About Damaged at Best

I’m Just James.

I’m not a therapist, relationship expert, philosopher, life coach, or particularly enlightened human being.

I’m a guy who’s spent a lot of time trying to understand why people—including myself—do the shit we do.

That has taken me through relationships, loss, childhood, philosophy, psychology, intimacy, grief, bad decisions, good books, and more than a few occasions where I was absolutely convinced I was right and later discovered things were considerably more complicated.

Damaged at Best is where I write about that.

Sometimes Marcus Aurelius will show up. Sometimes Daniel Dennett, Erich Fromm, David Whyte, Christopher Hitchens, or somebody else who made me stop and think.

Sometimes it’ll just be something somebody said that pissed me off enough to think about it for three days.

I’m not interested in telling you how to live.

I’m interested in asking whether some of the shit we’ve been told about how we’re supposed to live actually makes sense.

Relationships. Philosophy. Intimacy. Childhood. Technology. Grief. Sex. Alcohol. Family. Aging. Emotional intelligence. The internet. The stories we tell ourselves. And whatever else seems worth talking about.

Sometimes I’ll have an answer.

Sometimes I’ll change my mind.

And sometimes:

I don’t fucking know.

Apparently that’s allowed here.

— Just James

A note about personal stories

Essays on Damaged at Best may draw from lived experiences. Names, locations, occupations, timelines, and other identifying details may be changed, omitted, or combined to protect the privacy of the people involved.

The point isn’t identifying the people who happened to be there.

It’s what happened, what I thought about it, and the questions it left behind.

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