I live a simple life.
Apparently, this confuses people.
Some assume “simple” means boring—that if I’m not broadcasting joy at full volume, I must be missing out on something essential. Chaos. Noise. The approved version of fun.
I’ve even been told I’m not really living.
“The world can’t be found in one of your books,” they say.
“You need to get out and see the world.”
That bothered me once.
For about thirty seconds.
Then I explained what my everyday life used to look like.
Some people went quiet.
Some turned pale.
A few vomited.
I’ll admit—it gave me a little tingle.
The ones who mattered just nodded and said, Yeah… you’ve earned the right to rest.
They were wrong about one thing.
I’m not resting. I’m choosing.
Because I’ve seen the world—up close, in motion, at speed.
And I’ve learned you don’t need to cross an ocean to understand people.
You just need to pay attention.
Here’s what fun looks like now:
Reading
Reading isn’t escape.
It’s discovery through confrontation.
I read to understand why the world keeps repeating itself. Books showed me cruelty, tenderness, faith, and failure long before I met them face-to-face. Anyone who says the world can’t be found in a book hasn’t been paying attention to either one.
Books don’t pretend.
And they don’t let me, either.
Writing
Writing isn’t a hobby.
It’s a discipline with standards.
I write to see what survives the page—ideas, memories, versions of myself that don’t get to lie. It’s where things either hold or collapse.
Writing is fun because it gets to the truth faster than conversation.
And because on the page, I can’t bullshit myself.
Listening to Music
I don’t use music as wallpaper.
I listen to albums—front to back. Deep cuts. No algorithm steering my mood. The real story is never in the hits.
Music taught me timing. Restraint. When silence matters more than sound.
It’s also what made me fall in love with stories in the first place—before I trusted words, I trusted feeling.
Listening is fun because it still surprises me.
And because it reminds me that every good story starts with rhythm.
Hand Drawing & Photography
Both are acts of slowing down.
Drawing forces honesty—one line at a time, no undo.
Photography demands attention. You don’t take a photo; you notice one.
Sometimes these worlds overlap. I draw the photographs I take. Sometimes those images bleed into my writing, the same way music pulls a memory to the surface before I know its name.
I don’t make images to decorate.
I make them to see.
Mechanics & Woodworking
Things don’t come together by accident.
Mechanics teaches respect for systems. Ignore how something works and it will teach you—violently. Creation begins with understanding.
Before I build anything, I draw it. Sometimes I photograph something similar and reverse-engineer it—break it down, rebuild the idea, make it mine.
Wood remembers everything. You can’t rush it. You can’t argue with it. But if you listen, unrelated pieces become something solid and new.
Somewhere along the way, I realized I wasn’t collecting hobbies.
I was learning how to pay attention—how structure holds, how timing matters, how nothing works unless you understand what it’s made of.
This is discovery through confrontation, just with heavier consequences.
And that’s why it’s fun.
Because turning fragments into function leaves no room for bullshit. Especially my own.
Memoirs of Madness 