The thoughtless petty crimes that influenced how I saw myself — When I worked at Starbucks, I loved opening the store at 5:00 in the morning. It meant I would get to set up the pastry display. I would save the cheese danishes for last. I’d tear the plastic covering the four danishes my manager ordered; I decoratively set three of…

Choking on carefully measured 8 oz fillet mignons — Twice a year, the insurance company I worked for would get all its salespeople together to receive bamboozling persuasion tricks, kiss the ground where our top performers walked on, and eat carefully measured and mass-produced fillets with steamed-to-cartoonish-depression lonely carrots. The sessions covered tactics working for other salespeople or allowed…

Or, as my daughter says, “Off with my father’s head.” — My daughter was pretending her animal figurines were lively dinosaurs roaring at each other. I sat beside her, and it felt contagious when I saw her enthusiastically roaring. I growled, and the sound surprised her and scared her. She screamed at me, and, unable to quickly determine whether I was…

When someone tells me they can make me rich, I ignore all red flags. — People don’t really want to be rich, I told myself as I looked around the empty conference room of this Sheraton in San Diego’s Seaport Village. The fact that the conference room was empty didn’t bother me. My mom and I were excited for the seminar to begin. We waited…

Medium Day: Essay Drafted Impromptu on Presentation — The bean industry has not always had it together as they do now. Now beans are waiting for you to scoop them out of barrels if you want them in bulk. …

I am a sucker for a get-rich-quick scheme — The stranger made a beeline toward my wife and me through the sea of Christmas shoppers drowning in the desperation to find the perfect last-minute gift in Walnut Creek’s open-air mall, Broadway Plaza. “Wow, you have an amazing smile!” He said. I strained my lids so my eyes didn’t roll…

Medium Day Presentation — Today is the day. One final benefit of having a structure to help you make sense of your stories is that you can use it to write when you don’t have that much time. …

I am lying about what I can do on my Medium Day keynote — It is weird to receive a voice message from one of the writers on Medium. Take Joe Duncan. I have had so many conversations with him, and when I do, I guess I look at his profile picture and create a voice for his message and avatar. Because of his…

(Video) Bombing, Recovering, and Winning — This story had a list of Buddha names in Sanskrit. You can see the list here in the essay version of the performance, The Hair Brushing Vortex, published by Thomas Gaudex at Scribe. Unfortunately, the video starts a little behind the…