It was 1998. I was living in Egypt and I had taken up acting and singing at school and finally felt like I had a place in my community. For the first time ever, I was accepted (or whatever the closest version of accepted is in middle school) by a group of peers. My best friend at the time considered himself a playwright, but I didn’t take him seriously until he submitted a play under a pseudonym to a contest at a local university.

Seeing Austin Kleon tonight at Politics and Prose was highly enjoyable. He has such interesting thoughts and I love his books. Not to mention, his blackout poetry is really creative. One of the things he said that really stuck with me was the idea of making gifts. That we we will sometimes see a friend’s good art and then say that they should make an Etsy store or, in my case, try out for American Idol.

If you were to review the tapes of my life, all the books I’ve read, the podcasts, the movies, the lessons I took away from those movies… you’d think that I was doing whatever I could to seek happiness. And actually, maybe that’s most of us. Not everyone is into the genre of self-help, but most people I know are trying to help themselves through whatever possible means. An old friend of mine got into Jiu Jitsu in order to better his physical and mental abilities.

+++ title = “04” date = 2019 +++ There’s a street near me named Noyes. When I was a child, I thought that this name was pronounced “no yes,” which I found funny and contradictory. What was this street name that was both negative and affirmative simultaneously? It sounded as if someone was changing their mind and it was captured in the form of a street. Now that I know better, I realize that It’s pronounced like “noise” with a soft s sound at the end.

Many people, when they enter my home, notice that I have four echo dots scattered across my house. At first, they wonder why I would need so many echo dots, until they see how I use them: multiple cooking timers to-do list entry disable/enable alarm system turn off lights change intensity of lights turn on devices like heaters (and then having them automatically turn off 30 minutes later) There are ways to accomplish all of these things without an Echo dot, but it sure makes it easier to do things with voice when my hands are otherwise occupied by children or typing.