My Poetry, Suddenly More Than Art
It is without exaggeration that I say one of the coolest things I’ve ever done is be commissioned to write poetry. This has happened exactly one time and it was only recently — curiously enough for Red Bull. Read the whole thing.
34 is the New Infinity
I’ve never been set to have a year like this and I can’t wait. Today’s my birthday and life is good. I’ve never been this productive. I’ve never been this involved. I’ve never been this proactive. I’ve never been this grounded. I’ve never been this mindful. I’ve never been this earnest. I’ve never been this open. I’ve never been this healthy. I’ve literally never worked on my upper body until now. Read the whole thing.
How to Install a Car Stereo and Become a Perfect Person
Anything is as much everything as it is nothing. How do you fill something without parameters? I’ve wondered this since I first pitched The Perfect Person Project, my decidedly indefinite standing offer to learn anything from anyone. Asking the public to teach me whatever is a task so preposterously open-ended, it felt like I could lose my way after the first few steps. Read the whole thing.
The Perfect Person Project
Nobody’s perfect. But you can be better than you were. To recap, I was existentially damaged/drifting/trampolining in a low-ceiling celestial chamber and now I’m as wide-eyed as I used to be on uppers with a healthy brain that would’ve suggested identity theft as recently as last year. Now, I’m leveling up — and it’s actually me settling an old score with myself. Read the whole thing.
Do you know how insanely out of whack your existence has to be for you to huck half your wardrobe, scoop reading glasses you’ve needed for years, and put together three calendars in order to keep track of all the things you always wanted to do but never did? Read the whole thing.
5 Things I Learned Once I Got Proactive About My Mental Health and General Existence
My dad published his first volume of poetry when I was a teenager. Until then, I was quite unaware, yet totally unsurprised to discover, the man I know as Dad and everyone else knows as John Kilroy wrote poems. My whole life, my dad had been a thoughtful writer-editor type intrigued by the world. It made sense he’d been quietly interpreting his surroundings and those beyond with a curious, meditative pensiveness behind those golden glasses of his. Read the whole thing.
Why I Asked Everyone to Read My Dad’s Poetry When His Cancer Returned
For years and years and for better or for worse, I have maintained what I would describe as manic energy. Many other people would too. And it’s come to an end. Or at least it’s come to some version of an end. I’m not going to suddenly be a sharply dressed mute expressionist whose only contribution to a conversation is the obnoxiously loud sipping of expensive tea. I’m just going to be a different, better version of me. Read the whole thing.
I’m Trying to Not Be an Out of Control Mess This Year—and It’s Working
A regular exercise of mine is to organize memories — take them out of storage, dust them off, and settle them back in a bit more polished than before — so it hopefully proves easier to revisit my brain down the road as it slowly, and then I assume quite rapidly, deteriorates. I do this with good and bad moments alike; however, the latter doesn’t necessarily read light and bouncy, and I tend to keep those ones personal anyhow. Read the whole thing.
Once: 100 Moments of a Dunce’s Life
Whatever it was that brought you here, it was worth writing home about. Still, you’re more the type to ransom your brain across the breezy meadow of a fresh cocktail napkin than attempt to dilute experience by landscaping the wilderness of thought and packaging it up for friends and family to repeat to each other when you miss yet another holiday. Read the whole thing.