Welcome to Existential Neighbor
Humor essays and meditations about modern life
Hello there, fellow human. (unless you are a bot then, "01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111") I'm Jeff Mahoney, and I used to debug programming for a living. Now I debug life itself—which is significantly more buggy and comes with worse documentation.
This is where I chronicle the small catastrophes and quiet victories of adulting. Think of it as a field guide for anyone who's ever found themselves standing in a hardware store at 3 PM on a Tuesday, holding a mysterious piece of plastic that fell out of something important, wondering if this is what success looks like.
If you've ever Googled "how to be a person" at 2 AM, or found yourself having a philosophical conversation with your coffee maker, you're in the right place. Welcome to the neighborhood.
Latest Articles
October 19, 2025 •
Essays •
5 min read
Early morning and I'm standing in what used to be my kitchen, holding a prybar like it's evidence in a trial where I'm both defendant...
October 16, 2025 •
Essays •
2 min read
This morning I found Ellie, my Irish Setter, asleep on her back—legs splayed at geometrically improbable angles, one ear flopped inside-out, making soft honking noises...
September 15, 2025 •
Stories •
3 min read
A perfectly ordinary girl named Audrey lived in a topsy-turvy town where cats chased dogs and fish swam in the sky. Everyone called her Aud,...
August 22, 2025 •
Stories •
10 min read
The book hit the floor with a thud that echoed through the quiet library like a thunderclap.
Pages flew open, and in that singular moment of...
July 10, 2025 •
Stories •
7 min read
The Remembering
I remember when the world was soft. When fingers traced the worn paths of my fur with the deliberate tenderness of ritual, when breath...