Author: Scott Knell

1 min read

What Game Are You Playing?

5 Minute Read

As Simon Sinek reminds us, the games we play can be either finite or infinite. But what happens when we lose track?

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Just Open a Vein

6 Minute Read

[For Sotir] Douglas Thayer, a beloved mentor of whom I have written more than once, held that no one, including his own spouse, ever wants to read what writers have to say about writing. “Writers should be read and not heard,” was how he put it. Doug, if heaven has eyes for this sort of thing, please forgive what you are about to read.

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When’s Your Train?

4 Minute Read

Remember that proverbial squirrel spinning its heart out inside the black box of anything that is mysteriously mobile? If Erwin Schrödinger was right, before looking under the lid, there’s an equal chance the mysterious power source is something else entirely.

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When’s Your Time?

3 Minute Read

Beginning seven hundred years ago, young people were apprenticed to a master until they could come into their own as skilled workers and contributors. Today, we use terms like ‘intern’ and ‘trainee’ to describe an apprentice system that prepares its graduates for positions of choice and accountability.

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When’s Your Tide?

4 Minute Read

If, as my mother taught me, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, from what fictional materials must the journey not taken be made?

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When’s Your Turn?

3 Minute Read

When leading a meeting or presentation, it’s never a bad idea to consider that your busy audience might have been tempted to skip it. To recapture their attention, prepare your remarks as if listeners were in the middle of the biggest crisis of their week and only you possess the information they need to get through it.

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When’s Your Truck?

3 Minute Read

When pondering the future, it might sometimes seem easier just to let the present take us there, no questions asked. Fortunately, if awkward, even painful, the world has a way of begging certain questions. And when it does, maybe we should think twice before choosing not to answer them.

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Say It Again, Sam

18 Minute Read

In which I follow up last month’s post by asking the question: Where’s Yours?

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Say the Change

14 Minute Read

In which I begin a weekly newsletter by asking the question: What’s Yours?

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If Memory Serves

9 Minute Read

Or How the Brain Makes Room for the Mind Like a Seurat painting, incremental change appears on the scene point by point. Trusting the big picture to take care of itself once our entire canvas has been thoughtfully dotted, we free our minds to focus on adding new colors.

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Breakfast Prayer with Daddy

12 Minute Read

Or the Problem of Ethics in the Dark I learned the story of Cain and Abel around the time my younger brother and I were expected to share our first bin of Legos. After my five-year-old brain worked out how I could possess his half of my inheritance without getting caught, I conceived a plan to eliminate both “Abel” and the all-seeing God who would surely question “Cain” after the deed was done.

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Outbroken

14 Minute Read

[For Karl] When the knell tolls, like a scatter of pebbles across this archipelago of human being, its resonant frequency finds its way into not just my heart but yours beating but a stone’s throw away.

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Bone on Bone

11 Minute Read

Thomas Aquinas argues for deliberate will. René Descartes thinks and therefore is. Celine Dion belts My Heart Will Go On. But sometimes, the body just does stuff.

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If on a Summer’s Eve a Writer

8 Minute Read

[For Mark] From a child, I would, on rare occasions, look at a thing and sense from it a timeless, ineffable outreach. “Look at me. Notice me. Remember me. You’ll wish you had.”

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Leapin’ Leopards!

8 Minute Read

Want to change your spots? Not until we see the past for the feral creature it is and, with trepidation, let it into our house, train it not to bite our guests, and give it its own dish will we reduce the odds its jaws will one day spring back upon our necks.

1 min read

Restoration

11 Minute Read

When I dug into the recursive transformation of one of my dad’s revisionist paintings, it occurred to me that when we care for it the way a painter revisits an old canvas, the past is liberated to leap forward into its own future.