Human First

I rebuilt the site this week so people meet the person before they meet the machinery. Why the writing is now called Just an Ordinary Tuesday, and what my mom taught me about the days nobody circles.

My daughter’s endometriosis diagnosis took two years. The average is four to twelve. We got lucky, and luck should not be a diagnostic pathway.

ADHD, artificial intelligence, and the quiet hours when everything in my head finally has somewhere to go.

I started with a woman in a red dress and a feeling I could not explain. Following her through three images taught me something about how I create.

What becoming a beer league goalie at midlife taught me about pressure, blame, showing up, and letting go.

Two photographs of my family taken sixteen years apart, and everything that happened in between them that I could never have planned for.

A week in Washington in rooms full of people who believe American healthcare can be worthy of the people it serves. Everyone there had a story.

I went to the conference as a health center CEO, and as a husband and father who watched two women I love lose years waiting to be believed.

People from very different parts of my life keep describing the same feeling. They share no politics or faith, and I want to help it grow anyway.

By Mike Baker People ask about AI all the time now. They ask artists. They ask writers. They ask musicians. They ask podcasters.

Author, speaker, podcast host, songwriter, AI-assisted artist, EndoDad advocate, and CEO of a community health center in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.

Women do not need permission to lead. Men need to stop standing in the doorway. On authority, credit, protection, belief, and real resources.

What to work out before you commission a piece: what it is really for, what you are asking someone to make, and what makes the answer good.

Memorial Day, a hockey net, a sore body convinced it had one more save left, and the ordinary joy most of us manage to miss almost entirely.

Fifty episodes in. On public ugliness, women's health, and the work of staying human when the middle is the hardest place left to keep standing.

We are wasting too much of what makes us human. The future gets better when we stop feeding division, stop fearing every tool, and start building with purpose.

Season 2 of Still Here, Still Trying starts now. If this is the first you are hearing of it, you are coming in at a genuinely good moment.

The future gets shaped by what we build, what we fund, what we normalize, and whether we choose fear or shared humanity. You can feel it already.

One night, five songs, and a whole lifetime in fifteen minutes. Just the hot tub, the stars, and this EP playing straight through with no phone.

Someone asks how you are doing and you hand back the version that keeps things moving. Doing good. Busy, but good. On the habit of being fine.