As far back as I can remember, movies have been my conduit to the world. They help me laugh, cry, and muddle through life. They help me process the enigmatic. I call this cimilarity.

I’ve worked in visual communications for about 30 years but movies have always been my “why”—as long as my work feels connected to movies, my soul breathes.

My ongoing “film school” is primarily 700 hours (and counting) of the Scriptnotes podcast. (Yes, I started from the beginning and this says something about my neurosis.) I almost borrowed $50K to get an MFA, but paying John and Craig a whopping $6 a month has been a better investment. It’s the best investment I’ve ever made in myself.

My day job is technical editing for a massive engineering services firm. I love the work because I collaborate with kind, cool, smart people on projects that actually make the world better—and because I work with words.

Emily is my only daughter and we have cimilar, connected brains—kind of like Lobot in The Empire Strikes Back. Em’s an “old soul” but she arrived shortly after her twin brother, Evan. Bonnie and Clyde have two younger brothers: Noah is in the Air Force and Ben is in college (that’s Ben and me in the photo above). Like movies, my kids make me smile every day.

I live in Grand Junction, Colorado, with my pretty wife. We like the desert and tacos. When I’m not writing, I enjoy vacuuming and reading about kleptocracy.

I write essays about cimilarity on Substack.