Formal Writings

We All Think We’re the Good Ones

I didn’t know I was in a war until the silence got loud.

It was a spring Sunday. Not cold, not warm — just that in-between weather where you wear a hoodie and regret it by noon. My dad and I were trimming the pomegranate tree in the backyard. The branches had gone wild over the winter, tangling into the fence like they were trying to escape.

We weren’t fighting. That’s what made it worse. It was the absence of ease — the way we tiptoed around topics, laughed a second too late, kept everything safe...

The $125 Trillion Wake-Up Call: Why Reconnecting with Nature Isn’t Just Nice, It’s Necessary

Two hours.

That’s how little time in nature researchers say it takes to measurably improve well-being — about two hours a week, according to recent large-scale studies on green space and health (APA 2020). But here we are — living inside a system that hands us at least $125 trillion worth of free natural services each year — and still we treat the planet like a disposable backdrop. That contradiction isn’t just philosophical, it’s costing us lives, ecosystems, and entire economies.

I didn’t fully...

The “Un‑Woke” Agenda: How Trump’s America Is Reversing Time, Not Making Progress

America’s cultural rollback isn’t about values—it’s about erasure. And it’s happening right under our noses.

It was a Tuesday afternoon — September 9, 2025 — and Fox News did something unusual. They cut off a segment mid-air to broadcast Donald Trump speaking live at the Museum of the Bible. The words that followed weren’t new, but they hit differently this time:

“The woke agenda is practically gone.”

The camera lingered. Not because it was historic. Because it was confirmation: The dismantling wasn’t theoretical anymore — it...

Rekindling What Was Never Truly Lost: The Quiet Power of Showing Up

The last time I saw *Marcus before the silence stretched too long was at a bar in San Diego. I was babysitting my whiskey, neat. He was two beers deep, his laugh a little looser than usual. I remember that night because we both pretended we were fine. He joked about his job, about his ex, about how he couldn’t keep plants alive. I nodded, smiled. I said something about needing a vacation. Neither of us said what needed saying.

That was three years ago.

There was no big fallout. No betrayal. Just l...

Rest Is Radical: Challenging Hustle Culture and Redefining Success

This essay was originally written for a literary submission, but it felt too close to my own blood not to publish here first.

It started with a smear on the ceiling fan.

That’s how I knew I was tired—not sleepy, but tired in the marrow-deep, reality-heavy kind of way. I’d been wiping down counters at 10:47 p.m., again. Dishes done. Lights off. The kind of quiet that swallows the room when you live alone. But when I looked up—there it was. A splatter from some dinner weeks ago. A dried sauce comet...

The Legacy Shift: Why the American Dream I Chased No Longer Feels Like Mine

It didn’t happen in a boardroom. Not during some grand revelation at a conference or while reading a best-selling leadership book. It happened in the grocery store parking lot, in the middle of a Tuesday. I’d just gotten off a call, closed a deal that once would’ve lit a fire in my chest. But there was no spark. Just the low hum of exhaustion, like an old refrigerator that never turns off.

That moment—the stillness of it, the hollowness—was when I realized something had shifted. I had spent years running after a version...

The Kind of Strength That Silences You

It started with a glass. A cheap, foggy thing in my mother’s cabinet. I must’ve been nine. I’d just come home from school, still in uniform, still hungry. And I dropped it. It shattered in a way that didn’t just pierce the tile, it pierced her. My mother.

She didn’t yell. Didn’t scold. She inhaled sharply, knelt, and began to sweep the pieces. But something about her silence that day — tight-lipped, trembling — cut deeper than any broken edge. It was the sound of generations not allowed to scream...