This is part of a series of posts about people from whom I am learning:

Dammit, Rob Donoghue, stop writing so much, so fast, so well. With compossible confidence born of reason and a deep capacity to wonder out loud, he explores gaming topics in text that I only manage to daydream about. It seems like every day he is on to some new, engaging topic that cracks open the shell of gaming and exposes new workings inside. Sometimes this is deeply frustrating — as when he writes about things that I planned to write about, beating me to the field and leaving me obsolete — but always this is inspirational. I must learn his confidence for wondering out loud, for ignoring the assholic commentators, and for thinking ahead without fear of going too far, too fast.

This is part of a series of posts about people from whom I am learning:

Is anyone more generous with his own hard-earned wisdom than Fred Hicks? If I was half as smart as Fred, I still might not be wise enough to share without fear the lessons I’d learned with the world, as Fred does. He has scouted the territory, he has hunted the wild game there, and he has brought back maps and tales not just of his successes but of his setbacks. Would that I was savvy enough to make use of more than slivers of the insight Fred shares with us online. More than that, Fred seeks to embrace what’s good in whatever he finds waiting for him in life. He doesn’t dwell on what’s ugly, and somehow in doing so he multiplies what’s good. I strive to work as hard, with as big a smile on my face, as Fred Hicks does.

This is part of a series of posts about people from whom I am learning:

Somehow, Zach North is doing it all. He’s a lawyer, at that age when TV characters who are lawyers seem too young to be lawyers. He’s a budding novelist. He’s an avid gamer. How does he find the mental wherewithal for all this? He has the rare capacity to blend a law student’s discipline with a theater major’s passion — duty with creativity — without scuffing either in the process. Best of all, though, he has a cool humility that only makes him smarter — have I ever seen someone so quick to admit what he doesn’t know, and so quick to fill in the gaps? I’d be wise to steal that bit.

This is part of a series of posts about people from whom I am learning:

When I was young, I think I may have been smarter than I am now. For sure, I thought I was smarter then than I do now. Zack Walters and Lisa Rhoden are definitely smarter now than I was then. They’re young people, but curious, well informed, and unafraid to seek out information when they sense a gap in their knowledge. They stand on the nerd scale, balanced between gamerdom and readerdom, a foot on each pan. One cooks, the other bakes. They have a passion for cocktails that I had at their age, but have since forgotten. Which reminds me: being intelligent doesn’t just mean accumulating information, but keeping up with what, and who, is next.

This is part of a series of posts about people from whom I am learning:

Erin Grant is a bibliovore. I don’t know how she does it. I picture her tearing the pages out of books, wadding them up, and shoving them into her head through a port in the back. But of course she’s aghast at the idea of hurting books so. I wish I read as she does, with quick savvy and a myriad of colliding tastes. Where I savor and pretentiously slosh sips around in my mouth, she opens books for quick dips and hearty gulps, without losing any of the flavor, it seems. From Erin I’m learning to read without ritual, to just read, to read more, to read faster, to always be reading. And still I cannot keep up.