Every now and then, I catch myself looking around my life for no particular reason. Usually it happens on a Saturday morning. I’ve got a cup of coffee in my hand, the house is quiet, and I’m trying to convince a blinking cursor that it would really like
A few years ago, I was talking with someone in the Star Trek community when they started asking questions about my life. By the end of the conversation, they knew I was a musician, a writer, a podcaster, a coffee enthusiast, a dog lover, a Midwesterner, and someone who spends
I still remember sitting in my second year of college looking at a schedule filled with music education classes and U.S. history courses and believing I knew exactly what my future was going to look like. There was something comforting about the certainty of it. I was going to
Every once in a while I stumble across an old family photograph and find myself laughing. Not because the picture is particularly funny, but because it captures a version of me that seems both completely familiar and completely out of place at the same time. In one of my favorites,
I have questions. This is rarely good news for anyone who happens to be nearby. It usually starts innocently enough. Someone mentions something in conversation, I notice something I’ve never noticed before, or I encounter one tiny piece of information that doesn’t fit neatly into whatever I thought
I was raised by puppets. Not exclusively, obviously. There were actual humans involved in my upbringing. But Sesame Street, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Daniel Tiger, and The Muppet Show were woven into my childhood in ways that probably explain more about me than I should admit publicly. Somewhere along the way,
Room One I have been packing suitcases for most of my adult life, which you would think would have resulted in some measurable improvement in my ability to pack a suitcase. You would be wrong. Every trip begins with the same confidence. I know where I’m going. I know
The moment Star Trek: Strange New Worlds decided it was going to spend most of an episode in black and white, put Una Chin-Riley in the middle of a film noir mystery, bring Kor into the proceedings, and make half the Enterprise crew start keeping secrets from one another,
There are moments when I suspect the writers of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds sit around a table asking one another what they can possibly get away with. Una Chin-Riley belting out a Klingon version of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" while M'Benga tends bar
There are certain promises I continue to make to myself despite overwhelming evidence that they simply aren't true. One of my favorites is, "This will only take a few minutes." It's an optimistic little sentence, isn't it? It arrives with all the
I’ve never been especially good at watching horror movies. Not because I mind being scared. I simply spend most of the running time offering what I believe are perfectly sensible advice to the people on screen. “Maybe don’t open that door.” “Perhaps we don’t investigate the abandoned
Room One There are moments in our lives that don't seem particularly important while we're living them. In fact, they often look exactly like every other Tuesday. No dramatic music. No life-changing announcement. No feeling that we should stop and pay attention because this is
One of my favorite things about Star Trek is that it has never believed wonder and wisdom are mutually exclusive. It has always understood that sometimes the biggest ideas arrive wrapped inside the most unexpected stories. A courtroom drama becomes a conversation about prejudice. A holodeck adventure becomes an examination
An Essay in Four Rooms ROOM ONE There are some mornings that seem so ordinary while you're living them that you almost forget they're happening. This morning was one of those. The coffee was hot. The house was quiet in the way a familiar house is
An Essay in Four Parts That Is and Isn’t About Star Trek Part One Every once in a while, someone asks me why I love Star Trek. It’s a fair question. I’ve spent years talking about it on CloneStar Podcast, writing about it on social media, and
Every now and then, I catch myself looking around my life for no particular reason. Usually it happens on a Saturday morning. I’ve got a cup of coffee in my hand, the house is quiet, and I’m trying to convince a blinking cursor that it would really like