Headthegong.com

Headthegong.com has been my main creative outlet since 2004. I started the website as a way to stay connected — to friends, to my deepest self, to that mysterious something that comes alive when I choose creativity over consumption and distraction. At this point, the site mainly features my blog, musical recordings, and podcast. If it’s all about anything, it’s about an ordinary person struggling to live a creative and meaningful life. Welcome, and thanks for stopping by.

Below are links to music that is particularly close to my heart. Isaac Dust is me, recording at home at my little green desk. The other artists are friends of mine who have encouraged me, inspired me, and shared their gifts with me through the years:

The Head The Gong Podcast is about the everyday struggles of an ordinary person trying to live a creative and meaningful life, with a special focus on the process of making music and writing. 

The Integral Health Resources Podcast is where I reflect on my more professional and academic interests, such as mental health, meditation, attention, and holistic approaches to wellbeing.

The Chamber Door is an outlet for me to think through broader societal and cultural matters. I’m fascinated by the dynamics that limit discourse and predispose one person to disagree with another. I strongly value critical thinking and pay particular attention to the confirmation bias created by echo chambers, filter bubbles, and algorithmically constructed media feeds. These inquiries are intended to clarify my own thinking, and any conclusions are open to revision in light of persuasive arguments and evidence.  

Integral Health is an approach to well-being/human flourishing that takes into account the multiple dimensions (e.g., physical, psychological, social, cultural) of our lives. Integral Health Resources started out as a portal on the HTG website through which I could explore my more academic and professional interests, including: the study of attention (e.g., meditation, the attention economy, the impact of digital technology); holistic approaches to self-knowledge (e.g., Eastern philosophy, Integral Psychology, Somatics); and critiques of mainstream approaches to mental health. Over the years, the Integral Health Resources portal grew so much that I moved its content to a separate website, and it stayed there for over a decade. My interests are always shifting, and I think the time has come for IHR to return to the mothership to rest in a state of suspended animation. I may revive, rebrand, or restructure the IHR content and/or spirit somewhere down the road.