I held the rifle in the crook of my arm. I was playing with the safety-catch, flicking the little lever up and down. Safety on, safety off, safety on, safety off. We were looking for vervet monkeys. I was nine. My cousin was there, he also had a rifle, he was fourteen. And our friend…
A case for why you must read fiction
If you have any desire to understand what life is about or if you want to come to terms with why you suffer, or why the world makes so little sense then you must read fiction. Many people who I know who read, read non-fiction work exclusively. They suffer from the misconception that there is…
A discussion agenda for loved ones and mafia meetings
When I went to visit my grandmother, she always had talking points that she’d refer to as we caught up. She’d accumulate and curate the topics of conversation between my visits. Topics included stories and obituaries she’d read in the paper, news about my grandfather who rarely shared anything more significant than what we could…
The time when my friends were more like family and less like friends
It was when COVID had sent us all into what was to be our first lockdown. About 3 weeks after our governments forced us into our homes I seriously started to contemplate my mortality. There were moment throughout each day, usually when I took my kids to a park for our allotted 60 minutes of…
Want to be interesting? Do this.
This is my second attempt at writing a post on how to be interesting. I have a full draft of a similar themed post that has remained unpublished for over a year now sitting in the background. The reason I never published that article is because I had an uncanny sense that I’d missed something;…
This is the worst article I’ve written
Someone recently sent me this article. In it the author writes a letter to his young self on how to grow as a musician and songwriter. The article is appropriately named, Letter To A Young Songwriter. It’s a good letter with good advice that can be applied to all creative endeavours. And while I have…
Learn don’t envy
Where you compare yourself to somebody else and feel disappointment, a pang of envy, that is where you should focus your curiosity. I’m currently enrolled in a fiction writing course. There are eleven other students on the course and we all have very different backgrounds. A couple of the students are already published authors. We…
How sleep was stressing me out and what solved it
I’ve had it in my head that I am a poor sleeper. And all the facts appear to support my belief. I rarely have more than 7 hours sleep in a night. I like to nap in the middle of the day on weekends, and am late to rise on Saturday and Sunday mornings. During…
Why I don’t agree with the man who is ‘fiercely independent’ and ‘one of the last thinkers who used his own head’
Roger Scruton was a philosopher interested in both politics and aesthetics. He was also an advocate for traditional conservative policies and views. Roger died in 2020. This was Nassim Nicolas Taleb‘s tweet the day after he died. Now, I didn’t know who Roger Scruton was until this weekend. I’d never heard of him. Probably because…
Why a hamburger is art and how the Americans won the Culinary Olympics
The chef I studied under, when I still wanted to be a chef, had stories. All chefs do. They have stories about the crazy people they worked with, the insane dishes they prepared through the years, the shouting, the sweating, and the violence of creating with food. I was a chef for only a short…