Pencil Me In
These are essays, observations, reflections, and occasional attempts to make sense of the world.
Some were written recently. Others have been sitting in drawers, hard drives, and forgotten folders for years, waiting for a second chance.
The subjects vary. Creativity. Comedy. Acting. Identity. Media. Human behavior.
The strange things we do, and the even stranger reasons we do them.
I don't have answers.
Most of these pieces started with a question.
The rest is following where curiosity leads.
Some pieces in Pencil Me In contain explicit sexual situations and language.
Those pieces are labeled accordingly.
A quiet dinner at a Chinese restaurant leads to an unexpected reflection on identity, assumptions, and the strange ways we see ourselves—and each other.
I found this while going through some of my old writing.
I wrote it more than a decade before starting Freedom65Project.
Reading it now is a little embarrassing.
Apparently, I had already explained the problem to myself.
I just needed another twelve years to take my own advice.
Brazil, 1980s. He couldn’t understand a word she said. He fell for her anyway.
Tonight Is Christmas Eve
A short piece about Christmas Eve, memory, and the particular way a night can remain with you.
No elaborate framing. Just the work.
An experiment in avoiding the news for two days becomes an unexpected exploration of solitude, introspection, and our dependence on a world that never stops talking.
I started writing this story sometime in 2020 and finished it yesterday, July 12, 2026. Six years later, the story emerged. (It turns out there really is such a thing as an incubation period.)
There Is This Song I Like
A song finally returns to the memories that give it meaning.
Sometimes I write and write for years before a piece is finished. This one is not one of those.