Rerouting

The dangerous crossroad of life & livelihood

Feb 03, 2026

Hello, Intrepid Do-Gooders!

A couple eyars ago, on the way to my son’s neurology appointment, we stopped for lunch. When we got back on the road, my phone’s GPS went haywire. It took us down a strange back road and then got stuck rerouting us. Nothing I did seemed to be the “right” way. The gentle GPS voice kept repeating, with infinite patience, “rerouting.”

Fortunately, I’m older than GPS, and was able to navigate us to the freeway and head south towards Eugene without GPS assistance. Eventually, the GPS found us, and we made it to the appointment on time.

When you set up camp at the crossroads of life and livelihood, you have to accept a certain amount of messiness. You have to be ready for a lot of rerouting.

In July of last year, I started a new book project that I was very excited about. I just had no idea what it was going to be. By August, I had a direction and was off to the races. My next book was going to be a graphic novel with my Haiku Robot characters.

That book will still get made. But I’ve been rerouted.

In late July, I published an illustrated essay on Medium that would end up going very viral. To date, it’s the most popular and influential thing I’ve ever written. (Though, I don’t think it’s anywhere near my best work, so it goes.)

Unbeknownst to me, someone with a very large platform had found the essay and loved it. I was invited on their podcast last month, and my episode will go live sometime next month.

This is someone you have definitely heard of. I’m still reeling from the weirdness of it all.

The virality of that essay also meant I was able to stop doing any freelance copywriting work and continue to build my creative career as a poet-cartoonist and illustrated essayist.

Then, in October of last year, I found out my wife of almost 28 years quit her job and told me she no longer wanted to be married. In that moment, I stopped work on the Haiku Robot book, unable to find my way in the story. I paused the project, but I have not quit it.

Yesterday, on Medium, I published an essay about what my divorce means for my children and me going forward. You can read it without the paywall here.

Fortunately, I’ve been rerouted many times in life. I know how to find my way back.

Instead of the Haiku Robot book I was hoping to publish this quarter, I’m publishing a collection of my illustrated essays that includes my viral hit. The new book is called How to Create a Life You Love: Living a deeply human life.

How to Create a Life You Love is going to be live everywhere at the beginning of March in hardcover, paperback, and ebook. There will be an audiobook in June. Each essay has illustrations and poetry comics (mostly haiku comics) from me.

While I’m nervous about what the future will bring, I’m excited for this next book and the upcoming podcast appearance.

I do not plan on writing much about my divorce in public beyond what I’ve already said and linked to. It’s all still too painful, raw, and in process. However, the emotions of it have already been bleeding into my work since October, and will continue to do so because that is what it means to be a poet-cartoonist that lives at the intersection of life and livelihood.

Now, more than ever, I’m dedicated to discovering what it means to live a deeply human life. My next book shares what I’ve found so far, but I’m not done exploring.

Now, it’s time to get back to a certain dog, robot, and robin. They also have a story that needs to be told, and I think it has a lot to do with my humanity.