Marvel sees a tree. She approaches it and stops us completely, disrupting our walk.
This forces me to take in my surroundings.
I notice for the first time how blue the sky is today. Some geese fly overhead and land on the sparkling pond down the hill from us. There’s a father and his young son fishing off the dock. I take a deep breath and start to taste every note of the sweet air as it passes through my nose and into my belly. Speaking of notes, I hear the harmony of wildlife play through the woods, the low hum of the cool wind and high sliding chirps of the black-capped chickadees. God’s most perfect creature, the squirrel, climbs down a tree and onto the trail to say hello. I wave back.
I’m reminded of the Buddhist texts I’ve been reading: be present in this moment, and in every moment. You never step into the same river twice and all that jazz. I look at Marvel and realize that we will never take this same walk again. We do not last forever. Change is the only constant; the only permanent thing is our impermanence. I get emotional. Tears fill my eyes as a woman walks past us cautiously, understandably, as I am a man in the woods.
I am close to enlightenment. I can feel the universe on the tip of my finger and tongue.
Then Marvel sees the next tree, and we walk a few feet more. We start the process again.
As a born-and-raised Minnesotan and a self-taught musician, I made a solemn teenage vow to myself to see two artists live in concert: Prince and Bob Dylan.
I saw Prince in 2004; a manager at Chili’s had an extra ticket to one of his Musicology album release shows and invited little ol’ me and it was nothing less than life-affirming. Heck, I even saw Morris Day and The Time a few weeks ago at the new Mystic Lake Amphitheater.
Tonight, I finally saw Bob.
I was nervous; Dylan has put the miles on. I heard a review of one of his recent shows that described it as a form of elder abuse. Not real confidence-inspiring stuff.
But gosh: he opened his mouth and sounded just like Bob.
As the sun set behind the stage, he played keyboard and harmonica and sang words in the kind of way only Bob Dylan can sing them. Two songs in, a venue employee tapped me on the shoulder and asked if she could upgrade my ticket. I (literally) jumped at the chance and was whisked away down below where I could sit in a seat and actually see Bob for real, who was wearing a white jacket with the hood up (the entire time).
It was a sincerely enchanting experience, and absolutely worth the wait.
Oh! And no cell phones or photography were allowed. But, thankfully, I am a detail-oriented artist who drew this impeccable image as soon as I got home so you can feel like you were there, too.
I put an arrow on Bob so you know which one he is. Lucinda Williams and John Doe were so wonderful and subversive, as well.
I love my state and its music and its people and I got to soak in it (and the summer sun) on a pretty perfect day. It reminded me how grateful I am to be from here, be shaped by here, and get to live here.
It also served as an important statement on the state of this country during our birthday this weekend.
The shirt itself was joyously racist and aggressively obnoxious; in other words, it well-represented the administration and its supporters. It’s not always a shirt; sometimes it’s a hat or a bumper sticker or a viral tweet. There’s still (always) a lot of discussion about what divides us, but this was a good reminder of one of the clear and obvious differences: some of us fight for things, and some of us just fight against them.
I’d argue we’re at our best when we stand up for ourselves, for our values, beliefs, ideals, communities, and the people we love and care about; we’re at our worst when we incessantly and viciously attack, insult, and denigrate one another or whole groups of human beings.
This sounds like the kind of polite manners and mutual respect we used to teach children by example, but I have never seen adults this openly abusive and abrasive in my life, and as quick to flop and cry foul when the same crass techniques are turned around and pointed their way.
When you squint and see through all the bad behavior, however, you start to realize something: there isn’t anything these people are fighting for. It’s just a bunch of bullshit they’ve been brainwashed with to incubate fear and hate.
It’s something I think about all the time. When I get angry or become critical, I ask myself: what am I fighting for? And if I can’t answer that question honestly, then I realize I’m a sucker getting caught up in the mob, too. I’m human. It happens.
But it’s a question worth asking yourself, over and over and over. It’s the question that led to the birth of this country. And it’s a question that, once it dies, takes life and liberty and happiness and hope with it.
Being weeks out from graduation now, the first question people usually ask when they see me in the wild is: “How’s the job hunt going?”
My answer is always succinct and honest: it is a nightmare out here.
It is a daily humiliation, a habitual humbling, a constant experience of rejection and failure and soul-crushing uncertainty, but you know what? That’s okay and I’ll tell you why.
As far as the responses to the dozens of applications I’ve submitted go, it’s been an expectedly mixed bag. I’ve had my share of rejection letters, a few of them surprisingly sweet and thoughtfully written, but most just copy-and-paste slips from an age-old template. I’ve had phone interviews. I’ve had practice task requests; in design, instead of a traditional introductory meeting, they give you a prompt for a project and you send in your work and that helps them see what kind of designer (and person?) you are.
In a truly dystopian move, though, there is a new tactic on the job scene and, if you’ve been paying attention to the abysmal state of modern affairs, I’m sure you can guess what it is: the “A.I. assistant” interview. That’s right: there are companies that care so little about who works for them now that they’re not even bothering doing the interviews with people anymore.
I have received these requests. I have rejected them with my whole chest. And here’s the part where I tell you why I’m okay.
You’ll see a lot of people talk about authenticity. About being genuine and real. And then you’ll see them act directly opposed to this supposed ideology.
Go look at LinkedIn right now. You will find the same thirteen adjectives self-describing most people on any career website, because they’re all using the “professional playbook” (and yeah, that playbook includes A.I. now). Even at school, we were encouraged to sand our edges, to follow standards, to conform.
I have and will perpetually refuse to do this.
I have stubbornly remained human through all of this. My work and my writing and my social media presence and, hell, even my resume includes things that doesn’t tell people I’m genuine or authentic, but shows them. I can be sarcastic and silly and messy, but I’m also professional and empathetic and kind. There are thousands of people who have received my service and know I’m the real deal. And even though I don’t have that job yet, I strongly believe that when the right people come across me and learn about who I am, they’ll know I’m the right fit for who they are and what they do.
Basically, everything is okay because all of this is reminding me of who I am, and who I am is pretty cool and would be a good part of any good team.
Anyway, if you’re navigating this market right now too, I see you and I’m sending all my love your way. I’m grateful to be working in the other industries where I have skills so I don’t have to settle for anything less. And as the rising wave of backlash against A.I. (and inhumanity) continues, I hope that companies see sooner than later how humans are the irreplaceable and priceless assets; not just for their businesses, but for our lives.
Zen Buddhism says that in our absolute reality, each of us are the whole universe and nothing simultaneously; in our individual, relative versions of reality, however, I believe the entire point of our existence is to discover who we actually are before we’re gone.
Usually when we define ourselves, we have to say: I am this thing; I am not that thing. But if we do dig deeper, we start to experience a collapse of this kind of dualism. And when that line between two formally distinct sides is blurred or smudged or erased altogether, it can take us further away from concrete identity, which may be helpful in a spiritual, attachment-severing sense, but is a total bummer when it comes to figuring out who we are in the here and now.
I always think about this when I visit Faribault, and when I contemplate the complexity of being a man.
So what does it mean to be from somewhere? For those of you who don’t know me well or read everything I write (how dare you), I am of, at least, two distinct places: I was born in Minneapolis, the big city, and I moved to Faribault, a small town, halfway through the third grade. I never had the interconnected roots that the other kids in Faribault had; I always felt like an outsider, which makes sense when many of the children around you have known each other from before they left their respective wombs.
Interestingly enough, though, I always claim Faribault as my hometown, even though I wasn’t born there and have always felt more city in my blood than country (which might actually just be all the microplastics). I sincerely couldn’t tell you where I belong; my entire past feels as fluid as the Mississippi (or Straight) river.
This might seem trivial to some, but I’ve been watching the World Cup religiously and you can see and feel how people connect when they totally know where they’re from: in their bodies, through their hearts, down to their bones. Nationally, I’m a U.S. fan; genetically, I root for Germany, Norway, and Denmark (who missed the Cup this year). I have a inkling of where I was drawn from on the bigger page; I struggle to see which panels my lines fit into today.
So what does it mean to be of a particular sex or to have a specific gender role based on cultural and time-specific context? For me, being a man is being both dog and trainer; in fact, I’ve been able to deal with quite a bit of shame and guilt by realizing this duality, and finally accepting my responsibilities for both roles. But acceptance of both animal and non-animal qualities isn’t conductive to male identity-building; it can distort our perspective, make societal life even more confusing and, if used with resignation, can lead to countless excuses and refusal of personal accountability.
Said the alcoholic.
Look, I have a lot of empathy for men today, but it doesn’t mean I have to feel bad for them; a lot of the toxic masculinity and giant-sized narcissism we face is self-perpetuated and just plain gross, a ton of guys tying their own shoelaces together and blaming the world for tripping them over. It’s easy to be lonely when you treat everybody around you as wrong and less-than; a little dash of humility and a sprinkle of decency and sugar go a long way.
All of this to say: I don’t know how many people are doing this work anymore. This whole “knowing thyself” work. The work of figuring out who we were, who we are, who we want to be and, most importantly, why.
As I watch countless people around me scroll to death and defer all of their own potential feelings, thoughts, and/or opinions to AI or social media’s feelings, thoughts, and/or opinions, I don’t wonder why so many feel so alone and without any purpose. We make our own purpose and then we make it together, in real life, with the identities we discover and forge and then rediscover perpetually.
So, again, I don’t know what I am.
But I do know that the whole point of this life is to look into it as deeply and passionately and truly as I can before I leave this borrowed body behind.
I’m so sorry if you see me in the next five weeks because my personality will be, largely, the World Cup (though, depending on your opinion of me, this may be better than whatever my normal personality is).
I’ve always had a complicated relationship with soccer; I have both hated it and loved it during different periods of my life.
(I definitely had a comical distaste for the sport when I worked at Old Chicago and we started opening hellishly early on the weekend for Premier League matches, but it did gift me my English team. My GM Luke encouraged me to pick and support a side, as I would then get more into the games, so I asked him who the rivals were for his team, Chelsea. He said it was Arsenal and my choice was made. They’re currently the Premier League champs, btw!)
I am now at the point in my life where I have never loved soccer more. I don’t know when the light switch flipped but it actually wasn’t like a switch at all; it was a rekindled relationship that started with curiosity and has resulted in obsession.
(Another aside: I think my love/hate relationship exists with sports in general. Though I have never been known as athletic [nerd and writer and drama club president, hello], I really do love to play, and I think a lot of my physical awkwardness came from my terrible eyesight. Though a lot of you know I wear glasses now, I didn’t for the first thirty-ish years of my life, blindly navigating through my days like a powerless Matt Murdock. I was insecure about that, and not being able to see led to me finding other ways to represent myself. I think it worked out for the best, but I digress.)
Anyway, this is all a post to say: if you’re obsessed, too, and want to talk World Cup, I’m your guy. I’ve already watched every match so far and can’t stop watching and reading everything else Cup-related.
P.S. I read an article about a pick-up league in Atlanta called Roswell Seniors Soccer Club where the median age of the players is 73 and I can’t stop thinking about it. Does anyone else want to start an old person league with me? Please? I promise we can just walk the whole time, eat treats and chase butterflies at our leisure.
I know it’s been a long time between conventions for me when there’s so much to catch up on!
There was rarely a moment I wasn’t in conversation with an old friend, a new fan, or a random passerby today. I missed this community so much and there were moments I felt maybe I was missed too! I got to learn all the good news and listen to the hard times, too; everyone’s going through it and I feel grateful to those who share that.
I very rarely attend any con hearing near universal praise for the event, but I heard it sung again and again today (despite the heat!). Definite magic to be found at SpringCon, and I just want to thank the organizers, volunteers, fellow writers and artists and craftspeople and vendors, and, of course, the attendees. I won’t wait another eight months until you see me again!
I know that a surefire way to experience heartbreak in this life is to have attachments; this hard-earned knowledge hasn’t stopped me from keeping my mom in a ceramic squirrel cookie jar.
A beautiful, diseased tree that lived behind our home was cut down on Friday. Its branches held a dray that housed a sibling gang of squirrels; I counted seven of them one morning last week as they squeaked and leaped about our yard. I noticed that they had been moving pieces of their nest from one tree to another, like they knew the end of their stay in the former was near.
What a lesson from nature, I thought. Change is normal. Moving on is normal, totally not a big deal. The tree you live in right now is only the tree you live in right now; you will live in many trees and someday you won’t live in a tree at all.
Our beautiful, diseased tree fell and that was that. There was a quiet sadness sat in our yard, grief in the form of a stump. The absence of the tree deeply upset me, but I felt silly, as the squirrels were so easily able to get past it.
Until we heard it.
A wail of sorts. I thought it was a bird. But I looked outside and it was one of the squirrels, splooting over a branch in the new tree, seemingly crying out in pain, though not in any visible, physical danger.
Maybe it is possible to be okay with all change. Maybe it just takes practice. Or maybe it’s a trick taught by nature: act unaffected and unattached, pretend to be cool with change or get buried by it.
It’s my mom’s birthday today and I wish she were here to help me let that squirrel know it’s going to be okay; I wish she were here to let me know, too.
Sometimes I wonder what I would do if I woke up and my ceramic squirrel cookie jar was gone.
I think a part of me would be okay, knowing she was out there somewhere and living in another tree.
But I know another part of me would wail, the part of me that never stops, the part of me that holds on to all the birthdays we had before and all the birthdays we’ll never have.
This is the most common response I receive when I tell someone that I graduate from school this month. And, with all due respect, this has not been my experience at all. No, this has been two of the longest years of my life, in the very best way.
A few summers ago, I got an idea, which is always a dangerous thing for me to have. Like a puppy with a sock in its mouth, I have difficulty putting them down. I started a graphic design program when I was 19, made it to the third quarter, and dropped out unceremoniously; it wasn’t a decision that haunted me, but it did feel like regret. I clearly love art and design, I love learning, I love communication, I love rules (and love breaking them), I love accomplishing goals; how did I not have my degree? I learned about the North Star Scholarship, which made school affordable, through TV interviews with Governor Walz and thought: I could do this.
So I did.
I started taking the steps towards finishing something I started twenty years ago. I filled out the right forms, I talked to the right people and, before I knew it, I was sitting in a classroom on the first day of school at the age of 39, in August of 2024.
It’s at this point that most accounts would say “fast-forward to today” but that’s not what happened for me. The last two years were novel and difficult and exceptionally rewarding. I got humbled day after day in a way that, let’s be honest, I totally deserve. I knew stuff before; I know so much more stuff now, including how much stuff I just don’t know. I wanted to fully embrace this educational season of my life, so I joined clubs and volunteered and competed and connected to so many people from every age and walk of life. At the same time, hard stuff happened at home, as stuff does; thanks to the wonderful support I had here at home, we were able to figure it out and keep it all afloat until I made it back ashore.
It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t fast. It wasn’t inconsequential.
It did turn something I used to regret into something I am so glad I initially failed at; my life has been impossibly enriched by the time I spent at DCTC the last two years. I can’t imagine it happening any other way.
I know I said it in my speech (both versions), but I want to repeat it once more: you are undone. Forever. You can be whoever you want to be and I hope you choose to be who you really are. There are things you want to do but haven’t and, odds are, it’s because they are hard things to do. I can’t speak for you but I can say that, for me, the difficulty is worth it and, actually, the difficulty is the point. We’re being coldly sold on efficiency; let A.I. live your literal life for you, what could go wrong?
Everything. Everything could go wrong. You might find yourself at the end of a life realizing you didn’t really live it at all.
I just want to, once again, give you all my love and gratitude for the love and support you have given me, especially at home, work, and in school. I’m exhausted, I’m burned out, but I am so happy and fulfilled and proud to be a former student (and future alumni) of DCTC.
So what’s next? Oh boy. If you know me, you know I have ideas, and aren’t those just the most dangerous things to have.
Whoa! My heart is bursting. A massive and sincere thank you to everyone who came out to Commencement and supported me tonight; I love you all so much. A wonderful evening and every single person I saw and talked to was so lovely.
My speech went fine, but! A whole page was missing from the binder at the podium. It was low-key horrifying. I was genuinely losing it on the inside, a dozen squirrels screaming and throwing things around in my mind. But I did make it through alive and I knew I still wanted to record the whole thing at home and share it with you, if that’s okay. It’s called “Undone” and I love it so much:
My name is Dennis, and I am a psychic. See, I am willing to bet a fortune that I know what all of our graduates are thinking right now: “I’m done.” Or some variation of “I did it,” or “I’m finished,” or… “Yay.” But I have taken to this stage tonight to try to convince you that you’re wrong. That we are and will forever be undone, and this is one of the most extraordinary gifts we get just by being human. Good evening and welcome: to my fellow classmates, to our cherished friends, family, and support systems, and to our wonderful faculty and staff.
I am a psychic, but I am not a mathematician. Can anybody here estimate how long it took me to get the two-year degree that I’m taking home tonight? If you guessed about two years, then you clearly know how to do school more efficiently than I do. You need to add twenty to that number. In 2004, I started my epic Graphic Design journey at a now-defunct school called Brown College in Mendota Heights. I didn’t even make it a year; I dropped out during my third quarter. I was done. Some of you may identify with that kind of being done: the loss of a goal, a job, a relationship.
I have lived a lot of life since then. If you are a mathematician, don’t try to figure out how much. I started a family, I played music, I worked in restaurants, I published books, I dressed up as SpiderMan and Batman more often than any grown up ever should. But my biggest accomplishment wasn’t external or superheroic at all; eight years ago, I made the impossible decision to get sober.
I had reached another point in my life where I thought I was finished. I had spent so many years weaving malignant threads through every space and corner of my mind that I eventually found myself trapped in a toxic web of my own creation. I ingested poison and I secreted it; I suffered and I caused suffering. And long after I had decided I was done, I had one just more thought that ended up saving my life: maybe not yet. It is possible that I could be undone.
Change is a beautiful and terrifying and inescapable feature of life. I think we sometimes equate change to something novel, to becoming something new. But sometimes change is the opposite; it can be a return to the good things we were before we became who we are now. But no matter how we change, the change itself is constant; we are never finished, even after we believe we are finished. There is so much value in this.
I came back to school because I love learning, love growing, love changing. And I wanted to finish this one more thing I started a long time ago so I can start becoming countless new things. Through honesty and openness and empathy and a real dedication to service in all its forms, I’ve been able to embrace my indeterminate condition and have been embraced in turn by the people I love and care about. That includes all of you. And I’m not saying that if someone has hurt you that you have to forgive them or allow them back into your life; I am saying that any human being who is willing to admit they were wrong and embrace change is a candidate for that forgiveness. Change can heal; change can be a cure. And every day is an opportunity for it.If you were cruel yesterday, you can be kind today. If you said the wrong thing, you can try to say what’s right. If you didn’t say anything at all, you can speak up. If you weren’t there when you were needed, you can be present. If you forgot to tell someone how you feel, right now is the time.
Which brings me back to my original point: remember when I shocked you all by exposing your innermost thoughts? I hope now that you can rethink this old idea of done; I hope you can commit to being undone. That is: never done. Always learning, always growing, always changing. Even the word “commencement” is sometimes misunderstood: it doesn’t mean “accomplishment.” It means “to begin.” So, from the bottom of my heart: congratulations to you and this new beginning. I am beyond honored and humbled to be with you here right now. Go out into the world and show them who you are; but if you don’t show them on day one, remember that you are undone, and you can try again tomorrow. Thank you.
I have a million photos from a galaxy far, far away to choose from but I want to share this selfie from one of my favorite ever Star Wars experiences with my favorite ever Jedi (then not-a-Jedi, spoiler).
Ashley Eckstein, the voice of Ahsoka Tano, was at Twin Cities Con in 2023. When you table at cons (which I do; I’m a super famous and successful author in case anyone forgot!), it’s difficult to leave your booth for any reason, which includes meeting your favorite celebrities. In this case, I decided to check out Ashley’s table at the end of the day on Friday (after the floor closed) to see if she was still there.
She was! Yay! But she was all packed up and ready to go. Boo!
Shoot, I said. I told her I had been hoping to catch her before she left, but I would try again later in the weekend.
What’s one more? she said, and invited me behind her table where we took a dozen fun selfies like this one.
Artists and actors and writers and musicians owe us exactly nothing; they create magic that makes our lives better and deserve to live their own on their own terms. I’ve had good and bad experiences and have told those stories and at the end of the day, they’re all people.
But when you do meet someone who lives up to their character and is a wonderful person to boot, it is an experience that enriches the fantastical worlds we obsess over as fans.
I am repeatedly on the record as saying there is no such thing as bad Star Wars, and I stand by that statement. I think there is a spectrum of storytelling here that ranges from enjoyable and fun to deeply meaningful and life-changing, but it is all good in my correct opinion.
Now go watch the Maul finale so we can talk about it. I went from not particularly caring that this was a series to straight up sobbing during an episode last week. For Darth Maul! What the heck! I love Star Wars!
The Den 