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Continue reading →: Deliberate poetry
I’m not much of a poet, especially in that I let poems “come to me.” That happens about once per year. Lately I’ve begun to deliberately sit down to write poetry. These are the latest results. The second feels a little more like spoken word to me. Coffee relationship Every…
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Continue reading →: Four small poemsThe meaning of dogs Woe is meBut also, woe is you And woe is definitely that guy over therewho, while walking his dogdropped his cappuccino as Fido lunged at a passing cyclist a cappuccino the dog now seems ever so pleased to enjoy And so upon this observation and many othersit would…
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Continue reading →: False starts and writing hiccupsOn Oct. 8, I started my writing-every-day-for-365-days project, which has evolved into writing OR working on compiling and refining a book of old and new writings. So far I’ve done one and/or the other every day, but as for the writing, I’ve had a lot of false starts, where things…
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Continue reading →: Strangle the struggling artistTwenty-five years ago, I thought I wanted to be a photographer. I’d taken a photojournalism course in college and found I had a minor visual artistic side I wasn’t aware of. It was surprising, because, to be clear, that visual creativity was, and still is, strictly limited to photography. I…
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Continue reading →: Cooking in hellI like that in the fall evenings and winter anytimes you can bake and afterwards open the oven to let the hot air contribute to the warming of your home. And the rush of heat when you open the oven door can feel wonderful if you keep your distance and…
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Continue reading →: What can you doom?I’m not planning on working from warmer climes in the camper this winter for the first time since the winter of 2022*. Last night, that had me thinking about the winter that is soon to come, because my mind always turns first toward dwelling on doom. But doom-thinking sometimes leads…
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Continue reading →: Running full speed at lifeI’d always wanted to try writing a children’s book but came to realize that my ethics are questionable, and the odds are that any child reading my book would actually become less intelligent because of it. It seems like it could be a hard sell to, say, Scholastic publishing, that…
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Continue reading →: The chlorophyll will be destroyed (revisted)I’m in northern Minnesota (same place, nearly same time as last year) working from my little camper just yards from a tranquil lake amidst the aspens, pines of some kind (I can never remember which–the needley kind), and occasional maples showing bright oranges and reds. Along the North Shore of…
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Continue reading →: I Have Your Tupperware and it is Unlikely You Will Ever Get it BackTo the friends of my friends, who welcomed me to their French themed dinner* I want to thank you again graciously, as I did that evening when you and yours invited me to such an unforgettable soirée. The meal was marvelous, and there was so much of it — far too much to…
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Continue reading →: Side hustling with Rover, a kind of dating app for dogsA few months ago I signed up to be a dogsitter through an app called Rover. Since I work a desk job from home and take a walk each afternoon and evening, it’s a perfect scenario for me and a (very) lucky dog. The aptly named Rover is kind of…
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Continue reading →: Time and decreasing cellular divisionFor the longest time I had perfect eyesight—for more than 40 years, in fact, it was better than perfect. Throughout my life my vision has been regularly clocked at 20/15. So where “perfect” 20/20 vision means that a person can see what a person with normal eyesight should be able…
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Continue reading →: A poem and a public service announcement
Hello. It has been some time. I’m hoping to start writing again soon. I have been distracted, exhausted, and any number of other words that end in ted. There are thousands of these words. Two days ago a black-capped chickadee flew into a window over my back entryway and dropped…
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Continue reading →: The Disappointment Continuum: Finding Hope in Everyday LifeIt’s July 23 and I haven’t written for a month. All motivation, gone. Wallowing in the why bother. Life is nasty, brutish, and actually seemingly quite long at this point. And the world is a disaster, a disappointment. People are disappointing. They never seem to do what you want or…
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Continue reading →: It can be hard to leave the house
Where do you go for the positive things? Because it can be hard to leave your house, to go out into the world. Everywhere you’re confronted with, if not outright horror, then sadness, and defeat at the overwhelming scope of human challenges, of challenges to our humanity. It’s no better…
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Continue reading →: I attended my first protest ever*Published at Minnpost on June 23. Last weekend (June 14) I went to my first protest ever, the “No Kings” event at the St. Paul Capitol (Minnesota), where more than 20,000 gathered as part of nationwide protests. It took me 47 years to go to my first protest, a fitting…
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Continue reading →: Embracing Self-Delusion: A Path to Creative SuccessIs a little self-delusion a good thing? Is a lot of self-delusion a better thing? I recently wrote something for The New Yorker, which is to say that I recently wrote something, sent it to The New Yorker, and received a rejection email. It has been so long since I’ve…
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Continue reading →: Artistic tendencies and the cork of delusionI feel like I’m withering. I need a creative project to set my mind or my body to. One I’ve been thinking about is that I have all these wine corks I’ve been saving up for six or more years. An entire silverware drawer jam packed with them, even though…
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Continue reading →: I am a potato with shoesI used to regularly walk an average of about 11,000 steps per day. This was before the pandemic. I had a Fitbit. Part of that average came from physically going to work at the University of Minnesota. I’d drive to work, and to avoid paying $5 for parking, I’d try…
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Continue reading →: Travel is a lot like a colonoscopy prepEver since I came back from traveling, I’ve been trying to get more involved in things. Whenever I return from a long trip, something like this happens. Travel is, if not a rebirth, then perhaps a cleanse, like a detox regimen or a colonoscopy prep. You end up making plans…
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Continue reading →: He was a ‘working man,’ whereas I am a typing manThe other day at about 6 in the evening I was returning home from a walk when I noticed a couple on the front sidewalk near the border of my and my neighbor’s yard. Unlocking my front door, I glanced over and thought I saw the man struggling to hold…
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Continue reading →: Until the Road Calls AgainMy reintegration into society has so far gone poorly. I am cold all the time now, trapped in the godforsaken midwest again, nothing alive inside to keep me warm. This is the land of the sun-eater, that huge and horrible beast who drags his knuckles across the frozen ground, sending…
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Continue reading →: Earth is like a Big GarageI’m currently at Cholla Campground, Tonto National Forest—billed as one of the largest solar-powered campgrounds in the United States. Since they don’t have electricity at the campsites, I’m not exactly sure what that means. All the bathroom lights are solar powered, I guess, and they have hot showers. But the…
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Continue reading →: 65 Nights in a Camper: The Truth About Small SpacesI’m coming up on 65 consecutive nights in the camper, and while I always leave my return open-ended, it seems like 60 days or so is the point each year where I start thinking about heading home. I miss seeing my friends, of course, and I miss the relative comfort…
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Continue reading →: We the People, but they the People tooOut of about 150 posts here in the last 2+ years, I’ve written about politics around 5 times, and I really don’t want this to become a primary space for that, if only for my own sanity, but also because I want readers to be able to take a break…
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Continue reading →: Big Sur and Death Valley, Nature’s Best ExfoliantHow do you catch up with documenting your travels and other experiences after you’ve taken a two week break from writing and life has gone on and therefore many experiences have come and gone is a question I’m not going to try to answer here but instead illustrate through a…
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Hi. I’m Adam Overland, a writer based in Minneapolis. These are the meanderings of my muddled mind. I’ve written humor columns for various print publications, so naturally that’s dead and here I am, waiting for the last gasp.
