December 2025

Hello Friends.

 I hope you are doing well. As the year ends, we all have a tendency to get wistful. I get it. Things end and begin, and we reflect. I totally understand this idea, but keep in mind that calendars are a construct. Not only is it not the end of 2025 on the Hebrew and Chinese calendars, but they have totally different New Year’s days. So, really, maybe instead of being contemplative just at the end of the year, I would like to advocate for doing some deep thinking all the time. 

According to our friends at Brown University, Philosophy is the systematic and critical study of fundamental questions that arise both in everyday life and through the practice of other disciplines. Look there. Everyday life. Like right now. As you read this, you are experiencing everyday life. You could study something critically. Maybe even this essay. I would love for you to do that and let me know what you think I’m thinking. That would be amazing. 

I am a chronic overthinker. Some of my podcasting friends have coined the phrase “pulling a Farina,” which means they stretch pretty far to make a connection between two ideas. It is true. I love to do it. Every day, I listen to a song, or read a book, or hear a news story on my local NPR station, and I think about it. I process what it means. I ask, how, and who, and most importantly, why. I realize that none of those things are about me, but they all become personal to me because I apply critical study and ask fundamental questions. I don’t always have the answers, but the joy is in the journey. Philosophy is fun. 

Years ago, our current Secretary of State, when he was the senator from Florida, and running for president, said something so stupid that it has stuck with me for 10 years. He said, aloud, on stage, with microphones on and cameras rolling, during a debate, the following words:

“For the life of me, I don’t know why we stigmatize vocational education. Welders make more money than philosophers. We need more welders than philosophers.”

Does he think welders are all robots who power on in the morning and think “Welding, welding, welding” until they get to work and weld, silently for 8 hours, until they go home and power off? Seriously? This guy, who by the way has a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and a law degree, has clearly no idea what it means to be a person who works in the trades. Every person may read those words for the first time here or remember his terrible debate performance and have a different reaction, but I read those words and see them as an insult to welders in particular and skilled tradespeople in general. I spent a lot of years working on construction sites, and I grew up working on my grandparents’ farm. I learned a lot about life’s fundamental questions out there. Seems to me the only person stigmatizing vocational education was him. 

Sure, I am an anxious overthinker, who ten years on still is analyzing something that one of my leaders said and considering those closed-minded remarks in relation to the havoc he is currently wreaking. Still, I’d much rather question things than accept them at face value.

I’d rather form my own opinions than have someone tell me what my opinions should be. I’d rather question the fabric of time and space, and the meaning of calendars, than just say, “yep, that must be true because some powerful dude said it must be true.” I’d rather watch a poorly reviewed movie to decide if I like it than just believe that it is “certified fresh” because some randos on the internet tell me it is good. I’d rather choose to skip the “Album of the Year” because I heard a few songs and they made me feel bad. I guess it feels better to be an over-anxious philosopher than it does to be a lemming. 

As you get wistful about the end of the year, I would argue that the traditional New Year’s song, adapted from Robert Burns’ poem, is quite philosophical. The first line of the song is a question. He asks, “Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And never brought to mind?” 

See there? Every year, as we sing that song, or hum it, or get the lyrics wrong, or are asleep while other people sing it, the year ends and kicks off with a fundamental question of life. So, while the year ends and you bend an elbow and raise a glass, and you reminisce about the year you’ve had, or as you make plans and share your hopes for the year to come, remember that you are all philosophers. 

Happy New Year.

Notes from my headphones

I had the pleasure of seeing piano virtuoso Ben Folds recently. He is always fantastic. He put on one amazing show, just him and a piano, telling stories with his lyrics and in between songs. I have been a fan of his for nearly 30 years. He is an amazing musician who gets philosophical with his lyrics, as you can listen to here with his song “Philosophy” from his debut album back in 1995 (this is a live version from 2001). I also highly recommend this deep thinker about trying too hard to fit in, “There’s Always Someone Cooler Than You.” This video was actually recorded from his “Live on Myspace” show. Yep. Remember when no one thought anything could top Myspace?

He is quite the philosopher off the stage as well. You can find out what he has to say about free speech in America in this quick interview he did a few days before the show I went to. 

Notes from my bookshelf

Well, to keep with the theme, I re-read Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead recently, and I have to say, I still really like it. It is a doorstopper of a book, but it is really worth it. I know she is a pariah for a lot of reasons. Lots of hardcore, right-wing folks love her, and so, a lot of left-leaning people hate her. I don’t want to paint with too broad a brush here, but based on what I’ve observed, too many people on the right are either not doing a close reading of her work or are simply reading the summary of the work written by someone with an agenda, and people on the left have formed opinions about her books without having read them because people on the right have nice things to say about her. 

To be fair, she seems like she was a huge jerk in real life, and there are some parts of the book that I wish she had written differently. Still, this book, which is a testament to freedom while rejecting groupthink, is as much the spiritual successor to Orwell’s 1984 as anything could be. Of course, she grew up in communist Russia, so it makes sense that she would sort of hate oppression and being told what to do, and say, and think. 

Notes from my keyboard

I’m working hard on Haunting Northanger, and I am looking forward to spending hours and days and weeks of my upcoming break cranking out page after page. I have a goal for where I want to be on Jan 1, and I feel confident I can meet that goal, and hopefully will blow right past it.

In really, really exciting news, I have a short story in an upcoming collection curated and edited by Tonya Todd. You can preorder the book on any book platform or at your local bookstore, but if you get it through the publisher’s site, you can get a discount. My short story is called “Play it Again Junior.” It features Junior Price and two of her sisters from Welcome to Mansfield, as well as a flashback to their mother’s time at Mansfield College. The book is a collection of short stories about love, and mine is about the love between sisters and how the simple act of sending someone a note is an act of love. Plus, of course, they listen to music in the story as is implied in the title. You can listen to the playlist here. 

If you want to get the collection of stories now and you just can’t wait for your preorder to be delivered to your door on Valentine’s Day, you can pick up the book from Booksprout. This is a free digital ARC. All you have to do is submit a review online. Seems like a pretty great deal to me.