Throughout the year I read a lot of stories online, posting my favorites on Twitter and Facebook at the end of each month (or, more accurately, somewhere between the beginning and middle of the following month).

Here’s a year-end list of my picks, whittled down to the stories that stood out the most.

December
The Decade Comic Book Nerds Became Our Cultural Overlords by Alex Pappademas, GEN
Deep-Sea Mining and the Race to the Bottom of the Ocean by Wil S. Hylton, The Atlantic
Alienated, Alone And Angry: What The Digital Revolution Really Did To Us by Joseph Bernstein, BuzzFeed

November
We Are Living in Hideo Kojima’s Dystopian Nightmare. Can He Save Us? by Gene Park, Washington Post

October
He Never Intended To Become A Political Dissident, But Then He Started Beating Up Tai Chi Masters by Lauren Teixeira, Deadspin
The Glass Floor is Keeping America’s Richest Idiots at the Top by Michael Hobbes, HuffPost
Bong Joon-ho is Weaponizing the Blockbuster by Inkoo Kang, Slate
True Ghost Story by Tim Kreider, Human Parts

September
Donald Trump Is Not Going To Let This Hurricane Thing Go by David Roth, Deadspin
Malcolm Gladwell Reaches His Tipping Point by Andrew Ferguson, The Atlantic

August
The Anthropocene is a Joke by Peter Brannen, The Atlantic
The Adults In The Room by Megan Greenwell, Deadspin
Dear Gun-Rights Advocates: Hey, Congratulations! by Tim Kreider, GEN

July
Manly Wedding Rings for Tough Guys Who are Dudes by Dan Brooks, The Outline
I Was a Fast-Food Worker. Let Me Tell You About Burnout by Emily Guendelsberger, Vox
An Epidemic of Disbelief by Barbara Bradley Hagerty, The Atlantic

June
Why Should Immigrants Respect Our Borders? The West Never Respected Theirs by Suketu Mehta, The New York Times
The Man Who Was Upset by David Roth, The New Republic
Redemption Songs by Krish Raghav, Topic Magazine

May
Teenage Pricks by Alex Pareene, The Baffler
The Night the Lights Went Out by Drew Magary, Deadspin
The Pink by Andrea Long Chu, n+1

April
I Get One Last Lent With My Mami. I’m Using it to Learn Our Family’s Capirotada Recipe by Gustavo Arellano, LA Times
They Don’t Make ‘Em Like They Used To by Albert Burneko, Deadspin
Why We Spend Our Brief Lives Indoors, Alone, and Typing by Tim Kreider, Medium

March
The Making of the Fox News White House by Jane Mayer, The New Yorker
As pigs await slaughter, strangers offer water, love, and comfort to the doomed by Gustavo Arellano, LA Times
After the Tsunami by Matthew Komatsu, Longreads
Psycho Analysis by Andrea Long Chu, Bookforum

February
Student Debt is Dragging a Whole Generation Down by Anne Helen Petersen, Buzzfeed News
What the Crow Knows by Ross Andersen, The Atlantic
The Trauma Floor by Casey Newton, The Verge

January
Impeach Donald Trump by Yoni Appelbaum, The Atlantic
You Can’t Get There From Here by David Roth, Deadspin
The Secrets of Lyndon Johnson’s Archives by Robert Caro, The New Yorker

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I was going to say that 2019 was weird, but I’m getting the feeling that every year from here on out will be weird in distinct yet similar ways.

This past year was one of the most stressful and multiply frustrating ones ever. At the same time, it was easily my most professionally successful year. I wrote the best, most diverse work of my career thus far — which I suppose isn’t saying much given the fact I’ve only been doing this for five years but at least I’m moving in the right direction — and wrote for more publications than any other year.

As always, all those words would have been relegated to a blog or stuck ricocheting around in my head if it weren’t for the editors who helped me and the readers who validated their help.

So without further ado, here are Some Things I Wrote in 2019.

Essays

Basketball Taught Me How To Live
Human Parts, July
–An essay about basketball, the impermanence of youth, death, and my crappy ankles.

The Weight of Departure
Talking Writing, September
–An essay about tropical storms, illness, and the tension between moving on and leaving behind.

From K-pop to HI-Pop
Ka Wai Ola, October
–An essay about what the Hawaiian music industry can and shouldn’t learn from the success of K-pop.

Climate Change is Sabotaging the World’s Most Dangerous Canoe Race
GEN, November
–An essay about how climate change is affecting the Molokaʻi Hoe.

Away Games
The Under Review, December
–An essay about life and basketball in Korea, and what it means to be home.

Sherdog Column

Man, Myth, Legend
February
–On Cain Velasquez and the necessity of believing in your own delusions.

Owning the Narrative
March
–On how commentators affect our perception of fights, and how “moving forward” and “Octagon control” are empty criteria for scoring fights.

Words of War
April
–On how the Conor McGregor-Khabib Nurmagomedov beef exceeded the ordinary ugliness of promotional trash talk.

It Is What It Is, and It Is Beautiful
April
–On how the ugliness of the sport can sometimes be equalled by the beauty to which it is capable of ascending.

13 Ways of Looking at Fighting In One Week
April
–Probably my favorite column of the year, where I take a page from Wallace Stevens to look at how ridiculous MMA is.

MMA’s End Game
April
–On the complicated nature of deciding when to end a career.

Following Fear
May
–On the role of fear in fighting, and how it fuels some and leads others to self-destruct.

Cutting Losses By Cutting Winners
May
–On the contradictory messages the UFC sends to fighters about winning.

Why Do We Interview Fighters?
August
–On why most fighter interviews are pointless.

Cub Swanson and the Moment He Needed
October
–On how Cub Swanson, who was often on the losing end of other fighters’ big career moments, finally had a big moment of his own.

If you enjoyed this, I did the same thing the last few years.
Some Things I Wrote in 2018
Some Things I Wrote in 2017
Some Things I Wrote in 2016

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