What does it say when the societal response to mass violence is careless indifference? Mass shootings are met with concern but quickly…

I Five days ago, I stood in a sea of people as the lights went out and I lived a new experience. It was the first concert I had ever attended. Friday I went to my second. Man, what a week! My brother Hunter, my cousin Cody, and I saw Boston on Tuesday night at the Minnesota State Fair. Then Friday, at the same venue, it was the Steve Miller Band.

In the summertime, my favorite time of day is the last thirty or forty-five minutes before sunset. The sun's rays pour through the western windows, draping a stream of light across the kitchen floor and into the dining room. That's where the memories and the ghosts live. If you focus or bathe in the light with them, you might hear their story.

Summer in the city can be a magical place when you are in your early 20s. In my early 20s, I was living in a vibrant section of Minneapolis. There was an energy to it, and there was always something going on. One summer day, my friend Emily convinced me to make the short drive with her to St. Paul to attend the Grand Old Day Festival, an annual summer festival with live bands, plenty of beer, and food trucks.

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Were the 39 years before ADHD just a dream? When I was 30, I decided it was time to talk to a professional about ADHD. I had suspected for years that I might have it, but I had found shortcuts and ways to alter my life to work around it. That changed when I met my now wife. She was a high school teacher and interacted with students on a daily basis who had ADHD, and she was acutely aware of the signs.

Getting diagnosed with ADHD at 39 changed everything—and brought a flood of questions I wasn’t prepared for.

Led Zeppelin disbanded in 1980, the year before I was born. They had a couple of botched reunion shows during that decade, but the thought of a full tour with members of the original lineup seemed like a long shot. Now, here, June 12th, 1998, the biggest tour of the summer is in Minneapolis. Jimmy Page and Robert Plant have worked out their differences and have a new album out, their first together since the early '80s.

Dear 26, Your mind has changed…The obstacles you have lived with have become more pronounced as the years have passed. There are reasons for that, and you are just beginning to understand them fully. You will settle down, and you will find a steady routine. It is a calm pace to life that you dream about. You get married, get a steady(ish) job, you will own a home, and have dogs.

Dear 26, Your mind has changed...The obstacles you have lived with have become more pronounced as the years have passed. There are reasons for that, and you are just beginning to understand them fully. You will settle down, and you will find a steady routine. It is a calm pace to life that you dream about. You get married, get a steady(ish) job, you will own a home, and have dogs.

Dear 26, Are you ready for this? If somebody told you what you were getting into, would you do it? That’s how life, especially love, goes. That’s why it’s called “falling into love”; you’re walking along one day, not looking, and you fall into a hole. You don’t plan it out; it’s not a college degree or a career path. All the movies you’ve seen where someone tries to plan out their love life inevitably ends with leaving the person they have planned on being with and randomly bumping into someone on the street, and it happens.

What did I just witness? Was that the most incredible concert I’ve ever attended or a waste of two hours? And I mean two hours on the dot…

(Notes of a Vampire Weekend concert)

I'll be honest: I didn't think much about my job search for the first month or so of my layoff. I met with my career counselor once a week, went to a few networking events, and rewrote my resume. When I was laid off, my employer encouraged me to apply for a new position within the company. I figured that is what I would end up doing: relax and recharge for the length of my severance and then go back to the company I had been at.

For the first time in my working life, I was unemployed, and I didn't have the financial worry of how I was going to pay my bills. That was a relief, but initially, it didn't change how I viewed or thought about my situation. I had lost my job; yes, it was through company layoffs, but the reality of losing a job is embarrassing.

I awoke the morning after being laid off feeling comfortable. The day before, I had shared the news with a few close people to reassure them and, in the process, reassure myself that I was okay. And I knew that I was okay, but I had been down this road before, and it had scarred me. I had got married in my late 20s, and those early years of marriage were a bit of a financial balancing act.