Cinemorphosis

Tag: mental-health

  • Uncut Bezels: Watch Addiction and the Cult of Chaos

    Uncut Bezels: Watch Addiction and the Cult of Chaos

    Watch obsessives have more in common with Howard Ratner than we care to admit. Yes, that Howard Ratner—the unhinged gem pusher played with twitchy brilliance by Adam Sandler in the Safdie brothers’ cinematic panic attack, Uncut Gems. Ratner operates in the Diamond District behind bulletproof glass, drowning in sparkle and debt. We operate behind the bulletproof delusions of horological obsession, buried in brushed steel and moonphase complications.

    Like Ratner, we gamble—not at sportsbooks, but with FedEx tracking numbers. We tell ourselves, this is the one as we refresh the delivery status of the next “grail” watch. The package might as well be glowing, Pulp Fiction-style. And like Ratner chasing a cursed Ethiopian black opal mined from the bloodied crust of the Earth, we twist ourselves into financial and emotional pretzels to score that one special piece—the wrist-mounted miracle that will finally quiet the voices.

    Spoiler: it never does.

    Ratner is a man who thinks more is the cure. More bets. More jewels. More chaos. The watch obsessive runs the same play. We soothe our midlife despair not with therapy or silence, but with spring drives, meteorite dials, and limited edition bronze cases. Our collections don’t grow—they metastasize.

    Like Ratner, our problem isn’t the world. Our problem is internal. The call is coming from inside the skull. He can’t stop because he doesn’t want to stop. The thrill is the point. Every acquisition, every wrist shot, every gushing forum post—just another hit of synthetic joy to distract from the gnawing void. We call it a hobby. Let’s not kid ourselves. It’s dopamine addiction disguised as design appreciation.

    Uncut Gems is a cinematic espresso shot laced with panic. My wife and brother couldn’t sit through thirty minutes. Too stressful, they said. Too jittery. I’ve watched it three times.

    But of course I have. I’m a watch addict.

    I live in Ratner’s world. The caffeinated chaos? That’s not discomfort. That’s home.

  • Cavebrain, Clickfinger: How Evolution Doomed the Watch Addict

    Cavebrain, Clickfinger: How Evolution Doomed the Watch Addict


    In the early 1990s, I saw comedian Rob Becker perform Defending the Caveman in San Francisco—a one-man anthropology class disguised as stand-up. His central thesis, stitched together from kitchen-table spats with his wife, was that men are hunters, women are gatherers, and this prehistoric wiring still runs our modern relationships like a bad operating system.

    His proof? Shopping.

    For the gatherer, shopping is a leisurely daydream. Wandering the mall for six hours and imagining buying things she can’t afford is an enriching sensory experience—like spiritual window-shopping. For the hunter, shopping is a surgical strike. He wants pants. He buys pants. He leaves. The suggestion to “just browse” makes his eye twitch.

    “Let’s get the hell out of here,” says the man. He has completed his mission. He has felled the beast.

    That moment—man as single-focus, tunnel-visioned, goal-oriented predator—explains a great deal about the pathology of watch addiction. We are still cavemen, just hairier and worse at squatting. And we don’t hunt food anymore. We hunt wristwear.

    We see a watch online and a brontosaurus steak lights up in our brain. Locked in. Target acquired. Our dopamine circuits spark like faulty Christmas lights. We must have it. There is no tranquility, no peace, until the object is in our possession.

    The problem? Our primitive instincts weren’t designed for the digital age. Back then, acquiring a new object meant trekking through wilderness, battling saber-toothed tigers, and earning your meal. Today, it’s clicking a “Buy Now” button while half-watching a YouTube review at your ergonomic standing desk, surrounded by a sea of unopened Amazon boxes.

    Our brains still think we’re walking 40 miles to spear a mammoth. In reality, we’re reclining in office chairs with lumbar support, ordering $2,000 divers like they’re takeout sushi. The hunt requires no sacrifice, no sweat, no real effort. And so it never satisfies.

    You get the watch. You admire it. You post a photo to Instagram. Then—you twitch. You fidget. Your brain says, “Good job. Now go get another.”

    We are not content in the cave. Evolution didn’t design us for stillness. It designed us to be hungry. To prepare. To hoard. So we keep hunting. And the cave fills with stainless steel trophies until the glint attracts low-flying pterodactyls that dive-bomb us in our sleep and try to pluck the Omega off our wrist.

    We are maladapted creatures. Our eyeballs evolved for survival. Now they doom us. We were built to scan the horizon for danger. Now we scan Hodinkee, Instagram, Reddit, eBay, WatchRecon, and Chrono24 until our dopamine is a wrung-out dishrag and our bank account is an obituary.

    We’re trapped in a glitch—stone-age instincts, 5G bandwidth. Our visual fixation, once essential to survival, now chains us to a cycle of desire and regret. Thousands of watches flood our screens in a single hour, and our brains are too old and too soft to resist. The only real solution is exile. But exile from what? Our jobs, our networks, our entire digital lives?

    There is no cave to retreat to. Just another tab open.

  • Dorian Gray Wears a Diver

    Dorian Gray Wears a Diver

    I turn 64 this October. By all logic—and illogic—I should reward myself with a seventh watch. Something different. Something elegant. Something that whispers, you’re still in the game. Not another diver—I already have six of those aquatic symbols of masculine resolve. Maybe a sleek Grand Seiko. Or a snotty, sapphire-dialed Euro snob with just enough heritage to make me feel like I matter. Or more likely, a Citizen Satellite Wave Attesa Chronograph.

    But here’s the rub: I don’t have time.
    Literally.

    Buying another timepiece at this stage of life feels like auditioning for a band that stopped playing decades ago. The idea of adding yet another horological trophy to my drawer feels less like celebration and more like denial—of mortality, of limits, of the inconvenient truth that, like it or not, I’m on the back nine. The dopamine buzz of acquiring another shiny object is no longer innocent. It reeks of delusion. It’s a middle-aged man’s sugar pill. A form of spiritual Botox.

    Desire at this age should mellow. Shouldn’t it? Shouldn’t I have graduated to some Zen-like state of detachment, where I sip tea and listen to birdsong and chuckle softly at the foolishness of wanting things?

    Instead, I find myself lusting after lacquered dials and ceramic bezels with the unbridled thirst of a teenage boy at a mall kiosk. It makes me feel like Dorian Gray—but in reverse. I strap youth onto my wrist while the portrait in the basement, the one of my soul, grows grotesque. Not just wrinkled, but warped. A decaying ghoul of greed and vanity, clutching a watch roll and whispering, just one more.

    Another sobering thought: Getting another beautiful watch won’t make me happy. It will make me bitter because as pleasurable as it will be to behold it on my wrist, I will know deep down that this pleasure pales in comparison to the dopamine-rush I get from watching it displayed on YouTube videos. Much of the pleasure is in my head, not on my wrist. 

    These are not healthy thoughts for a birthday.

    And yet, here we are. When you’re a consumer with a conscience, you live in a state of cognitive dissonance. You want the toy. You hear the whisper of death. You long to be mature. You also want the damn Seiko. Buying stuff, especially beautiful, useless stuff, is supposed to be fun—frivolous, even. But once you’ve glimpsed the truth—the metaphorical rot in the basement—you can’t unsee it.

    That’s the thing about aging: it doesn’t always give you peace. Sometimes it just gives you clarity. And clarity can be a buzzkill.

  • Don’t Feed the Soul-Hole: 4 Rules for Making YouTube Content Without Losing Your Mind

    Don’t Feed the Soul-Hole: 4 Rules for Making YouTube Content Without Losing Your Mind


    Here’s what I’ve learned while preparing my latest YouTube video essay—”Don’t Confuse a Watch Collector with a Watch-Hoarding Demon”—which, by the way, still sits unrecorded because I haven’t found a quiet moment required to talk to a camera.

    Lesson One: Open with Housekeeping—But Make It Deranged.
    Begin your video not with a dry agenda but with something ridiculous and revealing. Tell your viewers how a simple search for watch straps turned into a midnight rabbit hole of vintage Camry trim packages or why you contemplated buying a Tudor Pelagos just to avoid folding laundry. Let them see your obsessions in their full neurotic bloom. Self-disclosure laced with comedy is more potent than any clickbait title.

    Lesson Two: Stop Feeding the Soul-Hole.
    The point of making videos is not to audition for emotional validation from strangers on the internet. That’s a black hole with no floor and no mercy. Seeking approval from the algorithmic gods only deepens the void. Instead, aim to share something real—stories, absurdities, and small slices of insight—with humility, clarity, and a firm grip on the absurdity of it all. You’re not here to be liked. You’re here to connect.

    Lesson Three: In the Age of Dopamine Overload, Be Useful.
    We live in an attention economy that’s basically a carnival of shrieking hucksters promising eternal youth through vitamin gummies and AI lifehacks. Most of it ends up being digital noise. Your job isn’t to out-scream them; it’s to offer substance. My strength is argumentative essays, so that’s where I stake my claim. Find your strong suit, sharpen it, and share it—preferably without a TikTok dance.

    Lesson Four: Welcome Dissent Like a Grown-Up.
    The comment section should not be a food fight. It should be a place where people can politely disagree without biting each other’s heads off. We live in a culture where disagreement is taken as a personal attack—like someone spit in your oat milk latte. But real disagreement, handled well, is a gift. It forces us to clarify, refine, and rethink. Without opposition, your ideas become flabby and self-congratulatory. Iron sharpens iron—just make sure it’s civil.

  • Buy Now, Cry Later: A Watch Addict’s Morning Routine

    Buy Now, Cry Later: A Watch Addict’s Morning Routine

    This morning, I sprang from bed at 5:50 like a man trying to outrun his own restlessness. Coffee in one hand, buckwheat groats in the other—my monkish morning ritual. By 6:20, I was deep into David Brooks’ New York Times lament over the death of the novel, parsing his elegy like a coroner looking for signs of life in a genre comatose under TikTok’s reign.

    I then pivoted to writing a YouTube essay on how to discover your watch identity without torching your bank account or your sanity. This required revisiting my own horological spiral, which could be summarized as: “I bought all the watches so you don’t have to.”

    Then, somewhere between the second paragraph and the first pangs of self-loathing, a thought struck me with the force of a stale TED Talk: I despise one-word-title books. You know the type—Grit, Blink, Regret, Drive, Trust—as if a single syllable can carry the weight of human experience. These are not books; they are glorified blog posts wearing a lab coat. They stretch one mediocre insight across 300 pages like butter scraped over too much toast. Malcolm Gladwell may not have invented this genre, but he certainly weaponized it.

    To be fair, a few have earned their keep: Testosterone, Breathe, and Dopamine Nation didn’t insult my intelligence. But the rest? They’re just placebo pills for the terminally curious.

    By 8:30, my family was still asleep, and I had hit the boredom wall with a dull thud. To numb the ennui, I began configuring a Toyota Camry online—my version of sniffing glue. I checked Southern California inventory as if I were a buyer, even though I won’t be pulling the trigger for at least a year. Classic FOMO, no doubt stirred by my best friend’s recent $70K Lexus purchase. His automotive flex triggered my inner consumer gremlin.

    Next came the Seiko browsing—Astrons, King Seikos, shiny little lies I tell myself in stainless steel form. I’m a man pushing into his 60s. I should be downsizing my neuroses, not accessorizing them.

    Right on cue, a depression fog rolled in. The psychic hangover of retail fantasy. I remembered a dream I’d had the night before: I was adding tofu to someone’s salad to increase their protein. They devoured it like they hadn’t eaten in days. Later in the same dream, I was at a party, where a couple asked me to mentor their autistic daughter. I smiled politely, feeling like a fraud. Me? A mentor? I can barely manage my own dopamine addiction.

    That’s when the epiphany hit like a steel bracelet to the skull: the urge to buy a watch hits hardest when you’re bored, self-pitying, or both. In those moments, a $2,000 watch becomes emotional currency—a metal antidepressant disguised as self-expression. And like all impulsive purchases, it cures nothing but your momentary discomfort.

    I hovered over the “Buy Now” button. Then, mercy. I pulled back.

    At 9:00, one of my twin daughters wandered into the kitchen and asked what happened to the leftover buttermilk pancakes from yesterday. I told her the truth: she’d left the door open when she went to ask the neighbors about babysitting their granddaughter, and a massive fly invited itself in. I saw it licking the pancakes like a dog at a water bowl. Into the trash they went. She laughed. I suggested Cheerios with a scoop of strawberry protein powder. She agreed. In that small, domestic exchange—an absurd fly, a ruined pancake, a shared laugh—I found myself re-entering the land of the living.

    Gratitude, not consumption, had done the trick.

    So now, I prepare for my kettlebell workout, towel in hand, wondering which podcast will offer the most delicious repartee to sweat by. My soul has steadied, for now.

  • Don’t Let Brotoxification Ruin Your Watch Hobby

    Don’t Let Brotoxification Ruin Your Watch Hobby

    I’ve been both a watch enthusiast and a watch addict for over two decades—long enough to know the difference between a genuine passion and a performance art piece in a wrist-sized frame.

    Some of my collecting history is noble. Some of it’s embarrassing. I’ve chased watches for the right reasons: fascination with engineering, aesthetics, a deeply personal sense of style. But I’ve also chased them for the wrong reasons: hero cosplay, status projection, and the sad, sweaty hope that someone—anyone—might think I was cool for wearing a submersible chunk of steel on my wrist.

    Let’s call it what it is: I’ve bought watches to feel like a man. That instinct isn’t always authentic—it’s often a costume. And in the world of collecting, nothing poisons the well faster than performative masculinity dressed up as personal style.

    So I started trying to pare things down. Simplify. Get to the core of what I actually like, and keep a small, personal collection that reflects who I am—not who I want Instagram to think I am.

    Easier said than done.

    Because in today’s world, “authenticity” has become just another algorithmic trend, another pantomime we perform for likes and approval. The word phony doesn’t even do justice to the industrial-strength fakery we’re marinating in. It’s beyond phony. It’s Olympic-level insincerity with corporate backing and PowerPoint slides.

    We now live in a cultural ecosystem where people are so fake, their attempts at being authentic create new layers of fakery. It’s not just that they’re inauthentic—they’re meta-inauthentic. They study authenticity like it’s a language exam, and the harder they try to sound fluent, the more their accent bleeds through.

    Take, for example, the great frauds of my TV-watching youth.

    Eddie Haskell—Leave It to Beaver’s oily teenage suck-up—mastered the art of smiling at your mother while plotting your destruction behind the garage. He didn’t just imitate politeness; he weaponized it.

    Then there was Dr. Smith from Lost in Space—the preening, verbose con man who brought zero medical skills to the spaceship but still managed to insult the robot with Shakespearean flair:
    “You clumsy, colossal clod!”
    “You insidious ignoramus!”
    “You bubble-headed booby!”

    Ironically, Dr. Smith’s insults turned me on to language itself. I owe the man my English degree. Which just proves: sometimes even a fraud can inspire something real.

    Fast-forward to today’s most delicious case of catastrophic phoniness: the political operatives who realized they had alienated the male vote. After years of condescension, virtue signaling, and high-minded lectures, they finally realized men were tuning them out—if not outright recoiling.

    So what did they do?

    They flew to Half Moon Bay, checked into a luxury resort, and held a think tank retreat to rebrand masculinity. Picture it: Ivy League consultants in cashmere sweaters eating lobster rolls and sipping Pinot Noir while spitballing ways to reconnect with the “working man.” They treated young men like they were a rare species of jungle ape. Field notes were probably taken.

    This level of cluelessness isn’t just tone-deaf—it’s operatic. If the writers of Succession pitched this as a storyline, HBO would tell them to tone it down for realism.

    We need a name for this kind of oblivious, polished, self-defeating fakery. I call it Brotoxification: the act of rebranding yourself to appeal to men—but doing it with such manicured insincerity that you repel the very people you’re trying to win back.

    I work with young men every day—college football players, ex-military students, guys grinding through school because life didn’t hand them a shortcut. They don’t want coddling. They want three things: structure, discipline, and real-life skills. The last thing they need is a smug consultant in designer sneakers telling them how to “be seen.”

    And this circles back to watches.

    A few ground rules for keeping your watch hobby clean:

    1. Don’t overthink it.
    If a watch keeps whispering to you at 2 a.m., it probably belongs on your wrist. Trust your gut. You don’t need a panel of experts or a YouTube breakdown.

    2. Never buy a watch because you think it’ll earn you applause.
    If you’re trying to impress the crowd, the crowd will sniff out your desperation and laugh behind your back. Buying a “manly watch” to look tough is like buying cologne to smell rich. It doesn’t fool anyone.

    3. You don’t need to be rich.
    A $200 G-Shock Rangeman, worn with conviction, beats a $10,000 showpiece worn like a rented tux. Living within your means isn’t just practical—it’s masculine. It’s called integrity.

    In the end, authenticity can’t be strategized. It’s not something you workshop in a resort ballroom between keynote speakers and complimentary wine pairings. It’s not a brand refresh. And it sure as hell isn’t something you can outsource to consultants.

    Whether we’re talking about politics, masculinity, or watch collecting, the minute you start performing sincerity is the minute you’ve already lost it.

    So do yourself a favor: Keep your hobby honest. Reject the Brotox. And wear your damn watch because you love it—not because you’re hoping someone else will.

  • The Fever Swamp of Watch Collecting

    The Fever Swamp of Watch Collecting

    Once upon a time—last week, to be precise—I made a YouTube video arguing that a man should not chase variety in his watch collection but instead find his signature style and whittle his hoard down to a tasteful few. Like a monk with only one robe. Or a chef with one good knife. Or a middle-aged guy who knows that buying yet another GMT won’t fix his marriage.

    Now, did I believe what I was saying? Not entirely. I was, to be honest, talking myself off the ledge. It was a kind of public self-hypnosis: say it enough times on camera, and maybe I’ll stop buying watches I never wear. But I’ll admit—the thought experiment was stimulating, like sniffing ammonia salts just to feel something. Most commenters agreed, saying peace of mind only arrived after purging the herd. But not all. Some insisted that a large, diverse collection brings them genuine joy. Fair. Not everyone needs to live like a horological monk.

    Still, I enjoyed making the video. It felt like intellectual calisthenics for the soul, even if it didn’t convert me.

    One viewer, the formidable “Captain Nolan,” asked a deceptively simple question that demands more than a quick reply:

    “How can you discover your identity without trying watches in every category—divers, pilots, field watches, dress, digital, mechanical, quartz, and so on?”

    By “identity,” he means your taste. What fits your lifestyle, your aesthetic, your internal brand. A fair question. And at first, I answered like a smug adolescent. I said, “You know what you like the same way I knew Raquel Welch was the apex of female beauty when I was nine. One glance. No need to watch Love American Style reruns or thumb through Vogue. Case closed.”

    But that answer is glib. And idiotic. Taste in watches—unlike adolescent lust—is not a hormonal thunderclap. It’s a process.

    So here’s the grown-up answer: yes, you do need to try different styles, just like trying on jackets at Nordstrom. Some are flattering, some make you look like a Bulgarian hitman. It’s tactile. Visceral. And wildly expensive. To really figure out your taste, you may end up spending $5,000 to $10,000 just to land in the right neighborhood. You might call this the Fitting Room Narrative—the idea that trying on a wide range of watches will help you find the “real you.”

    It sounds rational. Comforting, even. But I don’t believe in it.

    The problem is the human brain. It’s not a spreadsheet. It’s a haunted house full of desires, delusions, and marketing fumes. So let me propose a more honest alternative: The Fever Swamp Narrative.

    Here’s how it works:

    You fall headfirst into the hobby. You start buying watches the way a toddler grabs Halloween candy. You buy microbrand divers, G-Shocks, Speedmasters, and maybe a Rolex or two if your credit limit allows it. You tell yourself each one serves a “purpose.” You start spending a grand a month, easy. Over ten years, you’ve spent more than most people do on therapy. And God knows you need therapy.

    Eventually, the collection metastasizes. Dozens of watches, each one representing a temporary high. You stop wearing half of them. You obsess over straps, bezels, lume. Your identity fuses with your hobby. You’re no longer a man who wears watches; you’re a man being worn by them.

    Then comes the collapse: financial strain, marital tension, the vacant stare of a man wondering why he owns three identical Seikos. Maybe you go through a breakup or foreclosure. Maybe your friends stage an intervention. Maybe your dog leaves you. Think about that. Your watch obsession got so bad your dog abandoned you. 

    You finally tap out. Sell the collection. Keep three. Or two. Or one. You tell yourself you’re “cured.”

    Except… maybe you’re not. Maybe, like Bell’s palsy or a bad ex, the obsession lies dormant. All it takes is one random trigger—a stressful day, a YouTube thumbnail, a flash sale—and you relapse. Buy a Sinn. Then a Squale. Then you’re back in the swamp.

    Why do we cling to the Fitting Room Narrative when it’s so obviously false? Because it has a tidy structure. A clean arc. Beginning, middle, resolution. We’re narrative junkies. We want our Luke Skywalkers to finish Jedi school and never regress. 

    Same with watch collectors. We want the Watch Ninja to overcome his demons and live a Zen life with a single Grand Seiko. If he relapses, we unsubscribe. He becomes a punchline. Another Liver King of horology.

    Still don’t believe me? Consider Pete Rose. In the ‘70s, he was “Charlie Hustle,” the human embodiment of work ethic. But zoom out, and the myth crumbles. Pete wasn’t disciplined—he was compulsive. He gambled, lied, betrayed friends. The man was a walking cautionary tale wrapped in a Cincinnati Reds jersey.

    Or take Sedona. Supposedly a spiritual vortex. In reality, a commercialized fever dream of overpriced crystals, green juice, and pseudo-mystical hokum. You arrive expecting transcendence and leave with a maxed-out credit card and lower back pain from a “chakra realignment.”

    We love myths because they sell. But real life is more complicated. Messier. Less flattering.

    So I could tell you a satisfying tale about finding my “true self” through curating a humble collection of retro divers and minimalist field watches. I could wrap it all up with a bow. But I won’t. Because that would be fiction.

    And honestly, haven’t we had enough of that?

  • The Farmer’s Carry and Other Acts of Suburban Defiance

    The Farmer’s Carry and Other Acts of Suburban Defiance

    Last night I had dinner at The Kebab Shop with an old friend—a former boxing champion turned engineer, the kind of guy who looks like he could build a bridge in the morning and break your nose that afternoon, all while discussing Tolstoy.

    He recently broke up with his girlfriend and confessed something strange and honest:

    “I feel like I’m chasing the sad,” he said. “Just so I’ll feel better about myself.”

    I told him not to worry—he’s sad, alright. Sometimes pain is too large to register. Like being so exhausted you can’t fall asleep, or so depleted you can’t even feel tired.
    He nodded, then casually dropped the bomb: he just bought a Lexus. I assumed an SUV—some respectable adult-mobile with storage. Nope. He turned his phone toward me and grinned. It was an obsidian black Lexus RC350 coupe, a low-slung, 311-horsepower statement of rebellion against mediocrity and middle age. Price tag? A cool $70,000.

    Why? Because he gets bored. Easily. He’s cursed with a mind that needs friction. His current job is too easy, and when things get too easy, life feels mechanical. He’s planning to move on—to another job, another city, more challenge, more money, more meaning.
    He told me staying home to watch TV feels like soul rot. So instead, he journals (in a real book, with prompts—who knew that was a thing?), plays soccer on weekends, and takes private dance lessons. Yes, dance. This man has better time management than most monasteries.

    I told him I admire him. I mean it. He’s not surrendering to entropy; he’s interrogating it with pen, ball, and motion. He’s writing his way out of the void. I might need to follow his lead when I retire in two years. No matter our age, we either rage our fists at mortality or we start sinking into the upholstery.

    I then told my friend that I nearly bought a $2,000 recliner last week. A magnificent beast of engineered comfort. But the moment I imagined myself melting into it, day after day, I envisioned not rest—but early burial. A leather sarcophagus with cupholders. I backed away like it was a cursed object.

    I was inspired by my friend’s hunger for adventure, so the next morning I punished myself with a new exercise: the Farmer’s Carry–two kettlebells, one in each hand, pacing in circles across my front lawn like a rogue warlord in gym shorts. Neighbors peeked through their blinds to watch this 63-year-old Larry Csonka doppelgänger lumbering across the grass like I was either training for something… or losing a very public battle with aging.

    The exercise nearly broke me. I’ll keep it in rotation, but with moderation. I train to feel alive, not to hemorrhage my last remaining Life Force into the turf of suburban California.

    And now, I wait for my friend to pull up and take me for a ride in his Lexus. He’s earned it. The man’s been driving the same Corolla for thirteen years. Now it’s his turn to live a little. And me? I’ll tag along, a passenger for a while, enjoying the ride through this strange, accelerating cycle of life.

  • The Gospel of Iron: How Weightlifting Became My Religion

    The Gospel of Iron: How Weightlifting Became My Religion

    In 1974, at the age of thirteen, I began weightlifting under the guidance of Lou Kruk, my junior high P.E. teacher and Junior Olympic weightlifting coach. Lou wasn’t just teaching kids to hoist iron—he was shaping futures. He handed me a barbell and lit the fuse. Soon, I was consuming protein powders and flipping through Strength & Health and Muscle Builder, the gospel according to Bob Hoffman and Joe Weider.

    From garage gyms to commercial ones, from clunky bench presses to rusted barbells, I trained. I flirted briefly with gimmicks—a Bullworker here, a Power Yoga phase there—but nothing kept me grounded like the iron. Eventually, I found kettlebells: odd, compact, brutally effective. And fifty-one years later, I’m still at it. The protein, the lifting—they’re no longer habits; they’re rituals.

    I don’t work out to chase aesthetics or to stave off decay. I train because not training feels like suffocating. My routine gives shape to my days, the way grammar gives shape to language. Without it, life would collapse into chaos. I marvel at those who drift through their hours without structure, snacking at whim, binge-watching shows, darting between texts and chores like pinballs. A life without scaffolding feels not just unsatisfying—it feels dangerous.

    Sometimes I wonder: what if I’d never met Lou Kruk? What if weightlifting had never entered my life? Would I have found some other sacred structure to cling to, or would I have been swallowed by drift? Yes, I play piano. Yes, I write. But I’m no professional writer unless you count me as a “professional navel-gazer.” These activities are merely sidelines—dilettante pursuits. It’s the iron that makes me whole.

    Maybe weightlifting saved my life. Maybe it still does. I could psychoanalyze this, wax poetic about addiction to ritual and the fear of entropy. Or I could walk into the garage, chalk my hands, and get lost in goblet squats and Turkish Get-Ups until the world makes sense again. I think you already know what I’m going to choose.

  • Why Reading Is the Last Romantic Act

    Why Reading Is the Last Romantic Act


    If you take my Critical Thinking class, let me set expectations up front: I will not stand at the front of the room and lecture you into becoming an intellectual. That’s not how it works. I can’t command you to read. I can’t install curiosity like a software update.

    What I can tell you is this: the default setting is mediocrity. It’s smooth, seductive, and socially acceptable. The world—especially its algorithmic avatars—is built to exploit that setting. Platforms like OpenAI don’t just offer tools; they offer excuses. They whisper: You don’t have to think. Just prompt.

    You’ll get by on it. You’ll write tolerable essays. You might even land a job—something stable and fluorescent-lit with a breakroom fridge. But if you keep outsourcing your critical thinking to machines and your inner life to streaming platforms, you may slowly congeal into a Non-Player Character: a functionally adequate adult with no self-agency, just dopamine hits from cheap tech and cheaper opinions.

    The world needs thinkers, not task-completers.

    And that’s why I push reading—not as an obligation, but as a doorway to a higher mode of existence. Reading changes the texture of your thoughts. It exposes you to complexity you didn’t ask for and patterns of mind you didn’t inherit. But here’s the inconvenient truth: no one can make you read.

    Reading isn’t a commandment. It’s a love affair—and like any love worth having, it’s irrational, wild, and self-chosen. You don’t read because it’s good for you. You read because at some point a book wrecked you—in the best way possible. It made your brain itch, or your chest tighten, or your worldview crack open like an old floorboard.

    And that’s what I want for you. Not because it makes me feel like a good professor, but because if you don’t fall in love with ideas—on the page, in the margins, in someone else’s wild, flawed sentences—you’ll live a life someone else designed for you.

    And you’ll call it freedom.