Archive • Mixed Media with Mikkel • Buttondown

I am trying to find optimism everywhere.

Every Few Years, I End Up Rediscovering Livestreaming

2010 It is the spring semester of freshman year. I am not officially a member of WU-SLam’s Performance Crew, but I have attended all of their events in the...

Hey Clay, What If You Didn't (Use ChatGPT As a Life Coach)?

Prelude I was at a tech conference from June 2 to June 4. I have been working as a technical writer for eleven some years as of Memorial Day, and this was...

acausal damages

Ambient Train Noises as a Writer Writes

Written May 23, 2025, from 8:45-9:00AM CT (give or take 18 seconds) I am currently on a train to Kansas City right now. I am currently doing a weird...

survival at what cost

Matching Mixed Media - Compassion, Competency, and Community as Highlighted by Noah Wyle's Recent Corpus

At the start of the month, my therapist suggested that I do a Values Sort. The activity happens in four stages. The first stage is a simple binary quiz, a...

Yet Another Exercise in Writing Taxonomies

The natural six month cadence of my software documentation cycle is currently on its down swing. This means that my creative free energy is currently...

Introspection 202: How Different Forms Informed Me

There are two ways I can frame this post. 1) Nothing exists sans context. 2) I am a successive summation of everything that has happened and will happen....

shimmering As I mentioned on Tuesday, been thinking a lot about how my relationship with slam poetry recently including the phrase “old text messages read...

May We Continue Trying Things

SCRIPT: Welcome back to the Mixed Media with Mikkel YouTube channel, which right now vaguely resembles a cooking blog given that I’m dedicating this week’s...

Matching Mixed Media - Infinity Train & The Good Place

What does it mean to become a better person? Unsurprisingly, this is a question that I frequently ask myself. And perhaps also unsurprisingly, approximately...

In Which We Attempt to Build a Foundation for a Musical

Today, we're going to do a thought experiment. We're going to break down a musical book. I have never broken a musical book before. I also do not know if...

Idle Hands & Other Metaphors For Doing "Nothing"

I started “going to therapy recently, which also meant I had to do an intake session to start therapy recently which involves summarizing your life in not so...

liminal, as in flux The predecessor of paraluman was just the #liminalspacesofthemidwest on Instagram, which is either a fundamentally terrible or...

Prologue This last weekend, I was in New York City for the second annual Crossword Con, run by one of my dear friends, Brooke. She needs no introduction...

reply back at your earliest convenience

The Fool This April Is Me (Trying to Make Vegan Sugar Cookies)

The following text is the initial draft of my “script.” Welcome to this week's Mixed Media with Mikkel. Today we are making vegan brown sugar cookies. Why...

Matching Mixed Media - The Brothers Vonnegut (Nonfiction novel, 2015) and Twisters (Fiction film, 2024)

We are who we are because of a combination of both of circumstances and our consequences. Example It is 2016. Maybe 2017. Memory is a faulty thing. I am in...

If There Is One Thing Generative AI Has Been Good For, It's Convincing Me It's Okay to Try Making Art

I keep a running list of any article or post lamenting about the current state of Generative AI in my private discord. It’s a thread I’ve been running since...

The Concept of Time and I Go Way Back

A Somewhat Complete Oral History of This Relationship

A Completed Workbook of 5 Tongue-in-cheek Game Writing Exercises

All Writing Is Not Made Equal.

February 28, 2025

Matching Mixed Media - Supergiant's Hades Series / Netflix's Kaos / Hadestown

February 25, 2025

February's Matching

February 21, 2025

closed captioning

So I Watched a Musical About Corn This Weekend

February 18, 2025

And also about a Waitress.

February 14, 2025

Assorted Plaques from My Dope Line Mausoleum

February 11, 2025

Here's a guided tour of words that insist on bouncing around in head.

February 7, 2025

A candi(e)d conversation

The Convention Reinvention of Self Occassionally Requires A Soft Reboot

February 4, 2025

Hello friends. You may have noticed that Mixed Media with Mikkel has migrated off of Substack and you're now getting your weekly dose of Tuesday pop culture...

January 31, 2025

Matching Mixed Media - 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim & This is How You You Lose the Time War

January 28, 2025

January's Pairing

The Theseus Thesis

January 21, 2025

If a piece is only completed when you stop working on it, what happens if you never stop working on it?

January 17, 2025

anatomically incorrect

So I Opened a Letterboxd

January 14, 2025

A.K.A. Why do we insist on reinventing the wheel when we have a perfectly good wheel?

January 10, 2025

biblically accurate graffiti

Reset On The Count of Four

January 7, 2025

feat. box breathing

January 3, 2025

December 31, 2024

All Resolutions Are Arbitrary To Begin With, But There Is Still Power In Them

December 31, 2024

And you probably weren't expecting a sequel so soon.