Journal of American Despair

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The other day I watched a homeless man turn over a trash can and roll it a few hundred feet down the street so he could sit on it while he powered his…
This very special edition of the Journal of American Despair will only make sense (if it makes sense at all) once you’ve clicked this link and read the…
The bad day starts like any other. You might not even know that it’s the bad day until several hours in. You’ll spot little irritations along the way…
One of the stranger things about being alive is that the longer you go without dying the more people think you know what you’re talking about…
You’re not in competition, or at least not how you think There’s no one else who’s keeping score on how you swim, or sink You don’t get points for…
Nobody tells jokes anymore. This might be due to Twitter, both because of the shortening of attention spans it has helped engender and the "everyone's a…
The year that summer came late we wandered around in a permanent state of anxiety made bearable only by torpor. The rare sunny days seemed more precious…
Today I would like to tell you a story. It is a story I heard second-hand more than a quarter of a century ago, but I hope that will not diminish its…
I have lived in the Union Square area for over twenty years, and even a casual estimate would have me passing by Grace Church thousands of times in that…
One of the reasons I started this curious and enthralling experiment with the newsletter format was to teach myself how to write again. And by "teach…
One of the worst things about getting old—and if you’re someone who right now is like, “Ugh, is he really going on about getting old again?” I strongly…
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