When Belief Becomes the Advantage
People like to talk about talent gaps in professional sports. Faster. Bigger. Stronger. Smarter schemes. Better quarterbacks.
I’ve never fully bought it.
By the time you reach the NFL, the margins are thin. Almost invisible. Everyone can run. Everyone can hit. Everyone knows the playbook. The difference between winning and losing rarely lives in the muscles. It lives in the mind. And more specifically, in the shared belief of a room full of people who decide, quietly and together, that they are not done yet.
I realized this years ago watching a winless team that wasn’t nearly as bad as their record suggested. The Miami Dolphins weren’t devoid of talent. They were devoid of belief. Once a locker room starts expecting the floor to fall out, it usually does. Missed tackles feel heavier. Mistakes multiply. Hope evaporates faster than conditioning ever could.
The opposite is also true.
If You Want to Be on the Right Side of History, Follow the Music
History is loud when you’re living inside it. Everyone is certain. Everyone has a microphone. Every moment feels urgent and absolute, as if the future is being decided in real time by whoever speaks with the most confidence.
But history is quiet when it looks back.
What survives is rarely the speeches that demanded obedience. It’s the songs that told the truth gently enough to outlive the moment that produced them.
I have a theory I keep returning to, especially when the world feels heavy.
If you want to be on the right side of history, follow the music.
We’ve Been Here Before
There are moments when the world feels heavier than the body was designed to carry. When the news scrolls faster than your heart can keep up. When you look at your phone and realize you are watching fear try to pass itself off as authority.
Last night felt like one of those moments.
Not because of a single speech or a single city or a single headline. But because something underneath it all became visible. A familiar shape. An old strategy. Fear as leverage. Control as reassurance. Power insisting that compliance is safety.
And yet, outside the frame, people were standing in the streets.
Not reckless. Not unaware. Not confused.
Unafraid.
There was something quietly historical about that. And about the words that followed. Not focused on federal abstractions or policy jargon. Not reduced to talking points about drugs or immigration or crime. But naming the thing beneath the thing. Fear. Control. And the quiet, stubborn strength of community as its counterweight.
Holding My Breath in Familiar Places
Every year we come back to Colorado for the holidays, and every year it wears on me in ways that are hard to explain out loud.
On the surface, nothing is wrong. Family gatherings. Full calendars. Kids laughing with their cousins. All the things that are supposed to feel good. But underneath it, I feel drained in a way that sleep does not fix. I am not tired because I am doing too much. I am tired because there is no rhythm. No routine. No place for my nervous system to settle.
I am trying to work during the day. Trying to stay present at night. Trying to be grateful. Trying not to be a burden. Trying not to take up too much emotional space. Trying is exhausting.
I am not sleepy. I am tired.
Why People Change Their Tune: What Marco Rubio, LBJ, and the Rest of Us Reveal About Power, Identity, and Being Human
Every once in a while, I see something online that makes me freeze — not because it’s shocking, but because it’s a perfect snapshot of a human truth that we usually ignore.
A few days ago, it was Dawn Neufeld’s quote tweet aimed at Marco Rubio.
Rubio had reposted the State Department announcing the renaming of the Institute of Peace to honor Donald Trump, calling him “the President of Peace.” Dawn’s reply was simple:
“You need to be studied.”
It wasn’t political. It wasn’t even angry. It was observational — like a biologist seeing an animal do something unexpected in the wild.
And she’s not wrong.
Rubio does deserve to be studied.
Not judged. Not mocked. Not psychoanalyzed on cable news.
Studied.
Soft Heart, Hard Road - Three Years Strong
Three years ago today, our family’s world shifted. It wasn’t a dramatic moment in the cinematic sense. No swelling music. No clear resolution. Just an MRI, a phone call that came too early, and the kind of news that instantly divides life into before and after.