Sensory Dispensary

“The record you didn’t know you needed is what I am listening to in the other room.”

AI_IMAGE: A dimly lit vintage record store back room, shot at eye level across wooden bins overflowing with vinyl LPs. Warm amber light from a single hanging bulb casts deep shadows. Faded concert posters line the dark walls. Wisps of incense smoke curl through the golden light. The mood is intimate, analog, and deeply atmospheric with rich sepia and brown tones against near-black shadows. | photorealistic | landscape

Who, What, Why?

The What

This is the Sensory Dispensary. It’s a blog, technically, but I’ve been thinking of it more as a listening room with the lights turned low – a place where music plays and sometimes we talk about it and sometimes we talk about other things.

The majority of what you’ll find here is about music. That’s not an accident. Music is the thing I’m constantly scanning for – connections to whatever is happening around me, soundtracks to whatever I’m feeling, the right song for the wrong moment. If something is being said, chances are I’m hearing a lyric that fits.

But I’m a fully realized human being with other things going on, so you’ll also find writing about those things. Politics, when I can’t help myself. Grief and joy and the cats. Cancer, because I didn’t have it, and then all of a sudden I did, and now I write about what that was like. I will frequently mention my wife Gina, who is a goddamned superhero, and my very best friend, and my very favorite person in the whole world.

I will write the kind of rants that come out when something really pisses me off, and the kind of gratitude posts that come out when something reminds me the world is still mostly worth it.

Even though I’m a big guy, no shirt I own has sleeves large enough for me to wear my whole heart on them. This blog is where the rest of it goes.

The Why

I write for me. That’s the honest answer. If it connects with you, that’s a bonus, a real one, and one I genuinely hope for. The writing happens because it needs to happen though, not because I’m chasing an audience.

I don’t pay attention to keywords, SEO, backlinks, or any of the other voodoo search magic. I don’t optimize for engagement. I just put the shit I write out into the world and see what happens. If that sounds like your kind of thing, stick around. Leave a comment. Subscribe. We’ll connect. If it’s not your kind of thing, that’s okay too – I’m not for everyone, and I’d rather have a few of you who actually want to be here than a crowd of strangers who don’t.

So: if something I write ever makes you feel less alone, or puts a song in your head, or makes you think about something differently, that’s the whole point. That’s the only metric that matters to me.

The How

The site you’re looking at went through about 61 68 versions before it landed here. I built it with a lot of help from AI tools – Telex for the theme generation, Claude for the architecture conversations and copywriting assists, and a lot of back-and-forth iteration. But I want to be clear: this isn’t a “hey, AI, make me a website” situation. I was the architect the whole way through. Every design decision, every piece of content, every weird little choice about naming things “Long Players” and “Singles” and “Bin Diving” – those came from me. The AI helped me move faster and code things I couldn’t have coded myself, but the vision was mine and the work was collaborative.

I learned a lot building it. That mattered to me almost as much as the finished result.

The Features

A few things you’ll notice around here:

Long Players are the main event – full posts with featured images, the kind of thing you settle in with. Music, writing, personal stuff, whatever’s on my mind.

Singles are shorter – quick thoughts, observations, things that don’t need a thousand words. Think of them as the between-the-albums chatter. They live in their own feed and don’t clutter up the main grid.

Sounds is the music wing of the site. It’s where you’ll find Random Song of the Day (the daily song that caught my ear), Bin Diving (weekly album roundups, honest ratings, no algorithms), and The Needle Drop (deep track-by-track album listening sessions when something really grabs me).

Explore is a tag cloud. Click anywhere. Follow the threads. Tags lead to other tags. It’s not organized, it’s not comprehensive, but it’s a map of sorts.

The Who

I’m Scott. I live outside Chicago with Gina, my wife of 32 years, and our two cats. There have been other cats, and they’re still part of the place. I’m a cancer survivor. I’m a childhood abuse survivor. I’m a helpful, compassionate, empathetic otrovert who is trying to make the world a little better every day, mostly by being kind to the people in front of me and occasionally yelling on the internet about the ones who aren’t.

Photo of Scott & Gina

I have strong opinions. I rarely mince words. I’m also pretty quick to tell you what I’m grateful for and what brings me joy, because I’ve learned that’s not a small thing to have figured out.

If you want to know me, read this blog. I’m here in every post and in every word. This is what would happen if you distilled my essence and published it on the internet.

The Fine Print

If you made it this far and something resonated, leave a comment. Subscribe. Say hi on What’s Up?. I read everything, I respond when I can, and I’m always happy to find out someone else is in the listening room too.

If you’re still here but nothing resonated, no hard feelings. The door’s always open if you change your mind. I’d love to hear about it! Until then, let’s keep finding the magic in the simple, sensory stuff that makes life sing. 🎶

—Scott (he/him)