“Beware the barrenness of a busy life.”

Socrates

There was a stretch in my early thirties when I started slipping into the office a little before everyone else. It wasn’t discipline. It wasn’t ambition. I think I just needed a few minutes where no one was asking me for anything—a small pocket of quiet before the day woke up.

We had a great space—a real office, familiar in all the small ways that matter. There was the usual fluorescent hum in the hallways, but the break room was warm and lived-in. A place people lingered. You could hold a conversation there, or avoid one if you needed to. Both options were acceptable.

And in the corner, like a small, slightly judgmental altar: the Keurig.

I didn’t make pour-overs or French press back then. I wasn’t that kind of person yet.

Back then the K-cup was my ritual. My default. My anchor for the day. Later on it became the doorway to a dozen casual conversations, but in those early hours it was just me and the quiet—standing there in the half-light, waiting for the machine to wake up before I did.

But even then, I rushed it. Every morning.
Foot tapping.
Jaw tightening.
Muttering “come on” under my breath like the machine was intentionally holding something hostage.

There was no reason for it.
No meeting waiting for me.
No urgent task.
Just me, a cup, and a stream of coffee that always felt slower than physics should allow.

I didn’t have the language for it at the time, but looking back, I can see it clearly:
I wasn’t impatient with the coffee.
I was impatient with myself.

There is a version of me in those years who lived life like it was a test he hadn’t studied for. Like every delay was a flaw. Like if he just stayed in motion, no one would realize he was making it up as he went.

Hurry can feel like competence if you don’t look too closely at it.

I wasn’t trying to become that man.
But impatience has a way of slipping in unnoticed—one tiny, harmless rush at a time.

Tap your foot at the Keurig.
Tap your foot at the microwave.
Tap your foot at your own reflection because you’re already behind and you haven’t even started the day.

You don’t set out to become hurried.
You just wake up one day and realize you’ve been treating everyday life like a timed event.

Of course, I didn’t know any of this then.

At the time, it was just coffee.
Just a machine taking its sweet time.
Just a younger version of me who didn’t know how to wait because waiting felt like wasting something—time, potential, momentum, who knows.

Years later—after kids, after real responsibilities, after life had rounded off a few of my sharper edges—I found myself thinking about that break room again.

I was standing in my own kitchen this time, waiting for a kettle to boil. It was early, the kind of early where the house is still and the quiet feels earned. One of my boys was sitting at the table, half-awake, eating a bagel in slow motion. And for reasons I can’t fully explain, the memory just… arrived.

Me.
Younger.
Rushing a machine that wasn’t designed to go faster.

It hit me how much of my life back then was spent hurrying through moments that weren’t meant to be hurried. The coffee. The commute. The conversations. The version of myself I kept trying to leapfrog past.

Patience wasn’t the virtue I lacked.
It was the mirror I avoided.

Waiting brought up all the small, ordinary discomforts I didn’t want to sit with—the restlessness, the self-pressure, the habit of thinking I should already be further along.

But slowing down—really slowing down—was how I started becoming the man I needed to be. A steadier dad, a kinder husband, a person who could sit still, listen, breathe, and let life come on its own terms.

The Keurig didn’t teach me patience.
It just revealed how much I needed it.

The coffee was never the point.
The stillness was.

The post The slow cup first appeared on Stephen Boudreau.

“The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.”

L. P. Hartley

Every marriage has a division of labor.
In ours, Shelley handles the facts.
And I handle the confidence.

It’s not that I mean to get things wrong.
It’s that I get them wrong so sincerely I almost convince myself I’m right.

I’m not lying.
I’m just… narrating.
And once I start narrating, I believe myself completely.

We’ve been telling stories together for so long that they’ve started to blend—
not into agreement exactly,
but into a kind of shared language built from disagreement.

Take the stick-shift story.

Ask Shelley, and she’ll tell you she taught me to drive stick.
Ask me, and I’ll tell you I taught myself—
in her car—
while she was there.

It sounds like a contradiction, but it’s not.
Because in my version, she wasn’t teaching.
She was commenting.
And there’s a difference.

She remembers sitting in the passenger seat saying,
“You’re grinding the gears.”
I remember calmly saying,
“I know.”

Which, in my defense, was true.
I just couldn’t stop doing it.

By now, we both know how this dance goes.
We each hold our version loosely enough to let the other breathe—
and tightly enough to keep it alive.

Somewhere between those two memories is the truth.
But she has to admit—
my version has better sound design.

Here’s the thing, though.
Most days she doesn’t even argue.
She just gives me that look—not mean, just patient—
like she’s watching a child confidently explain how clouds work.

And the worst part is, she’s usually right.
But not always.
And that tiny sliver of possibility is what keeps me going.

After all these years, our history’s mostly written in pencil.
Which may be why some stories refuse to stay put.

And that brings me to the longest-running debate of our marriage—
what color my hair actually is.

I say brown.
Shelley says black.
Our friends weigh in like it’s a municipal vote—
and for reasons that remain unclear, they all vote with her.

This debate has lasted so long it’s practically an heirloom.

We’ve carried it through jobs, moves, two kids, and a dozen dinner tables where someone inevitably squints at me and says,
“Yeah… it’s black.”

At this point my hair is turning gray out of pure self-preservation—
like it’s trying to opt out of the census entirely.

Shelley votes black.
I vote brown.
And now the gray is voting third-party.

And that, right there, is the problem with democracy.

The older I get,
the more I think memory isn’t what happened,
it’s what we’ve agreed to keep.

Every story shrinks or swells
to fit the version I’ve told most often.
It’s like reality eventually gives up
and lets enthusiasm do the editing.

And maybe that’s the mercy of it—
that our memories sand down the edges,
swap the soundtrack,
and leave us with something we can both live inside.

Shelley remembers the logistics.
I remember the lighting.
Together, we make something close to a story.

I used to think being right was the point of remembering.
Now I think maybe remembering
is just how we stay close—
two unreliable narrators
building a shared mythology
we both still want to believe.

She keeps the record straight.
I keep it interesting.

The post The way it definitely happened first appeared on Stephen Boudreau.

“The waiting is the hardest part.”

Tom Petty

At some point during every pregnancy conversation, someone will lean in and ask the question like it’s a moral test.
“So… you’re not finding out?”

And when you say no, you get the look.
It’s the same look people give when you tell them you don’t refrigerate ketchup or still print your boarding passes—a mix of curiosity and faint suspicion, as if you’ve just admitted to churning your own butter.

They’ll say things like, “Oh, I could never do that. I’m way too impatient.”
Which, I’ve come to realize, is just another way of saying, I’m normal, and you’re a lunatic.

We got that reaction a lot. Especially the first time.
Shelley and I were surrounded by friends announcing their gender-reveal parties—fireworks, balloons, the occasional backyard explosion that made national news. Meanwhile, we were the weirdos saying, “We’re waiting for the big day.”

Not the baby’s due date—the moment of truth. The one true surprise left in adult life that doesn’t involve car trouble or your cholesterol.

And that’s really where it started for us—this tiny rebellion against the age of knowing everything.
We already had the apps, the charts, the heartbeat monitor that looked like a gadget from NASA. We could track sleep, kicks, and whatever else you can quantify about a person who doesn’t yet have fingerprints.

But one day, during an early ultrasound, the nurse glanced up from the monitor and asked, “Do you want to know?”
Shelley smiled and shook her head before I could answer.
The nurse nodded, like she understood. Then the room went quiet except for the hum of the machine and that steady flicker on the screen—proof of a secret we were still willing to keep.

It wasn’t one big dramatic decision—it was more like a recurring act of restraint. Every ultrasound was a high-stakes game of “Don’t Ruin the Surprise.”

We’d barely get settled in the room before Shelley would say, “We don’t want to know,” like a nervous tic. Sometimes she’d say it twice, just in case the technician was new or had a mischievous streak.

You could see the tech’s whole body language change. They’d squint at the screen, tilt the wand like they were diffusing a bomb, and announce things in vague, noncommittal terms.
“Everything looks good… right there.”
“Right where?”
“Just… there. In the baby region.”

Meanwhile, I’d be watching the monitor like I was decoding a satellite feed, trying not to accidentally see something I couldn’t unsee.
You start convincing yourself you know what you’re looking at—like one of those magic-eye posters that never quite comes into focus.
“That’s definitely a leg.”
“That’s an arm.”
“That… might be a sandwich?”

By the third appointment, it became almost comical.
We’d walk in, and the nurse would say, “You’re the couple that doesn’t want to know, right?”
And I’d think, Yes, that’s us. The last two romantics in the suburbs.

The guessing became its own sport.
Everyone around us had theories—belly shape, cravings, dreams, astrology. My mom swore she could tell by the way Shelley carried the baby.
“She’s all out front,” she said knowingly. “That means boy.”
I asked her what it meant that I’d gained fifteen sympathy pounds in the same area.
She didn’t laugh.

Every visit, every conversation, the anticipation grew—not in a dramatic movie-montage way, but in the quiet, daily buildup of suspense that somehow makes life feel a little more cinematic.

By the time the big day came, even I was starting to crack.
Nine months of not knowing builds a strange kind of tension—not panic exactly, just this low hum of curiosity that sneaks into everything.
You find yourself imagining two completely different futures every time you pass a car seat display at Target.

And then, suddenly, it’s time.

No slow buildup, no orchestral cue—just the unmistakable chaos of a hospital room where everyone seems to know what they’re doing except you.

Labor is a blur. It’s pain and breathing and timing and nurses moving like a pit crew. There’s the doctor, focused. There’s me, doing my best impression of “helpful husband,” which mostly involves staying upright and saying, “You’re doing great” in a voice that sounds like I’m trying to convince myself.

And then—just like that—it happens.

The nurse says, “Here we go,” and there’s this tiny cry that cuts through everything. Time doesn’t slow down, exactly, but it widens—just enough to fit a moment that’s too big to name.

Someone says, “It’s a boy,” and for half a second, I swear the world goes still.

You think you’re ready for it. You think you’ve pictured it enough times that it’ll just be confirmation.
But when it’s real, when that mystery finally unfolds, it hits you somewhere deeper than words.
It’s like finding out the ending of the best story you’ve ever been part of—and realizing you wouldn’t have wanted to skip a single page.

I remember looking at Shelley—exhausted, radiant, laughing and crying at the same time—and thinking, we did it. We actually waited.
Not because we’re patient people, but because we wanted that exact second—that one pure, unrepeatable surprise.

Later, I walked into the waiting room to a small crowd of family and friends who had been guessing for months.
No gender reveal balloons. No smoke cannons. Just me, standing there with a grin I couldn’t contain.
“It’s a boy,” I said, and the whole room cheered like we’d just won something bigger than we understood.

I get why people want to know.
Life is unpredictable enough. If you can control one variable, why not? Paint the nursery. Monogram the blanket. Get a head start on ordering a tiny football helmet or ballet slippers.

But here’s the thing: there aren’t many real surprises left. Most of them, if we’re honest, aren’t the good kind.
You don’t usually get a phone call that starts with, “You’ll never believe this, it’s amazing!”

Waiting for that moment—that one, small, beautiful mystery to unfold on its own—it taught me something I didn’t know I needed to learn: patience can actually heighten joy… if you’ll forgive the phrasing.

Because it’s not just about the baby. It’s about the waiting.
The wondering. The little daydreams you build together when you don’t know.
Every time someone asked, “What do you think it is?” we got to imagine both possibilities. Both futures. For nine months, our kid got to be every story at once.

And then, when that moment finally came—when the guessing stopped and the truth arrived with a cry and a heartbeat—it felt like we’d unwrapped something bigger than an answer.

I’m not saying everyone should do it. You’re not a bad person if you want to know.
But if you can hold off—even just once—it’s worth it.
Because there’s a difference between information and revelation.

One is knowing ahead of time.
The other is living through it.

And if you’re lucky, someday you’ll get to walk into a waiting room, your heart pounding, your smile too big, and tell everyone you love a secret they’ve been waiting to hear.
You’ll get to watch joy spread through the room like light.

And you’ll think, Yeah. This was worth waiting for.

The post The case for not finding the baby’s sex first appeared on Stephen Boudreau.

“No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one.”

Elbert Hubbard

Every family has a story that refuses to die.
For us, it’s Waltonia.

We were a road-trip family—not the carefree, singing-in-the-car kind, but the “let’s see how long we can tolerate each other in a confined space” kind.

My parents and I would pack the car like we were fleeing a war, then immediately realize we’d forgotten something important—like patience. They’d debate where we’d live after “the lottery win,” a recurring fantasy treated less like a daydream and more like an annual performance review. My mom always dreamed of Tuscany or France. My dad preferred anywhere with a Whataburger nearby.

We’d taken plenty of trips like that, but none that would become legend. Waltonia wasn’t even our idea—it came recommended by one of my dad’s co-workers, a man whose travel advice we’d later rank somewhere between questionable and litigious.

He couldn’t say enough good things about it. Called it a “hidden gem,” which, in hindsight, should’ve been a red flag. Things don’t usually stay hidden because they’re incredible.

Still, my dad trusted him. They worked together, which apparently carried the same weight as a blood oath. So we booked it and hit the road.

The brochure promised “rustic comfort along the Guadalupe River,” which sounded charming and vaguely European. We pictured something out of a magazine spread—rocking chairs on wide porches, gentle breezes through cypress trees, my parents laughing over iced tea while I skipped stones in slow motion.

In reality, Waltonia was… different.

Less rustic comfort and more mosquito cooperative with branding. The cabins came “with or without windows,” which felt less like an amenity and more like an oddly specific warning. The river moved slow and green, thick with water snakes that seemed far too confident about their place in the ecosystem. The humidity could’ve been bottled and sold as soup.

Out front, a sun-faded sign announced Welcome to Waltonia Lodges!—the exclamation mark doing most of the heavy lifting.

We pulled in late afternoon, the sun sitting heavy and low—like even it didn’t want to be there. The gravel popped under the tires as my dad tried to sound upbeat.

“This looks nice,” Dad said, the way someone might comment on a body at an open-casket funeral.

My mom squinted through the windshield. “Which one is ours?”
Dad pointed to a cabin that leaned slightly to the left, as if it were trying to get away from itself.

When we stepped out, the air wrapped around us like a damp towel.

Somewhere in the distance, a cicada screamed its resignation to God. The smell was equal parts river water, mildew, and whatever lives inside window-unit air conditioners.

Inside, the cabin had… character. The kind of character that comes from decades of guests and zero renovations. Technically, it had windows—though that felt like a generous interpretation. They didn’t open, but the curtains fluttered just enough to suggest hope. The air was still and heavy, the kind of heat that made furniture feel sentient. A single ceiling fan creaked above us, bravely doing nothing.

My mom took a slow look around and said, “It’s very… rustic.”
In that moment, rustic was code for non-refundable.

My dad, ever the optimist—or at least the man who had put down the deposit—clapped his hands once and said, “Well, this’ll do just fine.”
It was less a declaration and more a peace treaty with reality.

He unpacked like a man determined to enjoy himself: cooler first, then a stack of folding chairs, then the kind of forced cheer that smells faintly of denial. Within minutes he had claimed a spot on the porch, facing the trees as if it were a scenic overlook instead of a gravel parking lot.

I followed him out, mostly to see what “fine” looked like in practice.

The air was syrupy; every step felt like walking through someone else’s breath. Still, there was something oddly peaceful about it—the hum of cicadas, the slow sway of trees, the smell of sunburn already setting in.

From the porch, I could hear my mom inside, still trying to sound optimistic. Cabinet doors opened and closed. A few words floated out the screen door—first in English, then in Spanish, then somewhere in between. Each one came a little sharper. By the third, we knew things had taken a turn.

“Another spider!” she shouted, her voice somewhere between disbelief and surrender. “¡Hay arañas por todas partes!”

That’s when I knew the battle for Waltonia had begun.

By sundown, the porch light had attracted every flying insect in the county. My dad sat in his folding chair, drinking what I remember as either a Diet Coke or a Miller Lite—something cold, at least—and insisting the bugs “weren’t that bad.” It was an argument he was clearly losing.

Inside, my mom was wilting. 

There was no air conditioner, just a fan that sounded like it was pleading for mercy. The air didn’t move so much as hover. Sweat rolled down her temples, and she fanned herself with the Waltonia brochure, which by then felt like false advertising. Every few minutes came a sharp ¡Mier…coles! followed by the slap of a sandal and the rustle of paper towels.

At one point my dad poked his head in to check on her.
“Oh, that’s just a daddy long legs,” he said, as if identifying the species made the experience educational.
My mom didn’t find that comforting. “No importa cómo se llama!” she shouted back. I don’t care what it’s called!

Dinner was sandwiches, chips, and resignation. The stove might have worked, but no one was willing to find out. We ate with the door open, hoping for a breeze that never came.

Afterward, my dad declared that Waltonia “really grew on you.” My mom said she was fine, which translated, roughly, to “we’ll talk about this later.”

The cicadas hummed louder. The porch light flickered. Somewhere out in the dark, the river kept moving—slow, green, and full of secrets I hadn’t yet found a reason to discover.

That night we all tried to sleep in the same room—the only room—us and the daddy long legs. The fan ticked overhead, bravely pretending to circulate air that had no interest in moving. Every surface was warm: the beds, the walls, the air itself. Even the shadows looked sweaty.

My dad stretched out on one bed, hands behind his head, declaring, “This isn’t so bad,” which was how you knew it was. Five minutes later he sat up and said, “You feel that breeze?” There was no breeze. “Huh,” he said, lying back down. His voice had that quiet edge of a man negotiating directly with his choices.

My mom lay beside him, eyes open, whispering small prayers in Spanish that I’m fairly certain weren’t for our safety but for an early checkout. She fanned herself slowly, like a woman trying not to create any additional heat.

I stared up at the ceiling, watching a spider navigate one corner like it had paid for the place too. Somewhere in the dark, my dad sighed. Then the fan sighed. Then the rest of us joined in.

If paradise and purgatory shared a border, this might’ve been the checkpoint in between.

By morning, the fan was still ticking—slower now, like even it was reconsidering its life choices. None of us had really slept. My dad got up first, moving quietly so as not to wake the heat. He stepped outside with his coffee—or maybe a Miller Lite, hard to say—and sat on the porch, staring into the middle distance like a man doing the math on every decision that led him here.

My mom was already packing imaginary bags in her head. “Maybe we just stay one more night,” my dad offered through the screen door, voice hopeful but fading fast. She didn’t answer.

I decided to escape before things got worse. 

The air outside was already thick, but at least it was moving. The path to the river wound through dry grass and the kind of trees that always look a little disappointed. The sound of cicadas was louder now, almost electric.

And that’s when I saw her.

She was sitting on the swing set near the pecan tree—barefoot, reading a book, and looking exactly like someone who belonged somewhere better than Waltonia. The sunlight caught her hair, or maybe that’s just how I remember it. She looked up, smiled, and said something like, “Hey.”

It was the first cool moment of the entire trip.

By midafternoon, the heat had gone from unpleasant to biblical. My mom was done pretending to enjoy it, and my dad—whose optimism had run out of shade—suggested we “go into town.”

That’s how Waltonia families said surrender.

There was an Oktoberfest happening nearby—polka music, sausages, the promise of air-conditioning. They told me I could come along, but it was the kind of invitation that comes with an escape clause. “You can stay if you want,” my dad said, glancing at me with a half-smile that could have meant go get the girl or we’d like a moment alone with beer and German brass bands.

So I stayed.

The girl from the swing set was there again, barefoot and reading, the book resting against her knees. I walked over and said something—what, exactly, I couldn’t tell you. But she laughed, and I laughed, and somehow that was enough to count as conversation.

We spent the afternoon talking, or something close to it. She told me about her school back home, her friends, her dog. I told her about the water snakes, as if I were their appointed ambassador. Time slid by in that strange, elastic way it does when you’re thirteen and someone is actually listening.

When her parents called her for dinner, she stood up, brushed the dust from her dress, and said, “See you later.”
It wasn’t a promise, just a phrase—but it felt like one anyway.

We left Waltonia the next morning with the windows down, hoping to coax in some cooler air. Even the car seemed grateful to be leaving.

My mom didn’t say much. She just stared straight ahead, her sunglasses hiding the expression that said never again. My dad tried to lighten the mood by listing everything we’d “learned” on the trip, starting with, “Always read the fine print about windows.” He got a small laugh for that, which I think he took as forgiveness.

I sat in the backseat, quiet but different. 

I kept thinking about the girl from the swing set—how easy everything had felt for a few hours. How she’d listened like I actually had something to say. It wasn’t love, or anything close to it. It was just proof that I could step into a moment instead of watching it pass.

By the time we hit the highway, Waltonia was already taking its place in family lore. In the years that followed, whenever a trip went sideways—when a hotel overbooked or a rental house promised “charm”—someone would shake their head and say, “Well, at least it’s not Waltonia.”

And that’s the funny thing: we took better vacations, longer ones, even fancier ones—but this is the one that stuck. The one that turned into a story.

Every family has one that refuses to die.
For us, it’s Waltonia.

The post At least it’s not Waltonia first appeared on Stephen Boudreau.

“The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart.”

Unknown

It was the kind of Saturday that should’ve disappeared into memory without a trace—the kind you forget before it’s even over—if not for one dumb idea.

The three of us decided to go fishing.

Fishing wasn’t our thing. It wasn’t tradition, or nostalgia, or even a good idea. Our friendship was built on driveway basketball games and living-room tournaments of Joe Montana Football, not quiet mornings by the water. But that day, for reasons none of us could explain, we borrowed a few poles, drove to the bay, and gave it a shot.

We’d been friends since before we knew what friendship really was—long before life got complicated. Back when friendship was simpler. You just liked the same music, and that was enough.

Then junior high showed up and rewrote the rules.
Suddenly it wasn’t enough to just show up anymore. There were new hierarchies—who was cool, who wasn’t, who could survive a lunch period without humiliation.

We all stumbled through it in our own ways, trying out new versions of ourselves—often at each other’s expense. Secrets got shared and reshared, alliances shifted, and small betrayals felt enormous. Somewhere along the way, we said or did things we didn’t mean. Pulled away. Pretended it didn’t matter.

Boys do that a lot—pretend the distance doesn’t hurt.

So maybe that fishing trip was our way of trying to fix it, even if we didn’t have the words for that yet.

We didn’t have much to say that morning. Maybe that was the point.
Teenage boys aren’t great at conversations that start with “I miss you.” So we sat there in borrowed folding chairs, holding borrowed poles, watching the water and pretending we knew what we were waiting for.

It was quiet for a while—the good kind of quiet. The kind that lets everything else settle. The wind barely moved. The water didn’t care who we were trying to be.

After a while, the silence started to loosen. Someone cracked a joke about how none of us had any idea what we were doing. Someone else laughed too loud, probably relieved that it was finally okay to laugh again.

And just like that, we found our old rhythm—half teasing, half forgiving. Not all at once, but enough.

We didn’t catch a single fish that day. But something between us shifted, quietly, like the tide inching in.

That trip became our truce. No one said it out loud. We just packed up when it was time to go and knew somehow that things were better.

We never did go fishing again.
Never returned to that pier on the bay.
Turns out, once was enough.

The post The fishing trip first appeared on Stephen Boudreau.

“Heroes get remembered, but legends never die.”

The Sandlot

There are stories that stick with you because they meant something.
And then there are stories that stick because you’ve told them so many times they’ve been lacquered into myth by repetition and nostalgia.
This is one of those.

It happened in the golden age of teenage delusion—high school.
Specifically, the St. Joseph Academy intramural 3-on-3 league, which was less about basketball and more about unearned confidence and creative team names. My friends Jacob, Daniel (who everyone called D.D.), and I didn’t exactly specialize in winning. We specialized in chaos.

Our team names were our main contribution to the league. One year we went by I Don’t Know Who, which caused such havoc at the scorer’s table that we considered it a moral victory before tip-off.

But sophomore year, we had a new name—one that captured both our insignificance and our optimism: The Mighty Fleas.
And somehow, that name turned out to be prophetic.

Because that was the year we were scheduled to play The Twin Towers.

Now, a quick word about the intramural league. It existed for the rest of us—the non-varsity, the fine-but-not-that-fine athletes. It was supposed to be a safe haven—a place where you could miss a layup and still be respected as a human being.

Which is why it felt vaguely unjust—biblically so—that The Twin Towers were even in the league. They were actual varsity players. Six-foot-something, built like they’d been raised in a Gatorade lab. Their presence was like dropping a shark into a koi pond.

And they weren’t just tall—they were good. Too good. They’d been steamrolling everyone that season, leaving a trail of humbled mortals and broken confidence behind them. They played with the kind of arrogance you only get from knowing gravity itself is on your side.

So when our matchup appeared on the schedule, the result wasn’t in question. We were background characters in their highlight reel.

And as if that wasn’t enough, D.D. got stuck in some after-school thing—detention, choir, saving orphans—who knows. This was the ’90s; he couldn’t text to say why. He just didn’t show.

So there we were: two Fleas against three Towers.
If math is destiny, ours was bleak.

We decided to forfeit. We were halfway to the locker room when the Towers—ever the gentlemen—laughed and said, “Come on, it’ll be over quick anyway.”
They were mocking us. Everyone was. The handful of kids hanging around the gym were already snickering, eager to witness the human equivalent of a bug zapper in action.

But something in us twitched—stubborn pride, maybe, or the dumb hope of youth. We shrugged, looked at each other, and walked back onto the court.

And that’s how the miracle began.

We scored the first point by accident. The second on purpose. By the fourth, people started looking up from their homework. At 10-0, there were whispers. By 12-0, those whispers had turned into a crowd.

Every shot we made was met with disbelief—the kind you see when a magician pulls a rabbit out of a cafeteria tray. The Towers were confused. Then they were mad. Then they started actually trying.

But momentum is a funny thing—it makes even the impossible feel inevitable.

Then, as all good stories go, the comeback began. They scored. Then again. 12-6. 15-12. The gym tightened. You could feel the weight of every missed shot, every gasp from the stands, every squeak of rubber on the hardwood.

And then—it was 19-19.

Jacob had the ball, driving toward the basket like a man possessed (or concussed—it’s hard to tell). All three Towers collapsed on him.
He looked left, then right, then—miracle of miracles—passed.

The ball found my hands.

I didn’t think. Didn’t blink. Just shot.

Swish.

For a moment, there was silence. Then the place erupted.
The same kids who’d been laughing at us minutes earlier stormed the court like we’d just won state.
I swear I saw Mr. Pool, our English teacher and reluctant referee, pump his fist like he’d just graded a perfect essay.

Jacob and I screamed. We chest-bumped like idiots. We were two kids who had just beaten three future orthodontists, and it felt like winning the NBA Finals.

The next day, Mr. Pool stood before the class and declared, “Gentlemen, what I witnessed yesterday was the greatest sporting event of my life.”
He’d seen actual Olympic events on television. But sure, we’d take it.

The victory didn’t change our lives. No scouts called. No highlight reels were made. But that’s not the point.

The point is that for one ridiculous, perfect afternoon, The Mighty Fleas defied math, physics, and probability—and gave the whole school something to cheer for.

We were legends. Briefly.
And honestly, that’s the best kind.

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“Everything you’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.”

David Foster Wallace

I still open spreadsheets like they’re haunted.

Every cell looks calm, but I know that’s how they get you.

It usually starts with a cheerful Google Sheet—too many colors, too many tabs. I open it telling myself I’m looking for insight, but mostly I’m just looking for reassurance. That the math and I are still on the same team.

Most days, we are. But it’s a fragile truce.

I’m not bad at math in the general sense. I can split a dinner bill, I can estimate a tip. I’ve just never been emotionally stable enough for marketing math. Because marketing math doesn’t want to be solved—it wants to be interpreted. It’s like jazz, but with decimals.

And every so often, I find myself staring at the numbers like they’re hiding something from me. And maybe they are.

The math was never the math

It’s never really the numbers that get to me. The math isn’t out to get me—it’s just sitting there, minding its own business, being math.

The problem is me.

Because every time I don’t instantly understand something, a little voice in my head stands up and says, “You should’ve mastered this by now.”

That voice sounds suspiciously like the version of me who used to be the master of everything—the guy who designed half the product, sketched the other half, wrote the copy, ran the demos, worked the booth, and yes, even designed the booth.

If something needed polish, clarity, or whatever final touch would make it look like we totally meant to do it that way, it somehow ended up on my desk.

And that made sense in that season of life. We were a small team trying to build something that mattered, and everyone wore more hats than any one person should.

When you’re building something from scratch, “I’ll just do it” feels like both leadership and love. You’re not thinking about scalability or job descriptions—you’re just trying to get through Friday without the wheels coming off.

But that wiring doesn’t carry over neatly into a company big enough that I’m not in every room anymore.

Suddenly, there’s a structure—teams, roles, reporting lines— and you can’t just swoop in and fix something because you feel like it. What used to look like commitment starts to look like control. And if you’re not careful, the habits that once built the company start quietly holding it back.

Old wiring, new world

Right now, I’m in this weird in-between place—trying to lead at a higher level while still fighting the urge to jump in and do the work myself. And if I’m being honest, I still do it. A lot.

I tell myself it’s helping. I tweak the copy, rebuild the slide, dig into the funnel metrics because I “want to understand them better.” On paper, it looks like commitment. But most days, it’s really just insecurity dressed up as effort.

Because every time I step in, I get that same old rush—that little hit of “See? I can still do this”. It feels good. It works. Until it doesn’t.

Because the truth is, I have incredible people around me. They’re smarter than me in all the right ways. They know the math, the models, the machinery.

And still, some part of me feels like I need to master it all—not to control it, but to earn my seat at the table. To prove that I belong in every conversation.

That’s the trap.

It’s not that I don’t trust my team—I do. I’m just still learning to trust that my worth holds up when I’m not the one doing.

I can feel that tension in real time: between letting go and wanting to be the hero, between empowering others and quietly keeping the cape within reach.

It’s an exhausting place to live—half in leadership, half in logistics. And I know it can’t last forever.

Something has to give: the pace, the habit, or me.

Unlearning myself

Lately, I’ve been trying to sit with the discomfort instead of outrun it. To let the math be math, the team be brilliant, and myself be… unfinished.

It’s harder than it sounds.

There’s something deeply uncomfortable about realizing that your greatest strength—the ability to “figure it all out”—might be the very thing you need to stop doing.

But I’m starting to see that leadership isn’t a promotion from doing the work. It’s a completely different kind of work.

It’s choosing clarity over control, and trust over certainty. It’s letting people find their own rhythm, even when your hands itch to take the wheel.

And sometimes, it’s just sitting quietly while someone walks you through the numbers, reminding yourself that mastery isn’t the goal anymore—multiplication is.

I don’t have it figured out yet.

Most days, I still feel that pull to prove. But on the good days—the ones where I actually lead instead of perform—it feels like breathing again. Like maybe the point isn’t to be the hero after all.

Maybe it’s to build a world where you don’t have to be.

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“Songs are our way of keeping time.”

Paul Simon

I grew up with albums as companions. Whole seasons of my life pressed into vinyl and CDs, spooled through cassette tapes, and even tucked onto the occasional MiniDisc for good measure.

For me, albums weren’t just collections of songs—they were seasons. They were car rides and heartbreaks, Saturday afternoons with headphones, vinyl spinning in my parents’ living room. Each one carried its own atmosphere, and when I return to them now, it’s not just the music I hear. It’s the emotions and memories stitched into those tracks.

Of course, the way I listen changed over time. Like a lot of people, the 2010s scattered my habits into playlists, streams, and one-off songs. That’s a different kind of joy, but this list isn’t about that.

This list is about the era when albums were my unit of meaning.

What follows isn’t a critic’s canon. It’s my own. A top 20 that might change tomorrow, but today tells the truest story of me: the albums that shaped me, moved me, and still pull at something deep whenever I press play.

A Fine Frenzy, One Cell in the Sea

This album literally showed up in my hands.

It came from Evan, the husband of one of my wife’s friends. You know how those “husband pairings” go—you’re not sure if you’re actually going to like each other, you’re just along for the ride. But music cracked that door open. We both played guitar, both loved getting lost in the right album. And one day Evan says, “You’ve got to hear this record.”

It was by a young artist named A Fine Frenzy—Alison Sudol. I had never heard of her. Honestly, I don’t think I ever would have found it on my own. Maybe a stray song on the radio. But Evan didn’t give me a song. He handed me the whole album. And from the very first notes of Come On, Come Out, I was gone. Swept into something delicate, poetic, and somehow huge at the same time.

It wasn’t just discovering a new artist, it was discovering a shared language with a friend. And it’s funny: every time I go back to One Cell in the Sea, I don’t just hear Alison Sudol’s voice. I hear that moment—two husbands awkwardly figuring out if we actually like each other—and realizing we did.

Sometimes the right album doesn’t just find you. Sometimes it brings you a friend, too.

The Beatles, Abbey Road

I thought I knew Abbey Road.

My mom handed me the cassette when I was a teenager, and I wore that thing out in my Walkman. It had that squeaky plastic case that always cracked at the hinge, the one you had to tape back together after a few weeks. And inside it was my education.

On that cassette, Side A started with Here Comes the Sun. Which made perfect sense to me. That’s how you start an album. Light breaking through the clouds. It was almost biblical. Then, halfway through, Come Together swaggered in with that bassline, and I thought: Wow. The Beatles really knew what they were doing here.

Sunshine first, darkness second, and then—just when you thought they’d run out of tricks—the masterful medley at the end to tie the whole thing together like the finale of a Broadway show.

To teenage me, it felt like perfect architecture.

I didn’t just like the sequencing—I built my whole understanding of the album around it. I bragged about it. “Oh, Abbey Road? Yeah, genius structure. Hope, then grit. The architecture is flawless.”

And I believed that for decades. Until I hit my 40s, bought myself a fresh vinyl copy, and dropped the needle. Ready for George Harrison to welcome me with open arms.

Instead, BAM! Come Together. Right out of the gate.

I stared at the turntable in disbelief. Track one? TRACK ONE?! My entire teenage theology of Abbey Road collapsed in that moment. Turns out, the Beatles never consulted the cassette division at Capitol Records before sequencing their magnum opus.

So yeah, I’ve been living a lie my whole life. And here’s the kicker: I still kind of like my version better. I still hear Here Comes the Sun as the opener, every time. Which probably says more about me than it does about the Beatles.

Some people have the Mandela Effect. I’ve got the Abbey Road Effect.

Billy Joel, Greatest Hits Volume I & II

My friend Jerry insists Greatest Hits albums don’t count.

“It’s cheating,” he says, as though we’re drafting a fantasy team and I’ve just picked both Jordan and Pippen with one slot.

And from a purist’s standpoint, I get it. But… I’m not a purist.

I grew up in a house where Greatest Hits albums weren’t shortcuts, they were the main course. The track order, the sequencing, the way the songs stacked up one after another—that was my canon.

And Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits left its mark on me.

Two volumes, two discs, plenty to love—but it was Volume I that gave heartbeat to entire seasons of my life.

Piano Man alone drops me straight back into Gio’s Pizzeria in Brownsville. Friday nights with friends, quarters in the jukebox, the smell of pizza hanging in the air. Old enough to drive ourselves, to laugh too loud, to claim a night out as ours.

But the deeper imprint came my sophomore year of high school, when I was more or less adopted by a group of senior girls. Which, for the record, is both as thrilling and as confusing as it sounds.

Because here’s the thing: I didn’t know what to do with that kind of social upgrade. I was fifteen. I still had braces. Suddenly I was riding around with people who could vote. I had no business being there. I was just happy nobody asked me why I was in the car.

Yes, there were crushes, awkward subplots, and plenty of me soaking it all in, quietly amazed they kept letting me hang around. But more than the drama, there was music. And Billy Joel was the constant.

Volume I became our shared pulse. Freedom, romance, heartbreak, hope—it was all in there. And somehow, Billy Joel was the glue holding together this bizarre teenage ecosystem where a scrawny sophomore could hang with seniors and, for a whole year, believe he belonged.

Cat Stevens, Greatest Hits

My friend Jerry would roll his eyes here. Another Greatest Hits album? He’d call it padding the list, like sneaking CliffsNotes into an English exam. But again: I’m not a purist. In my house, these albums weren’t shortcuts, they were scripture.

This one sat in my parents’ vinyl collection until they did the unthinkable: they decided they didn’t want a vinyl collection anymore. A mystifying decision. But one I benefited from, since I inherited Cat Stevens Greatest Hits. And to me, it still feels sacred.

I remember the cover first. An illustrated Cat Stevens who, in my mind, looked exactly like my dad’s best friend, Joe. Which meant, for years, I half-believed Joe must be musically gifted. He wasn’t, but the association stuck.

The songs are timeless: Wild World, Hard Headed Woman, Moonshadow, Peace Train, Father and Son. Each one is like a friend who shows up exactly when you need them.

The only strike against the album comes at the very end: Another Saturday Night. A clunker. With so many other incredible songs in his catalog, it feels like an afterthought tacked onto the party.

But I don’t skip it.

Disliking that song has become part of the liturgy. A ritual of sorts. Because this isn’t just a record—it’s an heirloom. And like all heirlooms, it’s perfect in its imperfections.

Collective Soul, Collective Soul (self-titled)

If I’ve ever been truly obsessed with a band, it was Collective Soul. Not casual fan obsessed. I mean obsessed to the point where other people were starting to get concerned.

It started one night when Brownsville finally got its first “rock” station. I couldn’t sleep, fiddled with the radio dial, and out of the static came… Shine. That opening riff. That “yeah.” The guitar solo. That was it. I was done.

Some kids found God. I found Ed Roland.

But here’s where the obsession really took root. Their second album—the self-titled one—was the first time I understood what a release day meant. Back then, Tuesdays carried a kind of electricity. New music, new stories, all waiting for you at the record store.

But when that record came out in 1995, I wasn’t even home. I was in San Antonio with Jerry…for a nerd competition. Which is a sentence I don’t love admitting out loud.

Some kids had football games. I had…whatever this was. Polo shirts tucked into khakis, solving math problems, answering trivia about state birds. It wasn’t exactly Friday Night Lights.

But in the middle of that, I looked at Jerry and said, “We gotta get out of here.”

So between rounds, we slipped away to a magic kingdom. Not Disney. North Star Mall.

And when we got there, I didn’t walk to the music store—I sprinted. Bought that CD like it was gold bullion. Carried the bag around like someone might tackle me in the food court yelling, “Sir, that’s Collective Soul. You’re gonna have to put that back.”

And then came the moment.

On the bus ride back, I unwrapped that CD with the reverence of a holy artifact. Those of a certain age know the struggle: peeling shrink wrap with your teeth, the sticker strip that never comes off in one piece, and those brittle plastic hinges designed to last exactly 36 hours.

Finally, I slid the disc into my Discman.

And here’s where it gets good: I had a splitter. Two pairs of headphones. Which in the ’90s was basically social currency. Jerry plugs in, I hit play—

Click. Hiss. One second of silence.

Jerry looks at me like, “Is it working?”

And then… Collective Soul.

And suddenly the whole bus disappeared. The nerd competition, the cheap carpet smell, kids yelling in the back… all gone. Just two kids, two headphones, one brand-new album. And in that instant, the world cracked open.

That’s the magic of hearing an album the exact moment it lands. For me, that magic will always be Collective Soul in ’95—two kids away from home, skipping out for rock and roll, while the rest of our team was still arguing about the state bird of Wyoming.

Collective Soul, Dosage

When I left home for college, I left behind more than curfews and cafeteria food—I left behind dial-up. No more AOL chirps, no more “You’ve got mail” minutes ticking away like a cab meter. Suddenly I had high-speed internet. Which meant freedom. Which meant… time to build something.

And what I built was obvious: a shrine to Collective Soul. My band. My obsession.

This was the late ’90s, when most bands didn’t even have official websites. So I carved one out on a place called Geocities. And if you don’t remember Geocities—it was basically the wild west of the internet. Neon backgrounds, blinking text, animated GIFs that looked like they’d been coded by raccoons. It was perfect.

What started as me throwing up a fan page quickly turned into…something bigger. People found it. Sponsors showed up. Even folks from the label started paying attention. Suddenly I’m in college, running what’s basically a part-time job that didn’t pay—unless you count life lessons.

I was learning how to design, how to hustle, how to turn obsession into something that almost looked like business. And somehow, in the middle of all that, I even met the band.

At one point, the site had grown so much it was printed on the back cover of their album Blender. Which is surreal. Most college kids dream of their name on a diploma—I had mine on a Collective Soul record. In 6-point font, right next to the legal disclaimers and the barcode. Immortalized forever, basically as fine print.

So when Dosage was released in February of 1999, my fandom was at its absolute peak. The internet was still young, fandom still felt like the wild west, and somehow I was sitting in the middle of it.

One “industry insider” who followed the site mailed me an advance copy. Not a download. Not a leak. A physical CD, weeks before release. When that padded envelope hit the mailbox, it felt less like mail and more like contraband.

I tore it open on the spot, like it might self-destruct if I waited too long. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t just listening to music—I was first. I listened first, shared first, hyped first.

Imagine the power of being a 19-year-old with exclusive access to…Collective Soul. The neighbors probably thought I was running a drug ring. Nope. Just a fan site. With very strong opinions about track order.

And the best part? The album delivered.

Dosage wasn’t just another release. It was proof that sometimes obsession pays off. That if you love something fiercely enough to build around it, sometimes life will find a way to reward you.

And in this case, the reward wasn’t money, or fame, or even anything practical. It was a Collective Soul CD. Weeks before anyone else got it. Smuggled by the US Postal Service.

Counting Crows, August and Everything After

Jerry introduced me to a lot of music, but I didn’t always make it easy on him.

I remember one particular afternoon when he told me about this new band called Counting Crows. I hadn’t heard a single song of theirs—not Mr. Jones, not A Murder of One, nothing. But for reasons that are lost to time, I decided they were bad. Full stop. Not because I had evidence. Just because I was 15. And stubborn. Which, at that age, is the same thing.

Then… Round Here came on the radio.

And then… the Mr. Jones video showed up on MTV.

And suddenly… I had to face a rare and shocking realization.

Maybe, just maybe, I’d been wrong.

The first chance I got, I bought August and Everything After. From the opening notes, it was breathtaking. Adam Duritz wasn’t just singing, he was bleeding into the microphone.

‘Round here, we’re carving out our names
‘Round here, we all look the same
‘Round here, we talk just like lions
But we sacrifice like lambs
‘Round here, she’s slipping through my hands…

Damn.

Fifteen-year-old me was not ready to feel those feelings. But I did. And once I did, there was no going back. Counting Crows weren’t just a band anymore—they were in my bloodstream.

Don’t tell Jerry, but he was right.

Counting Crows, Recovering the Satellites

It was my freshman year of college. I was in that in-between space: no longer tethered to home, not yet rooted anywhere new.

And that’s when I met Jaime.

We’d only known each other a month, but already he felt like someone I could trust. The kind of person you let into the passenger seat of your life without checking his license. Which was fitting, because the actual passenger seat in his Dodge Colt was basically a death trap. No power steering. Or broken power steering. Either way, every turn felt like a workout video.

We both had the release date circled. On that October day, we climbed into the Colt and headed to Sam Goody at Post Oak Mall like it was a pilgrimage. Two freshmen, arms burning from wrestling the steering wheel, on a mission.

We each bought a copy, clutching the CDs like proof we belonged to something bigger. Then it was back to his dorm room—Ramen packets stacked on the dresser, that faint smell of Pine-Sol mixed with whatever the last guy spilled—where we slid the disc into his boombox and pressed play.

The magic was instant.

The songs felt like they’d been waiting for us—raw, aching, electric. We sat there in that cramped room, letting them pour over us, trading theories about lyrics, arguing over favorites until we finally agreed.

Goodnight Elisabeth. That was the one. To this day, it still feels like a hymn for people who don’t yet know who they are, only that they’re becoming. Which was fitting—because that was us. Two freshmen, unsteady and half-formed, trying to figure out who we were becoming too.

Looking back, Recovering the Satellites isn’t just my favorite Counting Crows album—it’s the soundtrack of that fragile, exhilarating season. Two brand-new friends. A busted Dodge Colt. A dorm room that smelled like Ramen and Pine-Sol.

An album that landed exactly when we needed it most.

Cowboy Mouth, Are You With Me?

Some albums feel like a secret you discovered. This one wasn’t mine—it was Shelley’s. But when she shared it, it became the soundtrack that carried her into my life.

We met at eighteen, both freshmen at Texas A&M. For me, it was love at first sight. For her, I was “a nice guy.”

Which was fine. Nice guys can work with that.

We became friends, and as friends do, we traded music. Shelley, having grown up in New Orleans, brought something different to the table: a band I’d never heard of, Cowboy Mouth.

The first time she played me the CD, I was floored. The opener, Jenny Says, blasted out of her stereo and I was hooked. Song after song, I fell for the music… and if I’m honest, for her.

Before long, Are You With Me? was the soundtrack to our friendship. And like all great soundtracks, it carried an undercurrent of something bigger.

That semester ended with me heading home, carrying Cowboy Mouth in my Discman and feelings for a girl who might never feel the same.

But when we came back, something shifted. Shelley started looking at me differently—or maybe I just started noticing the way she looked. Longer pauses. Smiles that lingered just a beat too long. That strange current you can feel when friendship begins to blur into something else.

For months, I’d carried around my puppy love like a secret I was sure the world could see written across my forehead. Suddenly it didn’t feel so one-sided. The air between us was charged in a new way—as though the universe had nudged the dimmer switch just enough for me to notice light I hadn’t seen before.

And then, one night, the impossible happened: our first kiss.

It felt less like a kiss and more like a door opening, like the soundtrack I’d been listening to for months had finally cued up its chorus. I was over the moon. It was everything I had hoped for.

Until it wasn’t.

The next week, something shifted. Again. But in the opposite direction.

Shelley grew cooler, a little more distant. Not cruel, not cold, just… careful. What had felt like the spark of something real suddenly looked like the classic cliché: two friends who’d crossed a line and weren’t sure what to do with it.

I tried to play it off, but inside I was unraveling. Every smile that used to come easily now felt cautious. Every conversation carried a weight it didn’t have before.

The kiss had happened, but we hadn’t spoken a word about it. Not a joke, not a confession, not even a nervous acknowledgment. It just hung there between us, invisible and heavy, until silence itself became its own answer. The longer we avoided it, the more it felt like maybe it hadn’t been a spark at all, but a mistake.

And yet, I held onto one thing. Before any kiss, before any drama… we had made plans.

Cowboy Mouth was coming to town.

Her band. Our band. The very songs that had pulled me into her orbit in the first place. That date on the calendar felt like a secret twist in the plot—proof that no matter how awkward things got, the story wasn’t finished yet.

But on the day of the concert, I made a rookie mistake. I couldn’t go on without naming it. A week and a half had passed since the kiss. That’s like a decade in teen years.

So I picked up the phone, called her dorm, and left the dreaded message on her answering machine: “We need to talk.” (Which, in the ’90s, was basically the nuclear launch code of dating.)

We met. We talked. And Shelley, as gently as she could, told me we should just be friends.

That’s right. I got friend-zoned.

I nodded, smiled politely, and died a thousand quiet deaths inside.

I walked away from that talk gutted, trying to smile through the sting. The “just friends” verdict rang in my ears like a gavel, final and crushing. But the night wasn’t over. There was still the concert.

And so, a few hours later, there we were—standing shoulder to shoulder in a crowded theater, the air thick with sweat and anticipation. The lights dropped, the drums thundered, and Cowboy Mouth tore onto the stage like a hurricane.

It was a revelation.

Everything I’d been listening to on repeat, everything Shelley had first put in my hands, came alive in a way I couldn’t have imagined. The floor shook. The crowd shouted every word. The band wasn’t just playing songs—they were detonating them, turning heartbreak into celebration, loneliness into communion.

And beside me was Shelley. The same girl who, hours earlier, had broken my heart with kindness. Now she was laughing, dancing, singing every lyric at the top of her lungs. And somehow, so was I.

We didn’t become Stephen-and-Shelley that night. But the concert gave us something else: a reset. A way to be in the same space again without the weight of the kiss hanging between us. A reminder that whatever this was, it wasn’t over.

Little did we know, the best was yet to come.

Don McLean, The Best of Don McLean

Another Greatest Hits album. Somewhere, Jerry is groaning. But in my house, this wasn’t filler—it was furniture. The heartbeat and hum of Saturday afternoons and family dinners, always humming from the cassette deck like background radiation.

It started, of course, with American Pie. Everyone knew that one. But what got me wasn’t the eight-minute singalong—it was everything else in Don McLean’s catalog. These weren’t just songs, they were open invitations for anyone with an acoustic guitar and a hopeless romantic streak. Which, at fifteen, was me in a nutshell.

I had a stack of albums and mixtapes I rotated through while mowing the lawn or hauling bags of leaves. But The Best of Don McLean was always in heavy rotation. I knew its track list like the back of my hand. His cover of Roy Orbison’s Crying nearly broke me in half every time. There I’d be, pushing the mower in ninety-degree heat, daydreaming about girls who didn’t know I existed, and Don McLean somehow convinced me there was nobility in unrequited love.

He made heartbreak feel like a hobby.

What made it even better, though, was that it wasn’t just mine. This was one of the few albums that bridged the gap between me and my parents. We all loved it. We could put it on during dinner, out on the porch, or while cleaning up the kitchen, and no one would roll their eyes. That made it rare: music that felt like mine, but also belonged to all of us.

The Best of Don McLean was a cassette that lived in our family room, our car, and eventually in my own Walkman. It was evergreen, timeless, and maybe the first album that taught me music could hold both your secret longings and your shared joys—sometimes in the very same song.

Keane, Hopes and Fears

Every once in a while, Shelley and I stumble onto an album where our tastes line up perfectly—two circles in a Venn diagram becoming one. Hopes and Fears was one of those albums.

It showed up early in our marriage, when life was equal parts wonder and chaos. We were young and naïve and counting every dollar. But we were also deliriously in love, convinced that optimism alone might just pay the rent. And through it all, this album was there, filling the tiny spaces we called home with something bigger than we knew how to name.

Tom Chaplin’s voice was the undoing. It didn’t just sing—it soared, it pleaded, it promised. She Has No Time became our touchstone, the track we’d always return to. There was something haunting in it, like it was narrating feelings we hadn’t quite learned to articulate yet: the ache, the tenderness, the fragility of figuring out life together before we really knew what life was.

I remember seeing Keane with Shelley at the now-departed Gypsy Ballroom in Dallas, an intimate venue built for nights just like this. Chaplin stepped to the mic, opened his mouth, and for the next ninety minutes the laws of physics changed. His voice didn’t just fill the room—it lifted us out of it, into some otherworld where bills and worries and our tiny bank balance didn’t matter. For those songs, the world was wide and shimmering, and we were at the very center of it.

Hopes and Fears will always be that portal for me. A doorway back to the start, to payday waiting games and mac and cheese dinners on repeat, to the tender hope that love would be enough—and the deeper truth that sometimes, with the right soundtrack, it really was.

The Killers, Sam’s Town

Sam’s Town came at the end of the era when I still had a “favorite band.” I’d been raised in the era of albums—front to back, devoured whole—and The Killers were the last group I loved in that way. Before life got busier. Before playlists replaced CDs. Before streaming made it easy to spread your love across a hundred songs instead of one band.

Hot Fuss had been Shelley’s find back in 2004. She pressed play and suddenly my world had these neon edges: soaring guitars tangled up with synths and dance beats. It sounded familiar and strange all at once, like rock music had just discovered electricity.

But it wasn’t until 2006—until Sam’s Town—that The Killers became my band. Not with the big lead singles, not with the flashy hooks, but with the third one: Read My Mind. That was the song that stopped me cold.

It was the kind of song that felt nostalgic the very first time I heard it, like it had already been waiting for me somewhere in memory. The opening notes carried this strange warmth, the way sunlight can feel familiar even on a street you’ve never walked before. It wasn’t just catchy, it was comforting, as if the song had always belonged to some corner of my life, and hearing it was simply remembering.

I first caught the video on TV—one of those late-night, half-accidental viewings. And then the music itself followed me around, sweet and insistent, like it had signed a lease in my head. The first time I heard it properly, I knew: this album was going to matter.

I remember one night in particular, working against a deadline, pulling an all-nighter at my desk. Sam’s Town on repeat. One track bleeding into the next until I lost count. The songs became a kind of companion—anthemic, aching, stubbornly hopeful. By the time the sun broke through the blinds, I’d listened to the album straight through more times than I could say. And instead of feeling wrung out, I felt wired, alive, like I’d been carried through the night by something bigger than myself.

That’s what Sam’s Town is to me. Not just a record, but a companion—the last album that stayed awake with me until the sun came up.

Neil Diamond, 12 Greatest Hits Vol II

If my musical taste has any kind of origin story, it probably starts here—with Neil Diamond spinning on vinyl. 12 Greatest Hits Vol. II wasn’t so much an album as a crash course in how many shades of emotion one man could wring out of a melody.

Neil has a song for almost everything: heartbreak, swagger, longing, joy. And if you need a tent revival with a side of sequins, he’s got that covered too. He’s a jukebox for the human condition. A musical love language everyone seems to understand, even if they didn’t know they spoke it.

“Love on the Rocks” was the one that got me. That opening piano riff, the way his voice comes in—low, world-weary, but still defiant. I was hooked. Jerry and I had this ritual at Gio’s Pizzeria: we’d feed the jukebox, cue up Joel’s “Piano Man,” and without fail, follow it with Diamond’s “Love on the Rocks.” A double-shot of sing-along melancholy, with mozzarella grease still on our fingers. Billy and Neil, side by side, keeping us company at the corner booth.

It’s funny how those pairings stitch themselves into your memory. To this day, whenever I hear Piano Man, I half-expect Love on the Rocks to come lumbering in behind it, like a well-timed punchline. One song pours the drinks, the other reminds you why you’re drinking.

That’s the magic of Neil Diamond for me. He wasn’t just background music—he was part of the ritual, part of the friendship, part of the way I learned music could carry you through moods and moments like a friend who always knew what to say.

Paul Simon, Graceland

The summer I think of when I hear Graceland wasn’t really summer at all. In Chile, the seasons run in reverse, so what I remember is winter air sneaking through car windows, the Andes standing guard in the distance, and one cassette tape rattling around like treasure in my mom’s bag. She’d brought Graceland with her, and before long it belonged to all of us.

My Tío Hermes was the first to claim it. He fell for Graceland almost immediately, like he’d been waiting his whole life for Paul Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo to meet. And once Tío Hermes loved something, the rest of us were along for the ride.

That year the ride was literal—a ten-hour drive south in a car that might have been a Toyota Corolla, or something Corolla-adjacent. I was wedged in the backseat with my cousins Javier, Pablo, and Jano. Limbs overlapping, elbows digging, the kind of closeness only family can (forcibly) survive. Out the window: mountains and farmland, landscapes that felt endless. Inside the car: Graceland, on repeat. The. Entire. Way.

There are only two possible outcomes for an experience like that: a lifelong grudge against an album, or an unshakable devotion. You can guess which one stuck with me.

Those harmonies and rhythms wove themselves into that trip, into that season, into that family memory. Every listen since then has carried a trace of that road: Tío Hermes at the wheel, my cousins half-asleep on each other’s shoulders, the cassette clicking and starting again as if the journey might never end.

Graceland isn’t just music to me. It’s a postcard. A time capsule. Proof that sometimes the right album can hold together a carful of kids, a season, even a family.

Roxette, Look Sharp!

I first met Roxette by way of Jerry’s prized cassingle of “The Look.” It was rock. It was pop. It was endlessly catchy. And, for an 11-year-old boy, it was also Marie Fredriksson on the cover in what was basically a bra. It was… a lot to process.

But Jerry and I were hooked.

I remember us outside his house, belting out the “na na na na na na” hook into the neighborhood air, convinced we were rock stars. We weren’t, but that didn’t stop us from announcing a band on the spot. The name came courtesy of my generic T-shirt, one of many my mom bought from Weiner’s—the discount emporium where the name alone broke more rules than the students. For reasons no one has ever explained, it said “Exploits.” And just like that, our imaginary band was official.

But Roxette was more than just a passing crush. Look Sharp! became the very first album I ever bought with my own money. Musicland. Sunrise Mall. I can still remember standing at the counter, clutching it like contraband. For a kid whose dad had pretty strict views on what counted as “acceptable music,” buying Roxette felt like a (very safe) declaration of independence.

Still, this album wasn’t just about me—it was a chapter in friendship. Jerry, Teno, and I were inseparable growing up. The three of us spent entire summers in backyards and living rooms crowded with cassette cases and Nintendo games. If one of us found a new band, it instantly became part of the collective.

And in the fall of 1988, Look Sharp! claimed the spotlight.

While most kids were screaming for New Kids on the Block, we were off in our own corner, mainlining Swedish pop. It felt like a secret language we shared—three boys staking a tiny claim on the musical map. We had our own taste, our own band, our own thing.

And somehow, that bond has lasted. Decades later, the three of us are still close—still the same trio at heart. Life has shifted, careers have unfolded, families have grown, but when we’re together, we slip back into the same rhythm we had as kids.

Look Sharp! still finds its way back into the conversation. Sometimes it’s a laugh about the gloriously nonsensical lyrics, sometimes it’s an argument over which track deserves more credit. But always, it’s a reminder.

The band was a phase, but the friendship never was. And this album is a touchstone we find ourselves returning to, again and again.

Semisonic, Feeling Strangely Fine

If I had to pick one “desert island” album, it might be Feeling Strangely Fine.

I don’t have a single dramatic story for this one—no fake band, no road trip, no jukebox ritual. What I do have is an album that, song for song, never misses. I love every track.

It came out in the spring of 1998, technically my college years, but in my head it belongs to the entire ’90s. I can’t explain why. Somehow, whenever I put it on, it takes me back to high school—like it rewired my memory, retrofitting itself into years it never actually lived in.

The ’90s were my wonder years. High school. College. Meeting Shelley. The golden age of my friendship with Jerry and Teno. We had a million little rituals—inside jokes, late-night drives, entire summers that felt endless. And somehow, Feeling Strangely Fine became my shorthand for all of it.

Teno and I especially loved this album. We’d swap notes on which tracks hit hardest, argue about deep cuts, blast “Closing Time” even though it was the obvious one. But for me, “Made to Last” has always been the crown jewel—maybe my favorite rock song of all time.

On a list of favorite albums, this might be the only one I still revisit as an album. Not a playlist of singles, not a shuffle of nostalgia, but the whole thing, front to back, like the way I first experienced it.

For me, Feeling Strangely Fine isn’t just an album. It’s a time machine. Every time I press play, I’m not just back in the ’90s—I’m back with the people who made those years what they were.

Strunz & Farah, Américas

Some albums just kind of appear in your life. Américas by Strunz & Farah was one of those. One day, a cassette showed up in our house. No one really explained it. I think my mom bought it, but it was my dad and I who fell for it. Jerry too, eventually.

I was a young guitar player, so hearing it for the first time was like watching aliens land. They played so fast it didn’t seem human. My dad, who loved the music but was also a practical man, decided there was only one logical explanation: they’d sped it up in the studio. He said it like it was a known fact. “There’s no way people can play like that.” He fully convinced himself this was a conspiracy. Like, he was ready to get Congress involved.

And then, somehow, Strunz & Farah came to Brownsville, Texas. Which made no sense. Brownsville was not exactly on the world-tour circuit. We had flea markets, Whataburger, and you get the idea. But here they were, headlining a cultural event.

But here’s the plot twist.

The opening act? Jerry’s older brother, Rudy. And Rudy deserves an introduction. Rudy had gone to Harvard for undergrad and grad school. He came back with degrees that probably said things like “Economics” or “Political Science.” But instead of doing any of that, he decided to start a band. He called it Eye of the Artist. And the best way I can describe their sound is: imagine if Yanni and Kenny G had a baby…and that baby also went to Harvard.

And here’s the kicker: Rudy recruited Jerry to play bass and me to run lights. Neither of us had any business being there. Jerry could play bass well enough, but me? I was the lighting guy strictly because Rudy asked, and I said yes. That was the whole job interview. Which meant every show was just me flipping switches at random.

“Well… guess this is a blue song now.”

So when Strunz & Farah came out for soundcheck, I was side stage, pretending to know what I was doing with the lights. And right away, they destroyed my dad’s conspiracy theory. No speeding up. No studio tricks. Just casually brilliant. Fingers flying, in perfect sync, making music that sounded like it came from five continents at once.

My dad looked like he’d just seen Bigfoot.

The concert itself was dazzling. But the real punchline? Because we were “with the band,” Jerry and I got invited to the after-party. Two kids from Brownsville, suddenly in the room with Jorge Strunz and Ardeshir Farah.

And here’s the thing: we weren’t just lurking in the corner, holding Cokes, trying not to be noticed. They actually talked to us. They laughed, they asked questions, they were warm and funny. It wasn’t just “we met them”—it was “they welcomed us in.” For one surreal night, we weren’t outsiders. We were part of the circle.

And that’s rare. Usually, when you meet your heroes, you walk away thinking, “Well, I’ll never listen to that album the same way again.” But Strunz & Farah? They were exactly who you wanted them to be. Maybe even better.

So that mysterious cassette my mom bought? It came to life. And my dad finally had proof. No conspiracies. No studio tricks. Just two guys, playing so fast my dad finally dropped the investigation. Congress was off the hook.

Tom Petty, Wildflowers

If Feeling Strangely Fine is my desert island album, then Wildflowers is the mountaintop. The king of kings. The one you carve into stone tablets and carry down to the people. I love Tom Petty’s whole catalog—probably my favorite of any artist—but Wildflowers is the one that left its mark.

It came out my junior year of high school, right at the age when you first start looking both ways—thinking about your future and your past at the same time. And somehow Petty had the soundtrack for that exact moment.

The album just delivers. Wildflowers itself. Time to Move On. To Find a Friend. Crawling Back to You. Not to mention the big singles. Every track is either a toe-tapper or a late-night companion. It was the record you could blast on the way to school and then lean on when you drove home in the dark, feeling feelings you didn’t even know how to name.

Jerry and I latched onto it together. That was part of the magic. It had enough pop to hook you, but enough melancholy to feel your feelings. And if there was one thing Jerry and I specialized in as moody teenagers, it was feeling our feelings. We treated melancholy like it was an extracurricular activity.

But the music still holds up. There’s a line in Crawling Back to You that I still hum to myself when the stress of day-to-day piles up: “Most things I worry about… never happen anyway.” That’s Petty in a nutshell—wisdom, simplicity, and melody, all rolled into one line that somehow still shows up for me decades later.

Leave it to Tom Petty to write the world’s greatest stress management program in one line. Therapy, but with a harmonica.

Tracy Chapman, Tracy Chapman

Like everybody else, I knew Fast Car. You couldn’t escape it. It was on the radio, it was in the grocery store, it was probably playing faintly behind you while you were pumping gas. But outside of that, I hadn’t really gone deeper into Tracy Chapman.

Then I went to college and met Shelley. Which, right there, is the best thing that ever happened to me, but also the beginning of this story. Because Shelley had a CD collection. And tucked into her binder of sleeves—you remember those binders, where you’d flip through like you were auditioning jurors—was Tracy Chapman’s debut album.

I should’ve known from Fast Car alone that Tracy was going to bring the lyrical heat. But this album? These songs made you think. Made you feel. Made a guy like me stop and see the world in new ways. Talkin’ ’Bout a Revolution, Across the Lines, Baby Can I Hold You. Each one could knock the wind out of you.

But here’s the thing. The song that stuck with me most wasn’t profound for the usual reasons. Baby Can I Hold You is a heartbreak masterpiece, sure. But for me, it became… comedy.

Freshman year. Shelley and I were a newly minted couple. And like any couple, sometimes you argue. Neither of us remembers what this particular one was about. Whatever it was, it wasn’t earth-shattering. It was probably me being annoying, because statistically speaking, that’s usually the cause.

So we’re in her dorm room. She’s face down on the bed, silent treatment in full effect. And Shelley was good at the silent treatment. She didn’t major in drama, but it was definitely an elective. Meanwhile, I’m sitting at her desk, trying to figure out how to dig my way out. Apologizing would’ve been too easy. And honestly, I didn’t even know what I’d be apologizing for.

On her desk: a boombox and her CD binder. And that’s when inspiration struck. I slide in Tracy Chapman, flip to track five. And as soon as Tracy sang that first word—“Sorry…”—Shelley cracked. She turned around, laughed, and just like that, the fight was over.

We didn’t even make it to the chorus. I didn’t need it. All it took was one word from Tracy Chapman to do what I couldn’t. She forgave me. And I’ve been cashing in on Tracy Chapman’s credibility ever since.

So yes, Tracy Chapman is an incredible album. It’s thoughtful, it’s profound, it’s full of timeless songs. But for me, it’s also the memory of that dorm room. Turns out, the secret to our relationship wasn’t flowers or chocolates.

It was Tracy Chapman, track five.

The Wallflowers, Bringing Down the Horse

If my life had a movie soundtrack, Bringing Down the Horse would be in the opening credits.

“6th Avenue Heartache” hit right as I was graduating high school. “One Headlight” rolled in just as I was stumbling my way through college. Those two singles alone felt like revelation. I remember hearing them and thinking, This is it. This is the music I’ve been trying to write in my head. Except Jakob Dylan had already written it. And better. And he had great hair. It was unfair, really.

The album was everything I wanted—clever lyrics, big hooks, the kind of songs you could sing at the top of your lungs or let break your heart at 2 a.m. It was joy and melancholy in equal measure. The whole thing felt like it was written just for me, and maybe that’s the trick of great albums: they make you believe you’re the only one who really gets them.

But here’s the thing. If you’ve been following along this whole list, you’ve probably noticed my personal “age of albums” always ties back to the time of life they belonged to. That’s what Bringing Down the Horse is for me. It’s not just eleven tracks. It’s a picture inside a picture inside a picture. It’s high school graduation parties. It’s college dorm nights. It’s driving with the windows down, music too loud, friends you thought you’d have forever.

And when I put it on today, all of it comes rushing back. The music, the memories, the people I mentioned here and the ones I didn’t. It’s like a time capsule that still plays.

So yeah, it’s a ’90s masterpiece. But to me, it’s more than that. It’s the sound of a kid figuring out who he was—one hook, one heartbreak, one headlight at a time.

The Bonus Track

Once in a while, an album used to have that hidden moment. You’d think it was over, but if you let the CD spin long enough, a secret song would fade in—a little reward for those who didn’t hit eject too soon.

That’s this section. The bonus track. Not part of the top twenty, but part of the story. These are the albums that filled in the edges: the road trips, the heartbreaks, the late nights that felt like they might never end.

I don’t really listen to albums the same way anymore. The last fifteen years brought new artists I love, but that era of jewel cases and liner notes still has its own kind of magic. Back then you let the music play from start to finish—partly because skipping meant getting up, but mostly because you didn’t want to miss whatever came next.

Here are the (many, many) albums that lived in that world. I’ve probably forgotten dozens, but these are the ones that stuck.

• America, History: America’s Greatest Hits
• The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
• Bee Gees, Greatest
• Better Than Ezra, Friction, Baby
• Billy Joel, The Stranger
• Blue October, History for Sale
• Blues Traveller, Four
• Bob Marley, Legend
• Boston, Third Stage
• Cademon’s Call, Long Line of Leavers
• Coldplay, X&Y
• Collective Soul, Hints, Allegations, and Things Left Unsaid
• Collective Soul, Precious Declaration
• Commodores, All The Great Hits
• Creedence Clearwater Revival, Chronicle: The 20 Greatest Hits
• Dave Matthews Band, Crash
• Death Cab for Cutie, Plans
• Dishwalla, Opaline
• Don Henley, The End of the Innocence
• Duncan Sheik, Daylight
• Eagles, Greatest Hits, Vol. 2
• Eric Clapton, Unplugged
• Gavin DeGraw, Chariot
• George Michael, Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1
• Hanson, This Time Around
• Hootie and the Blowfish, Cracked Rear View
• James Taylor, Greatest Hits
• Jars of Clay, Much Afraid
• John Mayer, Continuum
• Journey, Greatest Hits
• Juanes, Un Día Normal
• Led Zepplin, IV
• Lionel Richie, Can’t Slow Down
• Lyle Lovett, Anthology Vol. 1, Cowboy Man
• Maná, Sueños Líquidos
• Mat Kearney, Young Love
• Matchbox Twenty, Yourself or Someone Like You
• Matthew Sweet, 100% Fun
• Neil Diamond, The Jazz Singer
• Oasis, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory
• Oasis, Be Here Now
• Oasis, Definitely Maybe
• Once, Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
• Phil Collins, …But Seriously
• Radiohead, OK Computer
• Radiohead, The Bends
• Squirrel Nut Zippers, Hot
• Thad Cockrell, To Be Loved
• Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Greatest Hits
• Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, She’s the One
• U2, Achtung Baby
• U2, All That You Can’t Leave Behind
• U2, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb
• U2, The Joshua Tree
• Víctor Heredia, Coraje
• The Waiting, Unfazed

Special shout out to the “Time Life Music 60’s Rock & Roll Collection” which was a compilation of 10 tapes for every year of the 60s. My mom bought it on a whim from one of those infomercials on TV.  I devoured each of those tapes countless times.

The post My favorite albums first appeared on Stephen Boudreau.

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”

Stephen King

I’ve been in more arguments about audiobooks than politics. And that’s saying something, because I’ve lived through at least a dozen election cycles and one book club.

It usually starts the same way. Someone at dinner—usually the guy who uses “Kafka-esque” correctly—mentions what he’s reading. Then someone else, maybe me, says, “Oh yeah, I listened to that.”

And suddenly, I’ve committed a crime.

Not a big one, like tax fraud or forgetting to Venmo for the group gift, but something worse in certain circles: the crime of pretending to read.

There’s a pause. The table tilts. Someone swirls their wine like they’re auditioning for “Sideways.”

“Oh,” they say, eyebrows raised. “So… you didn’t read it.”

I don’t know what happens next because I’ve blacked out from shame.

Here’s the thing: listening to a book is reading. It’s just reading with your ears. If that bothers you, maybe you’re just jealous that your ears can’t multitask.

I’ve listened to whole novels while doing dishes, cleaning the garage, and sitting in traffic—three situations where paper books perform terribly.

I’ve “read” half a Pulitzer winner somewhere between Whole Foods and the school carline. I’ve finished another while hosing down the garage floor, earbuds in, feeling vaguely literary about it.

And yes, maybe I can’t highlight sentences or dog-ear pages. But I also don’t lose my place every time I sneeze, so I feel like it evens out.

Plus, there’s something intimate about it. You haven’t lived until you’ve had Wil Wheaton whispering The Martian into your left ear while your right ear monitors the GPS yelling, “Turn right in 500 feet.”

There’s this idea that unless you’ve physically lifted the weight of the book, you haven’t earned it. As if turning the pages counts more than what happens after. But the point isn’t how the words get in—it’s what they do once they’re there.

Stories are stories. The words go in your brain, and your brain does the thing. The rest is just equipment preference.

So yes, I read that book.
I met it the same way anyone meets a story,
one sentence at a time.
I just did it while driving home from work.

Turns out, stories travel pretty well.

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“We can’t win at home. We can’t win on the road…I just can’t figure out where else to play.”

Pat Williams

I grew up in Texas, where football isn’t a pastime—it’s a belief system. You pick a team early, and that’s your moral identity for life.

My problem was that I picked two.

I cheered for the Dallas Cowboys—America’s Team.
The NFL’s golden child. All swagger, no humility. The team that wins the coin toss and acts like it just cured cancer.

And then I cheered for the Houston Oilers—the team you rooted for when you wanted to feel pain. They were heartbreak wrapped in a helmet.

The Oilers could turn a 28-point lead into a documentary about regret. The 1993 playoff collapse against Buffalo wasn’t a loss; it was performance art. You couldn’t even be mad. It was too poetic.

My friend Jerry didn’t agree.

Jerry was a Cowboys guy—loud, loyal, confident, and statistically insufferable. He treated every Super Bowl ring like a family heirloom, personally handed to him by Troy Aikman.

One day at lunch, after another Oilers implosion, he said, “Man, the Oilers are a joke. Why do you waste your time on them?”

That stung more than I wanted to admit.
Because deep down, I knew he wasn’t wrong.

But also… he was.
Because loyalty, as it turns out, isn’t about being right.
It’s about refusing to quit even when every rational part of you says, you should absolutely quit.

So I drew a line.
I was done playing both sides.
I told Jerry I was all in.

I was an Oilers guy.

It felt dramatic at the time—like I was taking a stand for something bigger than football.
And maybe I was.

Or maybe I was just sixteen and practicing for future heartbreak.

But being an Oilers fan taught me more about life than any championship team ever could. They taught me how to hope against reason. How to laugh after heartbreak. How to keep showing up even when the odds (and Jerry) told me not to.

Eventually, the Oilers left Houston, rebranded, and started over in Tennessee.
And yeah, that hurt. It felt like being dumped by someone who immediately starts dating Nashville.

But I stayed loyal—to the memory, to the heartbreak, to the lesson.

Because sometimes you don’t pick a team because they win.
You pick them because they teach you how to lose—and how to love something anyway.

And if you can do that, you can handle just about anything.
Except, maybe, another 28-point lead.

The post The Oilers guy first appeared on Stephen Boudreau.