Derek Porterfield's Blog

I teared up the other day listening to a friend talk about how his girlfriend was secretly planning a trip for him. He saw an email or something that tipped him off and we chatted for over an hour about how incredible that was. It’s not even that the trip was a big deal, it is. But, It was more about how she was planning it around a brewery he really digs. Going through the effort of setting up a cool date around things she knew he loved. That’s huge. And honestly, pretty rare. I love seeing people give freely. I love watching the excitement of planning something special for someone you love and the receipt of that love. It’s all just this magical ball of amazing within the human experience.
I’ve been seeing a new obsession with what people deserve for their efforts lately. Whether within relationships or work or passion projects, it feels as though everyone is pushing the same line:

If they don’t appreciate you, drop them.

I get it. I really do. We live in a weird time of selfish survivalism. Really, the people telling you to drop someone that doesn’t appreciate you are trying to protect the fragile hearts we all carry. The idea of course being, that when we are unfulfilled or underappreciated in our own circles, we should hop into a circle that allows us to feel accepted and to grow.

But, I don’t know that this is the right way to approach it. 

I’ve been thinking alot about conditioned versus intentioned giving. 

“If they don’t appreciate you, drop them” Is a prime example of conditioned action. And while it’s certainly not the highest on the hierarchy, I think it’s a factor in the slow crumbling of our ability to interact with and love each other.

At risk of sounding like a philosophy major that won’t pause long enough in my diatribe to take your coffee order, I want to simplify the differences I see between conditional and intentional giving. I think it makes sense to focus on a romantic context, but this really applies anywhere.

You like a girl, right? She’s that one you dreamed about before you even knew you liked girls. That sort of show stopping, oh my god, there must be a soul inside me because it matches so perfectly with hers, kind of girl.

You take her coffee, buy her flowers, ask her on dates and buy her food. You both travel to beautiful places and get lost in each other’s adoring company.

Or so it felt.

But the girl really just wanted a few months of free meals and company while she waited for her ex boyfriend to get out of prison. And now, you sit alone in a booth, in a poetically drab diner, or on a beach somewhere, analyzing everything you did wrong over the last thousand dollars or so of courtship.

She used you, right? Used you to fill the vacuum left by someone else and further, gave you nothing in return. 

That hurts, right? And you screwed up.

But you didn’t. You only screwed up if your actions were conditional. 

“I buy you coffee, you be my girlfriend. I pay for dinner, you kiss me goodnight.”

Or whatever. And conditional action, while incredibly common, leaves everyone feeling worse. It’s an exchange, and insofar as exchanges work, someone will always feel shorted.

But if you look at those months and that investment of time and energy and money. The emotional capital wasn’t a drunken savings dump into DogeCoin because your cousin swore it would go to a dollar, but rather a reflection of your character. The humanity inside of us.

Intentioned giving is bringing her coffee because you want to impress her, date her, have like 12 kids with her. I don’t know what you look for in a partner. Maybe it’s 12 kids. But you want her to see that you care. And you did that. Intentionally and not conditionally.

With intention, it’s not that the rejection and misplaced effort doesn’t hurt, it does. It’s that it matters less because the goal was focused on things you can control rather than a strange scale of effort that so many people attempt to keep in balance throughout their lives and personal relationships.

When we focus on our own shit and the pieces that we can effectually change, we free up that mathematical fatigue of who did what and how much that was worth and are able to simply give. 

I’ve been told alot that I’m too easy to take advantage of. That I give my time or talent away too easily and freely. 

That can be true in a professional context, but with my friends or with anyone I might be chasing romantically at the moment, it’s simply how I choose to show love. And to steal a phrase from Gary Vee, “You can’t take advantage of somebody who’s given with no expectation.”

I want to act in the way I expect everyone to act. It’s cliche, “Be the change”, I know, but I want more people to stop expecting a return on their personal investments and instead choose to live in a way that’s reflective of their heart and what they want from the world at large.

I wanna be the guy that you know will help you move a mattress, or lay tile, or watch your kid, or fix your computer without an expectation of a return because I genuinely believe that everyone would be better off if we just stopped acting so transactionally.

See, now I’ve morphed from the philosophy major to a socialist stoner, but I’m still a barista not making your coffee. Sorry.

I hope you look at your own actions and measure them against conditional or intentional giving. And if you’ve been conditional for a while, maybe try and reshape your thought process inward rather than outward. It doesn’t matter if she loves you or not. Bring her a damn coffee and keep pouring out love. Eventually, someone out there will be doing the same thing and you’ll be much better prepared to receive it and give it back in kind. And really, that’s why we are all here, right? An endless exchange of energy that hopefully results in a positive impact.

That’s what I think anyway. 

Thanks for reading. I probably love you. 

The M1 Mac Mini is one of the best pieces of technology I’ve ever used. Here’s why I’m returning it.

I ordered the M1 specifically for use editing videos. Final Cut is streamlined and optimized to such a degree that my workflow was improved dramatically.

I can’t overstate the speed of this machine. Stabilization on a clip happened at least five times quicker. Rendering a project normally involved me hitting export and going to make coffee.With the M1 chip, rendering out a timeline barely allowed time for me to get out of the room, much less make coffee. 

So the speed left nothing to be desired. It met or exceeded the promises made by Apple.

But

I have two major categories of gripes with these machines:

M1 specific bugs

And

Apple OSX issues.

I’ll start with M1 since the OSX complaints are of a more ideological nature.

I use an external 32 inch display with the Mac Mini. It’s been wonderful on my PC and works well with the 2018 Macbook Pro I’ve been using as my mobile rig for a while now. But when attached to the Mac Mini, it exhibited a few really annoying issues, all apparently tied to the integrated graphical processor on the M1.

Initially it didn’t like my cheaper HDMI cable. I experienced awful flickering and occasional blackouts of the display. The resolution is 2560 x 1440, which requires a chunk more bandwidth on HDMI than the more standard resolutions like 1080p or even 4k. So I upgraded the cable to a GE model with 48GBPS of throughput. Plenty for up to 8k of resolution and roughly double what you need for 1440p.

This fixed the flicker but there was another issue. The screen now showed small flashes of blue lines running horizontally along the middle of the display. Especially prevalent on darker backgrounds. After some research, this is a known issue, not yet acknowledged by Apple (as of this recording) I called Apple, spent a few phone calls running through trouble shooting, but there wasn’t really a solution.

This was a bummer and distracting while doing any sort of editing work, but also while just watching youtube.

There’s more though. After submitting the logs and a video to apple I only have a few days to beat the return window and I still wanted to keep it just because of how nice my new workflow felt, but if I left the machine alone to fall asleep, it would then be unable to wake the monitor. It required a full hard reset every time. The bandaid for this was to prevent the machine from sleeping and manually turning off my display, but I don’t like to bandaid brand new hardware.

With no fixes apparent on the horizon, I decided to kick it back to Apple, but that decision was made even easier by issues with their OS.

If you’re a fan of OSX you may really hate what I’m saying here. That’s fine. Outrage is good for page views.

First, what I like:

OSX boots quickly, never hiccuped on any program launch and my lightroom/photoshop workflow were faster than they’ve ever been. Photoshop doesn’t even have an ARM version of their app out yet, so that was running on emulation.

Crazy. 

That’s about where my praise ends. File management is abysmal next to windows. An issue I have had for ages. While spotlight works really well for search, the finder experience in general is just far inferior to what windows has done with explorer. Additionally, icon management, by default is this gridless chaos that I can’t imagine anyone actually wants. Do you want you unzipped file to land directly ontop of the folder you just clicked on? That’s insane and weird.

Managing a large number of video clips has been more tedious without fast ways to change the icon size and default layouts. This changed the way I cull footage and generally just made me more frustrated than I like to be while doing the mundane parts of my job.

THEN, we have to talk about windows management. OH MY GOD, I hate default OSX window managing. If you come from the snapping functionality on windows, OSX feels like a jump back to 1995. It’s insane to me, that although they freely copy so many great ideas from Android, they refuse to copy the best idea from Microsoft.

An app called magnet fixes this in part and is only $7. I highly recommend it. It allows me to quickly send a finder window to half the screen and chrome to the other half or even work in quarters. It’s really nice and I dug it alot.

I don’t dig the “workspace” functionality baked into OSX. It threw me off when maximizing anything and I don’t ever see a scenario where I would want that function, but maybe I’m just not target demographic.

Finally, some miscellaneous junk: I added paragon’s NTFS software to be able to use my NTFS drive with the new machine. Works a charm and is only $20. BUT, to install it I had to go through a convoluted reboot process allowing apps from other developers and file access that involved entering my password no less than three times. It was a pain and shouldn’t have been. And if you’re saying, but wait, why don’t you just use ExFat? Exfat isn’t indexed and can easily tank your files if anything goes wrong. It’s fine in a pinch for swapping between Windows and Mac but if you do any sort of real work with NTFS or OSX journaled, get a program on the most used OS to read the file system of the least used and save yourself a headache.

I didn’t dig how often it asks for a password to do anything. I didn’t like the mouse scroll wheel not being able to be a different orientation than my magic trackpad. And lastly, I had a weird issue with being unable to launch two or three apps after upgrading to 11.4. Apple is also looking at this, but that’s a lot to deal with on a brand new machine.

Which is a testament to how much I enjoyed the actual operation of this thing that I really wanted to be able to overlook all of that and keep using the damn computer.

It’s fast, it’s cheap and outclasses anything else I’ve seen on the market at even double this price. When they work out the bugs, I’ll buy another. But until then, I’m sticking to my intel Macbook Pro and watching the Apple forums for an update on when they can fix these guys.

Thanks for reading or watching. I probably love you

I've always found emergency contact forms to be a unique sort of aggressive. 

Who cares about you? You know, when you die. Who will give a shit? That's what they're asking.

In addition to releasing whoever (or is it whomever?) from liability on the next page, they really drill home how few people you may have in your corner.

I mean, that’s how it feels to me anyway.

When filling these out, I tend to vacillate  between my uncle and whatever girl I may be dating at the time and both of those options, when written down, bring into focus something I never really talk about.

For reasons I won’t be diving into, I don’t speak with the immediate biologicals at all. 

I want to be super clear: this is not a bad thing nor do I hate the people that I grew up around. 

If you happen to live a life of the more estranged variety I assure you, that you are not weird or wrong and, insofar as you are making choices in a way that positively impacts your life, you are doing the right thing.

And that’s why I’m hung up on these contact forms. In the place where so many people put down their mom or dad, some of us have the gift of writing down the family that we chose. And really, the family that chose us. An adoption without the paperwork. 

When I was 15 years old I remember being upset. The reason doesn’t matter. I headed to my aunt and Uncle’s home and they made coffee at an hour that any reasonable adult would avoid caffeine, and they stayed up late and talked to me and supported me. In many ways, this night was the catalyst that led to my relationship with this part of my family growing stronger. I could trust them and they treated me with a sense of respect that I think every adolescent craves. 

Hell, adults too.

I worked for my uncle for years and that sense of mutual respect grew over the course of several arguments that lasted, I’m not exaggerating, literal weeks, about everything from politics to music. Around this time, he became the first change in my emergency contact. The guy I figured would be least likely to answer the phone but most likely to care if I died or became horribly mangled in some fashion. 

There was also my bandmate, Trey. I’ve written alot about him, but suffice to say he was the most profound friendship over the course of my childhood. He started the band, introduced me to Fight Club, which I probably talk about too much, and fostered a love of reading and a deeper compassion than my protestant upbringing had previously encouraged. 

I could write a book about all the things I learned from Trey. He was a really important person in my life. So he became the second big change to that form. 

And that’s why those are the only two phone numbers that I have memorized at 33. 

There were some sporadic points at which my girlfriend’s name would fill the space below the medical release and above the insurance information, but really, that was a kind of blind optimism, right?

Anyone with a passing knowledge of my music knows the girls don’t tend to stick around very long and really, what would they do in the event of an emergency? 

The idea of that phone call makes me smile.

“Yes, this is Derek’s girlfriend, Haley Williams. Yes, the one from the multi-platinum selling band. What’s wrong?”

“We’re sorry but Derek is super dead.”

“Oh damn. Well that’s a bummer.”

“Totally a bummer. So look there’s these bills and funeral stuff…”

(Blank frame)

“We really only texted a few times…”

“We’ll call the state to pick him up. Listen, Misery Business is a bop.”

“Thank you so much!”

Or something like that.

And that’s the power of that blank space on the emergency forms. Those people, often unbeknownst to them, are signed up for a different kind of hell should the information ever need to be utilized. 

Death is a difficult thing in any circumstance but when you are the one tasked with navigating the specifics and the arrangements and the money, it is a uniquely persistent hell. 

The ones doing that for you, in the absence of you, are of a particular brand of importance. The family that, in my case at least, runs deeper than blood. 

So if you struggle with that space on the medical release, you aren’t alone. I hope that you have someone you consider your chosen family. They really are the best. And if you don't’ have that yet, feel free to write me down. When Haley Williams texts me back, our family would be happy to help in any way that our multi-platinum selling home is able. Because I probably love you.

Thanks for watching.

1999 was a wild year. Computers were ubiquitous enough that the world had begun relying on them, but they were still widely misunderstood by the public. There was a fear that when we rolled over from 1999 to 2000, the systems that held the more tenuous strings of our reality would snap under the crushing weight of programmatic failure.

It was probably Bill Gates’ fault.

It was my first experience watching mainstream news really screw with people’s emotions, convincing all of us that we were going to die. 

Some things never change.

Brandt’s latest novel “Mixtape for the End of the World”, feels like a nostalgic rollercoaster of highschool emotions and drips with 90s era music references and snacks from my childhood that I’d all but forgotten. Set in 1999, in the months leading up to this computerized disaster, we get a story of a kid in a new town, discovering music and himself. Inside this time-capsule of a book, is a coming of age story written with heart and sincerity that tugs on your heartstrings. (And I’m purposefully not using that as a segue into talking about the lead character tugging on guitar strings or whatever because I respect you.)

I remember the first time I read The Perks of Being a Wallflower, I think I was 23 or 24, and it stuck with me as a cathartic exploration of so many awkward moments in the self-discovery phase we all trudge through during high school and early college. Brandt hits some similar beats in his story and manages to navigate what could have easily been a fluffy highschool drama, with a skill that elevates the story to something more. 

The halting flirtation with girls, the struggle of navigating friendships, the formation and naming of a high school band (They call the band, STEALTH, and while I can’t explain why, this is also 100% 90s kids naming. It was also, coincidentally, what I called my notebook superhero that I drew throughout elementary school). It all rings with a truth and earnestness that adds dimension to each of Brandt’s characters.

The most clever piece of this book is the musical pairings for each chapter. Chapter 6 is subtitled referencing Eve 6’s song - Inside Out. Which, if you hang out on Twitter at all, should ring as both a blast from the past and a pretty modern reference. 

These memory bites could have easily dipped into Ernest Cline territory and felt like nostalgic data dumps that add nothing to the story (Hey there, Ready Player Two), but they manage to do the opposite for me. Brandt offers glimpses into familiar pieces of his own youth, providing a touchstone of reality that grounds his diverse cast within something concrete and relatable. I won’t give away the story, this isn’t a book report, but it’s a fun ride with some dramatic twists that really pull the reader in and refuse to let go. 

It’s a coming-of-age novel that strikes all the right notes. Brandt has crafted lovable characters and a story full of heart and genuine passion. For anyone that's old enough to have made a mixtape, this nostalgia trip will be every hug your parents forgot to give you. Pre-order now at the link below to snag it when it drops May 18th.

Also, I designed the cover art, so please help my dopamine by telling Andrew how cool it looks. Thanks.

Preorder: HERE

Check out his other books: HERE

I will be on a podcast with Brandt to discuss music and other things of small consequence this Thursday (January 21st at 8pm). See ya then.

God I used to hate Christmas. I mean really despised it. I worked in the mall for my first real job and the incessant mannheim steamroller bullshit really bored itself into my head after the four hundredth repeat of the inexplicably short 12 track album that they played over the speaker system. And the people were horrible. Truly awful. Like a never ending sea of Sunday church ladies at an olive garden, entitled, angry and unlike the piano man who was so quick with a joke or a light of your smoke they really leaned into expeditiously requesting a manager. 

It wasn't just that though, I grew up dreading holidays. For reasons that will stay between me and my now wealthy therapist, family stuff was tough. 

It's unfortunate, really, that so much of my life was spent bahumbugging and generally relating to the bad guys from any Christmas film every December. ( And let's be real, it starts in October and just increases in volume and intensity from there)

But then I had a daughter. A beautiful, terrifyingly fragile little human and I watched as she grew and I encouraged all the magical parts of life so as to distract her through that all too familiar parental desperation, from the world and it's many horrors. I told her about Easter bunnies and fairies that hide in the back yard, we whispered secrets of unicorns and dragons and beautiful princesses and magic carpets and yes, also, santa clause. The jolly man in the red suit rewarding good deeds with capitalistic consumerism. 

I'm kidding. 

Kind of

Thing is, that's the part that broke me as a bitter young lad with a chip on his shoulder and an aggressive resentment towards anything festive. I hated the encouragement of debt to the impoverished masses for an exchange of shit we didn't really need. I was poor for a HUGE chunk of my youth. Hell, I'm poor now. But it's stressful, trying to meet expectations with a wallet flatter than Hank Hill's ass during a holiday that everyone seems to only appreciate Kim Kardashian's.

Cliche though it may be, the grinch inside me was shown the true meaning of Christmas (beyond co-opting pagan holidays to further the political grasp of the early church). I was able to enjoy the wonder of it all through the beautiful open eyes of my tiny child. Have you ever seen a kid look at Christmas lights? Or that first seasonal sip of hot chocolate? They light up with all the joyous beauty of novelty we lose touch with as we stop looking at Christmas trees and start cursing at traffic. 

She grabs blankets and more stuffed animals than is truly appropriate to crowd the couch and watch harry potter. She points out her favorite lights on a path of houses sparkling with electric bills that grew three sizes this month. She threatens to write santa a letter for toys she wants that I can't afford to get her. And she knows that he has enough elves to make it happen. 

It's remarkable and honestly, one of the coolest parts of my adult life, which I'm happy to say has been full of some really cool things lately. 

So I dig Christmas now. Alot. I look forward to it, and I get the fancy chocolate bars for my hipster hot cocoa that my uncle taught me to make, and I make a big deal out of playing ariana grande's santa tell me(which I maintain is an auditory masterpiece) and we drive up and down decorated streets and bury our proverbial faces in the Christmas spirit. I'm thankful for that. Thankful to continue to chip away at the angry parts of my life while trying my best to raise a kid that will grow up to be better and happier than me. The parental calling, I guess. So if you relate to the more angry parts of Christmas, I hope you take a break, and go look at lights. Take a niece or nephew if you're without child. They make it better. So much better. And make some hot cocoa. Not that swiss miss bullshit either. I'll leave my recipe below. Merry Christmas, thanks for reading. I probably love you. 

Let’s not pretend as though you don’t know about Andrew Monroe.

He wrote the remarkable fantasy epic, A Leaf and Pebble. (I reviewed it here.)

He’s the owner of The Subtle Nerd. Clothing for the classiest of geeks.

He runs a marketing firm called Axe and Bow and spends way too much time at Palace Coffee.

You know Andrew.

You may not know, Daniel. His partner in crime and best friend that has maintained the tenuous bonds of friendship across miles and the ever changing landscape of life. The two of them are a powerhouse of intimidating intellectual and athletic talent and they even co-host a podcast that goes by the same name as their debut writing.

Which is why you should be so excited about this latest book, co-authored by these mythologically wonderful men. A guidebook, reference manual for life, and generally just great read, Dead by Tomorrow upends what you expect from the self-improvement genre and provides a toolset for plumbing the depths of early career and post-college living for the most value and enrichment possible.

The tools presented in Andrew and Daniel's book are a welcomed reminder to lean into mindfulness. This is a call to appreciate and make the most of our time here and it thoughtfully tackles the methodology in a way that's approachable and applicable to anyone.

This can be used as a reference manual of sorts and picked up at any chapter, a convenience I certainly appreciated as I went back to revisit a few of the sections. By far the most valuable for me was towards the end, in which the authors provide a worksheet of sorts to encourage some difficult self examination. And I truly mean it when I say "difficult". I struggled to reconcile the answers in which I wasn't happy with my own progress or action. And that's a really good thing and a sign of a well written book.

I highly recommend this to anyone, but especially those earlier in life, perhaps just starting a career or exiting college and looking for that elusive mistress we all call "purpose". Monroe and Winter don't tell you the meaning of life, they just steer you towards discovering what that means for you, and that's an invaluable and welcomed addition to the bookshelf.

Snag it on Amazon

Okay, so I’m biased. I have a special place in my heart for emo rock and the people that make it. The genre is what got me into music as a nerdy 15 year old in youth group listening to Taking Back Sunday and Brand New on one of those Sony Walkman disc players that had the skip protection. You remember those? It was like a magic trick shaking it around while jamming out without the song freaking out and the disc stuttering. 

All that to say, when I heard that Native Crowds was finally releasing some tracks to Spotify, I was ready to fall in love.

The EP is titled “Sad Songs for Beautiful Days” and that poetic and lengthy title absolutely nails the feel of this record.

Jeremy’s talent is in his emotive expressions. Whether that’s the creative guitar soundscapes that are woven throughout the record or, more pointedly, in his singing. DeLara has some incredibly raw lyricism that cuts at the heart strings before spraying the listener with blood. This is the kind of record you listen to immediately following a messy breakup. It’s a record that begs to be screamed on a highway in the middle of nowhere with the windows down and tears on your cheeks.

Opening with a short teaser of an acoustic track, the band immediately follows it with palm muted, emo-punk greatness on “Lie of Omission”. DeLara is scream-singing his way through the track full of vitriolic hurt and the song elicits a nostalgic pang that feels so familiar.

There’s a great breakdown at the end of the tune that opens into a fantastic guitar solo. I can’t over stress how perfect Jeremy’s voice is for this genre. The subtle quaver as he stretches to those high notes is what everyone who has ever been hurt before feels in their lowest and most vulnerable. It’s primal and just sends chills down the arms.

The next track has a more subtle guitar riff that reminds me of the tones on some of Brand New’s instrumental tracks. It may be my favorite from the record. I can also confirm that it pairs really well with whiskey.

The story it tells is so earnest.

And really, that’s my favorite take away from this record. DeLara is being authentic, and that level of honesty really bleeds into every note of every track and we are all better for it. I believe his hurt, nothing feels overwritten or worked into something it wasn’t supposed to be. It all sounds like the stages of a breakup and I think that’s a unique kind of beautiful.

The album closes with “Daylight Savings” and it’s a great way to finish off a journey like this. I got chills with the doubled vocals near the end and the cool discordant guitar lick over distorted power chords. It’s all the greatest hits from the best of 2000s emo and I’m absolutely here for it. I hope you check it out and hit their upcoming show at Leftwoods next weekend, Nov. 21 at 9pm.

This album feels like a labor of love from the labors of being in love and Jeremy and the gang should be very proud of what they’ve put out there. Thanks for writing music. Let’s play a show soon.

Band Links:

Spotify

Facebook

Instagram

When I was in college, my best friend and I would walk from his apartment to the coffee shops or bars, often amounting to four or five hours of just walking and talking together. Whether this careless existence was more of impoverished necessity or for enjoyment I can’t really remember, but it was a unique sort of calm before life begins to bludgeon you more thoroughly with responsibility. A time in my life during which everything still felt inspired and artistic. 

And that wasn’t just the alcohol.

Magical things happen when we walk. When we slow down enough to breathe in the smaller pieces of life’s chaos. I remember playing music on a rooftop at 2 in the morning with complete strangers dancing along to the songs. I remember an abandoned building that was partially destroyed and screamed stories of an unseen apocalypse. We even broke into a construction site and climbed a scaffold just to sit at the top and drink Shiner while feeling like complete and total badasses.

I wanted to recapture that. At least in part. See, the adventure doesn’t need to be on the fringes of legality to release those euphoric friends we affectionately refer to as endorphins. Rather, I just wanted to take time away from the work I’ve been doing seven days a week for the last two years and find a state of moving meditation.

I know someone more educated than me is screaming at their screen that movement is antithetical to proper meditation but I kind of like that imagery. An angry monk. A monk that’s angry at me.

So I found a few audiobooks and podcasts and donned my headphones for a dipping of my proverbial and literal toes into the purposeful act of not working. I started small. Maybe thirty minutes around the neighborhood. And when I came back home I returned to the computer and kept working.

I think the key is getting beyond that one hour mark. Chasing the point that you’ve legitimately interfered with time you could be making money and made a deliberate choice to do the opposite.

I decided to listen to a few episodes of this American Life (I’ll link them below for the curious) and just walk until it got dark. The air was getting cooler and the light always seems to look different in the fall and winter, so for the first half of the walk I was just appreciating that golden halo around all of the mundane parts of my neighborhood and enjoying my podcast.

Even the trash cans seemed ripped from a Thomas Kinkade painting.

But it was around the first hour mark that I began to really pay attention to the things around me. The hidden throughway that was too small for a car that connected two cul de sacs near my home, or the basketball goal that was setup behind a fence with its net hanging into the paved alley for the kids to play on something more analogous to a court.

I saw trees that smelled like my first girlfriend’s perfume (Velocity by Mary Kay). I saw children acting out bloody battles with swords and bikes and nerf guns.

More importantly, I saw myself. The overworked and emotionally barren husk that remained in the wake of a twenty something that actually believed that the world was beautiful.

That’s a thing that I used to think about. The beauty in forgotten places.

I continued to walk and listen to some pretty remarkable stories on the podcast. There’s a big park near my home and I decided to make a loop around it. I watched all the families that brought their kids to the playground and the dads that were teaching a few young girls soccer fundamentals. And at about mile 3 I forgot about the work I had left to do and the bills, and the upcoming meetings and the girl I was flirting with. 

Okay, I was still thinking about the girl, but I mostly forgot the “adult” stuff and was able to feel the edges of calm for the first time in a while.

The walk home was euphoric and I found myself turning off the podcast and just walking in silence for a while, trying to breathe in the first whispers of fall and hold onto that fleeting brush with whatever the opposite of depression is called.

So I’m walking more. Chasing the dragon, as it were. That first high from when I was eighteen with a book of poetry and a desire to find the beautiful among the trash of my home town. And it’s working, kinda. So if you’ve been down, and I mean, haven’t we all been this year? I hope you take a walk, a long one, one that takes a dedicated and not insubstantial amount of your evening away just so you can see the sunset in the places you normally only glimpse while driving 35 mph in a 30 to get to the next appointment or obligation or whatever.

And if you really dig it, I hope you find a construction site and bring a few beers and watch the world from a new perspective for a bit. We’re here too brief a time to negate the little things.

Thanks for reading.

Do you know what the most common form of love is?

You might guess, platonic, or romantic. Or if you’ve been reading the five love languages, maybe you’d assume physical love, or gift giving, or quality time.

The truth is a simple sadness: The most common love is unrequited.

I know, it sounds as though my inner emo is coming out, but I actually think this is kind of beautiful.

You meet a girl, right? She’s pretty and funny and when she talks, about anything really, the world seems to go in slow motion, you notice the way light refracts differently through her hair in the sunset and that she smells good. Like really good. You go on dates and talk about life and goals and everything magical and mundane in breathless adoration for each other.

It’s great right?

The feeling you get in your stomach when the universe is clicking into place, just for you, is one of the most profound and intrinsically human experiences available to us. I think that it’s rarity is perhaps the coolest part.

More often, we see the girl, and try to match eyes. She waves and we wave back to the horrifying realization that her greeting was intended for the friend behind you. Or perhaps you found a guy that you really dig, and manage to get that date, maybe several. You find a rhythm, which isn’t easy to do and in that awkward dance of dinners and bowling and cute walks in the evening, you believe sincerely that you found someone. But he doesn’t feel that same energy. You’re nice and all, but it’s just not working. 

You say “tomato” he says “I’d like to see other people”. Or whatever.

If not for those moments, that feeling of elation followed so closely by it’s kissing cousin of devastation, we would be so much less capable of appreciating the magnitude and wonder of mutual affection.

When someone sees beyond your instagram painted visage and somehow manages to connect with your soul, when they see the ugly and the plain, and the honest, open truth of you and don’t look away, that’s as close as we really get to heaven down here.

There’s a quote, perhaps my favorite, from Rothfuss in The Wise Man’s fear. He says:

“In many ways, unwise love is the truest love. Anyone can love a thing because. That's as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.”

I film love and it’s many wonderful promises for a living. I was asked recently if it was difficult to work weddings while struggling to date in my own personal life, and….no, but also….more honestly, yes. Absolutely.

I mean, I don’t think about it alot, but there’s a different kind of loneliness that strikes when editing a love story of a beautiful couple while drinking whiskey in an empty house, with the sounds of a computer fan and clicking keyboard providing the only company.

It’s that sadness, or perhaps more accurately, that hollowness, that makes discovering the right person so much more profound. When the resounding echoes of your life find a place in which they can finally be still. The comfort and joy we realize in another person that, through no small twists of fate, returns your attraction is a remarkably rare and wonderful feeling.

To be honest, my point in all of this has very little to do with love. I’m certainly in no position to offer advice on that front anyway. Rather, I think I want to slow down and appreciate the less beautiful and unromantic pieces of living. 

I’m not directing this movie. And though it pains me to admit it, I’m not the star in anyone else’s film but mine. So to ignore or begrudge the parts that aren’t fun and cute and filling my insides with butterflies is to disregard the broader strokes of the story. Things are tough for everyone right now, maybe the best response is to sit with that feeling a little while. Understand it.

The absence of anything makes it’s discovery all the more important.

Just like love, life is full of unreturned energy.

Until it isn’t.

I hope you weather the storm and I hope you find a heart that matches your own. Cause you’re a badass, and I probably love you.

Above is the video version of this blog, but if you prefer to read, the following is the transcript. If you’d prefer to skip it all, here’s the punch line: Be nicer to yourself. I probably love you.

When I was 12, a 33 year old wasn’t just an adult, they were wise. As a guy that is now as old as the mortal Jesus, I realized that maybe I’ve always been kind of dumb.

I’ve thought alot about this particular birthday. The religious subtext only accounting for a tiny fraction of those thoughts. I really wanted to be further along by now. I think that when I was younger I just assumed I would have found a higher level of success. Like, shouldn’t I have a jet ski by now? I was under the impression that I would.

That’s not to say I’m ungrateful. I recognize and appreciate the enormous privilege of the life I’m living. I have, objectively, the best child on the planet who is constantly teaching me as I stumble through my own flailing attempts at doing the same for her. I work for myself and drink enough coffee to cause some pretty serious heart issues in a few years. 

Yesterday, I didn’t shower until 1 pm. 

I am, by any measure, pretty damn lucky.

But that’s the thing with luck. We all have this desire to earn something. To chase a goal and achieve it, but I think the irony is that we tend to shift the goal posts. No matter where you started, by the time you reach that first milestone you’ve learned enough to realize how shortsighted your initial ideas of success or achievement were.

I’ve been thinking alot about the music. I wanted a band that played a few shows and got to travel. Then I found out that it really doesn’t require much more than just calling and asking to play somewhere to get a show booked in another city. So then I wanted to get paid. Which is also remarkably more common outside of my hometown. I traveled and got paid to play music and still felt as though I hadn’t done much, because in reality, I hadn’t. I was a kid with a guitar, asking adults if they would pay me to poorly cover Matchbox 20 in their coffee shops. AND THEY DID. 

Kind souls, each and every one.

The same goes for most of the tentpoles in my life. Chasing that elusive mistress we call happiness resulted in a lot of cool things, but never a true sense of accomplishment, and certainly not happiness.

So I started writing books. My cousin wrote a fantasy epic and caused me to reflect on the countless novels I had started in Google Drive over the years and never finished. No-Mod felt cool the entire time I was writing. It took alot of work, but guess what? I was still unsatisfied. I wrote the next one, immediately throwing myself back into the project. It came out today. I don’t care if you buy it. I’ll sales pitch it or something with another blog. 

The meandering point is this: I’ve spent an entire life chasing the approval of other people and that will forever be a hollow goal of vapid motivation. My favorite quote from the Showtime series “Californication” comes from Meredith to Hank Moody before she leaves: “You love women, but you hate yourself, so that any woman who ultimately does like you is deemed a fool.”

It’s a rephrasing of a common trope, “love yourself before anyone else can”, but it’s stuck with me for a long time.

I want my 33rd year to be one in which I am kinder to myself, and I hope writing this out maybe allows someone else to recognize their own self-admonishment as a negative trend and they join me in trying to be more chill.

Jesus died at 33 so maybe it’s time I stopped playing the role of the martyr and started living life. Thanks for reading, I probably love you.