30-Degree Shift
Reality is a mass of reasons; I’m just here to map the gravity. 30-Degree Shift is a weekly publication of essays exploring the structural irony of the world through a neurodivergent lens. Whether it’s special relativity, the craft of fiction, or the sensory weight of a blue-buttercream cake, I’m looking for how light bends around our baggage.
TL;DR - My brain is a messy equation and I’m trying to solve it on the chalkboard in front of class.
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30-Degree Shift is a weekly column by William T. Torgerson
Sunrise
One hour, twenty-six minutes to sunrise. Eleven hours, fifty-one minutes until sunset. The numbers are precise, but the experience is blurred at the edges — a consequence of the human veil thrown over a celestial guise.
Short Story: Ad-Free Porn - The Dream
Today, I took a break from the rift and ventured into the near-future. Or, at least it’s one of them. In this episode of The Crossroads, we explore a world where originality is mined, hunted, and highly valued on the black market.
Morning Sky
The stars shock me. It’s been too long since I’ve paid them any mind. Beneath the canopy, between passing satellites and curious dogs, I spend a morning remembering what it feels like to look up.
Demons, A Personal Study
The demons live in my head. I would prefer if they found other habitation, but, alas, I have yet to learn any effective methods of eviction, leaving such methods, if they do exist, purely theoretical.
On Finishing
Over the last year, I’ve started and halted three different novels and two novellas. The stories are solid and worth telling, I’m confident about that, but each one has some issue that I can’t get past. Often, it’s an issue I can’t even recognize.
Sharpening Senses
Silent bubbles rise from soaking stones sat upright in a pitcher of warm water. Two tones of grey, white, and clay are the colors in this rainbow, dull but fine beneath the crystal-clear shimmer.
Some Notes on Walking
There is more complexity and beauty in ambulary locomotion than we give it credit for. Sadly, the only spotlight walking receives is one’s first steps.
Love Bugs
The love bugs are everywhere, coating surfaces like paint overspray – harmless and annoying.
What Makes a Dungeon?
I rarely think of dungeons in any practical manner. Mostly it’s fantasy world kind I loot when I’m pretending to be a Tiefling Rogue. But, when I do consider what constitutes a dungeon, fluids are more common than loot.
Minimum Relative Suffering
While complete annihilation of suffering remains theoretically impossible, several laws have been discovered which outline methods to decrease relative suffering.
On Winning Monopoly
Sometimes I wonder if my choice to live out in the country is just one more revolt against Monopoly.
Easier to Remove the Option
I have one tick. I think it’s a tick.
Commit!
It is a tick.
On Receiving a Package
Receiving a package is so much more powerful that it used to be. From junk mail to drunken purchases, we truly live in the best time of history.
A Convenient Theory of History
We assume the grand and mysterious structures of the ancient world to have been constructed for equally grand ambitions: religion, astronomy, legacy, the afterlife, what have you.
But isn’t the truth obvious?
Pretty, Handsome, Hot
I have a confession to make - I’m pedantic. Don’t worry, I know when to keep it locked up. Still, sometimes it can be useful.
The Weight of Invisible Work
The story behind Tears of Inti: how I complicated yet another simple idea, turning into four months of research, illustration, revision, and one handmade zine.
Looking for the Deli Cup
The trick to good worldbuilding isn't adding more detail. It's finding the one detail that makes someone say, "Huh. Hah!”
Robert Frost’s Bill
One life never seemed enough to me. Sadly, it’s all I have. No worries, I’ll just learn everything.
… shit.
Missing the Garden for the Peas
I walk through my garden every morning to inspect my plants. It’s been a while since I stepped back.
Get Ready With Me for Lunch With the Neighbor
We collect things as one life tumbles into the next. Of course, I'm talking about clothing.