Tag: love

  • The Things We Believed (Before Coffee)

    As I sit here drinking my coffee, convinced that caffeine is somehow going to help me defeat my lifelong nemesis—Sleep—and maybe keep up with whatever my ADHD has planned for today, I can’t help but think about all the things I believed as a kid. Back then, life ran on confidence… not facts. The right…

  • What’s Missing?

    I’ve never considered myself much of a chef. I don’t julienne. I don’t chiffonade. I don’t make foams, reductions, or anything that requires tweezers.  But a cook? Now that’s a title I’d proudly wear. When I’m cooking, I really only have one goal; Make enough food that everyone leaves the table full, preferably smiling, and…

  • The Things We Never Meant to Remember

    It’s funny, the things we remember. Not the moments everyone tells us will matter. Not always birthdays, graduations, or the day we got the keys to our first house. Those memories are there somewhere, but they often sit quietly in the background. Instead, it’s the little things that wait patiently for us. The smell of…

  • On the Honor System: How Are We All Still Alive?

    Civilization has a dirty little secret. It only works because, for the most part, we trust each other. Have you ever stopped and realized just how much of everyday life runs on the assumption that complete strangers are going to behave themselves? Not because they have to. Because they’re supposed to. That’s an important distinction.…

  • A Merely Audible Contemplation

    Lately, I’ve spent enough time alone to hear the refrigerator thinking. It’s a low hum at first, but if you sit quietly long enough, you start wondering if it’s judging your life choices. The funny thing is, I don’t remember solitude being part of the plan. Growing up in a small town, there was always…

  • Turns Out I Was Pretty Good at Being Me

    Once upon a time, there was a kid. A curious kid. A distracted kid. He was good at just about everything he tried, but never really great at any of it—or at least that’s what he thought. He never really knew what he wanted to be when he grew up. He considered all the usual…

  • No Batteries Required: When Play Meant Something More

    Yesterday, I saw something I never thought I’d see again—especially not from a high school student. I saw a group of teenagers playing leapfrog. Leapfrog. Not a phone app. Not a video game. Not some new social media challenge designed to last three days before disappearing into the digital abyss. Actual leapfrog—the same game kids…

  • Commencement Season: Tassels, Tears, and One Last Trip to the Snack Bar

    There’s something strange about graduation season. For four years, students spend most of high school counting down to the end of school—talking about summer, freedom, and escaping homework forever. Then suddenly, during the final few weeks, everyone starts walking around campus like they’re in the last ten minutes of a movie. People who normally sprint…

  • Self-Inflicted and Poorly Supervised

    I know I don’t need caffeine. That’s the first honest thing I write today, and I almost want to stop there because it already sounds like the kind of sentence people say right before they absolutely do the thing anyway. It’s not even about needing it. Not really. It’s more like… curiosity. Scientific curiosity, if…

  • The Fine Art of Holding a Grudge

    When we were kids, grudges lasted about six minutes.Someone stole your crayon, you cried, your mom intervened, and ten minutes later you were both eating the same bag of chips like nothing happened. Justice was swift.Closure was immediate.Snacks were shared. Then we grew up. And somewhere between paying bills and learning how to properly sigh,…

  • Beneath Your Balcony

    Beneath Your Balcony

    Beneath your balcony, I become music—not the kind you hear,but the kind that trembles in your chest before a single note is played. The night leans in to listen, roses hold their breath, and even the shadows softenjust to witness the way you look at me. Your hand—how can something so small carry the weight…

  • If Only For A Moment…

    On Sunday, Mother’s Day, during the second hour of a four-hour gig, something extraordinary happened. As I stood beneath a tree playing my trumpet, a hummingbird suddenly appeared. It circled around me three… maybe four times, hovering right in front of the bell of my trumpet while I played. Then it flew upward and landed…

  • Mirror, Mirror on My Desk…

    We spend a lot of time looking outward. At expectations. At what other people are doing, saying, or thinking. We compare, we react, we adjust. Most of our day is shaped by everything happening around us. But we rarely stop and look inward. There aren’t many moments in the day where it’s just you and…

  • Watching Things Become

    I stopped by our high school’s main campus today. It wasn’t anything formal—just a few quiet minutes between responsibilities. Long enough to stand off to the side and watch the construction crews preparing the site for the upcoming concrete pour. The ground was already undergoing transformation—leveled, measured, marked in that familiar orange construction paint, lines…

  • Alone at the Happiest Place on Earth

    Most people would say the Disneyland Resort isn’t a place you go alone.That doing so feels equal parts pathetic and depressing. And maybe… on paper, it is. But I did it anyway. I was there for a two-day excursion—an Arts Education Leadership Summit. Work. Professional development. The kind of trip that comes with lanyards, schedules,…