A Kings

  • The Last Generation of Mad, Wild, and Free Kids

    Growing up, back in my day, when you wanted to talk to a friend, you didn’t send a text or drop a WhatsApp message—you got on your bike, pedaled furiously through the streets, and knocked on their front door like a proper human being. And if they weren’t home? Tough. You’d find some other bunch…

    AKings

  • Bumper to Bumper with Buffoons: A Driver’s Rant

    By someone who used to be chill, but then you parked like a clown. I’ve been watching people lately—just sitting back and observing the slow-motion car crash we call “society”—and I can’t decide whether the world is spiraling into the abyss, or if I’m simply becoming a grumpier, less tolerant version of myself. It used…

    AKings

  • Where the Past Walks Beside Us on Independence Day

    Today as the sun comes up over in Richmond, Virginia— I find myself thinking about this city and its past. Richmond is not afraid to show its history. It carries it right out in the open, where you can see it, feel it, with the scars laid bare. It’s not hidden or polished. It’s in…

    AKings

  • A Promise Worth Keeping

    We are Americans. Did we forget? We were the ones who stepped in when others couldn’t. We stood up for the small and the voiceless. We gave hope when the world went dark. We didn’t always get it right— truth is, we messed up more than once. But falling short was never the goal. Our…

    AKings

  • Morning Habits (or How I Became Marginally Less Useless Before 8 AM)

    A masterclass in doing the bare minimum before breakfast. Waking up earlier — right, here’s the thing: it’s miserable. At first, I didn’t so much get up as lurk in bed, lying there like a wounded seal for 5 or 10 minutes, mentally preparing myself for the Herculean task of standing up. It was a…

    AKings

  • The Wild, the Weird, and the Wonderfully West Virginian

    January 2013. I rolled into Lewisburg, West Virginia, at precisely 8 PM after a long but admittedly beautiful drive from Pennsylvania. It was the kind of drive that makes you feel like you’re in an advert for winter tires—curving roads, mountains, light snow, and just enough loneliness to feel dramatic but not suicidal. First impressions?…

    AKings

  • A Moment of Reflection

    I’ve been thinking a lot about something I posted recently—about history, about monuments, about the things we choose to remember and how we choose to remember them. And while I stand by what I said, I also recognize that saying it the way I did may have hurt some of my neighbors, people I share…

    AKings