodern—which he calls Integral and which some others call Metamodern). There are earlier stages as well, but they don’t have much bearing on what I realized.

I was raised Traditional. The Lutheran church believes it knows the Truth and where it comes from. My job, as a young Lutheran, was to get on board with that program. Now, that sounds much worse than it actually seemed to me; my experience was rather benign. But this is still an expression of Wilber’s Traditional stage: ingest the community’s values, appreciate them, spread them. Evangelicalism is a very good example of Traditionalism.

But culture moved on to Modernity, which is an evolution of Traditionalism. Modernity still believes in Truth, it just believed that human beings could get at Truth via reason and science. Now the Traditional values aren’t so sacred, but rather the human capacity to think, argue, and discover the ways reality is put together.

Postmodernity followed Modernity, of course. The big realization of Postmodernity was that, actually, we can’t be sure any of our perceptions aren’t contaminated with bias, logical flaws, or other errors of perception or thought that would undo whatever carefully curated version of Truth we might come up with. We aren’t separate from the system. We aren’t the impartial observers Modernity holds us to be.

Anyway, what I realized is that I had been thinking that because I was aware of Postmodern thinking, that I was in some important way no longer a Modern thinker. But this isn’t true. I still have been going about my life thinking that I know what Truth is (the Singular Everything), and that if I could just get people to see that, it would solve a lot of problems.

But I haven’t fully understood what Postmodernism is saying. I still don’t, but my realization was a glimpse of the fact that maybe Truth really doesn’t exist. Maybe, within my own limited-yet-interconnected perspective on reality, the only truth I will ever be able to interact with is my own perspective-bound ideas. If this is the case, then any truth I come up with is necessarily my truth, and whatever truth I might help someone else discover is only theirs to discover. At the very least this would have profound implications for whatever method I tried to use to assist in this discovery.

So I think I probably have some grieving to do of my Modern self. The world is moving on—in many ways has already moved on. There is nothing wrong with being Modern, but I definitely feel challenged to grow beyond my past ways of being.

November 21, 2023

Last week I made a commitment I knew I would fail to keep. That felt strange.

I promised to listen for two whole weeks. Not just during conversations, but all the time. Even while writing an update like this one.

I think I did well for a couple days. Then it was the weekend and I often forgot about it, or just didn’t want to do it. Sometimes I let that stop me, and sometimes I didn’t.

What is this listening I’m talking about? I sort of know, and sort of don’t. It’s difficult, perhaps impossible, to describe. It’s a way of being, an awareness, that I have to carry with me through each moment. It’s being open to what’s happening, paying Attention to it, bringing what feels like more of myself but less of my thoughts.

I asked my coach, if I’m having a conversation and I’m using my mind to interpret and understand what the other person is saying, is that listening? He said no, that’s talking.

So in a way I don’t even know how to listen. But in a way I do.

It’s difficult. It’s a practice. And serious practice is a risk. I’m constantly failing. But also growing. Maybe that’s the point.

October 24, 2023

And just like that, October is gone. Time filled up with Halloween social stuff and a burst pipe in the crawlspace necessitating we get the whole house replumbed. Time consuming.

I nevertheless got a bit more reading done this month. The “new Christianity” movement I mentioned last time isn’t the right path for me. I pitched a couple books I was planning to read, but I’ve kept a few as well.

Currently working through Joseph Campbell and Brianna Wiest, and Tara Brach on audio. Have been meditating 20 minutes daily. No noticeable effect yet. I’m not sure effect is the point. I’m still learning. It’s a practice. It’s hard and somewhat frustrating, but also not exactly burdensome. I don’t know how to talk about it yet.

I am torn between a thing that’s important to me but I don’t know what it is (something to do with god and religion and what that even means) and a thing that is just fun and enjoyable and that I’m good at (board games). If you want to get updates on the important thing, sign up here. If you want to get updates about board games, well, you can’t. It doesn’t exist anywhere yet. I guess if you live near me we can talk about it.

Things have been expensive lately, what with house repairs, but I hope to be taking some risks soon.

September 26, 2023

A very busy month. Things still don’t feel back to normal.

Within the last week I got a good look at how out of touch with my self I’ve been. I’m working hard on listening—to myself, and others. I think maybe I have to learn to listen to myself before I can really listen to others.

I’m encountering a lot of soul work. I think it might be more fruitful to connect with and learn from the people in those circles than in the “new Christianity” movement I’ve been looking at.

There’s an overabundance of material and an underabundance of time. But I’m also practicing being more disciplined about my use of time.

September 5, 2023 (actually posted September 7)

Not a huge update today, but I had a reminder to check my site so here I am.

I finished Faith after Doubt, by Brian McLaren. I don’t think I was the target audience, exactly. Maybe I’m searching for some kind of faith? Or maybe I’ve already discovered it? I can pose several statements in a row as questions? I wonder how many? 5? 6? More?

Neither of the books I picked up next are making a point. They are both collections of thoughts.

First, there’s 101 Essays that will Change the way You Think, by Brianna Wiest. That one’s pretty much explained by the title. The essays are very good. The biggest thing that’s stuck with me so far is that fear isn’t something to be avoided, but is a sign that we’re moving toward something we want.

Then, there’s A Joseph Campbell Companion, which is a number of essays by Campbell, selected and edited by Diane K. Osbon, who worked with him and knew him well. Campbell’s work in mythology has had a big impact in my life, but I haven’t really read much by him, so this seems like a great place to dive in, even if it is difficult to read in long stretches.

Oh, I guess there’s a third one as well: Reconstructing Christianity, by Rich Mayfield. Though this is pretty much just a published daily diary. Mayfield is a very progressive Christian, but is still looking at things through a Jesus lens, which I realize I’m trying to avoid. I wonder if that’s ending up being helpful or not.

I’m still on the fence about which book I’ll seriously tackle next.

August 21, 2023

Random thought, encountered shortly before writing this: Layman Pascal is an amazing thinker. Like, go see the Barbie movie, then read this.

I’m creating a new shelf of books. I’ll call it my “bible shelf” or something like that. Books I want to return to again and again because they have deep things to say about being human, and I sense they’ll help me navigate life for the foreseeable future. Maybe books will fall off the shelf after a time, but that’s not a problem for now. Here are the books I’ll put on there right away:

• A Brief History of Everything, by Ken Wilber

• The Creative Act, by Rick Rubin

• The Way of Integrity, by Martha Beck

• 101 Essays That Will Change the Way You Think, by Brianna Wiest

• The Anatomy of Peace, by The Arbinger Institute (and possibly Leadership and Self-Deception as well)

I have another 17 books in the queue to read. It’ll be interesting to see how many of them make the shelf. (That’s not to say that books that don’t weren’t worth my time. But I’m looking at my reading project lately as a search for foundational material, and not everything can be foundational.)

July 20, 2023

You’re probably familiar with echo chambers. You know, environments where it’s vitally important to fit in and think what the group is “approved” to think. I’ve been reading Tim Urban’s “What’s Our Problem” recently and got slapped in the face that I’m a part of several echo chambers, and have been uncertain why I felt so irritated and out of place in them.

Tim incisively mentions that we don’t really have an opposite for echo chambers. That is, groups where it’s not the fitting in or the sacred ideas that matter, but the methods of thinking employed. He coins the term “idea labs” for such places.

That’s exactly what I’m looking for: an idea lab. So I guess I’ll have to create one.

July 3, 2023

So I’ve been learning some things about authenticity recently, and I’m struggling a bit with integrating them. I’m not sure if I’m doing it authentically or if I’m just “following instructions,” as it were.

The thing I think I understand (and even agree with) is that a good way to be authentic with someone is to admit how you’ve been inauthentic with them. It might even be the case that this is the only way to be authentic. Not sure about that yet.

So I had started out a recent email to my list with an attempt to do just that:

“Another part of restoring my integrity is admitting to you where I've been inauthentic. That's a little less straightforward. I mean, I can say pretty confidently that I have indeed been inauthentic. But the degree to which I have, or the various ways in which I have depend on a lot of things: whether or not you've read The Forest is the Tree; whether or not we've had an in-depth discussion about religion and/or spirituality. Heck, whether or not we've seen each other in the last ten years—if we've even ever met in person.

Anyway, I'm dissembling to avoid owning up to this. So, out with it, Michael.

In my writing—both in these emails I've been sending you and in my book, The Forest is the Tree, I've tried to be clear about one thing: I don't know anything. Heck, I said it in my previous email: "I have no idea how I'm going to do it."

But really, this isn't true. I use this feigned ignorance to hide. To avoid taking responsibility. To avoid standing up for something so I don't have to take responsibility for making a difference in the world.

While I do admit easily and often that I'm afraid to talk about these things, the real, authentic truth is much deeper than that.

The real, authentic truth is that there are some things I know a lot about. And I want you (and everyone else) to be impressed by my knowledge—but I don't want to take any of the responsibility that comes from knowing something. I want all the status with none of the work. I'm very self-centered. I don't want to help people. I just want to hide behind this vague, mild-mannered, quasi-enlightened-yet-bemusedly-perplexed demeanor and kill time playing games on my phone and eating too much sugar.

Ugh.

The impact of this inauthentic way of being that I've been foisting on the world is that I haven't been trying to help you (or anyone). Not really. I've just been living up in my head, oxymoronically articulately mumbling preachy stuff. Blah blah blah. Blah.

This is so pernicious, I'm even doing it right now. Being overly hard on myself so someone will feel sorry for me.

Don't feel sorry for me. I'm good. I'm going to learn to carry this thing I have to carry, and it won't always be graceful, but it's going to help the world. God willing, it's going to help you. Like, really really help.”

But then, as I was editing the email later, that felt inauthentic. And I got caught in this loop where it felt totally impossible to be authentic in writing. And that wasn’t something to confess in an email to my list. Too self-centered to be of use to them. So I moved it here.

June 21, 2023

It seems the two places to start on this project are 1) educating myself, and 2) making some extra money to buy myself some extra time to work on the project. My self-education has started: I have a number of books on their way in the mail. I’m diligently working on reading them during the baby’s naptime (as well as making updates like this one). Making some extra money is a bit unfamiliar territory for me, but I’m a lot more comfortable with it than I used to be. I have some ideas and I’ll start exploring them with my supporters in next week’s email update.

June 6, 2023

News: Recent guest on both The Writer’s Series and The Curious Navel. Both fun and interesting conversations. I’m learning a lot.

Progress: I’ve blocked out some time with a babysitter to give myself a couple hours a week to work on writing—or at least writing-adjacent stuff. I expect it’ll take me a while to get the cobwebs cleared out. But I have a new book idea—and a new vision for the future that book will be in service of. I never expected it, but in hindsight it makes complete sense. It’s this: I see a world no longer divided by religion.

That’s a huge can of worms, obviously. So I can say with confidence that you’ll see some good clean mess in the coming months.

May 19, 2023

Man, what a racket I run with myself, right? Look at that whining from April! I’ve been hard at work in Landmark’s programs, learning to see the ways I show up inauthentically with my family and my job. I have a lot of work to do to clean up my act, contribute to my family, friends, and community, and step into my power.

I’m learning to make promises I don’t know how to keep as a way to spur growth. So here’s one: I’ll update this page at least every month, indefinitely.

April 4, 2023

Oh, there are so many updates I could have written over the past three and a half months. It’s proving more and more difficult to sit down and focus on something for any significant period of time. I’m almost always interrupted, sometimes after 30 minutes, sometimes after 5. I remember a day a few months ago where I sat down to write and literally typed four words before I got interrupted.

It’s a pretty demoralizing way to try to make progress.

I could write about our successful Breakwater retreat in January, or our birthdays in February (with a surprise visit from my parents), or our having to drop too many thousands of dollars on a new HVAC system, or attending the life-transforming Landmark Forum in March, or realizing that I’ve not been present for my wife and daughter and needing to make amends to those relationships.

It’s been an eventful, and just generally full, few months. I’ve just slashed back my website to some general info, because I need to refocus on the relationships that matter the most. They are the foundation of all that I am and do, and I’ve been using them and selfishly taking them for granted instead of cultivating them and growing them as a partner.

So that’s my focus for now. I don’t know that I’ll write about it all that much. But if you stick around, maybe you’ll see some of the fruits of that over time.

I hope you’re well. Peace and love to you.

December 13, 2022

Reading my last few updates is interesting, because I conspicuously didn’t mention what has been the most significant development in my life, which is the birth of our daughter. She was born August 9, just one day after I made an update here.

So the last few months have been an adventure in juggling new parenthood with trying to maintain myself as a writer. It’s been difficult, and when things are in conflict I’ve erred on the side of parenthood. Hence, no updates in almost two months.

But things are beginning to move again, if slowly. I’ll be a guest on the Straight Talk No Chaser radio show on Thursday (flyer below), and I plan to restart my blog here (which has some embarrassingly outdated content in it). I fully realize that, if I want to be a writer, I need to write. That’s one of those no-shit realizations that’s been far too long in coming.

The baby makes it challenging, and will continue to do so. So my growth and development as a writer might not be exactly meteoric. But I’ll keep moving forward at my own life’s pace.

October 19, 2022

This is up on the Nonfiction Author’s Association page: Author Interview

The writing engine is sputtering to life. In some ways it’s getting easier, but in others it continues to be challenging. Still much work to be done promoting the book and myself.

September 12, 2022

Mistakes are all corrected and latest proof copies are in the mail.

It’s been difficult to write for the last month because of the new baby. I want to give myself some space to adjust to being a father, but I also don’t want to let things go for too long. My daughter shouldn’t be an excuse for me to not do the work.

August 18, 2022

Small update: I pushed the release date out to September 21. I made a small mistake with the cover that needed to be corrected, and there were a few other things about the self-publishing process I didn’t understand that made me slow out of the gate to announce the book.

This process has been frustrating in a lot of ways. I think I made just about every mistake possible, so it’s good to be done with this for now. Hopefully next time I’ll be able to straight up hire someone to do all this for me!

August 8, 2022

Has it really been four months again? Holy moly. Well, we’re through the proofreading and final edits and cover design and layout and ALL THE THINGS. There is SO MUCH that goes into producing a book. I’m in awe of the army of people who do this for a living. It’s remarkable that so many amazing books get produced (much less written) every year.

The book is published and up for sale on Amazon! The paperback version should be available soon, and physical copies will also be getting distributed to local bookstores by Ingram Spark (though I confess I don’t yet fully understand how that process works). The release date is August 31.

Big sigh of relief.

At the same time, there’s more work to be done, and in the last couple days I’ve done more than I did in the several preceding weeks combined (during which time I was often waiting on someone in the aforementioned army to finish their part of the project).

From here forward, it is finalizing these submissions, writing emails, finishing up the audiobook (currently being proofread—erm, prooflistened), and then starting to engage with readers. We will see how long until my next update!

March 30, 2022

Has it really been four months? I’m too preoccupied with all the stuff that’s happened to sit and write and reflect about it. Probably the perennial conundrum…

I finished the rewrite (fifth draft) in early February, did a pass with my editor, and put it in the proofreader’s hands throughout March. It’s been wonderful to be able to read again in the mornings, after having been writing for more than two years straight. In the last few days I’ve started workshopping ideas with my designer. I’m grateful and humbled to be helped by such excellent people.

Meanwhile, we traveled for my sister’s wedding, found out we’re having a baby in September, bought a house, moved in, and are painting and fixing all the things. That’s an ongoing amount of work that really forced me to shift how I look at getting things done. Having a book project going is one thing; having a book project and a home project going is another. Soon it’ll be a book and a home and a baby. Phew!

So I’m also glad to be coming to the end of the writing, and will be so relieved to have this published. Though, of course, then I’ll need to figure out how to sell books :)

November 30, 2021

I decided to start the rewrite. I’m happy with how it’s gone so far. I also committed to an editor, and had a preliminary meeting with her. She’s going to read the current draft of the book, then I’m going to talk her through the outline of the new draft. We’ll then analyze the current draft from the perspective of how well it elucidates the ideas in the new outline. Hopefully, that will contribute to a smoother next draft. And we’ll go from there. My current thought is that this book will be about 40,000 words. I suspect that, all told, I will end up having written almost 400,000 to get those 40,000. I hope that, as I become more skilled, future books will give me a better return than just 10%.

November 2021

A whirlwind of a month. I whittled the list of editors down to two, and sent them selections of drafts of the book so they could put together a quote. Just a few days after doing so, an idea came to me. Over two days, I was able to sit down and create a new outline for the book, just two-thirds of a page. This was by far the best and simplest exposition I had yet created. Looking at that page now I am floored by the amount of work—years—that can go into two-thirds of a page. So now, having finished what I thought was the final draft, and essentially submitted it for a dev edit, I am faced with the decision to continue with that version of the book, or to start yet another near-total rewrite. Writing is hard. I will mull it over during the Thanksgiving holiday.

October 25, 2021

Today I began talks with potential editors. As the book nears completion, I’m beginning to feel like I need to figure out how to start thinking of myself as a writer. This involves more than just writing every day. It’s a mindset thing. So I started seeking a writing mentor, as a sort of role model. I don’t know that I’ve found the right person yet, but I did sit down for coffee with a local author. Her advice, which I now plan to follow, was to skip the beta read. It’s too difficult, too complex, and the payoff is unpredictable. So I’m going straight to an editor for a developmental edit. Now I just need to choose the right editor. I have five leads.

September 2021

I got married in July, which is every bit as exhausting as people say. It’s a shocking amount of work, both physical, emotional, and planning…al. I have definitely been suffering from planning fatigue all through August. But, the wedding was a great success, and I am super happy to have taken this next step in my life. Work on the book has continued. The final section has been the most difficult to write because, unlike the other sections, it contains no recycled content from previous drafts. I can say for certain now that the previous title is no longer a fit. No good ideas for a new one yet. I also need to update my preview here.

July 4, 2021

As of today, the first half of the book is pretty much beta-ready. That’s a nice milestone! I don’t think the previous title, Reality Knows the Truth, fits quite as well anymore (though I do still love it). For now, I carry on, with an eye to finish in a couple months (or three or four, if I’m going to be conservative). When it’s done, I start the next step: finding beta readers!

April 25, 2021

Guest on the Graceful Atheist Podcast: A wonderful conversation with David about faith and its loss, about what comes after, and on the importance of talking about things that matter. Listen at this link or on your favorite podcast platform.

April 2021

Making good progress on the 4th draft, with excellent prereader feedback on the 3rd. If you’re curious, grab a preview of it here.

March 2021

The 34,000-word third draft of the book is currently in the hands of some prereaders. I hope to shorten the fourth draft a bit (I will at least get it as short as possible) and start the process of publishing later this year.

2020

I returned to the practice of writing most days in 2020. I got enough clarity of topic to start writing a book, and have been working on it since. Writing a book is complicated and difficult. I went through an extensive prewriting phase where I generated ideas and practiced my voice. By September, that turned into a 15,000-word first draft, which itself turned into a 24,000-word second draft by November. The book doesn’t have a title yet, but if I had to tease a subject, I would say it’s about something I’m calling “rational spirituality.”

August 2019-Covid-19

For the last half of 2019 I focused on some professional goals. No public work to speak of. But something was growing in the background…

December 2018

Guest on The John Poelstra Show: A touch more philosophical than my conversation with Stephen (below) was my talk with John Poelstra, another friend and colleague. John is an expert podcaster, and if you’ve ever thought about starting a podcast, he may be able to help.

October 2018

Guest on Life Skills that Matter podcast: If DMF somehow left you wanting to hear more of my voice (and/or thoughts), my friend and colleague Stephen Warley interviewed me for his podcast. He helps people develop the plan (and the courage) to create a career working for themselves. If you think you might want to go down that road, I am confident he would be able to help.

July 2018-June 2019

Dead Man’s Forest: DMF was my first work in response to my vision quest. It never had many listeners, but recording it every week was cathartic for me, and I suspect there’s some wisdom sprinkled here and there across the 50 episodes—both from my guests and occasionally from my self.

February 2018

I did a four-day fast with the School of Lost Borders. I went forth from the ceremony with a new intention to “share my gift of words with the world.” I wouldn’t say that I have so far succeeded, but I am still trying. A big part of the challenge has been finding a topic. Even the word topic seems insufficient; I want to talk about everything. So it turns out that even a milestone like a vision quest is no destination, just another journey’s beginning. (If you’re looking for direction or meaning in your life, I wholeheartedly recommend the School of Lost Borders. They do amazing work—and so can you.)

January 2018

The Truck that Killed Me: I honestly don’t remember writing this one, though upon rereading it, I do recall the way I felt waking up from this dream. This is more like a poem than most of what I write.

January 2018

I Decided to Write this Post of my Own Free Will… or Did I? Musing on the engine beneath our choices.

November 2017

The purpose of life, from a cosmic perspective: Why are we here?

August 2017

Home: Some thoughts on where we come from and where we’re headed.

August 2017

What do I care enough about to write about every day for 2 years? I started this 2-year writing project. I ended up abandoning it after 6 months—and ended up learning one of my most valuable lessons about the creative life (I have yet to write about this lesson, as it’s not really on-topic for me).

July 2017

Each and every moment is full of a million deaths: Reflections on life after encountering a squirrel.

February 2016

XQ Super School Grant Proposal: I wrote this proposal for the XQ Foundation, a nonprofit that wants to change the face of American education. They offered 50 million dollars to 5 teams to design and build a new high school. My team's proposal made it to the semi-final round of the competition.