If you’ve just discovered this site, welcome.
This space has been around for 15 years now. Like any long-running conversation, it has evolved over time.
You’ll find thousands of posts here. The more recent pieces are most likely to represent the way I see the world today. Some of the older essays represent earlier chapters of my thinking, my life and my attempts to make sense of things. I don’t think there’s anything from the past that I would completely disavow — insofar as disagreeing with the ideas — but there are plenty of cases in which I wrote in ways that don’t express the way I’d say something today.
If you’re wondering what most defines this site today — what themes and questions tend to run through my writing now — this page will help you find your footing.
Recurring themes
Over time, certain themes have become central to what I explore here. If any of these resonate with you, you may feel at home.
Meaning and inner life
Questions of identity, purpose, regret, self-awareness, contradiction, growth.
→ Explore essays about Meaning
Culture and the modern condition
Technology, media, social conditioning, collective habits, unexamined assumptions.
→ Explore essays about Culture
Relationships and human connection
Love, compatibility, loneliness, expectations, vulnerability, emotional risk.
→ Explore essays about Connections
Sanity and perspective
Reflections on cats, dogs, loyalty, honesty, and what they reveal about us.
→ Explore essays about Perspectives
Creativity and the creative life
Writing, filmmaking, fear, ambition, unfinished projects, the struggle to create meaningful work.
→ Explore essays about Creativity
Growth and healing
Psychology, family dysfunction, personal growth and traveling the path toward emotional health.
→ Explore essays about Healing
Invitation
If these themes resonate with you, you’re warmly invited to explore. You’re welcome to agree, disagree, reflect or linger.
Many readers return because something here articulates thoughts they’ve struggled to name — or asks questions they didn’t realize they were carrying with them. At times, I struggle to articulate something I’ve not yet fully understood, so you might sometimes see me sharpen a focus or change an emphasis over time.
I understand a lot more — about myself, about creation, about reality and about our culture — than I did 15 years ago. I have a stronger understanding today of my purpose in creating. I hope to connect with those whose minds and hearts resonate with the truth as I’ve come to understand it.
Either way, I’m glad you’re here.
David McElroy
Birmingham, Alabama USA
Planet Earth
davidmcelroy@mac.com