Anxiety Shark
  • Home
  • About
  • Tip Jar
  • Podcast
Sign in Subscribe

Niko Stratis

Niko Stratis
Solve for work

Blog Posts

Solve for work

There is no written word without a weary hand wielding the pen.

07 Apr 2026
a woman with grey hair and a green jacket signs copies of a book called The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman

Blog Posts

Any light in any storm

The veneer of visibility as a performance is nice, and it is also nothing.

31 Mar 2026
Bitter Melodies, Turning Your Orbit Around

Essays

Bitter Melodies, Turning Your Orbit Around

My first coffee was poured from the spout of a steel urn into a styrofoam cup, the kind that squeaks and crunches in your hand when you touch it that I’m certain was a little toxic.

21 Mar 2026
The lost memory of a perfect McPizza

Essays

The lost memory of a perfect McPizza

I can tell you that McPizza was salty and sweet, with perfectly melted cheese that tasted a little like an old ninja turtle fresh from 2 minutes in the microwave, all melted plastic and nostalgia.

14 Mar 2026
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
See all
Anxiety Shark
  • Sign up
Powered by Ghost

Anxiety Shark

Writing through all the thoughts that haunt a life