THINKING IN PUBLIC.

Moving through this life while watching Sky grow up has been one of its great gifts. She’s six now, a talkative ball of energy. I have never been talked to this much in my life. Today, she told me she has a bully. I can’t remember his name, but the kid sounds annoying, and she agrees that he is. I can’t teach her to deal with bullies the way I was taught. The world has changed. You can’t just fight fire with fire anymore. Sometimes I feel like an old relic, waiting to be thro

My mother told me a story in 1992 that I didn't fully understand until more than thirty years later. I was sitting on the floor in front of the television, completely mesmerized by Black or White. Like millions of kids, I couldn't look away. Michael Jackson wasn't just singing. He seemed larger than life. The dancing, the music, the energy. It felt like the whole world stopped when he appeared on screen. My mother looked over at me and smiled. "I saw him with the Jackson 5."

I often sit and wonder. I imagine, and I ponder what it feels like to be you. To walk the way you walk. To think your thoughts. What does it taste like to be you? When you dream, are those dreams pure? I wonder who you are. I get the feeling that you're the only one who knows. Maybe, if there is a God, then She knows too. But the story of you is still a secret. It's your secret. I find myself dwelling on the meaning of that thought. There is something beautiful about being th

I struggle with the fact that my daughter is growing up in a culture that isn’t mine. Her childhood can't look like the one that made me. She won’t wake up on Sunday mornings in rural Mississippi with bacon in the pan and heat pressing against the windows. She won’t hear giant drops of spring rain hammering the roof. She won’t spend long afternoons fishing with cousins or walking down to the spring with my uncles and aunts. She hasn’t pulled the sweet end off a honeysuckle fl

Lately I’ve been trying to imagine what it must feel like to be Dario Amodei. I saw him and several other AI leaders at the G7 summit today. Watching them there sparked something in me. Almost all of my friends are skeptical of artificial intelligence. Some are outright opposed to it. I understand why. Their concerns are real. They worry about jobs, creativity, misinformation, privacy, and who ultimately controls these systems. The interesting thing is that I don’t fully disa

I talk to God still. Here and there, you know. When I do, I never call them God. I call them the universe. Not because I don’t believe their name is God, but because I don’t think they ever told us their name. And if they did, we would find a way to minimize it. Humanize it. Give it rules and restrictions. Make it exclusive. So when I say, “Hey universe, help me,” or “show me,” or “listen to this,” it feels all-inclusive. Like anyone can access it, deny it, question it, wrest

I often think about writing to you. Then the thoughts, the stories, the words escape me all at once. Then it almost feels like I’ve forgotten how to create. That feeling is akin to death for me. This season, I’m talking. Meeting. Thinking. Planning. For decades, I made something new every day. That was my rhythm. That was how I knew myself. This isn’t bad news. Maybe it’s a reminder. I still need to create. Even now. Maybe especially now. When I can, I need to create with eve

Nique, Last summer I wrote you a letter. You know the one. This one is different. I can already see you rolling your eyes. Here he goes. The self-described introvert getting dragged into her brother's shenanigans again. Just sit with me for a minute. You know what I admire about you most. It's not something I've said out loud, at least not the way I mean it. You uplift your friends with reckless abandon. You believe in people before they believe in themselves. I saw you do i

Growing up, people in church often said they heard the voice of God. That He had spoken to them. And I remember wondering, what did that actually sound like? Did He yell like the pastor? Or whisper like the ushers when you walked in late to service? Were His instructions vague or specific? Did you actually follow them? Did He ever stop talking and listen to you, or was He annoyed with your choices? And really, why you? Why would He want to talk to you out of all of us? The "v

It's late. Sky and Shedia are fast asleep. I'm lying here in bed reaching for rest, but rest has other plans tonight. So I'm thinking about you. I wonder what you're doing right now on that ship. Whether you're bored out of your mind, staring at open water, or somewhere in the middle of something I'd rather not imagine. I think about whether you're okay. Whether you know we're all holding our breath a little on this side of the world. Mom is definitely worried. When she calls