and other ridiculous wishes

I've been dragging my past behind me, heavy comet. I'm tired. Constantly triangulating who I am relative to dozens of flat and liftless images is exhausting and useless.

Not the bright-eyed boy tinged with a melodramatic tendency. The performer, teacher's pet, self-centered but open-hearted nerd who fully invested in fictions, including stories he told himself about love and commitment at an age when there's nothing solid to commit with.

Not the disaffected obsessive, up all night in a solitary dorm room or in the strange square house where two years happened in six months, singing mournfully and meaningfully to no one as a body's worth of personhood slipped painfully to the floor. Rapid oscillation between zen-green afternoons and pitch-thick nights where self-destruction tried desperately to be rebirth.

Not the angry screenprinter. Not the musician whose voice was dissolving into ambient noise. Not the game-consumed property manager. Not the blooming bookseller and writer. Not the suicidal rat on the sinking copy shop. Not the surprised web professional, using sudden free time, money, and energy to dance and sing and flirt briefly with happiness. Not the debt-ridden, burned-out crater, feeling futility in every step.

I want a new story. New self-image. New me to lean into. That's a story, too, but it's what I want. Stop trying to be everything I was once, all at once. Ineffectively. Heartbreakingly, insufficient in every direction. I don't have to be these people anymore. I'm already not. Catching up to that is the hard part. Forgive me if I have to shed in the direction of something new. Because things are changing around me and I don't want to just be dragged along in the wake.

I really, really recommend you read the new House of Leaves TV scripts by Mark Z. Danielewski. Especially if you've read the book. These aren't simple adaptation. They're something else, nearly two decades(!) later.

Do me a favor and buy these for $9.

Just a thought!

You should just read this essay by Ken Baumann, but for my future reference:

Phrases which point to no distinct situation, but instead to other phrases which are just as vague. One of the pains of living today is that we live and make decisions without a clear picture of reality to reference or feel a part of. We feel pain not from this lack, but from knowing deeply and intuitively that we are mostly full of shit. And from feeling trapped in a petty game in which you can only proceed by gathering more and more of the right kind of phrases into your head then saying those phrases at the right time to the right people. (Job interviews and talking with customer service representatives are events that scream this truth: the game is not fun because the game was not made for you.)

I’ll say again our situation: we think in phrases that either stun us or which we resent; we want reality and our lives to make sense and feel purposeful but we have bad sources of information; we forget every day the immediate proof of our goodness and ability to choose. It’s as if we are dying of thirst yet stumble again and again to a well full of poisoned water. And when this water touches our lips we wonder: Is there any other way?

Those are the pains that must be admitted.

Now I want you to imagine a machine which can show us proofs of these pains, hundreds of thousands more proofs than we see stars in the night sky. A hundred proofs for every day of every year. Now imagine that this machine works everywhere. That we keep it within our reach every moment of our lives. That this machine is the first thing we use when we wake up and the last thing we use before we fall asleep.

No wonder we feel besieged. No wonder we feel naked to agony and disbelief. No wonder we accept the invitation to refuse to feel.

For nearly all our history as a species, we have lived because we have been where we are. By intimately understanding our environments, we have learned to thrive as a contributing part of them. We are local. This fact too is conveniently obliterated by cellphones and their makers. Knowing that we are best at surviving where we live—as opposed to living somewhere that doesn’t exist, like in some bullshit national narrative or in a battle between good and evil—knowing we are best when we are local helps us practice democracy. And the obviousness of the needs of your friends and neighbors reminds you of the ease of being where you’re at. Reality, and a language that makes sense of it, returns.

I define fascism as a kind of work. Fascism is a kind of maintenance. It is the work we do when we hurt others in order to maintain our belief that we are better than them. A fascist believes that another group is weaker and worse than theirs, then weakens and harms that group so that their original belief feels incontestably true. Fascism is cowardly work. We are fascists all the time. Knowing this, it is our personal and collective responsibility to change our thinking and behavior. Otherwise the logical end of fascism is not killing and torturing this or that specific group: it is destroying everyone and everything that is not you.

— Ken Baumann

There are always going to be linguistic taboos, because words have meaning & some things are unacceptable. It's telling that boomers and older can't abide words like "fuck" and "vagina" but think they should be able to use demographic slurs, while younger gens have flipped that.

There are words my friends hiss and recoil from, but they're all words that are ideologically harmful to material realities of humans: racist, sexist, *phobic, and other words that demean PEOPLE. Whereas our parents assert their right to use those, while objecting to baby words.

Like, "curses" and "swears" growing up in the 80s/90s/00s were all scatological, sexual, or deistic. And there's a whole area of study around what a given culture uses to swear! But it sounds SO pathetic to hear adults go, "Hey now!" when somebody says "ass" near them.

There may be something about boomers & up hiding from their bodies, treating normal bodily functions as so shameful they cannot be spoken, while obsessing over biological differences in skin, hair, and genitals as genocide-worthy offenses. That's something to think about!

But I just found myself going, "Wait is it weird that my friends have taboo words?" There's the conservative assertion that, "Well, I should be able to use ANY word because who cares, they're just words!" But we know that's not true. And it's not wrong to reject certain words.

The question is, what do we reject? What do we weaponize? What do we protect? Older generations weaponize bodies and defend oppressive norms while rejecting their own physicality. Whereas, widely, younger people want to protect bodies and identity while attacking ideology.

And this is a fundamental difference that conservatives don't seem to get. There's a difference between attacking someone's IDEAS vs attacking their BODIES. Being a Republican (ideas, incorrect, hurtful) isn't the same thing as being a person of color (bodies, normal, valid).

You can't be BORN wrong. Nothing about your physiology — not your skin, shape, genes, conditions, genitals, none of it — is invalid. Using words that demean people based on those characteristic IS wrong. It's immoral to be cruel toward people simply for existing.

But you can have wrong ideas. You can BE wrong in the way you regard our world, other people, and yourself. It's super easy to be wrong. Slurs represent wrong thinking. The whole human experience is learning, over and over again, what you were wrong about — and adapting.

And so, "boomer." It's not a slur. It's not making fun of people for just being older. It's a term being used now to encapsulate an ideology of ignorance, irresponsibility, selfishness, and disrespect. Those are common traits among older US people, for historical reasons.

And none of this is PURELY about age. There are teen boomers, because their inherited ideology sucks. And there are great older folks who still put in the work to learn and grow despite our nightmare history of oppression and violence. "ok boomer" signifies exhaustion with lazy thinking.

So it's HILARIOUS that an old white guy would get so hurt by "boomer" that he would ignore history, context, and good sense and compare boomer to the n-word. Unbelievable. Fuck off, boomer. :)

It's Halloween, which reminds me of my favorite spooky-sweet songwriter, Erin Lovett of Four Eyes. Here's a cover I recorded of one of her songs a few years ago, and the original EP you can buy for your increased enjoyment.

I hit some Jeff Buckley-ass notes at the very end. That felt good.

Her last couple of albums especially, Welcome to Earth and I'd Rather Be Ghost Hunting, are truly great works.

Content warnings for depression, medicine, and past suicidal thoughts.

Hello! I posted a month ago about starting to take antidepressants, in day-by-day detail. I'm not gonna do that again! But I do want to follow up.

It's been up and down! The first week was weird, and then in the second and third weeks I was a lot more focused and energized than usual. Since then it's been up and down, with the last couple of weeks trending back downward toward low motivation, more difficulty communicating, working, and moving around in general. I've also been having more of the kind of needless self-abusive thoughts that had become a real problem — but only a little bit!

The reasons I started taking medicine finally are because I have had increasing difficulty simply doing necessary tasks over the last year, and because I was starting to wonder if being alive was something I could keep doing. I didn't want to die, but I spend a lot more time than I should have with the question nagging at the back of my thoughts. It was pretty common for me to get wrapped up in an internal spiral of worry, fear, and disgust that dismantled a lot of the meaning in things I was doing. I can report that I have basically stopped getting that low, and had a lot less anxiety. That's so great!

After a couple of weeks where it was just... easier to do things, I can track a steady decline in that area over the last few weeks. This last week I've gotten very little done that's useful. I can play video games, I can squeak out bits of creative work, and I can be relaxed, but longer periods of productive work and social time have become difficult again. Putting off communication and labor in favor of just... waiting a little longer. Maybe in a bit I'll feel like doing it. But when I can't reach that point, something needs to change.

It was easy for me to start feeling like the whole project wasn't working out; that I was sliding back into darkness, that it just wasn't going to work. But luckily it's been much easier for me to get out of that kind of negative zone, and to make more positive assessments and changes. And, luckily, I have regular appointments scheduled with a psychiatrist and a counselor, so if things get weird, there are markers to look forward to and recalibrate around.

So after a conversation with my doctor today, we're leaving my Lexapro (Escitalopram) dosage at 10mg/day, and increasing my Wellbutrin (Bupropion) from 100mg to 150mg, to hopefully bring my motivation and energy up. It's normal for your body to adapt to metabolizing medicine more quickly over time, so after my initial positive response, tapering of effects is normal enough. You have to find the balance that works over time.

Things I haven't done as well in the last few weeks: I haven't exercised as much as I'd like, and I've gotten over-caffeinated too many days. These are both things I have to keep an eye on. If I run a few miles and do some basic bodyweight exercises, I feel better all the way around. If I keep my total coffee intake down below 3 cups over the course of a day, I can relax and concentrate much better. But it's been hard to get moving and do exercise, so then I wind up having more coffee out of habit, and that's an unhelpful cycle!

It's hard generally to make a living right now, and it's hard to feel safe. Almost everyone I know is struggling to pay their bills. Most of us don't have insurance or have terrible insurance we're overpaying for. There are lots and lots of reasons to be worried, and to question how useful our actions are. But those questions shouldn't be debilitating. I don't want them to be. I want to find hope, energy, and habits that help me be the best version of myself I can be. I want to be here for my friends, my colleagues, my loved ones, and for myself. So, I'm continuing on the path! Thanks for reading, and do whatever you need to feel as good as you can, friend!

I have a hard time with the balance between publishing and letting go of what happens after. I'm wired up to do things performatively; if I write a story or make an image, I want to walk around and show it to everybody immediately. That can be positive, because the thought of showing something can help me push through the difficulty of finishing something in the first place. But then, if I finish something and post it to the internet, there's just... never really enough feedback. It gets hard to focus on other things, because I keep checking to see if anybody else has noticed and let me know they noticed.

Mostly, they don't. I know this is because I mostly make things with pretty niche appeal, and that I don't have a massive available audience. The people who liked any of my podcasts, my websites, my visual art, my stories, or my music... are not necessarily going to like any of the other things! I have always had too many modes for simple market value. If I could just tell jokes, or just sing songs, or whichever of these things... I would have! And it's fine that I have diverse interests and that not everything is a hit. There are plenty of reasons to make things that interest you, and if a few of my friends think something is neat — or even if they don't! — that should be enough.

If it isn't... I've gotta work on that. Either focus on making more-marketable things, and then figure out how to market them, or make better peace with my art being a personal act.

I sure would like my stuff to find its audience, though. A few people have read my Garfield script and told me they loved it. Great! Where's everybody else? Where do I send this shit? Where's the platform? I have never known what to do with that phase. When I made albums, I never sent them to labels. Like, duh. I know I ought to submit my stories to... what, websites? Which ones? Who the fuck publishes surreal absurdist fiction? This is a real question.

In the meantime, I'm trying to remind myself that it's okay to post and then step back. Posting things here is easier than posting them to twitter. I'm still mostly blocking twitter and enjoying greater peace. In that peace, I make more things. But then I share it, because I have to, and that sharing disrupts the peace. So with all of this I'm basically just trying to say to myself, "Don't worry about it. Let it go. If there's no marketing push or end goal, just post and move on."

And say thanks to those of you who do like some of the things I make. I reckon I'm not an easy artist to follow all the time, but I'm trying harder than ever to make things that satisfy me and might bring greater pleasure to others, too. For whatever reasons, to whatever end. Wahoo!

Hover the images or use a screen reader for descriptions of the images, including some additional context.