Skip to content
Wild Krumpos

Day

Thursday, January 1, 1998

6 entries

  1. Thursday, January 1, 1998 · Don Krumpos

    I remember driving, maybe 23 or 24, and stumbling onto NPR while turning the

    I remember driving, maybe 23 or 24, and stumbling onto NPR while turning the dial out of boredom. I expected news. I found ideas. Writers talking about the creative process. Historians explaining the logic of empire. Philosophers speaking calmly about…

  2. Thursday, January 1, 1998 · Don Krumpos

    Somewhere in my twenties — maybe when I was drowning in Star Wars toys, maybe

    Somewhere in my twenties — maybe when I was drowning in Star Wars toys, maybe when the credit cards started to rot through their limits — I realized something strange and simple: Walmart wasn’t neutral. None of it was. The…

  3. Thursday, January 1, 1998 · Don Krumpos

    I didn’t understand money growing up. Not really. We didn’t talk about it.

    I didn’t understand money growing up. Not really. We didn’t talk about it. We lived it. Then came the credit cards. At first they felt like permission. Then like oxygen. Then like quicksand. The moment I understood what debt really…

  4. Thursday, January 1, 1998 · Don Krumpos

    My twenties were an awakening — slow at first, then all at once.

    My twenties were an awakening — slow at first, then all at once. Art school cracked me open. NPR gave me language. Buddhism gave me a framework. Friends gave me the permission I never got from my childhood world. It…

  5. Thursday, January 1, 1998 · Don Krumpos

    Someone drew something beautiful.

    Someone drew something beautiful. Someone built a strange little art installation. Someone made a zine. Someone lived a life where curiosity wasn’t a deviation but a path. I saw people — real people — living lives shaped by ideas, craft,…

  6. Thursday, January 1, 1998 · Don Krumpos

    It was silly on the surface — a twenty-something working retail in a toy store.

    It was silly on the surface — a twenty-something working retail in a toy store. But that job saved me in small ways. It let me be surrounded by color and imagination at a time when my life felt gray.…