Author: Ben van Loon

Writer, Researcher, Chicagoan

Financial advice for MEL Magazine

Got another call from MEL Magazine based on some of the first-person narratives I provided last year regarding how my wife and I worked our way out of $100,000 in student debt. The writer, Adam Elder, asked for my contribution to “The Normal Person’s Guide to New Year’s Resolutions: Spending Less and Saving More.”

My Top 13 Albums of 2017

If my top 13 albums of 2017 were donuts, they’d have everything from rainbow sprinkles to lab-grade PCP. These were albums that played like my personal soundtrack for the past year. That’s it. We got a horseshit president. I had a death in the family. I started a new job. I roadtripped across New Mexico,… Continue reading My Top 13 Albums of 2017

Full Nerd: 2017 in Books

I’ve almost always kept a running list of the books I read, but this year I decided to go Full Nerd. I used Google Sheets to log each book I’ve read since October 2016—66 books in total, spread over 384 days. I tracked titles, authors, author genders, copyright and publish dates, genres, page counts, format, dates… Continue reading Full Nerd: 2017 in Books

Boston

Provincetown, Cape Cod, Boston, Georges Island. No particular order. No particular need for order.

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Categorized as blog, travel

New Mexico Road Trip

For the second time in as many months, my wife and I headed back to the high New Mexican desert to see some new sites and find ourselves at some old ones. Every time I go back to the Chihuahua, I leave part of myself behind and I take something different back with me. New… Continue reading New Mexico Road Trip

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Categorized as travel

Taos, New Mexico

Taos is a small town of about 5,700 people in the high desert of northern New Mexico. It’s home to artists, ranchers, naturalists, vagrants and the oldest inhabited indigenous community in the U.S.—the Taos Pueblo, an UNESCO World Heritage Site, a National Historic Landmark and thousand-year-old residence of the Tiwa-speaking Puebloan people. Not many people… Continue reading Taos, New Mexico