I decided to go with the title "Don't Reduce Me" instead of "I Shall Not Be Reduced" because the proud declaration felt too confident, and I like the ambiguity between issuing a command and pleading. It's been a reflective couple of weeks, but answers are hard to come by. And then my mother said something to me that made explicit a truth that I had ( Read more... )

I don't feel comfortable sharing these thoughts, feelings, and experiences. On the one hand, I don't want to diminish the genuine struggles that people diagnosed with mental illness deal with, or equate my experiences with theirs. On the other hand, I very much believe I ought to be diagnosed, but I have not had the motivation, persistence, or ( Read more... )

What is hope? Is it a feeling? A belief? An activity? An orientation?

What can be hoped for? What ought to be hoped for?

Is hope individual or collective? Both/and?

How does hope differ from: expectation? patience? longing? prediction? wishful thinking? counterfactual desire?

Despite thinking and saying, "I hope...," a lot, and having spent so much ( Read more... )

In my estimation, this post will share some of the results of my most intense philosophical reflection and will probably be the least interesting and least durable post I write. At some point, I hope to write my intellectual biography, which may explain why I have invested so much time, effort, and thought in what follows, but hopefully it will ( Read more... )

It's been a tumultuous year--for most everyone, not just me. In the U.S., it's been 11 months since stay-at-home orders were first issued across the country, as COVID-19 ravaged the population. Like everything else, this became a politically divisive topic, which became all the more heated and pervasive during an election year. I left my friends to ( Read more... )

It has been a tumultuous week. It has been a tumultuous year. Typically I recoil from all-too-common sense, but I must relent before the resounding chorus that 2020 has been a most unusual and challenging year.

In November 2016, I went to bed on election night with little more than relief that another circus had ended, only to wake the next morning ( Read more... )

I contain multitudes
I am empty, fleeting
Shaped by other concern
Lacking concern for others
Is it giving up to go out fighting?
How much is survival worth?
So grateful to all my teachers
Yet what have I learned?
Fear, cowardice, resentment, sorrow,
Rhythms I cannot keep
So much beauty and wisdom fill
The nostalgia that fills me
Broken compass leaves me ( Read more... )

Ever since Anthony Davis got picked up by the Lakers and Kawhi Leonard and Paul George signed with the Clippers, NBA fandom and media have awaited the clash of the Los Angeles titans. All year long it was presumed that this would be the Western Conference Finals match-up, and everyone was here for it. There were those making cases for other teams ( Read more... )

Is that a ridiculous enough title for an online entry to a forgotten journal? I thought I was done with this site; in general, my days of writing  and thinking seemed to be over, and singularly I had moved on to other social networking sites and had not curated my virtual friendships from this platform.

But recently a friend and I have started a ( Read more... )

My partner and I, along with 10 friends, just returned from a 4-day weekend in the Gila Wilderness in New Mexico. This is a location that Susan and I have wanted to explore ever since our first spring in New Mexico, but each time we planned a trip, the wilderness caught on fire and was closed to visitors. So we planned this trip earlier and decided ( Read more... )