“I’m goin’ to Chicago.” I had just said these words to my wife with an almost giddy certainty as we watched history play out in the washed out images on the bar’s projector screen. We lived a thousand miles away and could not afford the time off work or the gas to get there. None of that mattered. The Cubs were five outs shy of winning the National League pennant and reaching the World Series for the first time in living memory of all but one member of my family. Their first since the invention of the microwave oven, their first since the integration of the game. Decades of loyalty to these lovable losers were about to pay off. It was going to happen. It was inevitable. Things, it seemed, would finally be made right at Wrigley. That was 13 years ago.

I did not see the wreck. I only heard it— steel and skin on asphalt followed by a terror-stricken shriek. When I turned and hurried back up the path I found my daughter, my eight year old child, standing over her pink and white bicycle spitting mouthfuls of blood on the ground.

It was right about the time I broke the third commandment that I heard the word of God in the distance. It came echoing through the pines on a misty Sunday morning in a soft South Carolina drawl. “Hunger not for the things of this world, for they are fleeting,” the voice said, “hunger instead after righteousness.”

Except I did hunger for the things of this world. Terribly. I hungered mostly for the granola bar pinched between my fingers and still sealed in a wrapper I could not tear. I was more than 40 miles into the bike leg of the Augusta Ironman 70.3 triathlon (1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, 13.1 mile run) when my stomach began to gnarl and moan. And now, my sweaty hands slipped uselessly on the cellophane, the only thing that stood between my lips and my lunch. I struggled to focus on the road ahead while wrestling with the wrapper and praying I wouldn’t drop the only food I brought with me onto the pavement. Sustenance so near; so absurdly far. Hunger can turn even the the most abstemious person into an irritable prick, but hunger when you’re holding the very thing you crave and yet cannot have, that invites a rare kind of rage.

“God. DAMMIT,” I barked.

In the rising heat of an Orlando Sunday morning 49 bodies lay cold on a nightclub dancefloor. With every worried mother’s call, every desperate sister’s text, a cacophony of ringtones and notifications buzzed in the stillness. The calls just went to voicemail. The texts would go unanswered. And while the FBI and OPD sifted through the aftermath of a massacre the country awoke to chilling headlines.

We’ve been here before though, haven’t we? Surely this is old hat by now, a yellowed script so often read we no longer need the cues. First is the offering of thoughts and prayers to the families and loved ones. Next, a show of solidarity in ceremonial moments of silence. And then, do exactly nothing.

Ten years ago I buried a time capsule. I put 24 samples into a black canister and hid it away for a decade. It was an accident.

Generally “year end retrospective” and “best of” lists are published before the ball drops, and midnight choruses of Auld Lang Syne rise drunkenly in the streets, but, well, I wasn’t quite ready to look back during the final days of December. With that in mind I am going to leave the light on in 2015 a moment longer and share my 10 favorite discoveries from the year that was — 5 books, 5 albums in no particular order.

Forget your resolution; set a goal. I know the temptation — we are turning the page to a new year, and the time feels right to resolve to change something about yourself and in turn your life. You know you should eat healthier, drink less, exercise more. Maybe now, maybe this time, your resolution will take. After all, you are a year older and more mature, better able to control your impulses. Maybe this year will be different. Except no, it won’t.

The field of a chessboard is divided evenly into 64 squares, and on that 8x8 grid the 32 pieces are mathematically capable of bearing out more unique games than there are atoms in the observable universe. The first time I heard this I scoffed at it. Considering that just one average grain of sand alone contains 50 quintillion atoms (that’s a 50 followed by 12 zeros) the idea that a handful of pawns and some miniature royalty are going to play through enough different sequences to outnumber the atomic totals strewn across 14 billion light years is unthinkable. On its surface it seems like a preposterous claim hardly worth serious consideration- that is until one seriously considers it.

I have a Confederate ten dollar bill. It is neatly framed in a shadow box and sitting on a book shelf in our home office. Among the imagery is a cavalry artillery unit pulling cannons presumably into battle. A portrait of Robert M. T. Hunter, Secretary of State for the Confederacy, looks out expressionless from the lower right corner as though he knows how this all will end. It was given to me by my father and to him by his father before.