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Niko Stratis

Niko Stratis
Hobbies in big letters

Hobbies in big letters

I don’t really have any hobbies, having fallen into the class trap of the working creative that is essentially a pile of bills and immediate needs placed gently over a hastily piled patch of grass. Most things I do, I do because I need to eat and other annoying

07 Mar 2026
a brick wall covered in graffiti, with a tower of ice cascading down the face of it.

Essays

Heart as hard as nails

I worry that we have let Sad Song mean too many things, that it’s too easy a phrase to describe such a deep well, and it’s time to find new words for the walls we hit on the way down.

21 Feb 2026
Get To Feel Old

Essays

Get To Feel Old

There are new things standing and waiting out there, each of them a mark on the days ahead, as if they are lighthouses steering me and my most tired bones away from the rocks that might shatter us once and for all.

06 Feb 2026
Down bad

Down bad

An act of clearing by just putting all the extra snow in scores of uneven piles that are half on the sidewalk and half on the street, ensuring that at least this way no one will ever run the risk of being terribly happy

31 Jan 2026
a photo of a sign that says smile you're on camera on a building. there's a pink square overlayed at the centre of the frame.

Better to feel bad than nothing at all

I have to trim down my coffee intake, and it is highlighting the grip of addiction in my brain. I currently drink an amount that is shocking to anyone not similarly afflicted with the same predisposition towards self-destruction as me, but normal for those who would see themselves in ruins.

16 Jan 2026
2025 in Dad Rock

Blog Posts

2025 in Dad Rock

I am perfectly on time with this, which is to say I am late.

09 Jan 2026
We're here tonight, and that's enough

Essays

We're here tonight, and that's enough

“Wonderful Christmastime” is not a perfect song. It might not work on your holiday playlist, or stand proud on a list of beloved classics, but it might be that it’s not a song to be played at home with intention

11 Dec 2025
Learning to love the ennui of release

Blog Posts

Learning to love the ennui of release

The lesson learned in all of this is that I need to work harder on allowing myself to celebrate the victories and the little things, that I'm allowed to be here living this life.

27 Nov 2025
The Gales of November remembered

Essays

The Gales of November remembered

This is the beauty of the song, the heart of it in those who lost their lives in service of building a world many believed they never belonged to, as if they are men out of time.

11 Nov 2025
a yellow and red risograph style photo, with text that reads fix your hearts or die on a box on the sidewalk

Lock The Gates

Maron is vulnerable, but he is also allowed to be in a way that many simply are not.

17 Oct 2025
punks on the internet

punks on the internet

I have long described myself as Taylor Swift agnostic, which is not really true because I do believe she exists, and the truth is that I always misuse agnostic when I really mean atheistic.

04 Oct 2025
The sidewalks are watching me think about you

The sidewalks are watching me think about you

When I lived here, I was always chasing something, the perfect idea of a life in the wild and untamed north. Partied and thought about parties and how each one would be the answer to the questions that kept me awake and pacing in my living room, like a raven seeking food half-buried in the snow.

27 Sep 2025
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Anxiety Shark

Writing through all the thoughts that haunt a life