I’m waiting on my friends to arrive.
Feeling like a hanger-on.
It’s been many years since I
had a formal excuse to be in this kind of room.

So, feeling awkward,
I fall back
into my old and worn
role of observer.

When I can lose the mirror
in the background,
I lean in.
I make mental notes.

Then you arrived,
my new not-quite-friend.
We’d bonded ever so briefly the day before
when I showed up to your poetry workshop
wearing the same Nick Cave t-shirt.

“I like your shirt.”

You engaged in an animated conversation
with the woman seated beside me.
I followed silently.

After a while, her animation became dominant.
I saw your frustration as you tried
to squeeze in your pieces
of the alternating monologues.

And then your eyes caught mine.
We both looked away,
a little too quickly.

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Post #15, Challenge Day #7

Leila just about lost it
as Alexa went on and on
about another perfect 70-degree day
in February
in Denver.

“Sure, it feels good now.
But it’s not natural.
It’s a flashing neon sign
of impending doom.”

And isn’t “feels good now”
how we got here in the first place?

It’s not just the weather.

Stock bumps after quarterly manipulations.
A pint of ice cream instead of the gym.
Avoiding the difficult conversation.
Endless scrolling.

But excuse me,
I’ve got some sun to enjoy.

I really don’t like the cold.

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Hard not to enjoy it.

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Post #14, Challenge Day #34

Like what hit me when Rose was born
and they took them from the room for routine tests.

Before, there was me.
There was my wife.

Now, there was us.
Three but one.

•

The Groundhog Day.
Truths that require constant revisiting
after slipping away.

Like equanimity, patience, humility.
All the fruits of a spiritual path.

Like how often I have to remind myself
the monsters of imagined futures
are not here right now.

•

The Quantum.
Truths we can glimpse
but never truly hold.

Like quantum physics itself,
or even space-time relativity.

Or how you and I
are neither fixed nor separate.

•

Some truths are all three.

Like grace.
Like unconditional love.

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Some truths rearrange us.
Others keep slipping away.
Some we can only glimpse.

The most important truths seem to be all three.

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Post #13, Challenge Day #33

I noticed you approaching from behind,
signal on.
And I didn’t get over,
though I needed to turn
just past the light.

Perhaps the tiniest kindness ever.
One you wouldn’t be expected to notice.

But it made me stop.
How many hidden kindnesses,
small and large,
have I benefited from?
Hundreds?
Surely, thousands.
Or millions.

Survival has conditioned us
to notice the prowling tigers,
the preying hands,
the conniving opportunists,
the obnoxious drivers (also me).

Can we notice

the door held,
treats left in the break room,
gym equipment wiped down,
litter picked up,
lowered voices on the sidewalk at night,

a honk (or bird) withheld
even when deserved,

a trivial text
really saying
“Thinking of you,”

the daily service of our jobs,
the routine sacrifices of friends and family,

the simple look in the eye that says
I see you?

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An echo that came to mind after this little moment of noticing:

I can’t believe how many years I lived without knowing the air you were breathing out was the air I was breathing in. Forgive me for not saying thank you before our lungs had reason to hide.— Andrea Gibson, “Note to the Stranger Six Feet Away”

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Post #12, Challenge Day #38

The lines kept coming.

I was on a roll.

I realized it.

So did:

My self-editor.
My inner success coach.

My self-protector.
My asshole self-critic.

Remind me.

How does one forget the self?

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Post #11, Challenge Day #16

It was like an episode of “House,”
differential diagnoses
refusing to stick.

“We don’t know how this will progress,”
the experts said.
The possibilities multiplied
with every test.

“It could be a rare virus that clears in days,
or your lungs and heart
could just shut down.”

By some grace,
I leaned into the not knowing.

Even with a three-year-old
tethering me home,
I settled into the farmer’s
“we’ll see.”

In the end,
it was a storybook ending.

I had entered the hospital
on Day 29 of a 31-day writing challenge.

On Day 31, I came home
to recover from a rare
but short-lived
virus, still unnamed.

Of course,
it wasn’t the end.

I am not made of Teflon.

And anyway,
Teflon flakes.

Some days, a sniffle sticks
to the thought
“must be lupus.”

Some days I go to write an email
and find so many attachments
I’m stuck in place

by sandburs
in threadbare socks.

I’ll be forever picking them out.

So I try
to watch
my steps.

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This piece comes out of a brief but intense stretch in 2016, when I was in the middle of a 30-day writing challenge.

On Day 26, I came down with a fever. By evening, it was getting difficult to even type. By Day 29, I was in the hospital.

I went through test after test, seeing specialist after specialist, who were all baffled. At first, they thought it might be neurological, something like Guillain-Barré syndrome. The blood tests showed my muscles were deteriorating rapidly. It was progressing so quickly that they worried my lungs and heart might just stop.

And then, just as quickly, it resolved. On Day 31, I came home. The recovery was slow because my muscles were ravaged, but I was fine otherwise.

I almost titled this “Differential Diagnosis,” but that centers the medical mystery. What stayed with me was something else: how calm I felt in the face of it.

Of course, that calm was noteworthy, but it was not permanent. Less serious situations can send worry spinning out of control.

The difference between those moments is what I wanted to explore here.

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Post #10, Challenge Day #12

I remember

feeling so alone.

Driving back from a festival in Illinois,
she said,
“I just can’t imagine feeling so bad
you’d think of ending it all.”

I kept my eyes on the road.

Later, I wrote:

“I’ll have to remeasure the world.”

We sat down to watch Buffy.
I hung on every word
in silence.

You commented on
her tight pants.

I went back to reading
Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale

and watching

alone.

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This one came to me while I was sitting in a sushi restaurant, waiting for Rose to finish guitar lessons.

Three moments. Three different people (and me). 25 to 35 years ago.

I was a little surprised how quickly they came back.

I don’t live in that same place anymore. In some ways, that version of me feels like someone else. But I remember him.

And yes — Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale is a real book. Full title: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale. With 23 essays from professional philosophers examining the “crucial ethical and metaphysical aspects of the Buffyverse.”

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I read the poem and share a bit more in the audio.

When I launched, I tried using my podcast setup and quickly got lost in endless Audition tweaking. This time it’s just Substack’s record-from-browser. No editing. Just me, in real time.

Post #9, Challenge Day #18

Just go slow.
Do what you know.

Wake me
when you’re
done.

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This one came out haiku-like: 5-7-5, even if it doesn’t quite look it on the page.

It traces back to an older piece I wrote on improv and risk-taking — one of those posts where I had a lot to say about a simple idea: that perfection is easy, and mostly beside the point.

That piece ranged pretty widely — business, creativity, presence, relationships. A mix of voices and influences. Also, a lot of em dashes. Proof that it’s not just a ChatGPT phenomenon.

Lately, I’ve been coming back to that same idea from a different angle — less about performance and business, more about personal practice (which is also not separate).

Showing up. Trying something. Letting it be a little messy.

And moving on.

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Post #8, Challenge Day #13

Exactly 20 years ago,
on Lazarus Saturday, 2006,
you watched your mom,
both of you visiting from Iran,
perform a Zoroastrian blessing
for the wedding of her cousin and me.

Cloth over our heads.
Sugar cubes rubbed to sweeten our life together.
Honey to sustain us.
Thread to bind us in one union.
Mirror for purity, candles for light,
scissors to cut away obstacles.

Then the Episcopal priest
led communion
as Karin and Linford played
“Drunkard’s Prayer.”

In the party that followed,
Persian food awed and wine flowed.
The English and Persian relatives
scattered all over the world
gathered and vied to be heard.
Paste coworkers
danced to the mix of
Persian, classic pop, and indie-rock.
The teetotaling, non-dancing, Midwestern Nazarenes
from my side
stood off to the side,
but took it all in stride.

Twenty years later,
Karin and Linford still tell this story
to various crowds,
especially when I’m in the crowd.

But I’m thinking of little four-year-old you, Arvin.
Your wide-eyed amazement at the spectacle.

I haven’t seen you since,
except in the background of a couple video calls.
But I know you’ve had to evade harm from your government.
And now mine.

I can’t imagine this spectacle through your eyes.

So tonight,
I’m thinking of you, Arvin.

And of whole civilizations,
all trying to stay alive.

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First cousin, once removed.

That seems to mean something different now.

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Post #7, Challenge Day #43

Either way
it won’t last.

But you’ll be ready
to do the work again

maybe even whistling
instead of stewing.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about acceptance and action. Both seem necessary and impossible. I want to add “especially right now,” but we’ve been saying that for a long time. It seems every election in memory has been “the most important of our lifetime.” More to the point, a close reading of history shows that humans have been saying “especially right now” for millennia.

There’s a lyric of Over the Rhine’s that has stayed with me for a couple of decades, and a reinterpretation opened a new way to sit with that tension:

The bed is made,
the world’s a mess
Maybe we’ve got it backwards
Maybe we should just care less
— Over the Rhine, “Show Me”

As I’ve struggled with the messes we’ve made of the world, this keeps popping into my head. Of course, it’s not that we shouldn’t care. But there’s something in the way we’re caring that is not working for us or for the world.

And I don’t think it’s just that we need to tend to our own messes, or that change starts with me. Both are clichés for a reason. They’re true.

Perhaps the underlying problem is that we think we can fix the world in the first place. That we can fix anything. We have this illusion that some sort of permanent perfection is achievable. Maybe that very delusion drives us to make matters worse by trying to force the impossible and eventually robs us of the energy to do anything. Ultimately, it robs us of hope.

It’s like holding out an ideal of the perfect spouse or friend, and then wondering why every real relationship feels like a disappointment.

Imagine if we thought we could “fix” the bed, the dishes, the laundry. We would live in constant frustration, pursue many foolish paths to keep them from “breaking” again, and eventually give up, magnifying the messes of our lives.

Maybe tidying, cleaning, washing are the better metaphors. We try not to make unnecessary messes. We might improve how we do the work. But we know we’re going to keep coming back to it, and mostly we just do the work.

Sure, sometimes I question why we make the bed regularly, and sometimes I want disposable dishes and clothes. But mostly, I just do what needs doing.

I still don’t know exactly how to tidy my life as much as I’d like. I don’t know the best way to deal with those who keep making messes on purpose. And I certainly don’t know how to tidy climate change. Or democracy.

But I know there are things to do. And I know that the need to tidy is never going away.

That realization changes things.

Note:

On Sunday, April 26, I’m giving a talk with the Insight Meditation Community of Denver titled “Beds Don’t Stay Made: Acting Without the Need to Fix,” building on this idea. It’s in-person in Denver and online via Zoom. We sit from 4–4:45 p.m. MT, with the talk and discussion from 5–6.

The following Sunday (May 3), I’ll also be facilitating an “Introduction to Meditation” session for a smaller group at IMCD. Less silent sitting, more walking through different approaches and common misconceptions. That’s from 4–4:45 p.m. MT. All are welcome. No experience (and no particular beliefs) needed.

If you’d like the Zoom link for either, feel free to comment or send me a note.

Post #6, Challenge Day #51

It’s been amazing.
Fulfilling. Energizing,
in the manner of new growth.

Which,
as it happens,
is tiring.

Yet I dare not skip today.
I need the streak
to avoid the inertia of Netflix.

Little games
to stave off entropy.

Little games
to make myself do
what I already wanted
to have done.

Outside my window,
a squirrel skulks,
snatching our barely ripened strawberries
and tormenting the cats.

His work is his play.

Where’s the play
in my games?

Yesterday,
I saw him sunning
in a fork
of a Ponderosa Pine.

Does he ever tire of gathering acorns
and watching his back?

Maybe.

But he’s not lying awake
worrying about the winter,
or complaining to his psychiatrist
about the injustice of his food system
and the irrational hatred of those cat guards.

No squirrel Prozac.
No Eat. Pray. Love.

Just:

Eat.
Play.
Sleep.

Oh, to be a squirrel.

Then again,
maybe he’s thinking:

“Oh, to be a human.

All of that food.
All of that time for play.

If I had that abundance,
I’d feed all the squirrels—
and the birds, too.”

Maybe I’ll just
gather my thoughts
and get back to it.

This is
kind of fun,
after all.

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What little games do you play to get yourself to do what you wish to have done (which, note, is not the same as what you wish to do)?

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Note:

On Sunday, April 26, I’m giving a talk with the Insight Meditation Community of Denver titled “Beds Don’t Stay Made: Acting Without the Need to Fix” (which, spoiler, relates to the forthcoming Thursday poem). It’s in-person in Denver and online via Zoom. We sit from 4–4:45 p.m. MT, with the talk and discussion from 5–6.

The following Sunday (May 3), I’ll also be facilitating an “Introduction to Meditation” session for a smaller group at IMCD. Less silent sitting, more walking through different approaches and common misconceptions. That’s from 4–4:45 p.m. MT. All are welcome. No experience (and no particular beliefs) needed.

If you’d like the Zoom link for either, feel free to comment or send me a note.

Post #5, Challenge Day #14

All of It Was Music (poem playlist)

When two violins are placed in a room
if a chord on one violin is struck
the other violin will sound the note.
— Andrea Gibson, “Say Yes”

Maybe I had no business being there,
but it was up to me to set the tone.

Exactly one week earlier, I was holding Mom’s cold hands,
her final breath coming in the early morning hours
before we could rush over from the hotel outside Atlanta.
The hospice room, so silent,
just days after my nephew Watson,
bearing Mom’s maiden name,
serenaded her while he could.

Now the Denver ballroom was filling with voices.
Journalists, editors and publishers
from across Colorado and beyond
gathering for the annual convention.

Even knowing these two things could coincide,
I couldn’t get everything off my plate.

Even many months of planning
just can’t be sufficient preparation
for things so momentous.

So I’m welcoming, organizing, emceeing,
interviewing the Attorney General,
and, as a Southern white man, moderating a conversation
with two Black statehouse leaders
about race, media and politics.

So you chop wood, carry water.
Get your ox out of the ditch.
Let the chips fall.
And be grateful for your practice and preparation.
What else is there?

I found out.

“I probably have no business being here.”
A confessional song to start.
“I know you don’t know what to say. I wouldn’t. I don’t.
That’s okay. Say nothing or ask for details.
As long as you don’t mind my tearing up,
needing a moment or maybe temporarily rebuffing you,
it’s all welcome.”

I go back to my hotel room.
Over the Rhine’s Christmas album song
“Let It Fall” shuffles into the August night.
And the pent-up tears indeed fall
with a little confidence and grace.

Over the next three days
I watch a room full of professional skeptics
find the same key.

A leader who’d taken friendly fire
aimed at corporate parents
for the better part of a decade
kicked off Friday morning
and it felt like a homecoming, a lion’s roar,
and a healing.

Legislators teared up
talking about racism’s personal toll,
even in statehouse leadership.

I saw simmering resentments aired out,
and hugs given.
New partnerships were formed.

For Friday’s dinner, forty industry leaders
gathered to send off a colleague.
The hotel staff had forgotten the wine,
so while my staff scrambled,
we began the introductions.

One by one,
voices joined in
songs of praise—
not just for Sam,
but for all.

Bread. Stories.
Eventually, wine.

Grace notes
resounding
around the table.

My biggest misstep was not finishing
the scripting for the awards slideshow.
But Rachel had used AI to make two up-tempo odes
to the newsrooms in the room.
So there was dancing. Literal dancing.

Somehow it was the best awards show yet.
Filled with recognition
and resonance.

If grief is love without a place to go
Well then I’ve been there, you’re not alone
And if a song is worth a thousand prayers
We’ll sing ’til angels come carry you and all your cares
— Over the Rhine, “Let You Down”

Two weeks later, I joined my musician friends
on their farm in Ohio for a Labor Day weekend
of music, art, poetry
and community.

I needed that time
in the middle of Nowhere
to rest.
A key change to decompress.
To heal.

But none of this was separate.

Death. Life. Grief. Healing.
Work. Art. Practice.
Showing. Telling.
Performance. Conversation. Silence.
Community.

All of it was, well, music.

You can find music in places where you cannot find air.
— Andrea Gibson, “Stay”

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Everything came to a head in August 2025.

I didn’t have the luxury of sorting it all out. I just had to be there for it.

What surprised me was how much richness there was in that. Not despite everything, but because of it.

If I ever thought mindfulness would flatten life, that month disabused me of that. It was all right there — tears, family, community, sadness, joy, stress, relief.

I tasted it all. I treasured it all.

Such bittersweet music. Such aliveness.

For all of the Over the Rhine songs referenced in this piece, as well as Andrea Gibson reading her referenced poems, see the playlist for this piece.

All of It Was Music (poem playlist)

Thank you, Karin and Linford, for accompanying me on this journey in ways you’ll never know. And thank you, , for showing me what poetry — what an open heart — can do.

Image:

The flowers on Mom’s casket with overlays of Over the Rhine at Nowhere Else Festival 2025 and roundtables at Local News Solutions 2025. Original photos by Stephen Porter, me and Thomas Cooper.

Post #4, Challenge Day #10

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I was that kid
who kept his Star Wars toys
in their original packaging.

Pristine.
Untouched.

Valuable
in some hypothetical future.
Cherished
but not for their intended purpose.
Loved
but only from a distance.

Only while they remained
in mint condition.

Half a century later,
the boxes are still sealed,
but yellowed tape is curling.
The corner of a protective Rubbermaid
has given way
to an indefatigable rat.

Luke’s scuffed plastic entombment—
like the brittle plastic
on grandma’s prized couch
I longed to feel
just once.

On the outside of the Millennium Falcon box:

Some assembly required.

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This piece was a turning point for me.

Earlier this year, I started an experiment. I wanted to see if I could write a poem a day for 30 days, inspired by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer (whose self-challenge began as a 30-day experiment and became a two-decade-long practice). The poems didn’t have to be “good,” but they needed to be emotionally honest.

In the first five days of my challenge, most of what I’d written was quite abstract and somewhat unsatisfying. I found myself circling ideas more than inhabiting them. On day six, I heard Rosemerry read “This Difficult Day,” quoted in the epigraph above. I found myself thinking about the illusion of perfection and what it costs us, and I wanted to see if I could make that concrete.

This is what showed up.

I don’t think of this piece as a metaphor so much as a microcosm. It holds together on its own terms, completely contained. But it also opens outward.

Writing this shifted something for me. Most of what I’ve written since has been more grounded in lived moments, with a kind of turn or realization emerging from within the scene rather than being imposed on it.

I’m now on day 47 of that 30-day challenge. I may never share or revisit those first five poems, but almost everything since then feels worth doing one or the other. I’m not saying this will become a decades-long practice. I may not make it to day 48. But it’s already changed the way show up for the world.

Thank you, , for the nudge.

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Post #3, Challenge Day #6

Gently bring your mind back,
the way you’d gently correct
a wandering puppy you’re training.

To those who feel like dumb puppies,
starting over and over again,
Joseph Goldstein says,
“we’re all dumb puppies.”

But put that puppy in a safe container,
where it can run amok without harm:

The puppy comes back on its own.

You’re not so much trusting the puppy
as the love,
the relationship.

The next time you catch yourself—
I mean, the puppy—
straying again
maybe forget about correction.

Try that other voice.

Who’s a good dog?
Such a good dog!

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Maybe some days the thing to practice isn’t correction.

Today, try a little tenderness.
Trust the love.

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Post #2, Challenge Day #42

“Bad bathtub,” I said.

You say,
That’s silly.
The bathtub didn’t do anything.

“Bad body, then?” I said.

Indignant,
My body’s not bad.

Some people don’t like their body.
I love my body.
Why would anybody hate their body?

When Sharon Salzburg asked
the Dalai Lama about self-hatred,
the interpreter tried several times
to explain the foreign concept.

Unlike his,
your insight
drained with the bathwater.

It’s like that.

That sense of a self,
separate and soiled,
returns again and again.

But it’s nothing
a little soap and water
can’t handle.

Welcome to The Long Unbecoming, a space where I explore what it means to be human, together.

Most of what I share here will be short pieces rooted in everyday moments. But this is more than a writing project for me. It’s a practice of paying attention, of being a little more open about what’s here, and sharing in real time.

Along the way, I’ll also share reflections, occasional mindfulness talks, and invitations to sit together in meditation—especially for those of us who create, struggle with all of this 💁🏼‍♂️ and try to find our way through, regardless.

I’ll be sharing here regularly and letting it evolve.

If you’re curious about the broader shape of this project and my background, you can find that on the About page.

I’m glad you’re here.

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Post #1, Challenge Day #8