Category: health

sick to my stomach

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At first, it was stress for my baby girl, but it turns out, she’s going to be okay. She’ll have to learn balance all over again, and she still walks like a drunk on black ice, but she’s going to live.

It sucks for her, but we were so not ready to lose another one.

What really made me sick was making the mistake of reading some of the Epstein emails.

America, either you’ve got incredible self-control, unbelievable cowardice or unmitigated depravity, but how you have picked up the torches and pitchforks and marched on the homes and offices of every single billionaire or politician named in those files is beyond me.

I suspect it’s a matter of all three, but holy hell. If you haven’t read these things, you should know it’s so much worse than you could ever imagine. Fiction isn’t that inhuman and sadistic.

An anger came up from somewhere absolutely primal reading some of these excerpts. I’m absolutely abhorred. It makes me ill.

These monsters aren’t human.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 898 words, short story: Skeleton Park

Read: The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
Comics: Fables: The Wolf Among Us 29-32
Music: 3, Violent Femmes

heartburn, round two

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Weirdly, I ate super light yesterday, but did have a customary glass of red wine, as one does, on Sundays.

We drink red wine on Sundays, or so my father-in-law tells me.

He’s also a man who feeds his other daughter ice cream and Coke for dinner on a regular basis, so he’s not exactly the sommelier we look for.

But still, for some reason we do it (and I do love a good red), but it seems to have triggered a relapse from the night before’s horrid gastrointestinal adventures, and now, I sit, having lost another couple of hours of wondrous sleep.

Plus some weird fuckin’ dreams.

Weird fuckin’ dreams, man.

I liked the ones I had before the acid set in; The Last Showgirl apparently wormed its way into my subconscious in the forms of Song and Ship.

Sorry, honey. It was involuntary. I can’t be held responsible for what my unconscious mind dredges up.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 3315 words, comic: The Stuff 4

Read: Full Catastrophe Living, Jon Kabat-Zinn (we're livin' the full catastrophe, all right)
Comics: Fables 135-137, Fairest 21
Music: 20 Years Of Hell, Vol IV, Anti-Flag/One If By Land

four hours

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Maybe three. I love a good homemade lasagna, but goddamn.

Heartburn.

Followed by bile creeping up the throat in the fifteen minutes I first fell asleep.

Then a light, persistent cough. No amount of water, milk or Gaviscon would help.

Eventually, I took a sedative and said fuck it.

Two hours later, I’m patted on the face by a cat.

Maybe three.

Maybe two.

Sleep is a fucking bitch.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 321 words, comic: The Stuff 4

Read: Full Catastrophe Living, Jon Kabat-Zinn
Comics: Fairest: In All The Land 1, Fables 134, Fairest 20, The Unwritten 54
Music: 20 Years Of Hell, Vol III, Anti-Flag/Worship This!

rage

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I had ideas about what to write today, but things went so far off the rails, from taking a coatrack to the head, being utterly abandoned by anyone and everyone and just the universe, doing its complete fucking of me, again and again.

I need to stay off social media. They’ve gone looney tunes down south and my blood pressure is through the roof.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 4500 words

Read: Secrets And Lies: Digital Security In A Networked World, Bruce Schneier (prophetic and interesting, as a time capsule during a time I would have been a lamer script kiddie)
Comics: Fables 107-109, Jack Of Fables 50
Music: November 25, 1990, Off Ramp, Seattle, Nirvana

for a writer, i don’t write good

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Or rather, I think I write well, okay at best, but I rarely know what I want to say. I read other books with these incredible telling details or unbelievable insights into the human condition and I think, why not me?

What am I saying that’s not been said before?

I suppose there’s something to be said on saying something that has been said in a different way, and different voices reaching different people in different ways, but yeah.

I always wanted to be original. Unique. At the vanguard of something new.

But I don’t know what. It’s the essence of constrained – having something inside of you building like a new big bang, but being so essentially weak of spirit as to be unable to unleash it into the void.

And that’s what out there – void.

No one reads my shit because I don’t promote my shit. I’m Holden Caulfield, if he lived now and on social media. If he thought he hated phonies before, man, wait until he gets a load of Instagram and Twitter.

He’d be dead before the day was out.

I was eased into it, and despite knowing these are the tools I require to be successful in today’s age, I am increasingly convinced that social media needs to be phased out of my life, and out of existence entirely, if we are to survive.

Otherwise, none of us may last the day.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1476 words, comic: The Stuff #1

Read: Secrets And Lies: Digital Security In A Networked World, Bruce Schneier
Comics: Fables 103-106
Music: August 17, 1990, Palladium, Hollywood, Nirvana

funny how you can’t remember stuff

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I completely blanked on the concept of a truck bed. What it was called, anything.

I literally had to google it.

Some days, brain no function. Thinkee bad.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1468 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: The Zombie Survival Guide, Max Brooks
Comics: Fables 63-64, Jack Of Fables 13-14
Music: 10-31-97, Hallowe'en Bash, Live as Nirvana at the Double Door, Chicago, IL, Local H

snowin’

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And blowin’. Ninety km/hr winds.

My glasses froze to my face and gave me a wicked headache.

Damn, sun. Rude.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 586 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Tesla: Man Out Of Time, Margaret Cheney
Comics: Fables 36-39
Music: May 13, 1990 Lincoln, Nirvana

night market

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A thoroughly enjoyable evening, after last night’s thoroughly enjoyable oyster bar.

Followed tomorrow, probably by thoroughly enjoyable heartburn.

My scale is crying.

Why would a man eat an entire buffalo chicken and blue cheese pizza to himself?

What could possess him?

Devil’s work, if you ask me.

But don’t. The shame won’t allow me to answer.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 3020 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Complete Poetical Works, Edgar Allan Poe
Comics: Fables 24-27
Music: Wrecking Ball, Bruce Springsteen

the rundown

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Multiple meanings for that these days, as you’ll eventually see.

If there’s ever a movie written of my life, it’s going to be a lot of stuttering and masturbation, followed by a slow, tortuous breakdown in front of a computer.

I know it was a shittier time, but past generations had such grand adventures; our life is so regimented now.

You must do this. You must do that.

There’s no time for peace. No time for quiet.

Where’s my goddamned quiet at?

No, I run, and run, and run, it all just runs me down.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1823 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Prozac Nation, Elizabeth Wurtzel (I was excited to read this, thinking I might comiserate, but this is far less a description of depression, but rather narcissism using depression as its party mask.  There's a point where she reaches true depression, I think, and there's a perfect description of it, which made me think, okay, finally, she understands, but then she does it all away with a drug, then spends the rest of the book bemoaning the fact that she did it before it was cool, like some pretentious alt-rock kid pissed off the little indie band they liked signed a deal with a major label.  This book?  Five percent depression, the rest about a real as the proverbial cut my wrist width-wise instead of lengthwise cry for attention.  Disappointing.)
Comics: Fables 20-23
Music: World Container, The Tragically Hip

hoping for better depression

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So, I suffer from depression. I don’t take drugs for it. I don’t go to therapy. I’m sure that would probably help, but the drugs I’ve tried have always made me feel worse, rather than better, and well, who the fuck has the time and money for therapy?

The thing is, I refuse to let it define me. It can run me, and it’s a struggle and fight every single day. Some days are worse than others. But I will not be labelled as the guy with depression.

I see it a lot now, and perhaps it’s a generational thing, where people label themselves with whatever damage they’ve got, physical or otherwise, and then that becomes their identity. It’s not a bone that needs to heal; it’s a bone that needs to stay broken, because it’s who they are.

It defines them.

But we’re so much more than that. Melancholy (aka depression) was just a piece of Abraham Lincoln. One could hardly say it was the primary fact of this life.

It was only part of it.

The generations behind me (and I blame my own shoegazing generation for starting this shit) seem to think it’s the only definition of themselves that matters.

I have anxiety, therefore, I am anxiety.

I have ADHD, therefore all I am is a lack of focus.

Man, fuck that. Treat yourself, do the things you have to do to get better or at least, function better within the restrictions you’ve got, but shit – it ain’t you.

Depression is not an identity; it’s just a thing that happens.

Depression is not the core of your self; it’s a chemical imbalance, or the sum total of some disparate thoughts or shitty life events.

It is NOT you.

That’s important. Remember that. You are not your depression; you are you.

And you have control over that.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1102 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Prozac Nation, Elizabeth Wurtzel
Comics: Fables 9-12
Music: Working Class Hero: A Tribute To John Lennon, Screaming Tress (and others, presumably, but that's all I got)