I started this blog on May 24, 2005 with a post about the film “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” It was about movies for a while, then grad school, then teaching, then a collection of rants and randomness, and it’s been 11 months since my last post here.

As is the trend these days, I have a Substack that I’m trying to figure out what to do with, so if you enjoy the occasional writing and haven’t found me over there yet, here’s a link. Or if you already follow me on Instagram, the posts will pop up there too. There’s not much there yet, but I plan to change that soon.

I’ll keep this spot up for another week, and then I’ll delete the whole thing.

I was talking to a friend earlier this week about how I’ve really struggled with my writing for the past year and he asked what my goal is when I sit down to write.

“I want to believe that at least one person will read something I write and feel less alone,” I said.

Thanks to those of you who read any of these posts over the past 18 years. I hope something I wrote helped you feel less alone.

I saw two excellent movies last week, both 100% worth your time.

The first, “Tower,” is a documentary about the Texas Tower shooting in 1966. This is different from the usual documentary storytelling technique of interviewee looking off camera, while still photos and some ancient video plays as B roll. The director instead used actors and animation, and it’s hard to explain, so you really just have to watch it.

The other movie I saw last week was the Academy Award-nominated “Arrival.” Multiple people had been after me to see this film, and now that I’ve seen it, I need to see it at least three more times. The concept of language and time as constructs that actually hold humans back from progress was interesting, but it was the twist at the end that caused me to feel all possible emotions at once–and I’m not using hyperbole there. It was unlike any reaction I’ve had to a film.

I didn’t really watch or listen to much else last week–this is the time of year when my life starts being consumed by school and the musical, and everything becomes a bit of a blur. But once that is over, I get to collapse into spring break, so if there’s anything I should see that week, leave it in the comments!

My friends AJ (who is one-third of the wildly popular “Teachers Talking TV Podcast”) and Marya have been pestering me to watch “The Good Place,” a sitcom about a woman mistakenly sent to heaven upon her death. I’m five episodes in and loving it. Not surprising, though: it’s run by the same people who put together Parks and Rec and Brooklyn 99.

Do you have Amazon Prime? Yes? Two things to bring to your attention:

One, “The Man in the High Castle.” This is a dark imagining of what America would look like if the Axis powers had won World War II. I can only watch one episode a day, because once I watched two, and I had horrible nightmares.

And two, Amazon music playlists. They have a playlist for pretty much everything, and while their music library included with Prime isn’t as expansive as Apple Music or Spotify, it’s still ample enough to enjoy. Here’s one I listened to last week.

Finally, even though some might argue that poetry is not popular culture, but I see parts of poems pop up on tshirts and tote bags on Etsy all the time. I’ve been ruminating much of this stanza from Mary Oliver’s poem “Sometime”:

“Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”

I’m not sure what Oliver intended by her use of the word “astonished,” but I’m taking it two ways, in hopes I will find balance to my off-kilter state of mind. I can be astonished at the injustices I see, and tell about those. I can be astonished at the simplicity and beauty of life, and tell about that.

What did I miss? What must I absolutely be watching or listening to?