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Today mom and I went to the storage unit to take inventory of my books. The count was about what I expected, especially considering everything I’ve lost while bouncing around in the mental health system—moves, transfers, sudden exits, and the chaos that always seems to swallow up a box or two of my life’s work. But this time, I was ready for the truth: what I had… and what I didn’t. So, naturally, I fixed the problem the way any artist-entrepreneur-lunatic-with-a-vision would—I ordered more. A lot more. I now have multiple copies of every book I’ve ever made, somewhere around...

Things are going well—better than they’ve gone in years—and it feels like I’m finally settling into a calmer, healthier version of myself just in time for Christmas. Mom and I have been bonding a lot lately, patching things up in ways I didn’t think were possible. We had some rough years, real rough, but the cancer scare shook us both awake. Suddenly the grudges, the misunderstandings, the stubbornness—none of that mattered as much as just being there for each other. And then came Whiskey the Kitty. My Christmas gift from Mom turned out to be the little cherry on top...

Ever since I quit smoking, my lungs have been acting like they’re filing a complaint. I wheeze, I can’t take a full breath, and every inhale feels like it’s trying to negotiate its way through a haunted house of old cigarette damage. The doctors tell me it’s anxiety or even a leftover symptom of cravings—but of course my mind, being my mind, jumps straight to the worst-case scenario. (Thank you, Google, for nothing.) I notice it the most when I’m dealing with Whiskey the Kitty. Her room is upstairs, which means I’m climbing those steps like it’s the Himalayas just...

Before the internet, iPhones, and the cloud—back when floppy disks were king and computer screens glowed green like alien eyes—my father and I shared one of the few things that truly bonded us: computers. He worked for IBM. A titan in a white shirt and tie, the kind of guy who could walk into a room full of engineers and make them feel like undergrads again. He wasn’t just a programmer; he was the sort of mind that taught calculus to the pioneers of programming. Not many people know this about him, but he’d take business trips to help early...

Today wasn’t about cravings for cigarettes — today was about something trickier: the desire to smoke marijuana instead. I asked myself the big question… Does this count as a slip? For me, the answer is yes. I made a promise to family and friends that I would go clean from all of it. Tobacco, alcohol, drugs — the whole catalog of self-medication. I didn’t promise to quit “most things.” I promised to quit everything. That matters. If I broke that promise, even “just one puff,” the dishonesty itself would be the relapse. Not the substance. Not the high. The dishonesty....