Unmute I woke up on very little sleep. No easing into the day. Straight into responsibility. The birds have been at it for a while now. The tree above the driveway has turned my vehicle into target practice. The birds have had no mercy. Worse than a paintball participant after a match. Bird droppings everywhere. Marked up. Hit from above. It reminded me of one of the jokes Robert’s been working on for his comedy set. He says he hates birds because they have the entire sky to operate in, but they’d rather dive in front of cars while you’re driving or hover above your vehicle and unload on it. That’s been happening. A few days ago, I got an estimate to cut down the limbs hanging over the driveway, scheduled for next Friday. The limbs will be gone. My dad won’t be getting on a ladder trying to handle it himself. Yesterday I worked on my set. It’s complete. Perhaps doing a comedy set will help stabilize things. It’s a...

I’m trying to stabilize while life keeps applying small amounts of pressure. Not catastrophe. Not collapse. Just friction. Interruptions. Urgency. Responsibility. Enough to keep the nervous system alert. Stabilizing isn’t dramatic. It’s choosing not to spiral when the pressure shows up. February 20, 2026. I planned on driving 45 minutes to purchase a cot mattress. I headed into Beeville with good company to pick up a cot I had found on Facebook Marketplace. We started with a light breakfast. Two quesadillas. Two 32oz sandia agua frescas. Refreshing. The first one came with cubed ice like it normally does. I decided I wanted another, but with the ice blended — slush consistency. The waitress looked at me like bugs were crawling out of my facial orifices and said, “I don’t think that will come out right.” I told her, “Trust me. I do it all the time at home. It works.” And it did. She looked a little defeated afterward. That's on ...

Unmute I hadn’t been to Magnolia Beach since I was about ten or eleven years old. And out of the blue, Wednesday, February 18th, today was the day to return. It wasn’t somewhere I would have chosen on my own, but it was somewhere to go, so we made the hour-and-a-half drive. Part of me didn’t want to go. That stretch of coastline is tied to a close relative I no longer wish to be connected with. Some places carry geography. Others carry people. Magnolia carries both. I put up a tent near the water and sat there most of the day. The sky was gray. The air was still. It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t cinematic. It was quiet in the way open water can be. I listened to Ozzy on the drive down. My mom loved Ozzy. Lloyd loved Ozzy. Jesse and I used to sit in his bedroom and play Blizzard of Ozz over and over again while he pushed against whatever authority he felt pressing on him. I joined him in my own way. Back then, Oz...

Slowly my items have been coming in. My bullet proof vest for my security officer job was just delivered today 2/17, at 2:17pm. I'm not sure if that has any meaning. I decided I need to refocus and secure my job. Though I was feeling sick, I still took my father to shop for a firearm. First stop was the first deal. Around 5:30–6ish. So now it's waiting until the 21st to pick up. I feel better securing my paycheck with my company. Being able to pay bills and take care of priorities, including my father, matters. I left a message for my counselor who helped me in another chapter of my life that I mention in Operating Without a Manual , to arrange a meeting. I know I can't do this alone, even with all that I've learned and all the tools I have. Of course prayer and connecting with God helps. I even made the realization that God is a solid answer to get through this. I keep thrashing when it's unnecessary. It's still hard. When ...

Unmute I stayed up too late finishing yesterday’s entry — the one about  The Origin of Death . My mind was still turning long after I laid down. Even while I was asleep, it felt like my brain was processing, reorganizing, breaking down everything in life. I feed it a lot of information, so it makes sense that it keeps working even when I’m not consciously directing it. I woke up later than I intended. I had to get up during the night to use the restroom several times. That’s been happening more often lately. Maybe I’m overhydrated. I do intake a lot of fluids. But I’m also aware that frequent urination can signal other things — kidney issues, blood sugar shifts, p...

  Unmute Up to this point, I’ve spoken of death from personal experience. Through an emotional voice . Through a clinical lens . Through the agonies of before and after . Through hospital rooms and funeral homes. Through occupation as an obit writer . Through ethics and autonomy . Through the weight of grief that lingers long after the service ends. I have examined death as event. As policy. As memory. As fracture. But I have yet to discuss the spiritual aspect of my nemesis. Death — both my enemy and my friendly reminder to live. The origin story. How death was birthed. Genesis. Adam. Eve. The serpent. God. Death did not begin with a body in the ground. It began with a whisper. The serpent did not need teeth. He needed a voice. He leaned into Eve’s ear and planted something there. Not fruit. A distortion. A temptation. Death was born from the whisper uttered into eves ear.. ...

  Unmute I talk about “Life Is a Storm” often. It started as a phrase. Then it became a lens. Eventually it became the name of this space. But recently, I felt the need to see it. Not just say it. So I made the poster. It isn’t fantasy. It’s a psychological self-portrait — a visual consolidation of themes woven throughout this blog. Death stands behind me. Not as a threat. Just present. Memento Mori. The storm above is life — loss, growth, culture, noise. The glowing rabbit represents attentional redirection — choosing where the mind rests. Monkey is family. Grounding. Real love. The poop monsters represent intrusive thoughts and negative noise. Persistent. Often ridiculous. I’m not stopping the storm. I’m standing in it. Life is a storm. The storm isn’t going anywhere. But neither am I. The ideas in this image aren’t isolated to a single post or poster. They’re woven through my books as well. The Operating Without a Manu...

UNMUTE AUDIO I’ve been thinking about REM sleep. Not in a mystical way. In a structural way. During REM, executive authority weakens. The prefrontal control center — the voice that says “don’t think about that” — quiets down. Emotional and memory networks become more active. Ironic Process Theory suggests that when we try not to think about something, part of the mind keeps monitoring for it. The Zeigarnik Effect suggests unfinished emotional loops remain cognitively open. Combine those with REM sleep, and something interesting happens: The suppressed becomes spotlighted. Not because it wants to harm. Because it wants integration. I’ve been writing about REM sleep recently — in more than one piece — exploring these ideas and how the mind monitors what it tries to suppress. Those ideas have been sitting with me. The past two nights, they stopped being abstract. Over the past two n...

  Who gets to decide when suffering has crossed the line? Modern societies answer that question through three primary authorities: the individual, the medical system, and the state. Each claims legitimacy. Each defines “irremediable” differently. Each draws the boundary in a different place. The right-to-die debate is less about death than about jurisdiction. It concerns who possesses the authority to determine when continued existence constitutes preservation — and when it constitutes harm. Autonomy argues that the individual is best positioned to assess subjective suffering. No external observer can fully quantify interior pain. Personal agency, in this view, is foundational to dignity. Medicine offers a different lens. Clinical authority rests on diagnosis, prognosis, and treatability. The term “irremediable” is not philosophical in medical contexts; it is operational. It requires evaluation, documentation, and professional consensus. What is intoler...

UNMUTE AUDIO About the Header Graphic The monster represents the intrusive thought you’re trying to suppress. But the mechanism isn’t about fighting the monster. It’s about substitution. Try this: Don’t try to forget the poop monster. Try to forget the magical bunny-like creature instead. Carry something small that represents it — a keychain, a token, a mental image — and deliberately tell yourself not to think about it. Watch what happens. Your background monitoring system will begin scanning for the very thing you’re trying to suppress. The attempt to forget activates the reference. The reference keeps it alive. That’s the architecture. You don’t erase what haunts you. You change what loads by default. There is something mechanical about the mind. The harder you try not to think about somethi...