Essays
This is a collection of personal writing that is not fiction. Not all essays are equal: some are messy documents I spent 30 minutes on, and some are quite polished. If you don’t know what to read, pick the title that looks the most interesting to you and go from there.
They are organized from newest -> oldest.
2025
+ No AirPods
+ The Gear Doesn’t Matter
+ The Case Against Making More Cases
+ 10 True Things About Brazil
2024
+ When a River Changes
+ Spoiler Free Travel
+ Side Quests
+ The Delicate Art of Predicting the Weather
+ How to Commission a Painting
+ A Better Way to Think About Money
+ Saying It Right
+ A Bunch of Opinions About Travel
+ When You Have to Reply
+ Packaging Matters
+ Can the Weatherman Get It Wrong?
+ The Most Qualified Person Never Gets Hired
+ Why I didn’t like Lisbon
+ Why I didn’t like Barcelona
+ Why I liked Paris
+ Realizations I’ve Had As An Adult
+ Inconsequential Ideas
+ Asymmetrical Life Upgrades
+ Dangerous Feedback
2023 & earlier
+ Why Your Favorite Author Let You Down
+ How to Make an Ocean Disappear
+ The Neil Gaiman Strangeness Trick
+ The Startup You Work at Is Going to Fail
If you have made it this far, you may notice there is not much writing from before 2023. That is not because I wasn’t writing before 2023. I wrote at least a couple milion words before then. The reason is that I no longer like a lot of that writing. Maybe some of my 2024 writing will disappear by the end of 2025.
I view that as a good thing, in some ways. If I still thought all of my old writing was great it would probably mean I have not improved much.