About

Operating Your Human is a reference manual for being a person. It works from a single idea, held consistently across every entry: you are an operator seated at the controls of a machine. The body is the hardware. The mind is the software. And you — whatever is doing the watching — are the one in the chair, reading the gauges and deciding what to do.

What it is

It is alphabetical, like any good reference. Open it to any term — Fear, Money, Boundaries, Grief, Time — and you get a self-contained account of how that part of the machinery works, why it works that way, and what the operator can actually do about it. Every entry stands alone. None of them require the others, though they point to each other constantly.

What it is not

It is not self-help. It does not promise to change your life, it does not traffic in clichés, and it never tells you that everything happens for a reason. It treats you as a capable adult operating complex equipment — not as a patient to be soothed. The tone is the tone of the best manual you have ever read: clear, thorough, and unexpectedly humane.

The complete book

This site is free, and it always will be. The complete work — every entry, in print and digital editions — is on the way under the author's publisher, Order and Wild.