Tag: writing

Be a Poor Speaker at Your Own Peril

On the latest Dishcast, Andrew Sullivan interviewed the ever-cantankerous Chris Matthews—nearly 80 and still sharp enough to cut glass. Matthews, with his gravelly baritone steeped in decades of political brawls, made a blunt but brilliant point: the failed American presidents—Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Joe Biden—shared one glaring flaw. They couldn’t talk. They mumbled, stumbled, or sounded like nervous librarians scolding kids in the back row.

Now contrast that with the great performers of the Oval Office—Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, Obama. Each could command a room, a camera, or a nation, not because they had better policies, but because they could speak. Kennedy practiced endlessly, even in the bathtub, channeling Churchill’s thunderous cadence while scrubbing his armpits. Reagan rehearsed like an actor because—well, he was one. Matthews’ thesis? If you’re a politician and can’t speak, you’re in the wrong line of work. There’s no excuse. Oratory is not some divine gift—it’s a muscle, and you’d damn well better train it.

I couldn’t agree more. In my forty years teaching college students, my most potent teaching tool wasn’t my syllabus or my grading rubric—it was my voice. My persona. My ability to perform indignation, irony, sarcasm, and revelation—all in the same breath. I played a character: part prophet, part stand-up comic, part disappointed parent watching the nation stick a fork in the toaster. And that outraged character got through to students. It entertained while it educated. It gave ideas a delivery system my students could remember.

So when I watch politicians stumble through speeches like deer on roller skates, I want to scream. You are leading a country. You should not sound like a sedated hostage reading a ransom note. At their worst, some of these men sound like toddlers in a supermarket, lost and wailing, unable to pronounce the word “mommy.” And yet they expect to run a superpower.

Chris Matthews is right: if you can’t speak, you can’t lead.

June 15, 2025
The Pilgrim, the Mansion, and the Flying Death Rig

Last night, I dreamed I worked at a surreal hybrid of a college campus and an amusement park—the kind of place where tenured professors could file paperwork in one building and ride a log flume in another. Picture syllabus deadlines and cotton candy coexisting. Naturally, I was late for both.

Meanwhile, several miles away in my old neighborhood, Marcus, a childhood friend, decided he’d had enough of modern civilization. His exit wasn’t dramatic—no manifesto, no angry blog post—just a quiet pilgrimage beginning in front of my house. The weather was unreasonably perfect. Sunlight filtered through air that smelled like rose petals and eternal spring. Think Garden of Eden meets Orange County real estate brochure.

So why would Marcus leave paradise? We didn’t know. But my neighbors and I were offended by the sheer moral audacity of it. His journey felt like a judgment—like he’d stared into the hollow eyes of our HOA and whispered, “You people are dead inside.” Naturally, we chased him. Not to stop him, but to prove we were decent people too. We jogged after him, waving metaphysical CVs and shouting, “We recycle! We make our own salad dressing!”

But Marcus was too far ahead. By the time I arrived at the college-amusement park, he was gone. I retreated to my professor’s office to catch up on what dreams insist professors do: paperwork. That’s when Mike arrived—a former student, Navy SEAL, and time-traveling spirit guide from the 1990s. He led me to a house in Buena Park, once his father’s, now transfigured by dream logic into a mansion of staggering beauty, where I apparently lived a life of joy and ease in another dimension. It was, quite simply, the life I never knew I had but now mourned like a phantom limb. I was flooded with regret. Why did I leave that parallel mansion where I was whole, radiant, and probably never had to grade a single freshman essay?

Then the sun set, and—as dreams do—I stopped being a professor and morphed into some kind of blue-collar rig worker, one of four men hauling cargo across the freeways of this theme park universe. At breakneck speed, we clung to the roof of a truck, flying over the 5 freeway like a band of deluded daredevils. I alone had the courage (or sanity) to question this arrangement. “You know,” I said, wind slapping my face, “we don’t have to die tonight. There’s an interior cabin. With seats.”

At first, they mocked me—because apparently, dreamland logic still includes workplace hazing—but eventually, they gave in. We climbed down into the safety of the rig, like cowards, or people who enjoy not being flung across asphalt.

As I relaxed, I thought once more about that mansion in Buena Park, that shadow life where I wasn’t trying to prove my worth or cling to cargo. A life of belonging, not striving. Then I woke up, ate a bowl of buckwheat groats, drank my Sumatra coffee, and wondered what it all meant.

June 15, 2025
Muhammad Ali and the Rent We Pay for Heaven

During the chaos of finals week—when my inbox floods with apologetic, last-ditch emails from students begging for an extended deadline—I found solace in something far removed from academia: Antoine Fuqua’s What’s My Name: Muhammad Ali. It’s a two-part documentary, but it feels more like a sermon and a love letter rolled into one. Like Fuqua, I’ve always had a boundless reverence for Ali—the most charismatic athlete to ever live—and watching him slowly succumb to Parkinson’s at just forty-two broke something in me.

There’s a word for the dark thrill we sometimes feel when others suffer: schadenfreude. But what’s the opposite of that word–the anguish we feel when our heroes fall? When they suffer with such dignity and pride that they won’t accept our sympathy, even though they deserve every ounce of it? We don’t just mourn them—we mourn the version of ourselves that believed they were untouchable. Seeing Ali’s mind remain sharp, his wit flickering through that neurological prison, was unbearable and beautiful all at once.

In his prime, Ali wasn’t just a boxer—he was a superhero, a shapeshifter, a one-man Broadway show in a heavyweight’s body. He was a sharp observer of American racism, yet never a scold. He wielded humor like a blade—cutting through injustice with charm and rhythm. His facial expressions alone could dismantle a room. And above all, he had soul. He was a poet, an actor, a preacher, and a provocateur.

His conversion to Islam was not cosmetic. It reshaped him. He carried a sense of divine accountability, speaking of God not as abstraction but as a constant, watchful presence. He lived with the weight of eternity in mind, casually discussing the soul as if he’d already made peace with his fate. One of the final moments in the documentary captures this perfectly: Ali scribbles a note to a fan asking for an autograph—“Service to others is the rent we pay for our room in HEAVEN.” The line made me stop in my tracks and pray that I could live such a life rather than momentarily be inspired by it or tell others about it, because I know from experience that “talk is cheap.”

The film doesn’t critique Ali—and truthfully, I didn’t want it to. I didn’t want the version of him that stayed too long in the ring. I didn’t want to watch his brilliance dimmed by punches that should’ve stopped years earlier. I found myself irrationally angry with him. I wanted him to become an actor, a comedian, a talk show philosopher—anything but a late-career boxer whose brilliance was traded for one more round. But of course, I’m lying to myself.

We place athletes like Ali in the realm of myth. They are our Achilles, our Hercules. His greatness was inseparable from the ring. The same inner fire that made him a champion refused to let him leave the stage quietly. That fire gave us the epic—and, inevitably, the tragedy. I only wish that the spiritual clarity that shaped his faith could have overruled the gladiator in him. But maybe that’s the final paradox of Ali: he lived as both prophet and warrior, and the cost of greatness was always going to be high.

June 14, 2025
Writing Your Origin Story: A College Essay Prompt
Writing Your Origin Story

An origin story is a personal narrative that explains how someone became who they are—it connects formative experiences, struggles, and turning points to a clear sense of identity and purpose. It’s not just a chronology of events, but a curated account that gives meaning to the chaos, shaping pain, failure, or rebellion into insight and direction. Like a myth with teeth, a well-crafted origin story turns vulnerability into vision, showing not just where someone came from, but how that journey forged their voice, values, and ambitions.

We have powerful examples of origin stories In the Amazon Prime documentary Group Therapy, in which Neil Patrick Harris plays a surprisingly restrained version of himself as moderator while six comedians—Tig Notaro, Nicole Byer, Mike Birbiglia, London Hughes, Atsuko Okatsuka, and Gary Gulman—dissect the raw material of their lives. The big reveal? That material doesn’t go from trauma to stage in one dramatic leap. No, it must be fermented, filtered, and fashioned into something more useful than pain: a persona built on an origin story.

Mike Birbiglia delivers the central thesis of the show, and I’ll paraphrase with a bit more bite: You can’t stagger onto stage mid-breakdown and expect catharsis to double as comedy. That’s not a gift—it’s a demand. You’re taking from the audience, not offering them anything. The real craft lies in the slow, deliberate process of transforming suffering into something elegant, pointed, and—yes—entertaining. That means the comic must achieve emotional distance from the wreckage, construct a precise point of view, and build a persona strong enough to carry the weight without buckling. In other words, the chaos must be curated. Unlike therapy, where you’re still bleeding onto the couch, stand-up demands a version of you that knows how to make the bloodstains rhyme.

This process is a perfect metaphor for what college students must do, whether they realize it or not. They’re not just acquiring credentials—they’re building selves by having a clear grasp of their origin story. And that takes more than GPAs and LinkedIn bios. An origin story requires language, history, personal narrative, and a working origin myth that turns their emotional baggage into emotional architecture. And yes, it sounds crass, but the result is a kind of “self-brand”—an identity with coherence, voice, and purpose, forged from pain but presented with polish.

Because your success, as a human being and someone who is creative and productive in the workforce, requires an origin story, you will write your first essay about the origin story–what it is, how it develops in others, and how it develops inside of you.

To explore the origin story in detail, you will write an essay in 3 parts. Part 1 will analyze the importance of an origin story in the Amazon Prime documentary Group Therapy. Your job in Part 1 is to write a two-page extended definition of the origin story based on the hard-fought wisdom of the comedians who pour out their souls and explain how through their suffering, they discovered who they are, what makes them tick, and how their origin story informs their comedy.

In Part 2, you will write a two-page analysis of the origin story by choosing one of four media sources:
1. The Amazon Prime 3-part series Evolution of the Black Quarterback, a meditation on the courage of black quarterbacks who broke racial barriers and built a legacy of social justice for those quarterbacks who came after them.
2. Chef’s Table, Pizza, Season 1, Episode 3, Ann Kim, the origin story of a Korean-American whose origin story led her to become an award-winning chef.
3. Chef’s Table, Noodles, Season 1, Episode 1, Evan Funke, an American who goes to Italy where kind Italian women share their cooking so he can preserve traditional Italian noodles and become a true chef.
4. Chef’s Table, Noodles, Season 1, Episode 2, Guirong Wei, a young woman leaves China to work in London to support her family and emerges as a noodle star.
In Part 3, you will write your two-page origin story. Taking the lessons from Group Therapy and the other media sources from the choices above, you will have the context to write about how you conceive yourself, your interests, your unique challenges, your unique doubts, your career goals, and your aspirations as part of your origin story.

Your essay should be written in MLA format and have a Works Cited page with a minimum of the 2 assigned media sources.

The 10 Characteristics of Your Origin Story
1. You recognize your challenge to belong and understand why you don’t fit in with conventional notions of success, friendship, family, and belonging.
2. You recognize your quirks, fears, and traits that make it a challenge for you to belong.
3. You recognize the barriers between you and what you want.
4. You recognize what you want instead of chasing what you think others would have you want.
5. You recognize being lost in a fog and having a moment or a series of moments in which you achieved clarity regarding what you wanted as a career, for your relationships, and for your passions.
6. You find a North Star, a higher goal, that pulls you from a life of lethargy and malaise to one of discipline and purpose.
7. You recognize the demons that you have to contend with if you are to rise above your worst tendencies and achieve happiness and success.
8. You recognize the talents, inclinations, preferences, style, and biases that make you the person that you are, and you learn to embrace these things and allow them to inform and give expression to the kind of work that you do.
9. You prove to your doubters that the path you have taken is the assertion of your true self and is the most likely path to happiness and success.
10. You recognize mentors and role models who blaze a path that makes you see yourself more clearly and live in accordance with your aspirational self.
June 10, 2025
Old Money, New Misery: My Southern Charm Obsession

Yes, I’m hooked—addicted, really—to Southern Charm, Bravo’s televised safari through Charlotte, South Carolina’s aristocratic swamp of ennui, vanity, and monogrammed dysfunction. Most of the men are local fixtures: old money, old habits, old egos. They drift through their curated lives like shirtless Gatsby extras, tumbling into affairs, start-up flops, and half-baked rebrands of their own manhood—usually involving whiskey, dubious real estate ventures, and “branding consultants” who charge $8,000 to tell them to get a podcast. They aren’t villains exactly—there’s a flicker of decency beneath the smugness—but they are prone to recreational cruelty. Boredom gives their mischief a sadistic edge. Monogamy is a punchline. Direction is a punch-drunk memory. They’re trapped in a gilded cage of their own entitlement, slouching toward irrelevance with cocktails in hand. For the most part, they are a cast of man-child babies performing businessman cosplay.

The women, in contrast, seem genetically engineered for composure, ambition, and unearned patience. While the men unravel like overpriced cable-knit sweaters, the women balance jobs, goals, and the emotional labor of pretending to be intrigued by yet another man-child’s whiskey brand. They hold the show together. They’re smarter, sharper, and infinitely more emotionally competent. Frankly, they deserve their own spin-off where they leave the men behind and conquer the Southeast in blazers and heels.

And presiding over this high-society soap opera like a Southern Sphinx is Grand Matriarch Patricia. She doesn’t walk—she presides. Draped in silk and judgment, she rules from her settee with a cocktail in one hand and a butler at her heels. Her hobbies include throwing theme parties for her yapping purse-dogs, matchmaking with surgical precision, and purchasing $30,000 gold elephants out of sheer boredom. She’s not a character; she’s a living monument to genteel tyranny. Watching her is like watching Downton Abbey if it were sponsored by bourbon and Botox.

Honestly? The show makes me want to move to Charlotte. The humid rain gives me Florida flashbacks. The homes are plush, the restaurants look sinfully inviting, and every time I watch Southern Charm, I find myself daydreaming of strolling through the city in linen pants, pretending I too have nothing better to do than flirt, sip, and emotionally combust in a well-upholstered room.

June 7, 2025
His Royal Hairdresser: A Dream in Kettlebells and Class Anxiety

Last night, my subconscious staged an outdoor fitness class without my consent.

I found myself in a park in Redondo Beach, the sun blinding, the grass impossibly green—an Instagram-filtered fantasy of Southern California wellness. I was mid-kettlebell swing, drenched in purpose and a light sheen of dream-sweat, when I realized I was surrounded. Dozens of adult learners had appeared from nowhere, kettlebells in hand, eager and expectant. Apparently, I was their instructor. No one had hired me. No one had asked. But the dream had spoken, and I complied.

Midway through a set of Turkish get-ups, a British emissary arrived. She looked like a character from a post-Brexit spy novel: stern, sun-dried, calves like cannonballs, dressed in a starched khaki uniform that screamed military cosplay and mid-level bureaucrat. She informed me—in clipped tones—that she worked for Prince Charles and that, regrettably, I lacked the proper haircut to instruct kettlebell technique. Apparently, the heir to the throne had strong feelings about grooming standards in recreational fitness.

I explained, gently but firmly, that I was bald. Smooth as an egg. No haircut necessary. She did not care. My objections were irrelevant. Orders were orders.

We marched off to a nearby luxury hotel, the kind with carpeting so plush it slows your gait. Prince Charles was there, sitting cross-legged on a massive hotel bed surrounded by two open laptops, deep in what I can only assume was royal doom-scrolling. When he saw me, he snapped both laptops shut with the speed of a man hiding state secrets or Wordle stats.

He gestured toward a massive, throne-adjacent salon chair, upholstered in padded leather and colonial guilt. “You need your hair parted down the middle,” he declared.

Again, I protested—I was bald. But His Royal Highness was undeterred. He placed a comb on my scalp, and as if conjured by the Crown itself, hair appeared. Thick, black, center-parted. The haircut was bestowed.

Feeling both knighted and absurd, I reached into my wallet and tipped him two twenties. He accepted the bills with the contempt of a man too wealthy for paper currency. It was as though I had handed him used Kleenex. He nodded, purely out of ritual, and turned back to his laptops, already erasing the memory of me from his mind.

I returned to the park, my hair neatly parted, my purpose restored. I resumed leading my eager students in kettlebell swings, disappearing into the warm fog of belonging, convinced—for at least this dream—that I was a vital member of my sun-drenched community.

June 7, 2025
From Wreckage to Branding: The Art of Curating Your Chaos

In the Amazon Prime documentary Group Therapy, Neil Patrick Harris plays a surprisingly restrained version of himself as moderator while six comedians—Tig Notaro, Nicole Byer, Mike Birbiglia, London Hughes, Atsuko Okatsuka, and Gary Gulman—dissect the raw material of their lives. The big reveal? That material doesn’t go from trauma to stage in one dramatic leap. No, it must be fermented, filtered, and fashioned into something more useful than pain: a persona.

Mike Birbiglia delivers the central thesis of the show, and I’ll paraphrase with a bit more bite: You can’t stagger onto stage mid-breakdown and expect catharsis to double as comedy. That’s not a gift—it’s a demand. You’re taking from the audience, not offering them anything. The real craft lies in the slow, deliberate process of transforming suffering into something elegant, pointed, and—yes—entertaining. That means the comic must achieve emotional distance from the wreckage, construct a precise point of view, and build a persona strong enough to carry the weight without buckling. In other words, the chaos must be curated. Unlike therapy, where you’re still bleeding onto the couch, stand-up demands a version of you that knows how to make the bloodstains rhyme.

This process is a perfect metaphor for what college students must do, whether they realize it or not. They’re not just acquiring credentials—they’re building selves. And that takes more than GPAs and LinkedIn bios. It requires language, history, personal narrative, and a working origin myth that turns their emotional baggage into emotional architecture. And yes, it sounds crass, but the result is a kind of “self-brand”—an identity with coherence, voice, and purpose, forged from pain but presented with polish.

We see this high-wire act pulled off masterfully in Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth and Chris Rock: Tamborine. Both men dive headfirst into their demons—not to wallow, but to narrate. They show us the bruises and the blueprint. Their stories aren’t cries for help; they’re lessons in how to survive the spectacle, reclaim the mic, and turn personal damage into public insight. And that’s the point I want to bring to my freshman composition class: that the most powerful voice you’ll ever write in is the one you’ve built—not from scratch, but from salvage.

June 7, 2025
The Forgotten Fleet: Memoirs of a Honda Hoarder

Last night, my subconscious staged an intervention.

In the dream, my family and I had relocated to a sprawling house perched at the edge of a forest—idyllic at first glance, but the driveway told another story. It had become a graveyard of Honda Accords. Not just one or two, but an entire archaeological dig of them: gleaming new models barely broken in, others half-eaten by moss and mulch, some peeking out from decaying leaf piles like forgotten Easter eggs, and one—yes, really—buried in the earth like a pharaoh’s chariot. Another Accord had somehow washed up near the beach, sun-faded and abandoned like a bloated sea lion.

A kindly messenger—part real estate agent, part archangel—told my daughter and me about the beach-stranded Accord. So we climbed into an older model, the color of a liver spot, and headed to the coast. Upon arrival, we ditched that old heap to rescue another Accord of the exact same jaundiced hue. Predictably, the beach Accord was dead on arrival. My daughter and I, summoning the brute strength of Greek demigods, pushed it across the sand, up a mountain, and across California at warp speed—from Orange County to Simi Valley—as if towing the sins of my consumer past behind us.

We paused at a cousin’s house, where iced tea and human needs awaited. My cousin, ever the concerned parent, confided that his son was wilting from loneliness. Without missing a beat, my daughter rang up a stunning actress—someone so luminous she made Instagram filters seem redundant. She showed up. So did half the neighborhood, offering baked goods in exchange for a glimpse at the sun goddess. One woman brought a cherry pie, trembling with reverence.

As we continued northward, my joy curdled into anxiety. How many Accords had I bought over the years? Were there more hidden somewhere—collector’s editions with leather interiors and forgotten potential—lost to my Swiss cheese memory? Had I turned into the automotive equivalent of a hoarder monk, stacking sacred relics of midlife crises in the forest of my own forgetfulness? I awoke not with peace, but with regret, soothed only slightly by a tall, steaming mug of Sumatra roast, which I drank like a sacrament to sanity.

June 6, 2025
Truth or Trick Play? Storytelling, Sanity, and Self-Mythology in Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth and Charlie Hustle (College Essay Prompt)
In an era where image can be engineered and confession can be weaponized, two notorious sports figures—Mike Tyson and Pete Rose—offer radically different approaches to self-narration. Both were cultural titans who became cautionary tales. Both became pariahs in the eyes of the institutions that once celebrated them. And both—decades later—attempted to reclaim their stories in front of the camera. But what emerges in Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth and Charlie Hustle: & the Matter of Pete Rose is not just a comparison of reputations; it’s a clash of narrative strategies, a psychological autopsy of fame, and a meditation on how the public consumes redemption, performance, and illusion.

Tyson’s Undisputed Truth is a one-man show where he delivers a raw, often disturbing monologue infused with comedy, trauma, confession, and defiance. It is part therapy session, part theater, and part media rebrand. In contrast, Rose’s portrayal in Charlie Hustle is built on decades of resistance to public apology—anchored in charm, denial, and a lingering fantasy that he alone controls the narrative of his life. Where Tyson leans into pain and absurdity, Rose leans into myth and markets nostalgia.

This essay asks you to compare and contrast how these two men use storytelling to carve out a space of sanity and coherence in a world of media distortion, scandal, and moral judgment. The assignment also challenges you to explore not just how these men present themselves—but how we, the audience, respond. What does the public hunger for? Clean redemption arcs or messy truth? Fallen heroes who confess, or ones who remain defiant?

Your essay should address the following key tensions:

1. Storytelling as a tool for reclaiming identity

How does each documentary attempt to make sense of a chaotic life? In what ways does storytelling create clarity, coherence, or at least a coping mechanism?

2. Confession vs. Self-Mythology

Mike Tyson uses confession—vulgar, honest, sometimes performative—to humanize himself. Pete Rose, by contrast, clings to a self-mythologizing script, resisting vulnerability. What are the psychological and rhetorical consequences of each approach?

3. Managing public and personal perception

To what extent are these documentaries efforts to manage not just what the public thinks—but how the subject thinks about himself? Is the audience being let into a sacred, unfiltered truth—or another polished, marketable persona?

4. Audience complicity

Why do we crave redemption stories? Are we looking for truth—or the performance of truth? How does our cultural addiction to authenticity (or its simulation) shape how these figures present themselves? Are we, as an audience, demanding an impossible paradox: icons who are real?

5. Cultural expectations and iconography

Both Tyson and Rose were lionized and then demonized. But is our relationship with their downfall really about justice—or spectacle? How does American culture cycle through its icons? And what does it mean that these men are now trying to write their own endings?

Requirements:
- 1,700 words
- Comparative structure: you must analyze both documentaries with balanced insight
- Engage in close reading of scenes, quotes, tone, and structure from both films
- Present a clear thesis and develop it through specific evidence and thoughtful reasoning
- Address at least one counterargument: for instance, what if Tyson’s confessions are also just theater? What if Rose’s refusal to confess is, in its own way, honest?
Five Sample Thesis Statements (with Mapping Components)
1. While both Mike Tyson and Pete Rose attempt to reclaim their stories from the wreckage of fame, Tyson succeeds through painful confession and theatrical vulnerability, while Rose fails by clinging to self-mythology and denial—revealing how authenticity, when filtered through media, is less about truth than about the performance of control.
2. Undisputed Truth and Charlie Hustle reveal a striking contrast in narrative self-management: Tyson embraces chaos through emotional honesty and humor, while Rose constructs a sanitized legacy rooted in nostalgia and evasion, exposing how audiences both demand and sabotage authenticity in their fallen icons.
3. Tyson’s raw confessional style and Rose’s curated nostalgia campaign expose two opposing strategies of narrative control, but both are shaped—and warped—by an audience that demands vulnerability while punishing imperfection, consuming not truth but the illusion of redemption.
4. Though both documentaries attempt to create a space of inner clarity against a backdrop of public spectacle, Tyson’s open confrontation with his demons reveals the healing potential of narrative, while Rose’s mythmaking underscores the psychological toll of refusing vulnerability in a culture that fetishizes both punishment and repentance.
5. In exploring Tyson’s emotionally chaotic confessional and Rose’s carefully guarded image-building, these documentaries show that the battle between public perception and private truth is not fought on the field or in the ring, but in the slippery terrain of storytelling—where authenticity is always suspect and the audience is never innocent.
June 5, 2025
My Watch Hobby Has Taught Me That Consumerism Can Become a Full-Time Job Resulting in Madness

Experience has taught me that one more watch could push me from “mild enthusiast” to full-blown horological lunatic. I currently own seven watches I like. Each serves a function, fills a niche, scratches an aesthetic itch. And yet, the siren song of three very specific timepieces keeps playing in my head: the Tudor Pelagos, the Seiko Astron SBXD025, and the Citizen Attesa CC4105-69E.

These aren’t idle cravings. They’re fully staged daydreams with lighting, music, and a voiceover narrated by my inner Watch Demon. But I resist. And I resist for three very good reasons.

First: Trying to fit more watches into my already-balanced rotation turns my so-called hobby into a logistical nightmare. It’s no longer joyful—it’s wrist-based Uber driving, shuttling watches in and out of rotation like I’m managing a fleet. I find myself resenting time itself for not giving me enough wrist hours to justify the collection. A hobby should not feel like an unpaid internship.

Second: I fall into the delusion that this next purchase—the Pelagos, the Astron, the Attesa—will be the final watch, the one that ends the madness and ushers in a golden era of contentment and minimalist grace. But let’s be honest: feeding the Watch Demon only sharpens its teeth. Every new arrival rewires the brain for more dopamine hits, not less. It’s not a cure. It’s a catalyst.

Third: Whenever I buy a new watch, something twisted happens—I begin to resent the ones I already own. Not because they’ve failed me, but because I need to invent reasons to justify their exit. The logic goes: “This new watch is more versatile,” or “I’ve outgrown that one.” Then I sell a beloved watch, feel instant regret, and enter the soul-destroying loop of rebuying what I never should have sold.

So what’s the solution? Lately, a single thought has been rising above the noise like a lighthouse in the fog:
“Jeff, put on your Tuna.”
Specifically, my Seiko Tuna SBBN049—possibly the most salient, most “me” watch I own. When it’s on my wrist, I don’t think about the next acquisition. I don’t scroll listings or pace the floor of my psyche looking for the next horological fix. I’m just… good.

Maybe that’s the Truth Path: stop chasing. Start wearing. Let the Tuna do its quiet, oversized magic and get back to the point of all this—joy, not inventory management.

June 5, 2025