“People like personal stories. It's time to talk about your comedy journey,” Andrew said; and he said it so confidently -- comedy journey -- like I'm really doing something, going somewhere.

“Comparison is the thief of joy.” That’s a quote from Theodore Roosevelt (father of teddy bears, but that's another story). It's a cliché for the good reason that it's timelessly true, but even if we all know the words, we fall victim to this brain glitch.

Author Tom Robbins died this past Sunday. No, not the actor, that's Tim Robbins. I'm talking about Tom, the author of a bunch of great books including Even Cowgirls Get The Blues (skip the movie), Another Roadside Attraction, and Half Asleep in Frog Pyjamas, the only novel I've ever read that's written in second person.

A therapist once told me that I don't have to answer every question someone asks me. It threw me off. But I don't have anything to hide, I said, my face scrunching up like when I try to do math.

The motto of 2025 is, “in this economy?!” Granted, when said jokingly, it never gets old (“I'm falling in love” “in this economy?”), but it keeps coming up non-ironically in more and more rooms, with a growing tone of desperation.

This past Monday was Blue Monday, the most depressing-est day of the year. The mid-winter blah-day, the point in winter when even those without seasonal affective disorder start to feel the weight of the long winter.

When we're young, we fantasize about our futures. The younger we are, the fewer constraints we place on the potential of the Universe, and ourselves.

Concepts come before the words for them are invented. Whether it's a new idea or a naturally occurring pattern freshly noticed, at first we find ourselves in the midst of klutzy explanations, wordy choruses of “it's kind of like…you know?”, with varying levels of hand gestures.

“We're leaving hesitation in 2024,” Andrew told me by phone the other night. He was hyped, pumping me up to face the new year with my shoulders back, and my boots laced tight.

It's Christmas day, y’all! It's weird that as a society we only celebrate Christian holidays on a grand scale, so if you feel left out, I wish you whatever joys and feasts you prefer.