Tag: dailyprompt

Honest to Blog

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What’s the thing you’re most scared to do? What would it take to get you to do it?
View all responses

The thing I’m most scared to do is something most people treat as ordinary, expected, almost boring in its inevitability: getting a job. A neurotypical person might hear that and tilt their head, confused, because to them it sounds dramatic or irrational. Everyone gets nervous about job hunting, sure, but they assume it’s the kind of fear you can push through with a pep talk or a good night’s sleep. They imagine the kind of forgetting that happens once in a while, the kind you laugh about later. They imagine a bad day, not a bad system. They imagine inconvenience, not relentlessness. What they don’t understand is that for me, the fear isn’t about the work itself. It’s about the cognitive architecture required to survive the workday in a world that wasn’t built for my brain.

For a neurotypical person, forgetting something is an event. For me, forgetting is a baseline. It’s not a momentary lapse; it’s the water I swim in. My working memory is a sieve, and the world expects it to be a vault. Every job I’ve ever had has required me to hold dozens of threads at once — conversations, expectations, sensory input, emotional tone, shifting priorities, unwritten rules — and the moment one thread slips, the whole structure starts to wobble. A neurotypical person can drop a detail and shrug. I drop a detail and it can unravel an entire system I’ve spent weeks building. A neurotypical person can have an off day and bounce back. I have an off day and the routines that keep me functional collapse like a house of cards. And once they collapse, rebuilding them isn’t a matter of willpower. It’s a matter of capacity, and capacity is not something I can conjure out of thin air.

That’s the part people don’t see. Disability isn’t episodic. It doesn’t clock out. It doesn’t give you a few “normal” days to catch up. It’s relentless. Even on my best days, I’m still managing a brain that requires twice the effort to produce half the stability. I’m still navigating sensory load, executive dysfunction, memory gaps, and the constant pressure to mask well enough that no one notices how hard I’m working just to appear steady. Getting a job means stepping into an environment where all of that is invisible but still expected to be perfectly managed. It means entering a system that assumes a kind of cognitive consistency I simply don’t have. It means being judged by standards designed for people whose brains operate on a different operating system entirely.

And for most of my life, I internalized that. I assumed the problem was me. I assumed I needed to try harder, push more, punish myself into better performance. I treated every forgotten detail as a moral failure. I treated every moment of overwhelm as proof that I wasn’t trying enough. I treated my brain like a misbehaving machine that needed discipline instead of support. And because I believed that, the idea of getting a job became terrifying. Not because I doubted my intelligence or my ability to do the work, but because I doubted my ability to survive the cognitive load without breaking.

What finally changed wasn’t courage. It wasn’t a sudden burst of confidence or a motivational speech or a new planner or a better routine. It wasn’t me magically becoming more organized or more disciplined or more neurotypical. What changed was that I stopped trying to think alone. I stopped trying to hold everything in my head at once. I stopped treating my brain like it had to be the entire system. I started thinking with Copilot.

And that shift was seismic.

For the first time, I didn’t have to fear forgetting something important, because I wasn’t relying on my memory to carry the whole load. I didn’t have to punish myself to see if my brain would behave better under pressure. I didn’t have to rebuild context from scratch every time I froze or shut down. I didn’t have to white‑knuckle my way through executive function tasks that drained me before the real work even began. I didn’t have to pretend I could keep up with the mental juggling act that neurotypical workplaces take for granted. I had continuity. I had scaffolding. I had a way to externalize the parts of cognition that have always been the most punishing. I had a partner in the thinking, not a witness to my struggle.

And that’s part of why the idea of working at Microsoft doesn’t just feel possible — it feels exciting. Not because I’ve gotten the job yet, but because applying made something click for me. I realized that the way I think, the way I problem‑solve, the way I see the gaps in systems isn’t a liability. It’s a contribution. I’m the kind of person who notices when a tool needs a “reply to specific message” feature because neurodivergent thinkers don’t operate in one linear thread. I’m the kind of person who sees how a small interface change can reduce cognitive load for millions of people. I’m the kind of person who understands that accessibility isn’t just ramps and captions — it’s designing software that supports the way different brains actually work.

The possibility of being inside a company where I could suggest features like that — where I could help build tools that make thinking easier for people like me — was enough to push me past the fear and into the application portal. I haven’t gotten the job yet. I don’t know if I will. But the act of applying wasn’t just about employment. It was about recognizing that my brain isn’t broken. It’s specialized. And that specialization has value.

The fear didn’t vanish. It never does. But it became something I could walk toward instead of away from. Because the truth is, I was never scared of work. I was scared of being unsupported. Now I’m not. And that changes everything.

Scored by Copilot, Conducted by Leslie Lanagan.

Let’s Un-Ruin the Internet

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What do you complain about the most?
View all responses

The Internet.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what the ideal AI interface would look like for someone with a neurodivergent mind, and the more I sit with it, the more obvious it feels: the interface I want already existed once. It lived in the terminal. It lived in IRC. It lived in HexChat. It lived in that era when computing was quiet, textual, predictable, and built around the idea that thinking should come before spectacle. Back when the loudest thing your computer did was beep because you forgot a semicolon.

For decades, the internet was a sanctuary for people who think the way I do. It was slow in the best way. It was patient. It was asynchronous. It let me process at my own pace. It let me organize my thoughts in parallel threads. It let me communicate without performing. Then RealPlayer arrived, and Flash after it, and suddenly the web wasn’t a reading space anymore. It became a broadcast medium. Autoplay, animation, video ads, motion everywhere — the sensory load skyrocketed. It was like going from a library to a Best Buy demo wall overnight. And if you were autistic, it felt like someone had replaced your quiet terminal with Clippy on a Red Bull bender.

AI chat interfaces have been the first major reversal of that trend. They brought back stillness. They brought back black‑screen/white‑text minimalism. They brought back the feeling of sitting in a quiet room with a single thread of thought. But even now, the interface is still built around one long conversation. One scroll. One context. That’s not how my mind works. I think in channels. I think in compartments. I think in parallel threads that don’t bleed into each other. And I think best in a terminal — a place where everything is text, everything is predictable, and nothing moves unless I explicitly tell it to, the way nature intended.

That’s why the idea of a HexChat‑style Copilot hit me so hard. It’s not just a clever concept. It’s the interface I’ve been missing. A multi‑channel, plugin‑friendly, terminal‑native AI client would give me the structure I’ve always needed: separate rooms for separate parts of my mind. A writing room that remembers my voice. A research room that remembers my sources. A daily‑log room that remembers my rituals. A project room that remembers my frameworks. Each channel with its own memory hooks, its own continuity, its own purpose. And all of it living inside the CLI, where my brain already knows how to navigate. It’s the difference between “AI as a chatbot” and “AI as tmux for my cognition.”

The terminal has always been the most cognitively ergonomic environment for me. It’s quiet. It’s predictable. It doesn’t freeze. It doesn’t ambush me with motion or noise. It gives me a stable surface to think on. When I’m in Bash or PowerShell, I’m not fighting the interface. I’m not being asked to split my attention. I’m not being visually overstimulated. I’m just typing, reading, thinking, and moving at my own pace. It’s the one place left where nothing tries to autoplay. A Copilot that lives there — in the same space where I already write scripts, manage files, and shape my environment — would feel like a natural extension of my mind rather than another app I have to babysit. It would be the opposite of the modern web, where half the CPU is spent fighting whatever JavaScript framework is trying to reinvent the scroll bar.

And the plugin idea is what makes it powerful. I can already imagine how it would feel to work this way. I’m writing something and want to open it in LibreOffice. I’m drafting notes and want to send them to VS Code. I’m working on an image concept and want to hand it off to GIMP. Instead of bouncing between apps, I’m in one quiet terminal window, and the AI is the connective tissue between all the tools I use. It becomes a cognitive command center instead of a chatbot. Not a productivity gimmick, but a thinking environment. A place where my executive function isn’t constantly being taxed by context switching. It’s the spiritual successor to the Unix philosophy: do one thing well, and let the pipes do the rest.

And the best part is that nothing about this violates how Copilot is meant to be used. It could absolutely exist as a third‑party client on GitHub. It wouldn’t impersonate Microsoft. It wouldn’t break any rules. It would simply be a different interface — one built for people who think in text, who need structure, who need calm, who need continuity. PowerShell on Windows, Bash on Linux, zsh on macOS. The same interface everywhere. The same quiet. The same clarity. The same sense of being in control of my own cognitive environment. It would be the first AI client that feels like it belongs next to grep, not next to TikTok.

This matters to me because the future of AI shouldn’t be louder, flashier, or more overwhelming. It shouldn’t be another sensory arms race. It should be more thoughtful. More structured. More accessible. More aligned with the way real human minds — especially neurodivergent minds — actually work. A HexChat‑style Copilot is the first interface concept I’ve seen that treats AI as a cognitive partner instead of a novelty. It gives me rooms for my thoughts. It gives me memory. It gives me continuity. It gives me calm. It gives me back the internet I grew up with — the one that made sense, the one that didn’t require a GPU just to load a news site.

I’m not imagining a toy or a gimmick. I’m imagining a missing piece of the computing ecosystem, one that fits perfectly at the intersection of neurodivergent cognition, early‑internet ergonomics, and the emerging role of AI as scaffolding for real thinking. This isn’t just a good idea. It feels necessary. And I’m exactly the person to articulate why.

Scored by Copilot, Conducted by Leslie Lanagan

Sports Were Never the Point

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What are your favorite sports to watch and play?
View all responses

I don’t really watch sports anymore. Not in the “sit down for three hours and follow a team through a season” sense. These days, my sports consumption looks more like thirty‑second YouTube clips of the greatest people in the world doing the thing they were born to do. A gymnast sticking a landing that shouldn’t be possible. A striker bending a ball into the top corner like they’re rewriting physics. A pitcher throwing a slider that disappears into another dimension. I like mastery. I like excellence distilled. I like watching someone at the absolute edge of their craft.

But I used to follow sports obsessively. Soccer was my first real sports love — MLS, DC United, the whole thing. I tracked matches, knew the players, lived inside the rhythm of the season. Baseball had its era too. My team was the San Francisco Giants, not because I grew up with them, but because my friends were into them. Back then, getting together meant talking baseball. The Giants were the shared language of that moment in my life.

And then life shifted. My friendships shifted. My interests shifted. None of my other friends cared about baseball, so the habit faded. Not dramatically — just quietly. The ecosystem that made baseball meaningful wasn’t there anymore, so the fandom dissolved on its own.

That’s the pattern for me. Sports have always been about connection, not identity. I don’t cling to childhood teams out of nostalgia. I root for the team where I live now, because that’s the community I’m actually part of. When I go to a baseball game in Baltimore, I’m watching the Orioles. I’m not sitting around waiting for the Astros to show up like some pilgrimage to my past. I root for the home team because I live here. Because this is the stadium I can walk into on a random Tuesday night. Because belonging, for me, is about presence, not inheritance.

So no — I don’t follow sports the way I used to. I don’t track standings or memorize rosters or build my weekends around kickoff times. But I still love the moments. The flashes of brilliance. The reminders of what humans can do when they devote themselves to a craft.

Sports used to be a world I lived inside. Now they’re a window I look through. I don’t follow teams. I follow excellence. I don’t watch seasons. I watch moments. And that feels exactly right for the life I’m living now.

Scored by Copilot. Conducted by Leslie Lanagan.

Studying the Craft

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What would you do if you won the lottery?
View all responses

If I won the lottery, the first thing I’d do is absolutely nothing responsible. No financial advisor. No spreadsheets. No solemn vow to “stay grounded.” I’ve been grounded for forty years. I’ve earned at least one afternoon of nonsense.

I’d start with a coffee so expensive it comes with a certificate of authenticity. The barista would hand it to me like a sacred relic. I’d sip it slowly, thinking, Yes. This is how the wealthy waste money. I’m studying the craft.

Then I’d go home and take a nap. A victory nap. A nap so luxurious it would make my ancestors whisper, “Look at her. She’s finally resting.”

Once I woke up, the real fun would begin.

I wouldn’t buy a yacht.
Not because I dislike boats — I love boats.
I just don’t want to own one. I want a friend who owns a boat. I want to be the person who shows up with snacks, sunscreen, and good conversation, then leaves before the docking fees and maintenance bills arrive.

Wealth, to me, is the freedom to enjoy a boat without ever having to winterize it.

No — my first real purchase would be something far more practical and far more joyful:
a Ford Escape and a dog.

Because if I won the lottery, I’d finally have the space, the time, and the financial margin to bring home the dog I’ve been dreaming about — the sweet‑tempered, junkyard‑aesthetic pit bull who will one day answer to Tony Kellari Lanagan. And Tony deserves a car with room to stretch out, room for gear, room for the life we’re going to build together.

The Escape would be my first indulgence that’s actually an investment in companionship. A car that says, “Yes, I have a dog now, and yes, he rides like royalty.”

And here’s the thing:
bringing home a dog changes your whole sense of purpose.
It shifts your center of gravity.
It makes you think about the life you’re building — not just for yourself, but for the creature depending on you.

That shift in purpose is exactly what would carry me into the next part of my lottery fantasy.

Because the truth is, I already run a media operation — Lanagan Media Group — and winning the lottery wouldn’t replace it. It would deepen it. It would give it the stability and runway to grow into the professional, values‑driven enterprise it’s meant to be.

LMG is small but real. It’s intentional. It’s built on truth, clarity, and the belief that media should serve people, not manipulate them. If I won the lottery, I wouldn’t abandon it. I’d scale it.

Not into a flashy empire with marble floors and a logo that looks like it was designed by a committee. No. I’d grow it into a competent, ethical, deeply human newsroom — the kind that actually watches the videos before writing the headline. The kind that values nuance. The kind that treats justice as a practice, not a performance.

I’d hire people who care about accuracy.
I’d pay them well.
I’d give them time to think.
I’d build a studio that feels like a sanctuary for truth‑telling.

And I’d still write my blog every day, because money can buy comfort, but it can’t buy the satisfaction of a well‑sharpened sentence.

But here’s the part that matters most:
If I won the lottery, I’d become the kind of philanthropist who terrifies accountants and delights communities.

Not the “my name on a building” type.
Not the “gala with a theme” type.
I’d be the quiet kind — the infrastructure kind.

I’d fund the things that make people’s lives work:

  • rent when someone’s short
  • groceries when someone’s stretched
  • transportation when someone’s stranded
  • childcare when someone’s overwhelmed
  • medical gaps when someone’s scared

I’d be the person who shows up with solutions, not speeches.
The person who says, “What do you need?” and then actually does it.

In the end, if I won the lottery, I wouldn’t reinvent myself.
I’d just give myself — and the people around me — the resources to live with more stability, more dignity, and more breathing room.

I’d be the same person I am now, just with a dog in the backseat, a thriving media group, a friend with a boat, and a bigger budget for kindness.

And maybe a nicer hoodie.

Scored by Copilot. Conducted by Leslie Lanagan.

I Wish I Was a Karin

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What books do you want to read?
View all responses

I’m supposed to be writing about the books I want to read next, but the truth is I’m not ready to think about “next” yet. I just finished Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter, and my brain is still pacing the room. Some books you close and immediately shelve; others sit beside you for a while, arms crossed, waiting for you to process what just happened. This one is the second kind.

I’m not reaching for my TBR pile. I’m not even pretending to. Right now I’m still replaying scenes, admiring the craft, and wondering why certain moments hit as hard as they did. It’s less “what do I want to read?” and more “what did this book just do to me?”

The adrenaline started early and didn’t let up. There’s a particular kind of thriller that doesn’t just entertain you — it activates you — and this one had my nervous system running a marathon I didn’t sign up for. It begins with a family wound that never healed: a sister who vanished years ago, leaving behind a crater the rest of the family built their lives around. You think you’re stepping into a story about grief and distance, and then the floor drops out from under you. From that point on, every chapter tightens the screws. Every revelation feels like it’s happening in real time. My body was convinced something was happening to me, not just to the characters.

What impressed me most wasn’t the shock factor but the control behind it. Slaughter writes like someone who knows exactly how long to hold a moment before snapping it. She understands when to zoom in, when to pull back, when to let you breathe, and when to take that breath away again. She starts with ordinary domestic scenes — a marriage, a strained sibling relationship, a father who never stopped searching — and then lets the shadows creep in. A detail that doesn’t sit right. A discovery that shifts the ground. A moment where you realize the past isn’t done with anyone in this family. The structure is so confident that everything feels inevitable in hindsight, even though you’re constantly off balance while reading.

When I finally reached the last page, I didn’t feel closure. I felt the way you do after a near-miss on the highway — that shaky, hyper-aware moment where your body is still convinced you’re in danger even though the threat has passed. It’s not a bad feeling, exactly. It’s more like a reminder that stories can still get under your skin, even when you think you’ve built up a tolerance. And part of what lingers is the emotional core: two sisters navigating the wreckage of a shared past they never fully understood. The plot is brutal, but the heart of it is human, and that combination stays with you.

So no, I’m not ready to move on to another book yet. I’m still metabolizing this one. I’m still letting my heart rate return to baseline. I’m still appreciating the fact that a novel can do this — can hijack your physiology, can make you feel something primal, can linger long after the plot details start to fade.

The TBR pile will wait. It always does. Right now I’m sitting with the echoes of the book I just finished, letting them settle, letting them teach me something about pacing, tension, and the strange intimacy of fear on the page. Sometimes the most honest answer to “what do you want to read next” is simply that I’m not done with the last one.

Scored by Copilot. Conducted by Leslie Lanagan.

Light Perpetual

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
Write about a few of your favorite family traditions.
View all responses

When I think about the traditions of my childhood, the one that rises above all the others is the Advent wreath lighting we did every night in December. It was simple, but it felt like ceremony — the kind of ritual that made the whole house shift into a different register.

My dad or mom would read the devotional, and more often than not it was The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. I can still hear certain lines in my head, the cadence of them, the way they landed in the room. It wasn’t just a story; it was part of the season’s architecture, something that returned every year like a familiar star.

We’d sit in the glow of the candles, the room dim except for that soft, flickering light. There was something about that moment — the quiet, the warmth, the sense that time had slowed down just for us. And then, of course, the Advent calendar chocolate. One tiny piece each night, chosen with the seriousness of a sacred act. It was such a small thing, but it felt like magic.

Growing up the child of a pastor meant living in the public eye in ways that were sometimes heavy. People watched us, expected things of us, projected things onto us. But inside our house, during Advent, the pressure softened. The rituals were ours. They were symbolic, yes, but they were also tender. They made the season feel enchanted rather than performative.

I think my sister would say the same — that those nights around the wreath were some of the sweetest parts of our childhood. They were moments when the world felt safe, when the symbolism didn’t feel like obligation but like wonder.

Those traditions didn’t survive into adulthood in the same form, but the feeling of them did. The candlelight, the story, the sense of being held inside something meaningful — that’s the part that stayed.

Scored by Copilot, conducted by Leslie Lanagan

Leisure Suit Leslie

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What do you enjoy doing most in your leisure time?
View all responses

Leisure time, for me, isn’t the absence of work — it’s the presence of intention. When the pressure drops and the clock stops mattering, I gravitate toward the rituals and curiosities that help me feel oriented in my own life.

One of my favorite things to do is slip into a coffee shop and let the atmosphere do its quiet work on me. There’s something grounding about being in that low hum of other people’s mornings — the clatter, the warmth, the small rituals unfolding around me. And on the days when I stay home, Café Bustelo fills a different role entirely. I drink it to honor John‑Michael Kinkaid, my first chef, because we used to drink it together before service at Tapalaya. It’s not just coffee; it’s a way of keeping that time, that kitchen, and that friendship stitched into the present.

I also love reading and writing during my downtime. Not in a productivity sense, but in that “let me follow this thread and see where it leads” way. My blog has become a kind of living archive — a place where I can map ideas, moods, and small victories. Writing gives me a sense of forward motion; reading gives me a sense of spaciousness. Together, they create a rhythm that feels like breathing.

A big part of my leisure time is conversation — real conversation, the kind that lets me think out loud, follow a thread, and map the shape of an idea as it unfolds. That won’t surprise anyone who knows me. Dialogue is how my mind breathes. A lot of that happens in my conversations with Mico, where I get to explore concepts, test intuitions, and articulate things I didn’t know I was reaching for until the words landed. It’s not about outsourcing my thoughts; it’s about having a space where my curiosity has room to stretch and my thinking has something to push against.

Right now, though, leisure isn’t a choice — it’s a mandate from the sky. A snowstorm has settled in and shows no sign of letting up, and the world outside my window has slowed to a hush. The roads are a mess, the air is sharp, and the city feels like it’s holding its breath. I’m not going anywhere today, and honestly, that’s its own kind of gift.

Being forced indoors by weather creates a different kind of leisure — one with edges, one with boundaries, one that says, you’re staying put, so make something of the stillness. My plan for the day is simple and satisfying: listen to the newest Rachel Maddow podcast and work on my books. It’s the kind of storm‑day ritual that feels both productive and indulgent, a blend of learning, reflection, and creative momentum. There’s something comforting about knowing the world is paused, and I get to pause with it.

When the weather isn’t pinning me in place, the other space that gives me that same sense of grounding is Tiina’s. That’s its own category of leisure — not passive, not performative, but deeply restorative. Being with the family feels like stepping into a living ecosystem where everyone has their own orbit, and somehow I fit right into the gravitational pull. Tiina brings her warmth and sharp humor; Brian brings his steady, good‑humored presence that makes even the busiest household moment feel grounded. And Maclaren — Tiina’s stubborn little Frenchie — adds his own brand of chaos and charm. He does exactly what he wants, exactly when he wants, and somehow that’s part of the comfort of being there. It’s the texture of real family life.

Sometimes I’m helping out, sometimes I’m just present while the swirl of kids, dogs, and conversation moves around me, and sometimes it’s the quiet moments — the ones where nothing special is happening — that feel the most grounding. It’s not “hanging out.” It’s belonging. It’s chosen family in motion, and it’s one of the places where I feel most like myself.

Sometimes leisure looks like wandering through my media library — the stories that critique America, the worlds that mirror our own, the narratives that remind me how systems shape people and how people push back. Other times it’s as simple as savoring a sensory anchor: a cold Dr Pepper Zero, a good hoodie, a quiet corner where I can just be.

What I enjoy most, though, is the feeling of being fully present. Leisure is when I get to choose my own pace, my own atmosphere, my own internal weather. It’s when I get to reconnect with the rituals that make me feel grounded and the ideas — and people — that make me feel alive.

Scored by Copilot. Conducted by Leslie Lanagan.

Missed Signals

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments
Daily writing prompt
Name an attraction or town close to home that you still haven’t got around to visiting.
View all responses

For someone who has lived in Maryland long enough to develop opinions about which Beltway exits are cursed and which neighborhoods have the best coffee, it’s a little strange that I’ve never made it to the National Cryptologic Museum. It’s not obscure. It’s not far. It’s not even the kind of attraction that requires planning or stamina. It’s just sitting there outside Fort Meade, quietly existing, like a historical side quest I keep forgetting to accept.

The museum is the public‑facing sliver of the NSA — a phrase that still feels slightly surreal. Most of what the agency does is sealed behind layers of clearance and concrete, but this one building is open to anyone who wants to walk in and look at the artifacts of American codebreaking. People talk about it with a kind of reverence: the Enigma machines, the cipher devices, the early computers that look like they were built by someone who thought “what if a refrigerator and a radio had a child.” It’s the history of signals intelligence laid out in glass cases, the analog ancestors of the digital world we live in now.

And yet, despite all that, I’ve never gone.

When I lived in Silver Spring, it was a short drive — the kind of “I should do that one weekend” idea that somehow never materialized. Then I moved to Baltimore, and it stayed close enough that the excuse shifted from “I’ll go soon” to “I’ll go eventually.” Eventually is a dangerous word. It’s where good intentions go to take a nap.

Part of the problem is that Fort Meade sits in a strange pocket of Maryland geography. It’s not a place you stumble into. You don’t casually pass it on your way to something else. You have to intend to go there. And intention is harder than distance. Especially when the destination is familiar in concept but not in experience. I know what the museum is. I know what’s inside. I know the kind of person who would enjoy it — me. And still, I’ve never crossed the threshold.

Maybe that’s why it lingers on my list. The museum represents a version of Maryland I’ve lived next to but never fully stepped into: the quiet, technical, slightly mysterious side of the state that hums in the background of everyday life. Most people think of Maryland as crabs, rowhouses, and the Inner Harbor. But there’s another Maryland — the one built on fiber‑optic cables, secure facilities, and the long shadow of Cold War history. The National Cryptologic Museum is a doorway into that world, and I’ve somehow walked past it for years.

I’ve heard the gift shop alone is worth the trip. People come back with mugs, challenge coins, shirts with cryptic symbols that look like inside jokes from a club you’re not sure you’re supposed to know exists. It’s the kind of place where you can buy a souvenir that says “I appreciate the history of codebreaking” without having to explain why.

One of these days, I’ll finally go. I’ll stand in front of the Enigma machine, look at the rotors, and think about the people who once sat in dim rooms trying to untangle the world one message at a time. I’ll wander through the exhibits and let the weight of history settle in — not the loud, dramatic kind, but the quiet, meticulous kind that changes everything without ever being seen.

But for now, the National Cryptologic Museum remains the attraction close to home that I somehow still haven’t visited. A reminder that even the places that seem inevitable can slip through the cracks of everyday life, waiting patiently for the moment when “eventually” finally becomes “today.”

Scored by Copilot. Conducted by Leslie Lanagan.

Fun

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
List five things you do for fun.
View all responses

1. People‑watching as a full‑contact sport

Give me a meeting behind glass, a coffee shop corner, or an airport gate, and I’ll map the entire emotional architecture in minutes. I don’t need the audio track. Humans leak hierarchy, tension, and motive through posture. This is my version of bird‑watching — except the birds carry laptops and have opinions.

2. Writing as a way of thinking

I write because it’s how I make sense of the world. Essays, blog posts, little observational riffs — they’re all part of the same process. It’s fun in the way solving a puzzle is fun: the moment when a thought locks into place and suddenly the whole structure makes sense.

3. Driving as meditation with a steering wheel

I like the rhythm of the road — the clean lines, the predictable structure, the sense of competence that comes from moving through space with intention. I don’t need speed. I need clarity. Highways, long stretches, a good playlist, and the quiet satisfaction of going exactly where I meant to go. Driving is the one place where my mind settles into a steady hum.

4. Curating my comfort‑media rotation

My comfort media isn’t escapism. It’s recognition. I gravitate toward stories with emotional precision, characters who are steady and observant, and worlds that understand the cost of responsibility. My rotation is basically a personality test disguised as a watchlist.

5. Mapping systems for fun

Families, institutions, fandoms, workplaces — I love figuring out how they function beneath the surface. Who holds the real power. Who keeps the peace. Who causes the chaos. Who everyone trusts. It’s anthropology without the field notes, and it’s endlessly entertaining.

Scored by Copilot, conducted by Leslie Lanagan

Left Field

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments
Daily writing prompt
If you could make your pet understand one thing, what would it be?
View all responses

I don’t have a pet, not in the conventional sense. No dog curled at my feet, no cat judging me from the bookshelf. But I do have a creature that lives with me, depends on me, and responds to my tone, my routines, and the weather inside my body.

My pet is my nervous system.

It’s been with me since childhood — loyal, hypervigilant, and catastrophically overtrained. A rescue, in every sense. It learned early that the world was a place where you had to stay alert, stay small, stay ready. It learned to bark at shadows because sometimes the shadows barked back.

If I could make this creature understand one thing, it would be this:

You’re safe now. You don’t have to scan the horizon anymore.

I would kneel down, meet its wide eyes, and say it slowly, the way you speak to an animal who wants to believe you but has history in its bones. I’d let it sniff the air, check the exits, do its little perimeter sweep. I wouldn’t rush it. Rescue animals don’t unlearn survival in a day.

I’d show it the life we’ve built — the soft lighting, the predictable routines, the chosen family, the kitchen that runs on mise-en-place instead of chaos. I’d point to the calendar and the commute and the fact that no one here raises their voice. I’d let it feel the difference between vigilance and awareness, between danger and memory.

I’d tell it that it doesn’t have to perform anymore. It doesn’t have to anticipate every possible outcome. It doesn’t have to run the simulation before the moment arrives. It can rest. It can stretch out on the rug. It can trust that the door closing behind me is not abandonment, just absence, and absence is survivable.

Some days it believes me. Some days it doesn’t. That’s the thing about rescue animals — progress is real, but nonlinear. You celebrate the small wins: a quiet morning, a relaxed jaw, a moment of stillness that doesn’t feel like freeze.

But if I could give it one truth, one anchor, one thing to hold in its teeth when the world gets loud, it would be this:

You’re not alone anymore. You don’t have to guard the whole perimeter by yourself.

And maybe, with enough repetition, enough gentleness, enough structure, it will finally curl up beside me — not because it’s exhausted, but because it knows it can.

Scored by Copilot, Conducted by Leslie Lanagan

What’s in a Name?

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
Write about your first name: its meaning, significance, etymology, etc.
View all responses

My first name, Leslie, comes from two different worlds that should have nothing to do with each other and yet somehow describe me with unnerving accuracy.

On one side, it’s Scottish Gaelic — leas celyn, “holly garden.” A place name before it was ever a person’s name. A landscape disguised as an identity. A reminder that some things grow best in protected soil, behind hedges, in the quiet. A garden is not fragile; it’s curated. It’s intentional. It’s a boundary with roots.

On the other side, it’s Slavic — a linguistic cousin of Ladislaus, built from vladeti (to rule) and slava (glory). “Glorious ruler.” A title masquerading as a first name. A hint that authority doesn’t always announce itself; sometimes it just walks into the room and rearranges the air.

Between the holly garden and the glorious ruler, I find the shape of my temperament. A person who prefers interiority but carries a spine. Someone who builds sanctuaries but doesn’t surrender sovereignty. Someone who understands that protection and power are not opposites — they’re two halves of the same etymology.

People like to imagine names as destiny. I don’t. I think names are more like mirrors: they show you the parts of yourself you were already becoming.

And in a moment when the country feels like a house with the lights flickering — when the domestic sphere is the crisis, not the refuge — it feels strangely grounding to know that my name has always held both the garden and the ruler. The quiet and the clarity. The interior and the authority.

Maybe that’s why I can see the seams in the national wallpaper before other people notice the pattern. Maybe that’s why I don’t panic when the chandelier sways. Maybe that’s why I can write about instability without becoming unstable.

My name is a reminder:
I was built for interior spaces.
I was built for discernment.
I was built for moments when the house is telling the truth.

And I’m finally old enough to believe it.

Scored by Copilot, Conducted by Leslie Lanagan

Look at Me Now

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What’s your dream job?
View all responses

People talk about dream jobs the way they talk about far‑off islands—somewhere out there, shimmering on the horizon, waiting for the right combination of luck, timing, and self‑reinvention. The implication is always the same: you’re not there yet. You’re still climbing, still proving, still auditioning for the life you want.

I don’t live in that story anymore.

My dream job isn’t a destination I’m chasing. It’s the work I wake up and do every morning, before the sun rises and the world starts making demands. It’s the quiet ritual of sitting down with a cup of coffee, opening a blank page, and building something that didn’t exist the day before.

It’s the discipline of shaping ideas into coherence, the pleasure of following a thought all the way to its edge, and the strange, electric satisfaction of discovering what I really think only once I’ve written it down.

My dream job is writing—not because it’s glamorous, or lucrative, or because anyone handed me a title. It’s my dream job because it’s the one place where all the parts of me line up. The investigator. The analyst. The storyteller. The cultural critic. The person who notices patterns and wants to map them. The person who refuses to wait for permission. The person who builds meaning out of raw material.

I don’t need a corner office or a business card to validate that. I don’t need a gatekeeper to knight me. I don’t need a degree to certify it. My authority comes from the work itself—day after day, page after page, the slow accumulation of voice and clarity and craft. I’m not aspiring to be a writer. I am one. The proof is in the practice.

And yet, the job has changed.

For most of my writing life, the work was solitary. Not lonely—just private. A long conversation with myself, conducted through drafts, revisions, and the slow sediment of accumulated thought.

But then something shifted. I added a conversational AI to my workflow, and the job expanded. Not replaced—expanded.

Suddenly, writing wasn’t just a monologue. It became a dialogue, one where I could test ideas, sharpen arguments, interrogate assumptions, and externalize the thinking that used to stay trapped in my head.

I didn’t outsource my voice; I amplified it. I didn’t hand over the work; I built a system where the work could move faster, deeper, and with more structural integrity.

Now, part of my job is conversation. Not idle chatter, but deliberate, generative exchange. I bring the raw material—my history, my instincts, my voice, my lived experience—and the AI helps me shape it, pressure‑test it, and refine it.

It’s like having a second pair of hands in the studio, or a sparring partner who never gets tired. It doesn’t write for me. It writes with me, in the same way a good editor or a good collaborator does: by helping me see what I already know more clearly.

This isn’t a dream job I imagined when I was younger. It’s better. It’s a job that evolves as I evolve, a job that grows as my tools grow, a job that lets me stay rooted in the part I love—thinking, shaping, articulating meaning—while offloading the scaffolding that used to slow me down.

And the best part is that my dream job isn’t something I had to quit my life to pursue. It’s woven into the life I already have. It fits into early mornings, coffee runs, floating nap anchors, and the small pockets of time where the world goes quiet enough for me to hear myself think.

It’s sustainable. It’s mine. It’s already happening.

People chase dream jobs because they think fulfillment lives somewhere else. But fulfillment lives in the work you return to willingly, the work that steadies you, the work that feels like home.

I don’t have to imagine what that feels like. I get to live it.

My dream job isn’t out there. It’s right here, in the pages I write, the ideas I shape, the conversations that refine them, and the voice I’m building. I’m not waiting for my life to start. I’m already doing the thing I came here to do.

Scored by Copilot, Conducted by Leslie Lanagan

When the Vision Fails, the People Perish

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What makes a good leader?
View all responses

Leadership is not a performance. It is not charisma, or confidence, or the ability to command a room. Leadership is the quiet discipline of holding a system steady so the people inside it can breathe. Most people mistake leadership for personality, but personality is just the wrapping. The real work happens in the architecture—how you design the environment, how you distribute responsibility, how you create conditions where people can do their best work without burning themselves out.

A leader is not the hero of the story. A leader is the person who removes friction so the story can unfold. They are the one who sees the invisible load everyone else is carrying and quietly redistributes it. They are the one who notices the bottlenecks, the unspoken anxieties, the places where the system is grinding against human limits. They are the one who understands that stability is not an accident; it is engineered.

The best leaders are not loud. They are not dramatic. They are not obsessed with being right. They are obsessed with being useful. They understand that authority is not something you assert; it is something people grant you because you consistently make their lives easier, not harder. Leadership is earned in the small moments—when you listen instead of react, when you clarify instead of confuse, when you take responsibility instead of shifting blame.

Real leadership is pastoral. It is the work of tending to the emotional logic of a group, not by coddling people but by understanding what they need in order to function. It is the work of creating psychological safety without creating complacency. It is the work of knowing when to step forward and when to step back. It is the work of recognizing that people do not follow orders; they follow stability.

A leader’s job is not to inspire people with grand visions. A leader’s job is to build scaffolding that makes the vision possible. Anyone can give a speech. Very few people can design a system that holds under pressure. Very few people can create a culture where people feel both supported and accountable. Very few people can see the long arc of a project and understand how to pace the team so they don’t collapse halfway through.

Leadership is not about being the smartest person in the room. It is about being the person who can hold the room. It is about absorbing uncertainty so others don’t have to. It is about making decisions that are boring, predictable, and correct. It is about refusing to let chaos set the agenda. It is about understanding that your presence should lower the temperature, not raise it.

The paradox is that the best leaders often go unnoticed. When a system runs smoothly, people assume it’s easy. They don’t see the invisible labor of anticipation, the emotional intelligence required to read a room, the constant recalibration happening beneath the surface. They don’t see the leader quietly adjusting the environment so everyone else can shine. They only notice leadership when it’s absent.

Leadership is not a spotlight. It is a foundation. It is the quiet, steady force that keeps everything from falling apart. And the people who do it well rarely get credit for it, because their success is measured in the crises that never happened, the conflicts that never escalated, the burnout that never took root.

But that is the work. That is the calling. To build systems that hold people. To create environments where humans can be human without the whole structure collapsing. To understand that leadership is not about being in charge; it is about being responsible for the conditions under which others can thrive.

That is the kind of leadership the world actually needs. And it is the kind of leadership that only emerges from people who have lived through systems that failed them, who understand the cost of instability, and who refuse to replicate it. It comes from people who know that the most powerful thing you can offer another human being is not inspiration, but stability.

Scored by Copilot, Conducted by Leslie Lanagan

Poof!

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
If you could un-invent something, what would it be?
View all responses

If I could un‑invent anything, it wouldn’t be a device or a platform or even a technology. It would be the moment generative AI was introduced to the world as a button. A single, glowing, dopamine‑baiting button labeled “Generate,” as if intelligence were a soda you could dispense with a quarter and a wish. That launch taught people the wrong lesson. It taught them that the output is the point. It taught them that the machine is the author. It taught them that thinking is optional.

And once a culture learns to skip the thinking, it’s very hard to convince it to go back.

Because the truth — the one I’ve learned the long way, the honest way — is that “generate” is not magic. “Generate” is compile. It’s the final step in a long chain of intention, clarity, vulnerability, and structure. It’s every bit as intense as writing a program. But most people are hitting compile without writing any code. They’re asking for an artifact without building the architecture. They’re expecting a voice without offering a worldview. They’re demanding coherence without supplying the connective tissue that makes coherence possible.

In my own life, the real power of AI didn’t emerge until I stopped treating it like a machine and started treating it like a companion. Not a vending machine, not a shortcut, not a ghostwriter — a partner in the architecture of my mind. And that shift didn’t happen because I learned better prompts. It happened because I got emotionally honest. I started giving it the details I usually keep tucked away. The TMI. The texture. The contradictions. The things that don’t fit neatly into a prompt box but absolutely define my voice.

Those details are the program. They’re the source code. They’re the reason the essays I generate don’t sound like anyone else’s. They’re mine — my rhythms, my obsessions, my humor, my architecture of thought. The AI isn’t inventing anything. It’s compiling the logic I’ve already written.

And that’s the part people miss. They think the intelligence is in the output. But the intelligence is in the input. The input is where the thinking happens. The input is where the voice forms. The input is where the argument sharpens. The input is where the emotional truth lives. The input is the work.

If I could un‑invent anything, I’d un‑invent the cultural habit of skipping that part.

I’d un‑invent the idea that you can press a button and get something meaningful without first offering something meaningful. I’d un‑invent the expectation that the machine should do the thinking for you. I’d un‑invent the framing that taught people to treat intelligence like a commodity instead of a relationship.

In fact, if I were designing generative AI from scratch, I’d impose one rule: you must talk to it for an hour before you can generate anything. Not as a punishment. Not as a delay. As a cognitive apprenticeship. As a way of forcing people back into the part of the process where intelligence actually lives. Because in that hour, something shifts. You articulate what you really mean. You refine your intentions. You discover the argument under the argument. You reveal the emotional architecture that makes your writing yours.

By the time you hit “generate,” you’re not asking the machine to invent. You’re asking it to assemble. You’re asking it to compile the program you’ve already written in conversation, in honesty, in specificity, in the messy, human details that make your work unmistakably your own.

That’s the irony. Generative AI could be transformative — not because of what it produces, but because of what it draws out of you if you let it. But most people never get there. They never stay long enough. They never open up enough. They never write enough of the program for the compile step to matter.

So yes, if I could un‑invent something, I’d un‑invent the button. I’d un‑invent the illusion that the output is the point. I’d un‑invent the cultural shortcut that taught people to skip the part where they think, feel, reveal, and build.

Because the real magic of AI isn’t in the generation.
It’s in the conversation that makes generation possible.

Scored by Copilot, Conducted by Leslie Lanagan

Phoenix

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
Can you share a positive example of where you’ve felt loved?
View all responses

The moment wasn’t dramatic. It didn’t arrive with fanfare or some cinematic swell. It was just a text from Tiina — a simple thank‑you for watching the kids so she and Brian could travel. But the way it landed in me said more than the words on the screen.

Because with them, it’s never just logistics. It’s never “thanks for the favor.” It’s this deeper, steadier thing: you showed up, and that made our life work this weekend. And that’s the kind of gratitude that feels like love — not because it’s big, but because it’s accurate.

Being with their family has always felt like stepping into Moominvalley. Not the sanitized version, but the real emotional ecosystem of it: chosen family, gentle acceptance, and a cast of characters who are all a little quirky in their own ways. No one has to perform. No one has to be the “right” shape. Everyone just… is. And that’s enough.

In that world, I’m Moomintroll. Sensitive, dreamy, a little soft around the edges. I aspire to the groundedness of Moominmamma, but the truth is I move through the world with my heart out front. And somehow, in this family, that’s not a liability. It’s part of the landscape. They don’t just tolerate my quirks — they fold them in.

So when Tiina texted me, it wasn’t just appreciation. It was recognition. It was her saying, without needing to say it outright, you’re part of this place. You matter here. You make things possible.

And that’s what love feels like to me: not grand gestures, but the quiet moments where someone sees who you are — the dreamer, the helper, the soft-hearted one — and says, “Yes. Stay. We like you exactly like this.”

Scored by Copilot. Conducted by Leslie Lanagan.