Yesterday, a woman in the neighborhood thought that it would be a good idea to give Erin, my wife, a letter which outlines how Erin's activities online (particularly her speaking her mind about politics on social media) was wrong and bad. It completely blindsided Erin, and not just because it was coming from someone who Erin viewed as a good friend, but because it was such a condemnation--not just that Erin was wrong, but that her wrongness was wicked.

Sometimes I struggle to come up with something motivational to say, especially during these hard times we live in. This past two weeks has been some of the best for me in a year--I got to go on a cruise with my brother, and I got to go away for the weekend with my wife (it's our anniversary on the 17th).

But I've felt almost guilty being happy about these things because it's hard to celebrate when other people are suffering. I sat on the balcony of my room on the cruise ship, watching the perfectly blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico go by, and watched on my phone as the Dow dropped almost 2000 points in two days. To talk about the great time I was having--even though I had never been on a cruise before and this had been planned a year in advance--seemed to be like Nero fiddling while Rome burned.

I feel conflicted telling people just how great the cruise was, because while I was on the cruise I would check the news and see the stock market plummeting and politics being awful, and I was just like "Hey! Another virgin Mojito, please!"

Anyway, the cruise was with my brother, Dan Wells. Dan is a writer, like me (he actually got me into way back 25 years ago) but he's also a big time gamer (I am not). So he and a couple other people organized a gaming cruise, where you go on a cruise and do all the cruise stuff, but while you're not eating you're in the lower decks' conference room playing RPGs…

Let's face it, folks: the world is a mess right now. To some extent the world is always a mess, but here in America it seems like it's raging. I don't love that. But at the same time, I don't know what to do about it. I was a poli-sci major, history minor, and I wish that gave me some insight into how change the world for the better, but in the past sixteen years of being on social media, I doubt I've changed any minds about anything.

So I'm trying something new.

I am stunned that I even have to talk about this, but it's 2025, and here we are.

I don't pretend to be an expert in Ukraine, but I am pretty well-educated about things adjacent to Ukraine. As I've mentioned elsewhere, my undergrad degree was in political science with an emphasis in international relations, and my minor was in history. I also was raised by a dad who, like all good Boomer dads, was obsessed with World War Two, and I inherited much of his passion. And, most important of all, I grew up during the Cold War.