I was maybe fourteen when my cousin Tom and a friend rode their motorcycles from their home in New Jersey to Florida. They spent the night with us at our house in Yorktown, Virginia. I can still picture the bikes. Choppers. Front wheels stretched way out on long forks. Ape hanger handlebars. They were the coolest motorcycles I had ever seen in real life. And my cousin was riding one of them on what felt like an endless road trip. Decades later, after owning several motorcycle

On memory and the narratives that shape our lives For the past couple of years, I’ve been writing a novel with the working title Begin Again. But recently, I’ve started questioning what I call it. In What If the Truth Was Never the Point?, I wrote about how the novel itself seemed to be changing as I moved deeper into the second draft. Or perhaps more accurately, my understanding of it was changing. That’s the strange thing about stories. We tend to think we are shaping them,

A handwritten note from his young daughter slips out of an old passport after years of business travel, leading one father to reflect on emotional inheritance, fathers and sons, and the language of love men are often never taught to speak.

On writing, validation, and the quiet pull to be seen A few days into being on Substack, I realized something that should have been obvious. I’ve spent far too much time thinking about where to publish, and not enough time asking what I actually want from my writing. My website sits in a quiet corner of the internet. It never drew much attention. But the people who did find it felt like my people. Mostly people I knew, or people adjacent to them. Substack feels diffe

On validation and the quiet pull to be seen. I spent much of the last couple days setting up a Substack. That may not sound like much, but for a visually impaired guy like me, it was far from trivial. I have a pretty technical background, but these days even simple technology tasks can test my skills, not to mention my patience. Most interfaces are designed for how things look, not how they’re navigated. That makes sense. The vast majority of people don’t have vision issu

A reflection on the choices we make, the ones we avoid, and why life’s defining moments aren’t doors, but turnstiles.

How Meaning, Memory, and Belief Shape Our Lives The Chasms That Divide Us I am well into the second draft of my novel, and I have found something surprising happening. Something I did not expect. I spent three or four months planning the story before I ever wrote the first word. I developed the characters, built the plot, and laid out the structure. It was clear in my mind where the story was going before I typed the first word. Now, eighteen months into the project, the

Confronting the fragility of mind, body, and certainty. It was dinner time when Marilyn pulled our RV up in front of our home in Colorado. The sun was already slipping behind the foothills, and after eleven and a half hours on the road from Sweetwater, Texas, the familiar outline of our house felt almost unreal. It marked the end of a two-and-a-half-month, forty-five-hundred-mile adventure that had carried us from winter in Colorado to the warmth of Florida and back again.

Finding Home in What Persists. “Where are you from?” It’s a simple question, one most of us have heard a hundred times. For me, it’s one of the hardest to answer. There is no concrete answer, at least not in geographic terms. By the time I reached second grade, I had already lived in three states and one foreign country. That’s the life of a Navy family. Later, the Marine Corps and a career in high tech kept the motion going. By the time I was fifty, I had lived in mo

I love Colorado. I have since the first time I visited more than thirty years ago. I remember thinking, I’m going to come back here someday , and I did. After sixteen winters—five after I stopped skiing—it felt like time to try something different. Marilyn, who had spent even more winters there than I had, agreed. So we loaded up the RV and headed to Florida. Twenty-five hours of driving and four days later, we arrived in St. Augustine. I began this essay sitting inside t

An essay on neuroscience, perception, and memory, examining how the brain simulates experience, why certainty is fragile, and what that means for how we understand ourselves and others.

A reflective essay on identity, certainty, and change—why the self may be less solid than we think, even when we polish the mirror carefully.

A reflection on how dance lessons revealed the different ways my wife and I learn, and how shared effort brought us closer than the steps themselves.

A reflection on vision loss, identity, and technology’s promise to “fix” what might not be broken.

We call it productivity, but often it’s protection—the mind’s way of staying busy to avoid what stillness might reveal.

“The Spaces Between Us” explores how the meaning of family and belonging has shifted—from the intimate bonds that once defined our lives to the vast, impersonal systems that shape them today. Through personal reflection and insights from Yuval Noah Harari and Adam Grant, Chris Monnette asks what real connection still looks like in a connected but lonely world.

Reflections on aging, accepting what is while discovering what still can be, and finding purpose in life’s second act.

Creative Interchange is a process for building stronger relationships and better solutions through curiosity, respect, and shared understanding. Learn how this approach connects with emotional intelligence, Stephen Covey’s paradigms, and Malcolm Gladwell’s insights on memory.

On a backpacking trip in Colorado’s Indian Peaks, a friend taught me differential equations on a log, and I tried to capture the Milky Way with fading eyesight. I didn’t bring home a photo, but I rediscovered the quiet joy of learning and the freedom of what I still can do.

The Mind I Choose I like to think of myself as someone with an expansive perspective, someone who tries to stay open and curious. But I can catch myself shrinking fast, especially when it comes to politics. Over my life I’ve probably voted Republican more often than Democrat, but in recent elections I’ve moved much farther to the left. I’m quick to pin unflattering labels on today’s Republicans, dismissing their motives outright. Some of those criticisms may be fair at times.