Archive for Favorite/Important Entries
A few friends have occasionally questioned my adding “No advice, please” to my posts, so I’ve been meaning for a long time to give some more details and clarity around that. But it’s a sensitive topic, and it’s taken me a while to put together a post that (I hope) makes clear where I’m coming […]
This started out as a Facebook comment about my history with story/plot in RPGs, in response to a discussion between Ben and Kel in comments on a post of Mary Anne’s; but it got long and sort of morphed into a broad overview of my history with RPGs. (In this post, I’m using the term […]
Gary Chapman’s five love languages paradigm categorizes the kinds of things that make people feel loved/valued. Here’s the original list: receiving gifts quality time words of affirmation acts of service physical touch I find this general paradigm useful—the idea that different people have different modes and approaches that make them feel valued—but I want to […]
[Note: This post is not in response to any particular instance; it’s about a longstanding pattern.] For many years, I’ve been seeing a certain specific kind of response to people expressing pain, and I’d like to respectfully ask people to think carefully about it before giving this particular kind of response. The pattern goes something […]
At some point in the early 1990s, I spoke with my college friend Alex on the phone, and was surprised that his voice had dropped in pitch by at least an octave since I had last talked with him. I think he told me something about having belatedly gone through puberty. It turned out that […]
When I criticize someone in the past for having done something that I consider bad by my own modern standards, I often get pushback from friends who say things like: “He was just a man of his time. [Alternative phrasing: a product of his time.] You can’t/shouldn’t judge him by modern standards!” (I’m using he […]
A day of interesting-to-me insights and thoughts. But no time/energy to write them up in any detail, so a couple of notes-to-self as reminders (each of these could be a full entry in itself if I had time and if I were more awake): This morning, it suddenly occurred to me while I was driving […]
This is a pattern in my life: Someone tells me something. I don't agree with what they said, but I...
I recently had occasion to stop by Addiction is..., a collection of about fifteen nonfiction pieces that, individually and together,...
This post is something I've been meaning to write for years; I'm finally writing it as a starting point/background for...
Many years ago, Arthur E and I were driving somewhere, and we saw a spotlight sweeping back and forth across...
I noticed this pattern in myself a few years ago: I'll say something in email, or in a public post,...