Casual Writings

The Crisis of Purpose: How I Rebuilt Meaning from the Inside Out

I used to believe purpose was something you stumbled into. A career path. A calling. Maybe something your parents prayed over you, or your mentors saw in you before you ever did. But one morning — just before dawn, in the muted blue hour of a San Diego winter — I realized that wasn’t true.

I was sitting at my kitchen table, hands wrapped around a chipped mug of black coffee, staring blankly at my laptop screen. Work emails blinked in unread red. Bills collected in a slow-motion avalanche on my co...

When Losing It Over Chicken Nuggets Means You’ve Got Bigger Shit Going On

When tiny moments crack open the truths we’ve been avoiding.

It was Chick-fil-A.
Three minutes.

That's all it was. Three damn minutes standing at the counter with no acknowledgment, no “be right with you,” not even a nod. Just me, half-dead without coffee, tired as hell, waiting. And I felt it — the heat rising in my chest, the sharp edge of anger pressing against my throat.

I was about to lose my shit over chicken nuggets.

The thing is, I’m not proud of this. Rationally, I know three minutes isn’t...

5 Reasons a Pizza, a Beer, and Someone You Love Can Make Life Worth Living

There’s something filthy and holy about a slice of pizza. When that cheese stretches like the dusk of evening, when the crust crackles under your teeth — that’s not just food. That’s humanity tasting itself.

To me, life isn’t about chasing enlightenment or sculpting destinies. It’s about one perfect Friday night: warm dough, molten cheese, a cold beer sweating on the table, and someone across from you who matters. A...

Voicing the Darkness: The Healing Power of Letting It Out

It started in the car. I was driving through my neighborhood — same route, same stop signs, same song on the radio I always skip. But that day, I didn’t skip it. That day, I let it play. And that song cracked me open. One line in, I pulled over and wept like something inside me had finally collapsed. Not a Hollywood cry. A body-shaking, steering-wheel-thumping, full-bellied scream into the silence.

It was the first sound I’d made in weeks that wasn’t pretending I was fine.

And something happened...

When the Job You Gave Everything to Kicks You Out the Door

You had it all planned out. You showed up early, stayed late, and climbed every rung of that damn corporate ladder, thinking it would lead somewhere safe, until it collapsed beneath you. Getting fired isn’t just losing a job; it’s a gut punch from reality. It’s being blindsided by the cold truth that loyalty isn’t always mutual, and corporate promises are as solid as smoke. Here’s the raw truth no one tells you about losing the job you thought defined you.

I remember walking into my boss’s office...

The Hidden Reason We Judge People (And How to Break the Cycle)

How Snap Judgments, Social Media, and Silence Are Tearing Us Apart — And What It Takes to Reconnect.

You ever notice how much easier it is to hate someone than to understand them? Seriously. One glimpse of someone doing something stupid, awkward, or just plain different, and boom — our minds fill in the blanks, constructing an entire narrative built on assumptions. And social media? That shit throws gasoline on this fire.

Let me tell you a quick story. For years, I was the “weird quiet guy.” Peopl...

We Are One: The Radical Truth Hiding in Plain Sight

I grew up in the dirt of a broken heart. Not metaphorically — I mean real dirt. The kind that stains your knees when you’re eight and trying to fix a busted pipe under your uncle’s trailer. The kind that smells like oil, metal, and a hundred years of hands that never stopped working. My childhood wasn’t soft. But it was real. Real like the taco my abuela made on Sundays with her hands stained red from dried chile and fire-roasted tomatoes.

And maybe you didn’t grow up in the dirt. Maybe you grew...

Embracing Your Weird: How Owning Your Out-of-the-Norm Nature Sets You Free

There was always a strange comfort in the bathroom stall. Not the act of using it, but just sitting there. Locked in. Alone. I used to fake stomach aches just to escape lunch. That fifteen minutes of quiet solitude? Way better than the clatter of trays and forced conversation I never quite knew how to navigate.

I was weird. Not eccentric or quirky in a cool, Zooey-Deschanel-in-an-indie-film way. Just weird. Reserved. Shy. The kind of kid who got invited to group projects only because the teacher...

Tariffs Could Be the Slap We Need to Stop Buying So Much Shit

Let me start with the pile.

The one on your chair. Or in the backseat. Or jammed in that junk drawer you haven’t opened in months. It’s not just clutter — it’s a map. Of how we buy, toss, repeat. A quiet monument to convenience disguised as progress.

That pile didn’t show up overnight. It grew, quietly, with every late-night impulse buy, every “treat yourself” scroll, every cheap thing made somewhere far away by someone paid barely enough to live.

And that’s the fucking problem.

But this isn’t about...

5 Brutal Truths About Mental Health (And How Writing, Music, and Nature Saved My Ass)

I don’t know about you, but every time someone told me “it gets better,” I wanted to punch a wall. Better? What the hell does “better” even mean when you’re knee-deep in a sadness so heavy it feels like you’re carrying another human on your back? Or when you’re smiling at work while your insides feel like they’re bleeding out?

Mental health isn’t a fucking straight line. It’s not “sad” to “better” with a confetti cannon at the finish line. It’s more like walking through a damn minefield — some da...

Rewilding the Soul: How Rediscovering Our Roots Might Just Save the Planet

It starts with something simple. A plastic fork. A gas station receipt. A grocery cart packed with more than we need, filled with food we didn’t grow, wrapped in packaging that will outlive us. And that’s not an accusation. That’s the reality we’ve been handed.

Somewhere along the way, we traded our old knowledge for convenience. We forgot the rhythm of seasons, the sacred hush of forests, the stories the soil used to tell us. We paved the ground our ancestors once walked barefoot. We silenced th...