11 Benefits of Working From Home Nobody Talks About
These are the things people rarely talk about. I’ve been working from home for 13 years now, and other than a brief stint answering customer service emails for a department store and a few months of bartending, I’ve been doing it full-time. When 2020 hit and offices everywhere were closed down, I told my wife […]
Screw Audiobooks: 8 Services I Use to Efficiently Consume Content Every Week
I used to live with a lot of consumption guilt. I should be listening to more audiobooks. I should be reading the latest books from that author. I should be listening to that in-depth podcast discussion. But it can take hours to get through those audiobooks. Those nonfiction books are often a slog to get […]
I’m Not Good, But I’m Trying To Be Better
A couple years ago, my wife and I were standing outside of a bar in a small town over half an hour away from our house. It was a Saturday afternoon in late 2018. We were waiting with my mother-in-law at the curb for my father-in-law to bring the van around to pick her up. […]
5 Things I Learned About Myself Writing My 5th Book
Image by TanteTati from Pixabay This morning, I finally finished drafting my fifth novel: almost 86,000 words across 78 chapters. And while I couldn’t be happier, there’s a part of me that is a little frustrated by the moment of success: namely, that I planned to have this moment last February. In my infinite wisdom, […]
How I Use Todoist: Recurring Tasks
This post is part of an ongoing series on How I Use Todoist. If there’s one thing I’ve always needed from a to-do list manager, it’s recurring tasks. I’m a creature of habit. I don’t like to have to think about or remember certain tasks. I want them to just pop up on my list […]
How I Use Todoist: My End of Day Review
This is part of a new ongoing series I will be writing about how I use the Todoist app to manage my tasks. To see all the Todoist posts, just click here. Peace of mind is absolutely essential to me. I am a pretty level-headed guy, but if I feel like things are piling up […]
How I Work, 2020 Edition: The Office
For more than a decade, I’ve been writing for a living. And while the nature of that writing has ebbed and flowed over the years, the fact remains that I sit at a desk for hours every weekday, trying to force myself to tap words onto a screen for money. What does that even look […]
My 2019 Annual Review
I want to get into the habit of taking some time to publicly run through my previous year. During the last week of December, I spent a few days reviewing how my year went, taking down lots of notes and assessing where things worked and where things fell short. After several really bad years, 2019 […]
Nobody has it “figured out”
I tried not to sell the surprise on my face. I had spent the better part of the previous hour sitting in a local coffee shop with a gentleman that goes to my church. It was basically our first-ever conversation after having sat near each other in church for most of the last 5-6 years. […]
If you’re going through hell, keep going.
I’ll never forget the look in her eyes. It was somewhere near the beginning of August 2018. My wife was standing in my office with tears streaming down her cheeks. I hated every second of it. She was struggling. She was scared. She was beaten down and worn out, and she felt desperate. Because of […]