There has never been a better time in history to be a human and it has also never been easier to see what is wrong with everything in the world.
It is much more interesting to look at the same mess and find what is right about it. Not the polished, inspirational version. The real version. The one that only becomes visible from an angle that nobody bothered to try because they were too busy being disappointed.
I am an escape room operator by trade. I have spent a decade watching thousands of people reveal who they really are under pressure, in sixty-minute windows, behind closed doors. That is a strange education. It makes a person notice things. It demands attention to human behavior in a way that most jobs never require and most people never practice. And it gives a writer stories.
But the stories here are not about escape rooms. They are about everything else. Fatherhood. Grief. Absurdity. History. The people I love and the ones I’ve lost. The things we all do that make absolutely no sense when anyone stops to think about them for more than five seconds. And occasionally, the deeper questions — where puzzles came from, why they persist, what they reveal about the species that cannot stop solving them.
This is the personal branch of jackrosewrites.com. The other branches cover the industry I work in and the fiction I write. These are personal essays about life. Messy, funny, tender, profane, and occasionally philosophical.
Personal Essays and Observations
Genuine Intelligence: Why Puzzles Are the One Thing AI Cannot Fake — The entire internet now depends on puzzles to prove a person is human. That is not a coincidence. It is the latest chapter in a story that started before written language existed. A deep dive into why puzzles have spanned every culture in human history and why they are still the one thing machines cannot replicate.
Elegy for Gene — My grandfather was the kind of man strangers would stop me to tell stories about, like I was related to a celebrity. His last word was thank you. This is what I said at his funeral.
Here for a Good Time, Not a Long One — Rob was a devoted addict, registered sex offender, and exemplary degenerate who never missed an opportunity to screw someone out of money. He was also kind, genuine, honest to a fault, and one of the most extraordinary humans I have ever known. This is his eulogy. It is exactly what he would have wanted.
I, Homer — A poem for my wife Annie on Valentine’s Day. About hometown fans, Homer Simpson, and the absurdity of measuring oneself against some invisible version of perfection when the real thing is standing right there.
Busting Grumpies and the Three Seashells — Primitive humans lived in caves and wiped their asses with their hands. From there it only gets more interesting. A complete history of humanity’s relationship with its own backside, from ancient Greece to Demolition Man.
Bacon Saves America! — How a salt-cured pork product united a broken nation, nourished the soul of a country, and remains the one thing Americans can still agree on. A historical essay about the only food with its own national day, international day, and Canadian day.
Back From the Future — I am a time traveler. I did not need a flux capacitor, just the willingness to ignore an arbitrary government mandate about clocks. A true story about what happened when my family stopped observing Daylight Saving Time.
The thread that runs through everything on this site — escape rooms, fiction, and whatever this is — starts with the manifesto: There Is No Escape Room.