Tag Archives: writing

Righteous riffs

Thinking of you ….

Was downstairs and at my desk early yesterday morning. 

Didn’t sleep much or well. 

I was up and asking Alexa for the time every 20 or 30 minutes all the way from 2 until I pulled myself outta bed in surrender at 5:48.

Headspace is a fragile thing when I don’t sleep. 

Vultures circle. 

Downstairs I cracked open my laptop as mechanically as if brushing teeth, with nothing on my mind or heart.

Just started typing ….

“Dried out and crispy, flicking flint on stone, desperate for a spark.” 

Then I received a text.

Was early for a text. 

“Can you chat this morning?” 

Old college roommate.

Seeing his name made me smile.   

Lives on the other side of the state, doing the work of the angels. 

We’ll sometimes schedule cup-filling calls on our respective morning commutes.

Don’t recall a chat ever being impromptu. 

It’d been a few months since our last one.

Didn’t figure myself for good company, but I called him right away. 

Me: On your commute? 

He: Already parked and walking for coffee. 

Me: Is it a London Fog morning? 

He’s a big fan of the London Fog — Earl Gray tea, steamed milk, vanilla, hint of sugar.

“Tastes like a warm hug,” to quote my old roommate quoting one of his office colleagues. 

Sometimes I find myself ordering one when I see it on the menu.

Always makes me think of him.  

He: Ha, yes! I’ve been trying to cut back, though.

Me: Everything in moderation … to quote Ben Franklin. 

He: I just walked past his grave, actually. 

He really did … he passes Christ Church in downtown Philly on his morning pilgrimages for Warm Hugs. 

Our conversation was as spontaneous as his text.  

We bounced across topics like skipping stones … sleep, dispiriting Eastern winters, kids, family, work … making our days count. 

During which I began to feel the gears of my heart start to loosen.

In passing I mentioned a friend’s recent retirement. 

He said he’s got his own date, about a year out. 

He spoke about ‘ending well.’

Said it’s something that’s been on his mind a lot.

He referenced one of our previous conversations that’s stayed with him.  

I’d forgotten about it ’til he reminded me. 

During one of our previously scheduled caffeinated commutes, I talked about how there’s a big difference between things that end, and things that have an ending. 

How there’s a whole school of thought on the topic … called “endineering.” 

How it’s an under-appreciated facet of experience design in my, um, experience. 

How there’s a sturdy body of research that posits that the way an experience ends disproportionally weights participants’ memories — what they take away, what they remember — about it. (look up “Daniel Kahneman” and “Peak-End Rule,” ICYI).

 And yet … most things in our lives just … end.  

Friendships. 

Marriages. 

Jobs.

He said he’s mindful of the legacy he wants to leave with the people he touches … for those that come after him.

Not for the first time, I found myself inspired by my old roommates’ example.  

We were about 15 or so minutes into our chat when I guesstimated he was on his way back to the office with his London Fog. 

He affirmed such was the case. 

So I made sure our conversation … ended well. 

I broke the fourth wall.

Told him how perfectly timed his text was.

Thanked him for thinking of me.  

Let him know his simple text had single-handedly re-directed the trajectory of the day I was headed for. 

Reminded him to never underestimate his capacity to be awesome. 

He made a point to remind me of the same.

___

I can’t overstate the power inherent in the simple act of letting folks know when you’re thinking of them.

You will be astonished by the flowers that bloom from parched earth.

Your timing will never not be perfect.

It scatters the vultures. 

At least long enough to give our Thursdays a fighting chance. 

I will go to my grave (while mentally walking past Ben Franklin’s) shouting it from the rooftops.

The work of the angels, it is.

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Time, an appreciation ….

“But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down. Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it.” — David Foster Wallace, “This is Water,” Commencement Speech to Kenyon College, 2005

__

Walked into the post office yesterday morning carrying the hand-written card and extra copy of Dave Eggers’ “The Captain and the Glory” I was sending to a best-friend for his January birthday. After picking out and addressing a padded envelope, I went to take my place in line … just as a mom and her young son were walking in. 

The boy, maybe eight, was carrying a package at least half as tall as he was. Could barely peek over its top. Based on the way he was waddling, the contents had some heft. 

Carrying the lighter of our respective loads, I let ‘em go in front of me.

The post office people behind the counter were in the process of switching shifts — logging in and out and whatnot — so our patience was, um, appreciated.

Mom asked the boy if wanted to put the package down while they waited.

“I’m holding it,” he said, defiantly, standing on one leg for a sec so he could adjust his grip.

I smiled at such innocence.

Obviously, his first time waiting in line at the post office. 

Within a few seconds he was grunting.

Mom moved her suggestion from the interrogative to the imperative. 

He remained a stubborn helper. 

However, his strength timed out before the glacial logging in process. 

He put the box down. 

Looked around and noticed the floor-standing carousel of gift cards strategically placed near where the line begins. 

Asked Mom if he could have a dollar for a Roblox gift card. 

Upon which she proceeded to explain the business concept of disintermediation to her child. 

Told him it was ‘cheaper’ to just purchase credits from the site, rather than going through a middle man. 

She wasn’t merely patient. She was generous.

You could tell they spent a lot of time together for how easy their conversation was. 

Reminded me how much I enjoyed conversing with our kids when they were young. 

How much I learned from the way their minds worked. 

“Thank you for your patience, can I help the next customer?” 

The son cupped his hands back under the box. 

Hoisted. 

Waddled over to the counter and heaved it up there himself. 

“I see you brought your helper,” said the freshly logged-in counter person. 

“She can’t lift with her one arm, so I have to carry things,” said the boy, carrying the conversation as responsibly as he did the box.

Over the next couple minutes of the transaction, the adults left space for the boy’s participation.

He complemented the clerk on her gift cards, relaying how he wanted a dollar one, but his Mom said it was better to buy credits online.

“Have you ever gotten a gift card before?” the clerk asked, as she processed the postage for the box. 

“Yes,” he said. “Sometimes my Mom gets me one … when I do good things.”

I inferred from the small sample size I was witnessing that he had a few credits in the bank. 

Meanwhile, a line began to form behind me, headed by a white-haired, tightly-coated, tightly-lipped older woman. 

Who was out of both stamps and patience.

As the boy elucidated on his upcoming birthday and that one time he was late for football practice, the woman’s huffs under her breath were oddly comparable to the boy’s grunts under the box.

I made smiling ‘what-are-you-going-to-do?’ eye-contact with her a couple times to give her frustration a chance to froth over. 

She returned a couple huffy head shakes and an unsmiling eye roll. 

In these moments I like to remind myself that the exact same experience is experienced differently by the folks experiencing it. 

The reasons for a tightly-coated elder’s impatience can be just as valid as a Mom’s inexhaustible well. 

The post office can sure test both. 

Sandwiched in between — both me and time standing still — I saw life flash in front of me. 

And over my shoulder. 

Before me … a Mom doing her best to teach her boy how the world’s supposed to work, while protecting him from how it actually does with her one good arm.

Behind me …  the world’s grumpy restlessness to just get on with it.

“Thanks for your patience … Can I help the next person in line?”

I waited an extra second so I could watch the boy reach for his Mom’s hand as they left the counter.

What to the world looks like an eight-year-old’s obliviousness to time … the 55-year-old knows is, in fact, the keenest appreciation.

 

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Dancing with Vonnegut ….

I’d just finished writing my last coffee shop letter of 2025 when I remembered we were out of envelopes at home. 

Opted for a surgical strike at Shop N’ Save, as I also needed shampoo (ran out a couple days ago) and ginger beer (just in case New Year’s Eve called for Moscow Mules). It’s right down the road from the coffee shop, saving me a trip to Wal-Mart or Target, which I try to avoid at all costs. 

The lot was pretty full with folks picking up New Year’s provisions. 

Walking in to the vestibule with the shopping carts, I saw the gentleman from the Salvation Army tucked in the corner keeping his kettle. Delighted me to see he had his banjo with him. I see him often when I visit, though not always with his banjo. He plays softly, not too fast. Sounds like folk music to me, possibly songs from his native country, but I’m not sure. He and his kettle used to sit inside the store where it’s warm, but awhile ago he told me they don’t like him playing inside, so when he brings his banjo he sets up shop in the vestibule … where it’s not warm. The majority of folks coming in and out pass right by him. 

The feeling I get seeing him with his banjo in the wintertime is the same one I get seeing lightning bugs in my back yard in the summertime.

Feels like a gift. 

Since I never know where to look for my stuff, I walked through the main body of the store, past the deli and the prepared foods counter. Caught a conversation just as someone said, “I’m playing at the President’s Pub Sunday … from 11 to two.” I turned to see a local musician I recognized, a jazz guitarist, talking to a person in a wheel chair.

I kept on walking for a couple seconds … before turning back around. 

Found the guitarist by the apples. 

“Excuse me,” I said. 

He looked up. 

“Did I hear you say you’re playing at the President’s Pub on Sunday?” 

Yeah, he said … confirming the time.  

“Oh, wow,” I replied. “I didn’t know they had jazz there anymore.” 

Yeah, he said. “They have music every Sunday. It’s not always jazz, though.”

It’s been years since I visited the President’s Pub on a Sunday morning. 

Remember going there the Sunday after my Dad’s funeral, listening to jazz and spilling a couple glorious tears into an Old Fashioned … and buying one for the pianist who took my request for Stardust. 

Not sure I’ve been back since.

I turned the corner past the bread just as two older ladies bumped into one another. They hadn’t seen each other in a while and fell into a big hug with their winter coats on. Asked each other if ‘everybody’ was all right and doing well. I didn’t have to know them to know how much they meant it.

As they wished each other Happy New Years, I went to walk around them, but an older guy with a shopping court was moving with purpose, so I paused to let him pass. 

“No, go ahead,” he said. 

He had right-of-way so I deferred. 

“No … please,” he insisted.

It was a small thing, but I got the sense he was looking for a place to put some New Year’s Eve kindness, so I accepted his invitation.

I didn’t even make it to the envelope aisle before I saw a different version of the scene I’d just witnessed — two other ladies who hadn’t seen each other in a while. They actually ‘whooped’ when they recognized each other. 

More winter coat hugs and Happy New Years. 

And behind me, I again heard the music of the older man who let me pass inviting another stranger to go in front of him. 

He and his cart were on a roll. 

And as I took the scenic route to find my envelopes, shampoo and ginger beer, I thought of Kurt Vonnegut. 

Who liked to tell the story of a time he went out for envelopes. 

How his wife thought him foolish. 

“Oh, she says well, you’re not a poor man,” Vonnegut said in a version of the story he told to PBS. 

“You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.

“I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babies. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And ask a woman what kind of dog that is.

“And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we’re not supposed to dance at all anymore.”

After going through the self-check out, I did a quick inventory of the treasure I collected during my surgical strike …  

… a serenade from a kettle keeper who would rather be cold … as long as it meant he could keep his fingers dancing … 

… an older person out shopping for someplace to put his kindness … 

… the joy of New Year’s Eve winter coat hugs between old acquaintances.

The Shop N’ Save’s usually good for reminding me of things I forget I need. 

Though I didn’t see any babies, I had a helluva good time buying the envelope for my letter to my daughter.

On my way out I made sure to say thank you to the kettle keeper for playing me back out into the cold. 

And as I tried to remember where I parked my car in the crowded lot, I was already thinking of Sunday … 

… and whether the guitarist shopping for apples might know Stardust. 

 

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The 12 Days of T-Shirts Intermezzo / Torso at the Crossroads

We made it, and yet we haven’t made it … yet. 

For 13 days straight we celebrated a different treasure from my — chooses adjective carefully — “consequential” T-shirt collection. 

But it’s still 11 days before Christmas, not to mention 17 until the calendar turns over, which means over 400 hours left in our present fast where — in a fit of hubris mixed with a spasm of poor decision-making — I pledged to Karry that I could make it the rest of 2025 without buying another t-shirt. 

Or what the supportive members of my family have dubbed the “You’ll Never Make It” Tour.

As the supportive members of my family are quick to attest, the act of my setting out to accomplish something and actually accomplishing it … is no small accomplishment.

Outside of the bags of frozen Reese’s Cups I deplete on a regular and consistent basis (which is EXACTLY what eight-year-old Pete imagined adulthood looking like), my track record for finishing tasks within specified parameters is what the historians would call ‘pock-marked.’

Since the odds of future goal-setting-and-accomplishing suggest betting the Under, we thought it appropriate to seize this rare ‘mission-accomplished’ vantage point for a reflective moment, much like we do in the sugar high afterglow following double-digit Reese’s consumption.  

I think it’s fair to say alchemizing my t-shirt affection through a retrospective lens has proven successful, at least in the recent modest sample size, in curbing my appetites for acquisition. 

So my torso and I find ourselves at a Crossroads.

A.) Keep the retrospective going

(B.) Declare myself ‘cured’ and — for the next 17 days — trust in my newfound ability to resist the algorithms massing at the gates of my feeds hurling temptations like so many flaming projectiles launched from medieval trebuchets

(C.) Give in and hit ‘launch’ on my 2026 T-shirt Registry, which is almost-but-not-quite-as-full as my closet

(D.) Empty a bag of frozen Reese’s trees while we decide

(E.) Both A & D, with possibly a C chaser. 

When you put it like that, is it even a question?

Gauntlet thrown. 

By which we mean Japanese cat tribal warrior t-shirt added to the ’26 registry, bitches.

Can we keep the streak going? 

Can we perpetuate the momentum? 

Can we make it to ’26? 

What will run out first … my will power in the face of great odds? The number of clean t-shirts in my closet? The Reese’s currently in my freezer? 

As we step out in faith into uncharted territory towards an unexplored map with unknown temptation and peril waiting at every turn, we look — as all great explorers do — to Ernest Shackleton, famed leader of three expeditions to the Antarctic,  for inspiration. 

*Adds to ’26 registry.

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The 12 Days of T-Shirts / Day 12: CATSA

My friend Stephen designed this badass logo for his badass wife Sam’s badass business, whose mission is to “create the coolest, space-themed, design objects for cat lovers.” 

Mission accomplished.

Proceeds from their refined, feline designs fund cat rescue and advocacy projects for community cats and their caregivers, which me and Viktor the Cat (my sensei) agree is righteous.

I could pick this logo as Stephen’s out of a police lineup. He’s had his own singular sinister aesthetic since I met him when I was a clueless intern in the mid-90’s. I owe my professional career to Stephen’s brilliance.

Check ‘em out at catsa.co. Their merch is next level and their wearables so soft they’ll make your torso purr. 

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The 12 Days of T-Shirts / Day 11: City Lights

Type “cathedral” into my brain’s large language model, you’ll get an image of 261 Columbus Avenue in San Francisco’s North Beach. 

This t-shirt unlocks so much for me … beginning and ending with the Pilgrimage.

Whenever work or friends would take me to San Francisco, I’d stay at the Hotel Rex on Sutter, which was part of Chip Conley’s Joie de Vivre collection of boutique hotels, each one inspired by a different magazine. The Rex was inspired by the New Yorker, and was designed to evoke San Fran’s literary salons of the 1920s and 30s.

Their lounge was The Library, all cushy chairs, reading lamps and the magical musty smell of old books (swoon).

Its atmosphere was cozily curated for unburdening … conducive to liberating one’s hands to alternate between a good book, a pen and paper, and a half-full glass of the house red.  

Make a left exiting the hotel, I’d walk the few blocks down to Bush, hang a left and climb its hill to the iconic Dragon’s Gate.

From there take a savoring stroll through North America’s oldest and largest Chinatown, a world unto itself. 

Keep walkin’ until I find North Beach. Make the right, slowing to a reverent saunter through Jack Kerouac Alley, pausing to bow and whisper read his pavement words etched in its center, “The air was soft the stars so fine the promise of every cobbled alley so great.”

And then, proof that alley promises come true: City Lights — Ferlinghetti’s fierce, tender, defiantly flickering eternal flame of a bookstore. 

Every single second I’ve spent walking amongst its stacks has been a replenishing.

The sound of one’s shoes creaking its old wooden floors while in slow-browse reverie? A poetry all its own. 

I love reading the staff’s hand-written recommendations slash love letters adorning the shelves as much as I do the books they hype.

The pleasure of stumbling upon treasure you didn’t even know to look for.

Going upstairs to the poetry room, where Ferlinghetti’s rocker — the ‘poet’s chair’ — still sits by the window in open invitation. 

Harvesting an armful of sustenance for the suitcase home.

Walking back to the Rex drunk on Kerouac’s soft air and fine stars, clutching my brown paper bag tightly as I imagine he did his.

 

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The 12 Days of T-Shirts / Day 9: Old Crow

In the years when we were legally adults, but intellectually and emotionally still ‘ripening,’ we cultivated what some of us consider an ‘abiding affection’ for Old Crow, while others of us, if they are feeling euphemistically generous, would acknowledge under oath as a ‘relationship.’

All I know is that during the dark ‘post-college-graduation-scuffling-by-on-part-time-jobs-with-no-real-prospects’ years, Old Crow’s firm place on the bottom shelf was an accessible and fortifying presence.

And ever since, we have reverently and dutifully honored Dr. James Crow for inventing the sour mash process.

There is a loose thread of American history (that we choose not to tug terribly hard at) that believes that Old Crow was indirectly responsible for winning the Civil War. 

It was well-known that Ulysses S. Grant fancied himself a good tipple now and again. It was believed that Old Crow was a preferred part of his, um, medicinal regimen.

A story has sloshed around that critics of the general once complained about his drinking to Lincoln. To which the 16th president purportedly replied, “I wish some of you would tell me the brand of whiskey that Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to my other generals.”

We’ll drink to that. 

Because sometimes it’s more about good memories than good memory.

Also, as anyone who has ever been brave, desperate, or just (like us) poor and dumb enough to send Old Crow down one’s gullet knows … it’s out for vengeance.  

In his book “The Social History of Bourbon,” author Gerald Carson relates a tale that, during the Northern Army’s siege of Vicksburg, Grant enjoyed generous nightly nightcaps of Old Crow. 

Served neat, of course. (autonomic sympathetic body shudder goes here)

And not to draw a parallel between the Union Army’s 47 days waiting out surrender and us waiting out the last of our adolescence enjoying Red-Hot-doused frozen taquitos from the microwave … but I find it hard not to wax nostalgic when it comes to Old Crow.

Its vague place in our country’s history. 

Its humble yet consistent place on the bottom shelf. 

Its proud place on this author’s torso. 

And its hallowed place keeping us company while we figured — and continue to figure — our shit out. 

Cheers.

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The 12 Days of T-Shirts / Day 7: Fahrenheit 451

Joe Mugnaini’s brilliant cover for the first edition of Ray Bradbury’s incendiary novel. 

The book holds a special place in my heart for a couple reasons, on top of its timeless cautionary tale.

My daughter and I read it aloud together across many Saturday coffee-shop mornings when she was a young teenager, which was my first re-read of it in a good 20 years or so. What a wonderful way to be reacquainted. 

And during our re-reading, I was profoundly moved by a passage late in the book when Montag, on the run, encounters a group of kindred spirits living in the woods on the outskirts of town. And around a campfire, he remembers his grandfather. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone back to this passage since.

Its still glowing embers warm me as much as the campfire that coaxed the words from Bradbury’s typewriter.

It’s not only been medicine to my heart, but I’ve shared Bradbury’s beautiful words with friends and kindred spirits seeking warmth in the darkness of their own loss.

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.

It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the (person) who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.” 

Always makes me think of the gardeners I’ve known in my life.

Reminds me to keep planting.

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The 12 Days of T-Shirts / Day 2: Franktuary

Spill a little mustard on your shirt for Franktuary, which sunsetted its brick and mortar a few years back, but still operates a food truck here and there I hear. 

Reverently prepared hot dogs.

Peter and I used to pilgrimage to their Lawrenceville location for boys day out Saturday lunches. 

And like the great philosophers of antiquity, we’d spend the purgatory between our ordering and our munching engaging in spirited, hangry debates over the universe’s cosmic questions. 

Does ketchup belong on a hot dog? 

Answer: as you will consistently find across both your meat-eating eastern and western religions, the creator intended ketchup for hamburgers, mustard for hot dogs. 

Are Franktuary’s fresh cut fries with garlic aioli better than Shorty’s fries with gravy?  

Answer: What, in life, is truly objective? Just as Plato and Kant tussled with that hot potato across centuries … Peter and I staged “The Great Potato Debate” across many a table over the years. He was unequivocally Team Frankturary. Me? I was polytheistic on the matter. For the ultimate answer … ask God next time you see her. 

Without irony, I believe that you can test the mettle of a good cathedral by the questions and conversations it engenders. 

Once, while Peter and I were debating metaphysics, Heidegger, and the nature of being — by which I mean whether honey mustard was a salad dressing (Peter) or a condiment (me) — a father and young son, both dressed in Pirates jerseys, sat down at a booth across from us. 

No sooner had they taken their seats when the son, maybe eight or nine, asked his Dad, “Who’s your favorite baseball player of all time?” 

Which settled the question of God’s existence for me once and for all. 

In dogs we trust. 

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Introducing: The 12 Days of T-Shirts (Man Of Action edition)

Couple weeks ago we’re in the kitchen when Karry asks me about a charge on our credit card that looked suspicious. 

Read aloud the name of a company she didn’t recognize. 

“No, that’s me,” I said. 

Was kinda’ hoping that would end her curiosity. 

Had the opposite effect … like most of my good intentions.

“What did you buy?” she asked.

“It’s … a surprise.” 

As an aside … that’s pretty good for me as far as comebacks under pressure go.  

But it was late October. She knows I’m not that proactive with my holiday shopping. 

“What did you buy?” she repeated.

“A t-shirt,” I confessed. 

She: You bought a $35 t-shirt? 

While it might seem like a yes or no question, the answer … was nuanced. 

Me: No, I bought a $28 t-shirt.

She: (silence) 

Me: Seven bucks for shipping.

Karry tends not to put on her cheaters to appreciate nuance. 

For context, I love t-shirts. 

My family prefers the word ‘addiction.’

It’s my only one. 

Yep, T-shirts and postcards. 

And, um, books.

T-shirts are among the reasons I don’t get tattoos. 

I’m too easily seduced. 

I fall in love too frequently … and fleetingly. 

I mean, just when you see a design of a badass skull made up of tiny cats ($28 + $7 shipping), your feed serves up a silhouette of a man’s arm coming into frame to fist-bump a similarly silhouetted cat who looks like one of the cats who live in your house (Viktor).  

The family staged an intervention a few years ago. 

Unbeknownst to me, they harvested a bunch of t-shirts from my closet and had them made into a blanket … like parents do when their kids leave for college. 

They were sneaky. Did it under the guise of my birthday and presented it as a ‘gift,’ … which forced me to suppress my immediate reaction, which was along the lines of, “You did  … what ???!!!”  

Some (most) of the shirts were still in regular rotation … including one of my all-time favorites: the orange GI Joe “Man of Action (With Lifelike Hair)” number that I found in a comic book store in Houston, Texas many years ago. 

Joe’s head on the t-shirt had the same life-like hair as the action figure doll I had in the 70’s. 

Glorious. 

Over the years many wide-eyed smiles and fist-bumps from kindred spirits, most (all) middle-aged men, most (all) of whom proceeded to lose their sh*t when I pointed out that Joe’s coiffe was, in fact, life-like. 

At night, when I am under the blanket, I can sometimes hear Joe softly sobbing.

Since the thoughtful-birthday-gift-slash-intrusive-intervention (still stings), we’ve operated under an uneasy detente.

For any new t-shirt I bring into the collection, I must remove one from my closet.   

So I felt cornered when Karry called me out in the kitchen on my latest acquisition. 

“It’ll be my last one of the year,” I blurted. 

She: Yeah, right. 

Me: No, seriously, last one of the year. 

She: (silence)

Me: It’s only, like, two months. I can make it.

She: (silence)

While acknowledging that historical precedent would suggest, shall we say, an uphill climb, I pointed out that a little encouragement would, you know, go a long way.

She: You’ll never make it.

__

Couple weeks later, I’m downstairs when I hear yelling from the laundry room.

“Wait, did you get another t-shirt?”

While it seems like a yes or no question, the answer was … nuanced. 

At the storytelling thing in the city I went to the night before, Jacob the producer gave me the t-shirt I won a couple months ago. They were out at the time. 

I hadn’t bought it, so therefore had not violated the embargo. 

I assured her that my t-shirt fast was still holding strong. 

Then she did the thing she does sometimes … where she held her gaze a couple extra seconds without saying a word … letting me know she’ll be keeping an eye on me … until midnight strikes on Dec. 31.

Which I received as, you know, encouragement.  

Recognizing that I still have about four weeks to go in my fast — which, let’s be honest here, will be brutal for the holiday algorithms ramping up to tempt me at every turn — I thought it’d be healthy to channel my energies away from my feeds and towards counting my blessings, by which I mean the treasures hanging in my closet.

Which history suggests are only ever a stealthy intervention away from being permanently removed from circulation.

So I’m here today to officially launch the TWELVE DAYS OF T-SHIRTS … a celebratory ‘greatest hits’ retrospective befitting, you know, a man of action with life-like hair. 

The ones that bring me joy.

The ones that keep me in Cozy Mode as I clumsily navigate the world around me. 

The ones that I impulse bought in spasms of poor decision-making somewhere between my second and third Moscow Mules. 

Each one with its own story to tell.

Full disclosure: knowing that the odds of my following through to 12 are only marginally better than my resisting t-shirt temptation for the next four weeks … I will be receiving any and all feedback (including silence) as encouragement. 

Tomorrow: #1 Tuscan Serenade

Apologies in advance. 

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