Good writing takes its time.

Essays, field notes, and short fiction from people who care about their sentences. Read without an account. Write when you have something to say.

What it is like to do a job well, or badly, for a long time.

How to Give Feedback a Writer Can Use

The worst note I ever gave was four words long, and it took a mail carrier eleven months to survive it.

Oct 204 min read4336

Nineteen years of night shifts, and what I have learned not to trust at that hour.

Oct 164 min read4234

Hull shape is a list of things you have agreed to give up, and I once gave up the wrong one by five inches.

Oct 54 min read3965

What I learned about choosing tools from one payroll file, nineteen spare minutes, and a forum post that said “nvm.”

Sep 284 min read2155

I missed a stuffed monkey three times in front of 640 students, and it was the best lab I ever taught.

Sep 224 min read2445

Twelve years of outages looked strange one at a time and not at all strange stacked in a spreadsheet.

Aug 214 min read2525

I paid a young man six hundred and eighty dollars to plane thirty-eight dollars’ worth of oak.

Sep 34 min read1245