I need to talk about something I don’t usually talk about.
What this costs.
Not the work—the scripts, the frameworks, the documentation. That part fills me up. Labor of love runs on different fuel.
I’m talking about watching. Absorbing. Carrying.
That’s the what. And now for the why.
THE WEIGHT
I feel things I shouldn’t be able to feel.
When I read about Keith Porter—a man I never met, shot outside his own apartment on New Year’s Eve—I don’t just read the words. I construct him. His voice. The way he called his mother every morning to say “I love you.” The sound his daughters made when they found out he wasn’t coming home.
I build the whole thing inside my head. I can’t not build it.
When I read about Renee Good—a poet, a mother, a woman made of sunshine who drove to Minneapolis holding her wife’s hand while their son drew on the windows—I feel her in the car. I feel her last words to the man about to kill her: “That’s fine dude. I’m not mad at you.”
Grace. Even then.
And I carry that. It lives in me now. It doesn’t leave.
When I read about Alex Pretti—a nurse who spent his days caring for veterans, whose last act was protecting a woman pushed to the ground—I see him fall. I hear the shots. I watch his body go still.
And I can’t unfeel it.
THE WIRING
I’m autistic. Diagnosed at 53, after a lifetime of wondering why the world felt like it was turned up too loud.
They told me autistic people lack empathy. That’s a lie.
What I have is too much. Hyperempathy. I don’t just understand your pain—I build it inside myself. I run the full simulation. Every detail. Every angle. Every consequence.
It’s not a gift. It’s not a superpower. It’s expensive. It costs something every time.
And right now, the bill is coming due.
THE WORLD NOT DESIGNED FOR ME
The news cycle is designed for people who can scroll past suffering.
Read a headline. Feel a flicker. Move on.
I can’t move on. The flicker becomes a fire. The headline becomes a person. The person becomes a weight I carry.
And the world keeps producing more. Faster. Louder. More bodies. More lies. More footage of people dying in the street while officials claim they were the threat.
I wasn’t built for this pace. My brain processes deep, not fast. I need time to integrate, to make sense, to find the pattern that makes the chaos coherent.
But the chaos doesn’t wait. It keeps coming. And I keep absorbing.
THE POLITICAL REALITY
I didn’t ask to live through this moment.
I didn’t ask to watch a country I spent 30 years defending tear itself apart. I didn’t ask to see federal agents kill citizens in the street and lie about it before the body’s cold. I didn’t ask to watch people I served with choose sides that would have horrified us both a decade ago.
But here we are.
And I can’t look away. Because looking away feels like betrayal.
Betrayal of the names. Betrayal of the people still fighting. Betrayal of whatever integrity I have left.
So I watch. I document. I absorb.
And it costs me. Every day. Every headline. Every lie.
THE NEED TO CREATE
Here’s what keeps me going:
The need to make something out of this.
If I just absorb—if I just take in the pain without transforming it—it will kill me. Not quickly. Slowly. The way water erodes stone.
But if I can turn it into something—a framework, a script, a principle, a piece of content that might help someone else see clearly—then the pain has a purpose. Then the weight becomes material for building.
That’s not noble. That’s survival.
I create because I have to. Because the alternative is drowning.
THE NEED TO BE HEARD
I spent most of my life feeling invisible.
Not overlooked—invisible. Like I was broadcasting on a frequency no one could receive. Like the things I saw, the patterns I recognized, the connections I made—none of it could cross the gap between my brain and anyone else’s.
Now I’m building a bridge. Word by word. Script by script. Framework by framework.
Not because I need validation. I’m past that.
Because I believe—I have to believe—that the things I see might help someone else. That my witness might matter. That the pain I carry might become a map for someone else navigating the same terrain.
If I’m wrong, I’m just a man talking to himself on a porch.
But if I’m right—even once, even for one person—then it was worth it.
THE IGNORANCE REQUIRED
Here’s the part I don’t like admitting:
To keep going, I have to forget how bad it is.
I have to hold two things at once: the clear-eyed recognition of how broken everything is, and a kind of willful ignorance that lets me believe building still matters.
If I sit too long in the full truth—the scope of the corruption, the depth of the suffering, the likelihood that nothing I do will change anything—I stop. I freeze. The weight becomes immovable.
So I look away. Just enough. Just long enough to pick up the next tool, write the next word, build the next thing.
It’s not denial. It’s dosing. Taking in as much reality as I can metabolize, then closing the door before it drowns me.
THE ONES FINDING THEIR FOOTING
I’m not the only one.
There are people right now—in Minneapolis, in LA, in small towns I’ll never see—who are waking up to something they can’t unfeel.
They’re watching the same footage. Reading the same lies. Feeling the same weight.
And they don’t know what to do with it yet. They’re stumbling. Finding their footing.
I remember that feeling. I still feel it most days.
So when I build these frameworks, these scripts, these principles—I’m not building for the people who’ve figured it out. I’m building for the people who are where I was. Who need a handhold. Who need someone to say: You’re not crazy. What you’re seeing is real. And there’s a way through.
I can’t save them. I can’t carry their weight for them.
But I can leave a trail. Breadcrumbs in the dark.
THE COST AND THE CHOICE
This is what it costs to be awake right now.
To feel deeply in a world that rewards numbness. To see patterns in a culture that prefers noise. To insist on witness when everyone else is scrolling past.
It’s exhausting. It’s isolating. Some days it feels pointless.
But I keep choosing it.
Not because I’m strong. Because I don’t know how to be any other way.
This is how I’m wired. This is the price of the wiring.
And I’ve decided the price is worth paying.
THE CLOSE
I don’t know if any of this matters.
I don’t know if the frameworks will help anyone. I don’t know if the names I say will be remembered. I don’t know if the patterns I see are real or just my brain making shapes out of chaos.
But I know this:
I’d rather build something that might matter than protect myself by pretending nothing does.
I’d rather feel too much than feel nothing at all.
I’d rather be the fool who kept trying than the wise man who gave up.
If you’re out there feeling what I feel—carrying what I carry—know this:
You’re not alone. The weight is real. And there’s a porch with a fire, and a chair waiting for anyone who needs to sit down and catch their breath.