"Progressives really got to figure out how to deal with this buzzkill problem." (Marc Maron, 2025)

It's a hard thing, I think, to figure out how to balance the deep anxiety and uncertainty many of us feel towards the state of the world with finding joy and appreciation in the present moment. The desperation and despair of it all often finds us turning the simplest conversations with friends and family into soap-box like diatribes, screaming about the injustices and dangers perpetuated by one's choice of hand soap. As Maron continues in his latest special, "no one can ruin a bbq quicker than a liberal."

He's not wrong.

A few years ago, I wrote a thing for an environmental coalition on how not to ruin parties by taking a more hopeful posture in these conversations rather than a doom-centric one. I might go further if I were to rewrite that today. I think the thing that Maron is addressing in this new special is that talk isn't actually making any difference. If anything, it might be making things worse. This seems to be—at least in part—why he is ending his long running podcast this year. But if talking is no longer helpful, what does that mean and what can be done?

I wonder if part of the problem is that we're all just having one-sided conversations. Now, this isn't me saying that I think we need to get better at listening—though I do. It's also not me saying that I think we need break down our silos and learn to build community across differences—though I also do. Rather, what I'm getting at here is the way we have all become pseudo-experts at sharing ourselves and our ideas as content. We've spent years now honing our ability to take a thought, craft it to compete in the attention economy, and make it connect with people based on likes and reshares. Curated personalities and opinions. It's not conversation, it's marketing.

I'm not sure if Maron would say that's what he's been doing, but he does make some pointed comments about his fans and the specific type of people who would be at one of his shows. The audience laughs. He knows who he's talking to. Which is exactly the point. Good marketing is about reaching the right audience. The ones who already want what you're selling. What it rarely does is make any meaningful change.

So much of everything right now feels like this. As though it's been made just for content. Even conversations with people can come across as either a testing ground for content or a repeating of content, like if this hasn't already been posted, it will be. But content is not designed for real conversation. It's meant to be consumed.

And the attention economy has an unyielding appetite.

I'm struggling to define what I think is needed as an alternative or resistance to this. It's not to say that no conversation can ever be helpful. But I think part of it is that we need to embrace embodiment. To inhabit our values and ideals in such a way that they are evident in how we live our lives. To practice them instead of preaching them. There's an old wisdom here that I think we have forgotten because of how disembodied our culture has become. I believe we need to reclaim the truth of it. That actions do speak louder than words.

Another part of embodiment to me is simply being more present in the world. It's about turning off and tuning out the unending deluge of content that competes for our attention and reconnecting with the natural world. Again, an ancient wisdom that is getting forgotten. Our minds and bodies need the slowness that comes with being unplugged and just experiencing the world as it is around us.

Now, will any of this make progressives more fun to be around? Probably not, but it might help us deal with some of our own anxieties about everything and move us closer to a healthier place.

I've been reflecting lately about growth and change in a professional sense and how a career trajectory evolves over time. It's probably a byproduct of approaching 40. Looking back, many of the major roles I've taken in my career so far have been a response rather than a typical applying for a job sort of scenario. They often began with people I know reaching out and saying, "I think you'd be a good fit for this"—and they were usually right. It has also left me with a bit of strange looking path, taking a few seemingly random turns along the way. And if you don't know the context for how those opportunities came about, it can seem like certain steps don't make much sense or even what the big picture actually is.

The other day, I was reading a recent interview with one of my favourite vocalists, Julian Casablancas (The Strokes, the Voidz), in which he commented that keeping the Strokes together made sense only for financial reasons, but it was leaving him unfulfilled creatively.

“There’s a beautiful Miles Davis quote: ‘The real risk is not changing.’ That’s why I always want to feel like I’m searching for something unexplored. If I make money, that’s fine, but I don’t want to stay still. I’m not looking for security or the status quo. If someone wants to keep creating, they have to be ready for change. Even if it means the death of something they held dear.”

As I've already admitted, I'm a big fan of his and have been since Last Night easily became one of the most recognizable songs of the early 00s. And, while I don't love everything he's ever done, I have a certain fondness for his impulsive, self-indulgent eccentricities, despite how messy they can become. But I think that's part of what I like. He's honest in his art, even when it sucks.

Which brings me back to my own messy career. I went from running programs for youth to marketing and comms. From nonprofit to for-profit and back to nonprofit again. I went from coordinator to director to manager. And I have a decade of experience in the church + a Mdiv in church leadership and theology to now working entirely outside of that space. It adds up to a pretty bizarre resume.

This is where I find a certain resonance with Casablancas. From a coherent, linear career progression, my path doesn't always make a lot of sense. If anything, it can come across like a series of missteps or start-overs. But underneath all of these shifts and turns was a never-ending battle between playing-it-safe and staying true to my ideals. The roles I've chosen have had less to do with building a career and more to do with feeling like I can make a meaningful difference in some way. And I've left them when it began to feel like I was unable to be true to myself. I know what it is to take a role and reinvent it several times over, pushing it to the boundaries of what's possible. And I know what it is to find that the people you work with aren't always ready to take that journey with you.

Maybe a resume doesn't have to be seen only as a progression. Maybe there's a way to think of it like a playlist on shuffle. Each contribution is its own unique piece of growth and learning that plays with what comes before and after. And it's our willingness to keep exploring and keep evolving that allows us to add the next unique piece. Sometimes that's found within pushing the boundaries of our current project, and sometimes that means stepping out and trying something entirely new.

Do you have a favourite tree?

I don't mean a favourite type of tree, but an actual individual tree. Maybe this is a strange question to ask, sort of like asking if you have a favourite wall or street sign. Trees are just kind of there, not something that often comes to the foreground of our thoughts unless there’s a problem (a tree branch falls on your car or something).

When I was a kid, I had a favourite tree. It was an extra tall one in the forest near a family farm where we spent summers. In the mornings I’d throw some snacks, books and binoculars into a bag and run to it, climb and just spend time sitting there reading or imagining. Oddly, thinking about it gives me a wave of nostalgia, almost as though I’m remembering an old friend.

While that may seem unusual, consider the role that trees have played in the folklore and traditions of communities all around the world. Often associated with wisdom and the interconnection of life, trees have acted as the central gathering spot for both sacred and social rituals. In many Indigenous cultures, trees are deeply intertwined with memory and connection to ancestors. And in some traditions, trees can act as a link between the physical and spiritual realms, places where one might even have a chance encounter with a guiding spirit or trickster god.

It can be humbling to think about all the history and lives that trees bear witness to. Engagements, rites of passage, festivals, quiet moments of reflection, storytelling, memorials, and every other milestone and event that has taken place under or around them. And that’s to say nothing of all the other, non-human living things that enter their presence.

Regrettably, in the history of urbanization, trees are often seen as an obstacle or burden in the way of development — something to destroy, domesticate or relocate rather than work with and around. Maybe this is why so many of us rarely think of trees anymore except as a problem. But it doesn’t have to be this way. There are lots of emerging models (drawing on ancient wisdom) in how our built environment can have a healthy relationship with nature.

Evergreen (where I work) began as a tree planting organization in a bid to bring nature back into our cities. For over 30 years, we've been inspired by the way trees work together with one another to create a canopy for life to thrive, offering everything from food, shade, rest to even a safe transportation network for non-human living things. That's why we now invest in the power of public spaces. Just like trees, they too are the vital layers that enable city life to flourish.

Note: this was a piece I wrote for our Evergreen Newsletter this month.

A while back, I was reading a book by Hannah Arendt for a course that I’m doing and she had a comment on happiness that really wormed its way into my brain. It’s in a section she is writing on labour, a realm of human action that she describes as being distinct from work and related to the cyclical nature of our survival. She writes,

“There is no lasting happiness outside the prescribed cycle of painful exhaustion and pleasurable regeneration, and whatever throws this cycle out of balance — poverty and misery where exhaustion is followed by wretchedness instead of regeneration, or great riches and an entirely effortless life where boredom takes the place of exhaustion and where the mills of necessity, of consumption and digestion, grind an impotent human body mercilessly and barrenly to death — ruins the elemental happiness that comes from being alive.”

Read it a few times.

Arendt describes real, lasting happiness as being rooted in this cyclical aspect of labour; a pattern she refers to as painful exhaustion and then pleasurable regeneration. At first read, I had a hard time with that. How does exhaustion have anything to do with happiness? The pleasurable part of it made sense to me, but not pain. However, the more I (re)read and reflected, I think I started to get it. She’s talking about a fundamental balance in human behaviour. Look at how she describes the things that throw that cycle off: poverty and misery on one side and great riches and effortlessness on the other. Arendt suggests we need the balance of both to feel truly alive.

I had a prof who used to say ‘you can’t understand what it means to feast unless you understand what it means to fast.’

What’s fascinating to me is the relationship between happiness and sustainability. As capitalism has promised us a better life through the endless pursuit of more, our planet has struggled to keep up with our consumption rates. What’s even worse is that current studies suggest that beyond the meeting of essential needs there is no actual correlation between increased income and a country’s wellbeing rising together. The point is, current research is confirming what the wisest amongst us have been saying throughout human history: that the satisfaction of our desires is not the way to lasting happiness.

The world itself is dependant on that same cycle of exhaustion and regeneration. Resources are not infinite and need time to replenish. Capitalism’s insistence that there is always more to be taken has stripped the earth of what it has left to give, breaking the balance of the cycle, and threatening our very survival.

Are we happy yet?

There is a way forward for us. Arendt’s definition of happiness echoes the very patterns needed for a sustainable future. It’s a cycle that invites us to resist the myth of endless growth and embrace the wisdom of limitations and moderation, patterns that are found all over the natural world. It’s a path connected to the core experience of simply being alive on this planet: painful exhaustion and pleasurable regeneration.

I believe in the possibility of change rippling out as people show others a different way. As I once heard in a podcast, “everything large is made up of small parts.” We can affect the big picture by creating new patterns in the smaller areas within our reach. Maybe by changing the way we think about and pursue happiness in our own lives, our families, our friend groups and neighbours, our workplaces, schools, and communities, we might begin to challenge the hold that capitalism has on our culture.

Note, this is a piece I wrote for an environmental activism newsletter a couple years ago that I thought was a fitting reflection on Earth Day today.

This week I was listening to a conversation with Chuck Klosterman on a Grateful Dead podcast/gameshow called Guess The Year.

To clarify, I have never gotten into the Grateful Dead and this is not a podcast I had ever listened to before. They are a complete blindspot in my musical tastes. I do, however, quite enjoy Klosterman's deep dives into various pop cultural niches. So I was excited to hear where this might go. As it turns out, Klosterman is also not much of a deadhead, something he admits to several times in the episode. He does spend some time making the case for why they are in his top five list of the greatest American bands. Where things do get interesting is when they shift into a conversation about whether you should be able to separate the art from the artist. It was a topic that they were sort of circling around throughout the whole thing, touching on the current way in which an artist's political views seem to matter so much to fans. Klosterman started to make the argument that it should be possible to be apolitical, suggesting that when he began doing music criticism, it was expected that you would be able to weigh the music on its own merit without letting who the artist is as a person influence your opinion.

Okay, I have some thoughts.

Nothing is ever truly neutral. We all act and create from a place that is deeply intertwined with our experiences and who we are as people. This includes our political or ideological beliefs.

Recently, I was reading a 2017 article on Death From Above 1979 that was responding to the (now old) controversy around their bass player, Jesse Keeler's, affiliation with Gavin McInnes, an alt-right figure. Fans (including myself) were frustrated and disappointed to learn about this. However, the author of this particular article notes that none of this should have been shocking and that this sort of men's rights politic has been a part of their brand since the beginning. Fans (especially male ones) had just been unwilling to notice it. But those political views becoming more public shines a backward light onto some of their more 'colourful' lyrical choices that may have just seemed silly at first listen ("where have all the virgins gone?") and even reframes the aggression within the music itself.

I guess my point is that context matters. You can't pretend like it's not there.

And this was always true. Critics have long loved to frame the way artists use their real-world trauma or suffering as a catalyst for their art. Regardless of whether that was the artist's intent. If a musician grew up in poverty or as a refugee or suffered abuse, we have no problem imprinting that onto their music. Maybe Klosterman is saying that pure criticism should avoid that, but I think it's naive to suggest that most criticism ever actually did or imply that this is a new problem as a result of some 21st century obsession with cancel culture or something (my words, not his).

Perhaps what is new is that the free pass that had been extended to primarily male and usually white (though not exclusively) artists has been somewhat revoked. And their art is being reevaluated retroactively in light of their beliefs, their affiliations, their actions, and yes, their politics. I'm not suggesting that we have this all figured out or that every criticism is entirely fair, but I do think it's reasonable to let criticism of the artist influence your criticism of the art.

The question that maybe we're asking here is, is it okay to stop listening to someone because I disagree with their politics or belief system? Or, can I continue to enjoy an artist even if it turns out they're a shitty person?

And I think that the answer to both of these is yes; but the choice is as subjective as the enjoyment of the art itself. While drawing some hard lines may seem more obvious than others, most of this falls into a murky grey area that might vary artist to artist. I can listen to the Smiths, even if it's become a lot harder to enjoy them after learning about Morrissey's anti-immigrant stance. Yet, I haven't picked up my Art Angels record ever since Grimes started dating Elon Musk. I do, however, still enjoy M.I.A., despite her increasingly polarizing opinions. Though admittedly I don't hold her quite as highly as I used to.

Complicated people can make great art. And sometimes the artists we admire turn out to be pretty terrible. Of course these things are going to colour our relationship to their work. I think what matters more than trying to hold to some unbiased judgment is an attempt to be fair. I think it's fair to consider who someone is when trying to interpret what they create. Nothing happens in a vacuum.

This is probably why they say don't meet your heroes.