Narrative-first, evidence-driven

I live in Minneapolis. I watched events unfold here that felt like power without guardrails, people getting hurt, rights feeling negotiable, and the temperature rising fast.

What shook me most wasn't just what I was seeing. It was seeing family and friends, people I know as decent, loving humans, cheering it on.

That's the part that messes with your head.

Because now you're not just arguing policy. You're trying to reconcile:

• "I love this person."
• "I think this is wrong."
• "How are we watching the same movie and describing different plots?"

I got angry. I couldn't sleep. I could feel myself drifting toward bad choices: saying the cutting thing, posting the self-righteous thing, escalating because escalation felt... satisfying. (My inner toddler has strong opinions and a Wi-Fi connection.)

So I did what my faith and recovery tools have trained me to do: pause and tell the truth about what's happening inside me.

• What am I feeling?
• Why am I feeling it?
• What's real, and what's my fear filling in?
• What's my part?
• What can I do that doesn't make things worse?

That's when two long-running problems snapped into focus:

1. We don't share reality anymore. Information bubbles can take people with similar values and land them on opposite sides of what each believes is obvious right and wrong.
2. Economic insecurity makes people easy to aim. When the monthly squeeze rises, housing, healthcare, childcare, debt, people get scared and angry. And scared, angry people are easier to manipulate.

So I made a commitment: first, stop making the problem worse. Don't shout across the canyon. Build a bridge. Second, do what I can to make things better, one small action at a time, consistently.

This project is the result: a home for my writing, and a framework I can use to stay grounded and useful.

There's a specific kind of panic that hits when you realize you might lose your steadiness.

Not "I'm mad." More like: I can feel my mind searching for a justification to do something I'll regret.

I was watching Minneapolis through a nervous system that felt overloaded:

• anger that wanted a target
• fear that wanted certainty
• grief that wanted to be witnessed
• betrayal that wanted to say, "How can you not see this?"

And then the harder piece: realizing that some of the people cheering were not cartoon villains. They were veterans. caregivers. neighbors. the ones who show up at funerals. the ones who've done genuinely brave, sacrificial things.

That cognitive dissonance is a trap. If you try to resolve it too fast, you reach for the simplest explanation: "They're evil," or "I'm crazy," or "Nothing matters," or "I need to go to war."

None of those explanations make you healthier. None of them make your community safer. They're just emotionally efficient. (Fast food for the soul. Tastes great, terrible later.)

So I slowed down and did the inventory:

• The anger was real, but it was also fuel. Fuel needs a stove and a recipe or it burns the house down.
• The fear was real, but fear also hallucinates futures and treats them like facts.
• The grief was real, and grief that isn't honored will come out sideways as contempt.

I didn't need a hot take. I needed a way to stay human and stay effective.

That's the beginning of E4E.

I decided my job wasn't to "win the internet."

My job was:

1. Don't feed the machine. No performative cruelty. No dopamine posting. No dunking. No "you're dead to me" energy. If I wouldn't say it to someone's face (with my kid watching), I won't say it online.
2. Build shared reality in small places. Not everyone. Not everywhere. Just where I actually have relationships. One conversation at a time. One honest question at a time. One boundary at a time.
3. Reduce the squeeze where I can. If insecurity makes people easier to manipulate, then lowering insecurity is civic work. Some of that is policy. Some is community. Some is just refusing to treat people as disposable.
4. Show up consistently. Not grand gestures. Repeatable actions. The boring kind. The kind that works. The kind you can still do on a Tuesday when you're tired.

And I started writing, first to steady myself, then to connect with others who are trying to stay steady too.

E4E is me turning that into a framework:

• so I don't reinvent the wheel every time I'm activated,
• so my thinking stays anchored to dignity and reality,
• and so readers can take one small action and keep going.