Voting As A Social Event ....

So I voted this morning. The polls weren't crowded, but I didn't expect them to be, as local elections don't have a lot of turnout. Still, there were about 6-7 people voting when I got there, which is better than I thought it would be for this type of election. One thing about these insane, divisive times, it makes for more political involvement.
One thing I wasn't expecting is that there are no more voting machines at my polling place. Everything is done on paper ballots. So I got to sit at a table, and fill in little circles like I was taking a standardized test at school. Of course, being people, everyone was complaining about what an inconvenience it was. In all fairness, that was my initial reaction as well, but it only lasted a few seconds. The touch screen voting machines that have been in place for the last decade or so never filled me with confidence. There were often problems with them, and I saw people having all kinds of trouble with them at times when I was there voting. Paper ballots are more secure and a better way to go.
Still, there was griping, and a discussion about it, but I finally said "when you really think about it, it's just a couple extra minutes out of your day. You're getting to vote, and have a say in your government, something so many people around the world don't even get to do. It's not really that big a deal." Everyone agreed, and we went back to filling in our circles.
I love voting, to be honest. Not just for the whole civic duty, making my choices known, blah blah blah stuff. I like being part of the process. I like the community of it. The same volunteers have been there forever, and I like them all. There are a couple of older black women who have been there since I started voting at that place, and they are two of the nicest, outgoing, most genuine people I have the pleasure of coming across out there in the wild. We kid around, and talk about voter turnout, and joke about how to pronounce my last name and my illegible signature. I talk to other people there as well. Voting makes some people nervous, because it's not something you do everyday, and people feel out of their element. Don't ever kid yourself, one of the reasons for low voter turnout is because there are a lot of people who are simply intimidated by it. Some with good reason, if you know anything about the history of voter suppression. Political parties go out of their way to make it hard or nerve wracking to vote. They don't want certain groups to vote, and they know how to make that happen.
So what you get is a lot of people who are on their best behavior because they feel out of place. That generally sounds like a bad situation, but in actuality, it makes people nicer and more open. I have had very pleasant interactions with Republicans and conservatives, religious types(my polling place is a church), a bunch of people I wouldn't necessarily go out of my way to engage. We are all just people, doing our part in our democracy, and for a few minutes, it makes you feel like a community. Communities are made up of people from all walks of life and with all sorts of ideologies and views. When you are face to face with them, interacting with them on a personal level, it's much harder to just write them off. That's something you almost never get online. It's easy to dismiss or attack someone from behind a keyboard, but when you're in the same room with an actual human being, it's not that simple. I like people, at least I want to like them. As I always try to get across, I'm an extroverted introvert, so voting makes me happy because I get to be engaged with people, even though the thought of it beforehand can really turn me off!
I have never had a bad experience voting. You won't either, so get out there and just do it. You might be surprised at how much you enjoy it!.

Check Your Balances ...

One of the things I’m taking away from this whole horrible Trump debacle is that the checks and balances in place to safeguard our democracy only work if people agree to adhere to the rules of the game. Trump and his gang of thieves and tyrants don’t care about decorum or optics or shame anymore. They don’t care if they break laws, on the books or unwritten. Who’s going to stop them? Perhaps the Dems and the few respectable Republicans left out there, and maybe the Constitution, eventually.
In the meantime, they openly mock the principles and good faith that our entire system of government and social structure depends on.
Why do you think people in power are so desperate to quell any anarchy or questioning of authority? Why do you think they have so many jackboots on the ground, keeping the people down that they are sworn to protect? Why do you think they want us so dependent on our jobs and our credit scores and afraid to rock the boat? Why are we bombarded with fear mongering stories about murderers and rapists right outside our doors, and how we need to fear everyone rather than engage them? Why do you think they divide us?
It’s because if the population ever decided to stop playing by the same rules that keep us all down, the whole house of cards will fold. Anarchy would mean no more rich and poor, no more leaders and serfs, no more blue line to keep the aristocrats safe from the masses. Yet, as usual, the elite and powerful are showing you that the same rules and laws don’t apply to them. We sit here and wonder why our leaders are allowed to thumb their nose at congressional hearings, ignore subpoenas, commit perjury, and storm into closed door meetings with no real repercussions for their behavior. It’s simple: If you are in charge of making the laws and enforcing the laws, you get to choose which ones apply to you. If you’re a comedian or movie producer who behaves heinously, you get torn down and sent to jail, but if you’re part of the upper echelon of government and society, you get to be a supreme court justice or president.
I’m really not sure how the human spirit has been crushed this badly that the people in this country don’t take to the streets in open revolt. The system is set up so those in power get to behave any way they want, all the while sucking the rest of us dry and holding us in contempt, and not only do we allow it, we openly campaign and vote for them. We hand over power willingly, we are so eager to be enslaved.
We live in a kingdom of fear, trapped in cages, yet the cage doors are all unlocked and opened. Still, we sit inside, afraid to come out and demand what’s ours. Pull the cards at the bottom, and the whole house comes down.
We are those cards the whole corrupt mess is built upon.

Pretty Hate Machine

I've been thinking about how truly hateful people accuse decent and caring people of hate because they don't agree with their opinions. They get mad if you point out bad traits or horrible behavior in their leaders and idols. On one hand, it's an age old tactic bullies use to try to twist the narrative. They don't really understand or care what's going on, it's just basically a case of "I know you are, but what am I?" Some decent people get caught up in this behavior as well, because they aren't really aware of what game they're playing, they are simply defending what they feel they need to defend to keep the status quo, and feed their insecurities.
The thing is, it's actually alright to hate things. It's even okay to hate the occasional human being here and there if they prove themselves worthy of scorn and derision. As long as you hate someone on an individual basis, not because of their skin color or gender, sexual preference or social status, etc. Hating truly horrible people is healthy.
That's where the other part of the equation comes in. Most hateful people are afraid to admit what they hate, at least in public. They are hypocrites and lying to themselves. It's like how closeted politicians rail against gay rights or church leaders rail against sex, because they don't trust their own desires and feelings. They can't even admit to hating anyone for fear the floodgates will open, even thought must people can plainly see how hateful they are.
That's why people can support horrible people who do horrible things, but claim that they don't feel the same way. They support Trump, but they aren't racist or misogynist or homophobic. They can somehow reconcile that within themselves. The same way people say that they can love the art but hate the artist. If you're consuming the art, you're supporting the artist, there's no way around that fact. If you support truly abusive and violent people, you condone abuse and violence; yet people who support serial abusers and racists somehow find a disconnect in there.
So they lash out, and call people who have genuine concerns and questions about politicians and artist haters. Usually, they throw in a lot of verbal abuse and insults, and turn it into an ad hominem attack rather than debate the actual issue at hand. It's an adolescent thing to do. Somehow, they do all this while proclaiming how much they love everyone, and how they are taking the high road. It's a master class in passive-aggressive behavior.
And it also functions to help them ignore their own shitty positions and attitudes, and live with themselves. They spend all their time convincing themselves that they are the victims, they are the ones being attacked, and that must mean that all the other people are the hateful ones.
That's a dangerous path, and the longer you're on it, the more you're going lose yourself, and the people who matter. That's why hatred flourishes in the world. That's why Trump gets elected. That's why psychopaths get to keep making movies and music and running corporations and studios. The hateful people prop each other up, and come to feel that they are doing something noble by feeling like they do. It's smoke and mirrors and bullshit, and like most things, it's just fear and insecurity wearing different masks. Learn to recognize what's going on, or be consumed by it.

Mental Health Awareness Day

Today is Mental Health Awareness Day, and I am acutely aware of it. I know a lot of people who suffer from varying degrees of mental illness and conditions. I know people who have severe bipolar issues. I know paranoid schizophrenics and sociopaths. I know people with varying degrees of depression, ptsd, and anxiety. For some of them it's an annoyance, and for some of them, it's crippling.
I know so many people who are still dealing with the fallout from abuse; mental, physical and sexual. For some, it was when they were children, for others, when they were adults. For a few, it is still happening now. They have had something taken from them that they might never get back.
I have friends who are self destructive, who suffer from addiction and compulsive behavior. I have friends who wake up everyday, and have to convince themselves that it's worth it to keep going. I have friends who live with self loathing, who feel inferior and worthless a lot of the time. I have friends who live in fear and apprehension almost every minute of their lives.
I have friends who can't even see themselves as they really are. They have a distorted self image, and see themselves as ugly and unwanted, as a burden and a failure. Usually, other people have made them feel this way, because those people have mental health issues of their own. It feeds upon itself.
I watch them struggle, I see them try to get help, only to find that it's too expensive, or not covered by their insurance, or they get misdiagnosed when they do manage to get some sort of treatment. I see that getting help is a herculean effort, and involves opening old wounds and reliving every bit of trauma and pain that landed them where they are now.
I want them to know that I am aware. I see how hard it is. I see how hard they work. I see what an effort it is just to go out and face the world, when all you want to do is hide and feel safe. I see your bravery. I see your pain. I see your victories and I see your setbacks, and I marvel at your strength and grace. I marvel at how with all that going on, you're still empathetic, and kind, and nurturing. I see how you treat others better than you treat yourself.
I see it because I deal with some of the same things. I have been abused, in all categories. I sometimes look at it on paper, how it might be better to just call it a day and give up, but I still find a reason to keep going. I have attempted suicide. I get insecure, and even terrified, at some of the most mundane and simple things I have to do during the day. I get overwhelmed and frozen in place. I look at myself through the lens of body dysmorphia, and will probably never be able to see myself as I truly am. I will always feel ugly and grotesque. I have suffered through eating disorders, starving myself or making myself vomit after every meal. I have been self destructive, I have hated myself, I have felt like a failure and a burden to everyone I know at times. I have spent a lot of my life feeling completely unlovable.
And yet, here I am. I am still strong and brave enough to tell you all this in a public post on the internet. I am still capable of love, for others, as well as myself. I am still able to let the walls down, and share myself with others. I haven't let any of this make me lose sight of a better world, I haven't become bitter and let hate consume me. I haven't crumbled, I've become stronger, just like all of you.
In a way, the things most of the world sees as weaknesses have resulted in a strength that dwarfs most people's. It has made us warriors, and we don't even recognize it.
So be aware, not just of your issues and illnesses, but of the strength and courage and sheer will that keeps you going. You are extraordinary. We are extraordinary.
We are aware, and we are fucking beautiful.

Ryan Adams And Me

People who have known me awhile, know that I was a huge Ryan Adams fan for a lot of years. I used to tell people how great he was, and try to turn them on to his music. He was a prolific and hugely talented musician. I can’t now pretend that he was just some mediocre nobody with nothing to back up his place in music history. He has written some truly amazing songs.
I knew he could be a real asshole at times. He went to great lengths to be accessible to his fans, but at the same time, he treated a lot of his fanbase like shit. He would go off on them on social media over nothing, indiscriminately block them on Twitter, many times simply because they complimented him. There were all kinds of stories about how he treated fans in person after shows, or in private messages, and he seemed to burn a lot of bridges with musicians and people he worked with.
Oh well, he’s a temperamental artist, and he has substance abuse problems, so I was more than willing to give him a pass. A lot of us were.
By “a lot of us”, I mean other fans in the huge online community of Ryan Adams fans. Even before Facebook, there were message boards where fans would gather and talk about shows and songs and Ryan gossip. Ryan was even there with them, interacting and building up a whole facade and relationship with his fans, which turns out was just a way to manipulate people. Ryan would regularly lash out at fans on the boards, irrationally, saying some really awful things over minor disagreements. He was toxic, but still we all made excuses for him.
His songs were the soundtrack of our lives. That’s how it is with music. Your favorite songs get weaved into the fabric of your life, and they become part of your memories and the emotions attached to them. They helped us through hard times. They accompanied the pain and heartbreak of broken relationships and losing loved ones. They accompanied the joy of getting married and having children. They spoke to us and comforted us at times when no one or nothing else could.
We shared that all with each other as well. So many of us became such good friends. I am closer to some of the people I met on social media through my love of Ryan Adams than I am with some of the people I grew up with in real life. Throughout all the groups and offshoots that are associated with Ryan on social media, we have all been there for each other in times of crisis and times of joy. We took up collections for people in need. We helped each other through abuse and divorce. We collected money for charities when some of our community passed away, and sent a lot of money their way in our fallen friend’s names. There have been relationships and marriages that have come of it all. We have probably saved each other’s lives on occasion.
I know that was probably the case with me. About the time I really became a big part of that community, I was going through a very rough time. I had just lost the love of my life to mental illness, and there were a lot of other things in my life that were not going well at all. I was at a point in my life where the thought of killing myself brought me comfort. People picked up on it in the group, and messaged me and made sure I was okay. We all talked, and we all shared our experiences, and it helped me through a very tough time in my life. Would I have actually killed myself? Probably not, but I had tried it once many years earlier, so you never know. I do know that now I would never do it, and a lot of that mindset has come from the people I met through Ryan Adams and his music.
That is not enough though.
In February, the New York Times published an article detailing all the abusive things he had done to the women in his life, including his ex wife Mandy Moore. There were so many women in the article going on record with the horrible things he did. Promising record contracts and then withdrawing them when the women wouldn’t sleep with him, or ended their romantic relationships. Horrible, manipulative things like threatening to kill himself when they didn’t respond to his texts quickly enough, or gaslighting them by being loving one minute, then blaming them for his bad treatment of them. It always seemed to be young vulnerable women he preyed on.
In fact, the most egregious thing outlined in the article is about how he was messaging sexually explicit content to a minor, grooming her over the internet. She was 14 when he started contacting her, and was having phone sex and explicit video chats with her. The Times had over 3,200 texts between them, and although he would sometimes ask about her age, he knew how old she was. He told her things like “i would get in trouble if someone knew we talked like this,” and “If people knew they would say I was like R Kelley lol.” The girl in question, Ava, was a bass player, already known in musical circles and gigging in New York at 12 years old. At 13, she stopped all that, because of the death of her father and bullying at school.
And then Ryan swooped in. According to the article, he spent the next few years grooming her and having sexually explicit conversations and skype sessions. He was 40, she was 16. There is nothing anyone can say to defend this, but lord, do people try. More on that later.
The article has a long list of women who were treated very poorly by Ryan. Women who he made promises to get them in bed, and then attacked or ignored them when he got tired of them or didn’t get exactly what he wanted. His marriage to Mandy Moore was full of verbal and psychological abuse. He would lord his own musical success over her, and chastise her how she wasn’t a real musician because she didn’t write her own songs. He was controlling and insecure, and just plain nasty.
Once they were divorced, he would take to social media to trash her, usually deleting the posts soon after. He did the same with the women he dated, saying truly horrible things about them on twitter and in interviews. We in the community saw it all over the years, and thanks to smartphones, most of it was saved in screenshots and posted in the groups.
Even before the Times article, people in the groups started to show a clear divide. There were the misogynists and apologists, who victim blamed the women, and the people who were starting to see that their idol was a flawed and fucked up guy. There were huge blowups in the groups, where people would start attacking anyone who questioned Ryan’s behavior. There were real fanatics in there, who took it personally when they felt like you were attacking their hero. There were also a certain percentage of people who seemed just as damaged and fucked up as Ryan Adams, and I started to see why he appealed to them.
One of the most horrible things he allegedly did was use a woman’s sickness and death to help sell his good guy image and records. The story goes that he was dating Carrie Hamilton, a singer, actress and playwright, the daughter of Carol Burnett. She was stricken with lung cancer, and died about 5 months later. Ryan told his stories about how he wanted to stay there to take care of her, get a place with her, did everything he could, and he wrote his album Love Is Hell about losing her, whom he referred to as the love of his life, and how he would have been with her forever if only she hadn’t died.
The problem with that is that her family says it’s not even remotely true. Carol Burnett has gone on record as saying she never even heard of him. Her sister has publicly stated that while they did date, he basically just left her when she got sick. He promised to take care of her and get a place with her, but did none of that. He was even dating someone else when she died. I will post a copy of the letter her sister wrote in the comments.
Still, to most of us, Ryan was this poor, sweet guy who constantly got hurt because he was just so giving and trusting and looking for love. We didn’t really know all the facts, we told ourselves. He was so romantic and vulnerable, and he was such a deep and thoughtful musician, how could he really be this bad? His songs were all about how he was the victim, and everyone did him wrong. For me, it is all summed up in the line from the song Two, “I got a really good heart, I just can’t catch a break.” He was the poor, empathetic, lovesick fool who got taken advantage of time and again by horrible women and fickle fate. He cultivated this image, and a lot of us bought it.
Until we didn’t.
And then the Times article came out, and everything was in turmoil in the groups. The admins had to keep out new members, because journalists were trying to join to get info on him. Everyone had an opinion. A lot of us were trying to digest all this information, and figure out just what we wanted to do about it. We had a lot of serious decisions to make. Were we going to stand by him or abandon him, and if not, could we separate the man from the music? What followed was months of intense discussion, emotionally charged posts, some name calling, and a lot of soul searching.
We were still a community, and most of us were there, as sounding boards, as fellow wounded souls, as people who weren’t sure how to give up something that was this big in our lives and navigate a different world than we were used to living in.
Some of that might sound crazy to you, but if you’re a music fan, you probably get it. Music plays such a big part in our lives. It gets wrapped around all the fibres that make up the rest of who you are. We form real bonds with songs and artists, and when that gets ripped away from you, it hurts. We all have those few artists who are really special.
People who defend Ryan like to bring up other rock stars who have done some suspect things. They talk about Jimmy Page and Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis,as if two wrongs make a right. The thing is, while I’m not going to sit here and defend things that they did, I don’t have a connection with them like I did with Ryan Adams. By the time I discovered most of those artists, they were dead, or their groups broken up. Ryan feels like a personal betrayal. He went to great lengths to present himself as something he’s not. I championed him many times, and I now feel like a fool. Besides, a lot of the things people mentioned were isolated incidents. Ryan Adams was a lifelong predator and abuser.
The thing about Ryan is that he attracted a lot of people who related to the person he presented himself to be. A little broken, a little damaged, someone on the fringes who didn’t quite fit in with this world. Some of those fans were women, who suffered through some of the same abuse it turned out that Ryan was inflicting on the women in his life. It was so much worse for them. It was like reliving it all over again. Just talking about it was enough to trigger anxiety and PTSD. I can’t imagine what it was like for those women to have to read horrible comments in some Facebook music group about how the victims weren’t really victims and got what they deserved. That happened more often than you’d think, because so many fans would rather tear apart other fans than face some simple facts. When women in the group would share their personal stories of abuse or rape, the standard reply from the people defending Ryan was “I’m really sorry that happened to you, but …” which instantly invalidated whatever trauma the person shared. Many were using the Trump tactic of calling the New York Times fake news, so that right there should tell you all you need to know about them.
One of the most telling things about all this is that when the New York Times article broke, none of the people Ryan had worked with over the years came to his defense. Many of those close to him made statements to the press telling people to believe all the things you heard. Some came out with their own stories of his abuse. Other women came out of the woodwork to relate very plausible tales of abuse or strange behavior. Ryan has taken to social media quite often to bash most of the musicians he worked with in the past. He seldom has anything good to say about anyone, and is constantly downplaying any role they had in his career. He comes off like a raging narcissist and egomaniac.
I know people who have played in bands with him. I know people who have worked with him. I know people who have written books about him. None of them have defended him in any way whatsoever. In fact, some of them tell the same stories of abusive behavior and borderline sociopathic behavior. I’m not a journalist here. I don’t have any bombshell inside information. It’s all out there.
Since this happened, so many other people I know have told me personal experiences about their interactions with Ryan. Some of them are perfectly fine. They met him after a show, and took a picture with him. They messaged him on social media, and he was lovely.
The thing is, I have been hearing many other stories that are horrific. They almost defy belief, but like I said earlier, there are those screenshots … These were his fans, people who support him and buy his records and followed him from show to show. He abused them, belittled them, basically treated them like shit. Some he tried to groom and manipulate into sexual situations. They are not my stories to tell, though, but I definitely believe them.
The groups are still a mess. There is still fighting, although a lot of people just left in disgust. I’m not here to judge most of the people. If they can manage to separate Ryan from the music, good for them. If they want to continue to support him, that’s their decision, even if I don’t agree with it. There are a lot of people who just have a lot wrapped up in Ryan Adams. He is a part of their lives that they don’t want to let go of, now or ever. While some of us can’t separate the man from the music, they just can’t separate the music from their lives.
The thing I can’t abide by is the people who are belligerent about it all. They attack anyone who criticizes Ryan in the slightest. They blame the victims. I have seen them refer to Mandy Moore and the other women as whores, opportunistic bitches who are trying to use Ryan to further their careers. They feel like every victim of Ryan’s deserved what they got. They defend his abuse and gaslighting as “normal relationship stuff.” I have seen plenty of instances where some of these people have attacked women in the group who have anything bad to say about Ryan, calling them cunts, and advocating physical violence. There are deplorables everywhere, and a certain amount of them have heard Ryans siren call. All they do is complain about how Ryan isn’t putting out records now, and how sad it is that he isn’t able to tour right now.
And Ryan Adams? Since this all happened, he’s just made it worse. He has shown no remorse. He has done no work to redeem himself. A few months ago, his manager shared some text messages with him where he told her that he wants his career back, and has no interest in “this healing crap.” After laying low, Ryan is now back on social media, and it’s a complete shitshow. He is posting at all hours of the day and night, and he doesn’t look good. While it’s impossible to truly analyze anyone over social media, it’s obvious he’s not doing well. He still posts weird and nasty stuff, then deletes it. He makes everything that happens to anyone remotely connected to him all about himself, completely self-serving, as he did recently with the death of his Cardinals bandmate Neal Casal. He refuses to address anything that happened in the past other than in weird, cryptic posts about upcoming revelations and how he will tell his own story, only to remove them soon afterwards with no explanation.
I really don’t want anything to do with Ryan Adams anymore. I found that once I stopped listening to Ryan’s songs, I have discovered a whole new bunch of artists to listen to. I am not a teenager anymore, I don’t have to have some slavish, blind devotion to some rock star to validate me or them. I am still in one of my Ryan groups because that community I spoke about is still there. It is still under attack by people who can’t accept anything but total allegiance to Ryan. In fact, we’re pretty positive Ryan is in there under some aliases, because he will sometimes tweet things that correspond with specific things from the group.
One of the tired tactics the more obnoxious fanatics will use is to question why any of us are in a Ryan Adams group if we don’t like Ryan Adams, which superficially seems like a valid point. I ask myself the same thing sometimes. What I realize is that there was always a big part of the group that had nothing to do with Ryan. We talked about all kinds of music. We made silly jokes and pun threads, we had all kinds of private jokes involving among other things, Ed Sheeran, flouncing, and some guy who ate croissants. I can still discuss his music and his place in history, and some memories of what his music meant to me at one time. Some of us have a lot of years in that group, and we still care about it, although to be honest, the trolls and deplorables are making it tough. It was never just about Ryan Adams, and it wasn’t a fan club in the least. Many of the people saying that weren’t even in the group that long.
There’s even a part of me that holds out hope that Ryan can get it together. I know it is extremely unlikely, but I believe in redemption. Right now, though, I don’t see it. I don’t necessarily believe in cancel culture. I don’t think that one mistake means you lose your whole career, and I’m not sure that is the case in every situation anyway. A lot of people like to rail against anything PC, and claim it is ruining the world, but most of it is pretty much in line with what it should be.
In Ryan’s case, it is more than just one thing. It is a life and a career filled with transgressions and bad behavior, and in his case, I think he deserves all the scorn and loss of revenue and ability to distribute music. It is part of how society polices itself. Consumers decide with their pocketbooks, and I don’t think any label or company wants to take on Ryan right now. The downside is too big, and who wants that hassle? The fact that Ryan can’t even understand this shows how much of a disconnect with reality he has. I don’t think he has people in his life who have his best interests at heart, most likely because he drove them all off. I’m not sure if he’s sober these days. He’s lied about it in the past, as addicts often do.
So that’s where it stands between Ryan Adams and me. This is all just my opinion, and how it has affected myself and my friends. I will always side with victims. I will always side with the people I know personally who have been hurt by him, and all this that he brought upon himself. He has not only tarnished and damaged his own image and career, he has hurt the people associated with him as well. He has hurt the people who worked for him, at his recording studio and merchandising company. It is clear he feels no allegiance to anyone, so why should I have any allegiance to him?
So really, all the stuff I have had to deal with is small, compared to what his victims have had to deal with. I feel the worst for them, and hope they can heal and move on. That’s hard to do when the person who hurt you refuses to acknowledge what they’re done. That’s becoming commonplace these days. Abusers just deny and wait it out. It works, people have short attention spans. For some, they get to be on the Supreme Court.
Which is why I don’t feel like I want to just let it drop and move on. I don’t want people to forget, and let it all fade into the background. I feel a little responsible in my own way. I bought his albums. I paid to see him live. I helped get other people to listen to his music and become fans. I enabled him as well. I helped a predator cause havoc in other people’s lives, no matter how small my part in it. I feel like I need to see it all through and do my little part to hold him accountable, as well as myself. After all, I should have paid closer attention. The signs were always right there, between Ryan Adams and me.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/arts/music/ryan-adams-women-sex.html

e=mc2

Every single day, I wake up and wonder if it's worth it. Not in a suicidal kind of way, although I often think about that angle as well, but probably not in the way you think. I'm not lying in bed, contemplating ending it all, I'm just looking at the day ahead and life in general, and wondering what's the whole point of it all.
Mostly, I realize that there is no point, not in the grand scheme of things. I even laugh about the whole "grand scheme" terminology, because there really doesn't seem to be one, and if there is, none of us can see it. We might fool ourselves that we do, or pretend to understand whatever deity we decide to worship, or that we comprehend the inner workings of the universe, but that's poppycock. We don't have the first clue.
We just try to do what's right, to live the best lives we can, and then fail spectacularly at it everyday. Because really, what fun is playing it safe and being responsible?
Which is ironic, because a lot of my morning ritual is spent plotting a course for the day that I will not follow, at least not for long. Sure, I'll get a couple of the things done that I need to do, but as the day goes on, I'll convince myself that a lot of the tired old day to day stuff can wait until tomorrow. Then, rinse; repeat.
I will think about the things I did yesterday, and wonder why I didn’t do some things differently. There are so many simple and easy things that I put off that I should do, and I wonder why that is. In hindsight, it seems like it would have been so easy to do whatever it was that I talked myself out of doing. For some reason, when it is time to do a lot of the mundane upkeep life requires, it just seems so hard. I will distract myself any way I can. I will sometimes just sit and stare into the distance, and avoid doing the simplest and easiest chores that are right in front of me.
I sometimes wonder if it’s depression that keeps me from doing even the simplest things. I don’t think so, at least not in any chemical sense. I think it’s probably a byproduct of my whole thinking too much and making lists in my head of what’s really important and what’s just pointless stuff that doesn’t really matter at all. If you pull back far enough, nothing really matters at all. In that nonexistent grand scheme of things, nothing anyone does matters at all, so why do I care about housework? I live alone, so who cares if I vacuum? Who’s going to see it? What does it matter if I leave the dirty dishes in the sink until tomorrow? No one sees my kitchen but me.
The thing is, it does kind of matter. In fact, my unvacuumed rug and my sink full of dishes makes me feel worse about myself. Now, in my bed in the morning, taking stock of my life, it seems like failure. It radiates out from there. I don’t want anyone to see my dirty floor or messy kitchen, so it’s kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy sort of thing. I feel like I spend too much time alone, but I don’t want anyone seeing my messy apartment, so …
That’s how easily patterns form, and how quickly we lock ourselves into cycles that are bad for us. I can quickly extrapolate not vacuuming my rug into thinking that it’s pointless to do anything with anybody. Ultimately, it will all end badly, and somehow my carpet is to blame.
So I lay in my bed in the morning, and I participate in another one of those cycles. I resolve not to do all that anymore, then I go out and do exactly that. It is hard to break routine, which is why we need to be careful about the routines we set for ourselves. That’s why you should do different things all the time. That’s why you should have new experiences and live outside your comfort zone.
So I lay there and decide against doing any of that. After all, if nothing matters anyway … well, you get the idea.
That’s where the whole wondering if it’s worth it thing comes in. Everyday, I make a list and draw diagrams in my head. Although there is no actual paper, but I am looking at everything spelled out on paper, and doing complex equations in my head to try to get the sides to balance. There are plenty of days when I can’t, when on paper there seems to be no point in going on. I look at it in an academic sort of way. Suicide isn’t an option, but on the days when I can’t balance the spreadsheet, I just sigh to myself, and think about how it’s going to be a melancholy day. Sometimes it’s going to be a day I just have to power myself through.
I often think about my friends, and the things that they are dealing with. I marvel at how they handle things. I think about the people I know who have it worse than me, and I figure if they can do it, so can I. I think about how I’ve made it this far, 54 years on the planet, and how so many of my days started out just like this, but I made it back to my bed at night in one piece.
It’s usually at this point in the morning when I write one of my horoscopes. I write them to share my own inner dialogue, and I hope they help other people get through their own hard times. I hope people can relate to them, and see that they aren’t alone. Sometimes, they inspire what I write, because I am awed by them, or moved by what they are going through. Mostly, though, they are the result of all my calculations I am working through in the first moments of the day, while I lie there and wonder if all this is worth it. In the end, they are basically a way to talk myself into getting out of bed and facing the day. They are surprisingly effective.
What I usually realize is that life isn’t meant to be lived on paper. It can’t just be summed up by some convoluted math. Most of what makes life … well, life … is the intangibles, and I don’t think any of us are good enough at math to compute those into the equation. Most of the things that make life worth living are things we never saw coming. There are emotions we could never plan because we didn’t know we were capable of feeling them until they came along. There is so much random chance and unexpected epiphanies. There are so many things still left to be discovered, and so many reactions we didn’t know we would have.
How could we possibly factor in the things we didn’t even know existed in the first place?
Life is meant to be lived, in the moment, not played out incorrectly in your head. That’s where I get myself in trouble the most. I am constantly thinking about the past or plotting a course through a nonexistent future, and getting most of it wrong. It’s like the most poorly played game of chess in the world, where I don’t know all the rules, and can only see half the board to begin with.
I will try to map out where everything is going to end up, and my compass is telling me that most of it really doesn’t matter anyway, and spins erratically. That’s a bad navigational instrument. It won’t tell you where true north lies, and will send you in circles and deposit you in the same place.
Somehow, I need to reconcile the fact that while I know nothing matters in some weird cosmic scale, a lot of things actually do matter. My list should be more along those lines, figuring out what to leave in the “what’s important” column, rather than figuring out the elaborate mathematics that I need to move them to the “what doesn’t really matter because life is an absurdist cosmic joke” column.
There has to be a better balance to life than simply living my life from my bed in twenty minutes at the beginning of the day, then sleepwalking through it for the remainder. That’s what really matters.

Subdued Sports Fan

I guess it's nitpicking, but as football season starts, I see a ton of sports fans going on about particular fans of certain teams. Most of it is done in a humorous way, and it's just part of the whole sports thing. Honestly though, one of the things that annoys me most about sports in general is that you get stuck in some sort of club with a bunch of douchebags just because you like the same team.
I don’t know how many times I’ve been out in public in my Mets shirt and had total strangers just start talking to me because they like the Mets as well. It’s not that I’m anit-social or anything, but if I wanted to hang out with other Mets fans I would have gone to a Mets game more than the one time I went just before they tore down Shea Stadium. I figure I have at least another 30 years to see a game at Citifield.
Sports fans love to think that everyone is a kindred spirit, or some soldier in the same army, supporting their team by drinking in a parking lot, shouting homophobic slurs at each other, and generally being assholes about it whenever their team loses. Or wins, for that matter. Fans of every team act like dicks almost all the time. They love to bust balls, they love to gloat, they just love to be douchebags most of the time. That’s why it’s so nice when I see someone else in a Mets or a Cowboys jersey, and they just nod or smile and continue on their way. It's sort of like religious types, the best churchgoers are the ones who never talk about it.
The thing is, it’s not other fans of the Mets or Cowboys that accost me in public when they see me. It’s fans of other teams, who think it’s perfectly acceptable to give a total stranger shit in the grocery store or at the gas station because you’re wearing the shirt of one of their rivals. I have had people curse me out in broad daylight, or hassle me while minding my own business in a bar or restaurant or at the movies.
People seem to love being connected to something bigger. They talk about their team winning like they had something to do with it. They always use “we” when they mean “they.” “We got a really big win today!” “We really picked it up in the second half and came back!” “We just didn’t have what it takes today.” Newsflash: You weren’t out on the field scoring touchdowns or tackling anyone. You could have dropped dead at halftime, and it would have had no effect on the team whatsoever, even if you had a season ticket in a luxury box. Those things are paid upfront.
My point here is that I really don’t want to be identified as a “Mets fan”, a “Cowboys fan”, or a fan of whatever team I like to root for. It’s probably the least identifying thing about me, and it’s way down on my list of things I really care about, especially as I get older. Sports fans don’t really have the best image anyway, so I’m not too boisterous about it because it’s not really a club I’m proud to belong to. Sure, most sports fans aren’t the dumb fucks you read about all the time, destroying their TV’s or beating their wives after a loss, or destroying their cities after a win. It’s like most things, you hear about the loudmouths and assholes more than the average, calm and grown up fans.
But every team has a faction of assholes that follow them. I’m not a tribe kind of guy. I’m not a conformity type of guy. I’m not a uniform kind of guy. I don’t like Superbowl parties, I don’t like watching games in a sports bar, I don’t like bonding over them. I just like to watch them in the comfort of my own home, by myself. I still get excited during the games. I have been known to yell or curse or cheer while my rabbit looks at me like I’m nuts, but just like I have no actual effect on the team or the outcome of the game, it has very little effect on me. If my team misses the playoffs, I say to myself “that sucks.” If my team wins the Superbowl, I say to myself, “that was cool.” Then I go on with my life. I realize that I haven’t accomplished or failed at anything, I just watched a team I root for participate in some weird, made-up game with arbitrary rules and a certain amount of luck built in, and I don’t bother with all the manufactured drama that comes along with it.
I’m not trying to put any sports fans down; like I said, most of them are fine. Nearly all my friends are sports fans, and I don’t really have a problem with any of them, I just don’t get how serious some people get over it. Maybe I’m the weirdo here, but I like being the weirdo most of the time. Which is why I don’t want to be known as a Cowboys or Mets fan. I have my own identity, and I like it.
So if you see me out wearing a team shirt, just leave me out of whatever it is you feel you need to do or say. Nod or give me a thumbs up or down if you really can’t contain yourself, but otherwise, just keep moving. I’m not really going to share your enthusiasm, and I’m certainly grumpy enough most days to tell you to go fuck yourself if you hassle me about a t-shirt. Now excuse me while I go check on my fantasy football league.
Just kidding! If you ever see me bothering with fantasy leagues, please shoot me right through the heart. It’s the point right in the middle of the “t” on my Mets shirt.

Stick Around

Rich and wealthy people commit suicide.
Famous actors who are the toast of Hollywood commit suicide
Comedians who spend their lives making people laugh commit suicide
Rock stars who are envied and adored and worshipped commit suicide
People with good jobs and loving families and young kids commit suicide
Friends we know well and count on and thought they had everything going for them commit suicide
People from every walk of life, in every situation, who seem to have everything they could possibly want and the world on a string, still take their own lives everyday. It’s not about money or fame, or even doing what you love and achieving your dreams. 
So don’t sit around and think about the things you don’t have that would make you happy and fix your life, because they won’t, not if you’re not happy with yourself in the first place. Not if you are suffering from depression. There is nothing that you want that someone else didn’t already have, and it still didn’t stop them from being unhappy, or even ending their life. Figure out what makes you happy, and go do it. If you suffer from depression, talk to someone and get help, and start that journey to a better place. Figure out who you are and what’s going on, because the world is a better place with you in it, and once you’re gone, all you were, all you were gonna be, all the things that were uniquely you are lost, and only shattered people are left in your wake. 
Because you have to look at the flip side as well. There are people who have nothing. There are people who have suffered through things that we can’t even comprehend, and come out the other side. There are people who have everything stacked against them, with almost no prospects and no obvious reason to have hope or go on.
Yet they go on. Not because they are stronger, or better, or more worthy. Because they are blessed with support and love, from others and for themselves. Because they got help when they needed it. Because they are lucky enough to be able to hold on to their dreams and their faith in the future and to see the good things in life that are still all around them. 
So again, try to figure that all out, and don’t try to do it alone. Believe me, there are more than enough people to go around, and a good percentage of them are happy to help if you only ask. It might not seem like it, but the world is full of beauty and joy and possibility, and a whole lot of truly amazing and wonderful human beings waiting to share it with you.
Stick around and see.

Who’s your favorite right winger type on Facebook?

Who’s your favorite right winger type on Facebook?

There’s the out and out troll, who doesn’t even care about or understand politics. They just want to be abusive and antagonistic because I guess their parents didn’t give them enough attention.

The ones who claim to not even follow politics and want nothing to do with it, and wish people on Facebook wouldn’t even post political stuff. Still, they can’t help themselves from sharing nasty memes they don’t understand and articles from Fox News and some weird sites with “America” in their titles.

The comedians who constantly share hilarious stuff that is usually just hateful and racist, misogynist or homophobic. Seriously, why do so many conservatives have no sense of humor?

The intellectual right winger, who tries to use big words but doesn’t know the difference between there/their/they’re. As proof of their stupid points, they often cite articles from propaganda sites they think is news, and YouTube videos made by some beardo in their mom’s basement.

The Independents and Libertarians who somehow always have the same exact views and talking points as Fox News. They will offer their take, and it’s the same exact take that they all have, copied and pasted from the same Fox News article, while all the time they pontificate about how they think for themselves and aren’t left or right.

The ones who are in way over their heads, who think that they are politically literate, but whenever you present a valid viewpoint or argument, they respond with personal insults because they have no actual response.

The angry baby boomer, who thinks millennials are the cause of all the world’s problems, along with snowflakes who cry about everything. Meanwhile, they get all twisted up over Starbucks cups and some football guy kneeling, and they think all music made after 1979 is garbage, except maybe the Foo Fighters and Greta Van Fleet.

The financial tycoons, who care only that their 401k is doing well and that the economy looks good, at least on paper, and refuse to acknowledge that it was doing quite well during Obama’s tenure, and he was responsible for most of what is happening today.

The churchy types, who only care that Trump is going to save us from the heathens and sinners because he was sent here by God to save America.

The true patriots, who think that the way to make America great is to actually shred the Constitution and go against every policy and sentiment that makes America what it is.

The gun nuts, who think that the solution to all of our gun violence problems is more guns. Also, you’re stupid because you call an AR-15 an assualt rifle or something, and thus you have no business talking about mass shootings in the first place.

The Russian bots who post on every single article in broken English, and can only get away with it because they don’t seem that much dumber than actual Americans. When you check their profiles, they have only been on Facebook for a month and have a generic profile pic, and a few posts about The Office or Friends or The Simpsons because they are obviously good, pop culture obsessed decadent Amercan swine.

*disclaimer I know that there are some perfectly decent conservatives out there who are just as appalled by Trump and where their party is going, and I count them among my friends. Not every Republican is like anyone on this list, but there sure are a lot of them shooting their mouths off on social media everyday. Most real, decent conservatives I know don’t even engage in political talk on Facebook.

What Kind Of Person Are You?

What kind of person are you?

If you say you’re not a racist or homophobic, would you hang out with people who are? Would you just sit by and listen to them say racist stuff, and talk about how other races are inferior or support genocide? Would you be fine with them talking about how gay or trans people are an affront to God, or disgusting and amoral, or advocate denying them their rights? Would you be okay with people you call friends if they were advocating violence against people based on race or their sexual preferences? Would you tolerate this kind of behavior from people you know?

If you saw one of your male friends sexually harass or sexually assault a woman, or hit a woman, would you defend the woman, or just turn a blind eye? If your friends talk derogatorily about women all the time, would you speak up? Would you stop them from hitting their wife or girlfriend if you saw it happening? How about if it they were doing any of these things to your daughter, or sister, or mother? Would it really make a difference to you exactly who the woman was in relation to you, or would you stick up for all women?

If you saw a bully beating up or harassing a small child, would you intervene? If you saw anyone picking on and attacking someone weaker than them, would you speak up? If you saw someone mocking a handicapped person, would you step in? If you saw an adult mistreating children, submitting them to cruelty or neglect, would you try to stop it? Would you stand up to abusive bullies, or would you join in?

If you saw someone kicking a dog or torturing a wild animal, or throwing harmful waste into the water supply, would you just stand by and watch? If you saw someone you know throw their trash into the street everyday, or pour antifreeze on the ground to poison any animal who happened to walk through it, would you just let them do it? Would you be friends with someone who loved hunting exotic and endangered animals for sport, and who proudly posed with their trophies of dead giraffes and elephants and rhinos?

If you knew someone pretended to be your friend, but who constantly sided with your enemies and people who wanted to do you harm, would you remain friends with them? If they broke into your house, stole your money, or trashed your reputation, or helped the people who wanted to hurt you, would you ever have them in your house again? Would you help them by unlocking your front door, and by giving them more of your secrets to tell others who want to bring you down, or would you cut them off, and file charges? Would you even put up with someone who simply throws you under the bus every chance they get? Would you remain friends with someone who has no loyalty to you whatsoever?

If someone close to you, be it a friend or a love interest, lied to you constantly, would you have enough self respect to call them on it? Would you have the self esteem to walk away from someone who habitually lies to you about important things, who is selfish and controlling and treats you like you’re garbage? Do you think enough of yourself to demand that the people in your life treat you with respect, and not treat you like you’re some kind of worthless idiot? Would you be smart enough to see when someone is using you, and strong enough to call them out, or leave them when they are?

Here’s the thing: If you support Trump, or today’s Republican party, you are aligning yourself with all the wrong answers to any of those questions. You obviously know what the right answer to all those questions are, but even if you answer them all correctly, and then you turn around and support Trump, you are lying, to the world and to yourself.
Our president is a racist, a homophobe, a misogynist, and a bully. He is a liar, of epic proportions. He mocks everyone, including his base. He is corrupt, and abuses his power and position every chance he gets. He is a traitor. He is a thief. He is insecure and petty. He is a sexual abuser, and in all likelihood a rapist. His administration is putting children in cages, in concentration camps. His administration is rolling back every protection for the environment and for animals that they can. He is making it easier to hunt endangered species and bring back trophies, and to murder wolves, and allow more cruelty in the meat industry. His policies are accelerating climate change. He is cruel, and full of anger and hate. He cannot be trusted in the slightest, in any situation. He will turn on anyone if he thinks it will get him out of trouble. He has no loyalty to his friends, this country, or anyone but himself. He’s monumentally dumb, he can barely form a coherent sentence.
If you are any kind of decent human being, with any brains and self respect, he is no one you would allow anywhere near you or your family. He should repulse you. He should make your stomach turn.
But yet you support him, and you support every wrong answer to important questions that you can easily figure out what the right answer should be.
So there’s the real question: What kind of person are you?

Revolution

If the Sandy Hook shooting where 20 children were shot and killed didn’t change gun laws in America, nothing will.

If videos of black people being murdered by police officers doesn’t even result in convictions for the murderers, nothing is going to change the way the police conduct themselves, and nothing is going to convince racists that there is a problem.

If the Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein cases, and a whole bunch of other high profile sexual assault and discrimination incidents don’t convince misogynists that there is a problem, nothing is going to.

If the staggering poverty and gross and unfair wealth distribution, the limited access to basic human rights, the horrible treatment of the poor and minorities, as well as the middle class, doesn’t make our leaders and richest people do something, You’re not going to be able to broach their selfish ways.

If all the videos of animals being tortured and treated inhumanely, and all the deregulation and abolishment of environmental protections and climate change doesn’t upset or alarm people, posting facts and statistics isn’t going to do it.

If bombing abortion clinics and shooting up gay nightclubs and suicides from persecution and denying civil rights based on sexual orientation doesn’t convince fanatical evangelicals that their views are wrong and hurting people, nothing you say or do will alter their faith.

If all the corrupt and horrible things Trump says and does, and all his terrible policies and executive orders don’t make his supporters realize that he’s a horrible human being and destroying America, nothing is going to change their minds.

The point is, it’s probably time to stop worrying about changing these people’s minds, and get the revolution started already. We keep coming up with clever and reasonable arguments to illustrate the logical and rational points to people who don’t want to see them, and nothing we do is going to make them consider any of it. How many generations is civilization going to go on being held back because no one can be bothered to grab some pitchforks and get their hands bloody? You wonder why the people in charge don’t fear us? Would you be afraid of us? We can’t even stop fighting amongst ourselves and come up with a candidate we can agree on. No wonder a lot of conservatives view liberals as weak and ineffectual, and think the label is embarrassing. There comes a point where you have to make a stand.
Revolution might be the only way.

Give And Take

There are two types of people in the world, takers and givers. In a perfect world, people would be equal parts of each. Some people are, but not nearly as many as it would take to get the world to run smoothly and for half the population to stop thinking the other half a bunch of assholes.
Being one or the other doesn’t necessarily make you selfish or a pushover, but people today can’t seem to do anything in moderation. We are polarized, and everything in life increasingly seems to come down to two choices, and no wiggle room in between. We seem to have lost the time or patience for all the nuances of life. You get to be one thing or the other, that’s it, so here we are with your choices for today: giver and taker.
The weird thing is, as soon as you are established as one or the other, you take to that role with a vengeance. Once someone has defined you as a giver, that’s all they see you as. Once you define yourself as a giver, that’s how you see yourself as well. It becomes who you are. You feel a need to help care for everyone except you. You put other’s needs in front of your own. You tend to devalue yourself without even seeing it, because you are fulfilling a role. Eventually, you might even get your sense of self worth twisted up in caring for everyone, and you are spreading yourself too thin in an effort to get everyone to see you as you see yourself, and like you at the expense of your self image. Like I said, we take to our roles with a vengeance.
The problem is, once you are a giver, you usually wind up with a taker. The thing about takers is that most of them are completely unaware that they are takers. They might not have started out that way. They might have had that same hesitation and guilt we feel when people present us with the easy way out at one point, but they soon learn to ignore that. They develop the attitude that if someone is offering to do it, why not just let them, and there is always going to be a giver around to do it.
Once you are in these giver/taker relationships, you really settle in to your roles. The givers usually wind up putting their wants and needs on hold to serve the takers, and they convince themselves that they are happy to do it. In some sense, they are. They get their self esteem from feeling needed, so the more the better. They often become enablers, serving their takers and making it easier for the taker to become complacent and lazy, or to sink into their addictions more, or become more abusive and entitled. No one wins.
What’s kind of strange for a giver is that while your relationships with your spouse or partner, and your family, usually falls into the whole giver/taker mess, your close friends are usually givers as well. Perhaps it’s because you commiserate with them. It’s a frustrating way to live though, for a number of reasons.
First off, you can clearly see from the outside that they are being taken advantage of, even when you can’t see it in your own life. It’s frustrating because givers don’t take, they give, so they don’t want your help. That goes against everything they are. They are the helpers, they are the caregivers, and asking for help themselves seems like poison to them. Givers often get to the point where they cannot even take a compliment, because they have gotten so caught up in their role that even a kind word feels like they are taking more than they deserve. They derive no pleasure from it; in fact, it almost seems insulting to ask them to take even a tiny thing like that. That is not who they are. So when two givers get together, they will constantly try to care for each other, but neither will slip into the taker role, so everything eventually becomes a log jam.
It is also a problem when givers get together because it holds up a mirror to themselves, and on some levels they resent the other person showing them that they are basically a servant to an entitled master. They can only point out the problems in another giver’s life for so long before they start to notice the parallels in their own.
The ironic thing is, takers turn their children into givers, while givers often turn their children into takers. The role you give to your child will usually define them for the rest of their lives, so be careful. It is kind of unavoidable, though. Give your child too much, and they will think that’s how the world works, and they become entitled. Make your child jump through hoops or saddle them with too much responsibility, and they think that’s how you earn love. Parents are usually so entrenched in their own roles by the time kids come along that they don’t even know that they are doing it.
In that way, takers aren’t always simply selfish or bad, they just came up with the opposite idea. Someone being subservient and attentive to them seems like love, so they think that’s how it should be. They often don’t figure out that they are not providing that for the person they are with, but why should they? The system works, the giver feels like they are fulfilling their role in the relationship, so what’s the problem?
Givers aren’t all innocent themselves. Many times, they look for relationships with takers because they feel it gives them some control. The more a person comes to depend on someone, the more they are beholden and likely to stay. It can really go to extremes at times. The next time you look at some successful and amazing person who has shackled themselves to some pathetic loser, realize that it is because they feel like it gives them the power in the relationship.
Every good relationship is give and take, but that is supposed to mean that each person gives and takes in equal amounts. Somehow along the way, that got lost. Like I said earlier, we get a choice between two things, and in doing so, we have pared down the complexities and nuances in being human to a few easy labels. We just want someone to fit into their box and get on with it already. We even see ourselves in more simplistic and narrow terms, and we conform ourselves to that mold.
The problem is, that is not who we are at all. We are diverse and complicated, a mosaic of all the things we see and experience and wonder about. We cannot confine ourselves to simple roles and outlooks forever without tremendous willpower and sacrifice. As we get older, we start to realize that roles are stifling, and rob us of our potential. That is why many relationships don’t last. The things that define our roles change, the people we really are cry out for more as we see all the world has to offer, and all the time we spent ignoring it.
Relationships are complex, and ironically, the more time we spend trying to simplify them, the more convoluted and complex they become. We try to tidy up and streamline our lives, but that’s not who we are. The best chance we have is to be honest with ourselves and the people in our lives from the start, and work on learning to give and take in roughly equal parts. Learning to be less selfish and to start giving more is obvious, but It seems crazy to think that we have to learn to accept help or compliments, but I know that many people reading this know exactly how hard that can be.
I know it’s pretty impossible to get an equal amount of give and take on both sides. There is a reason that the whole giver/taker thing exists in the first place. To some people, giving is always going to make them feel better about who they are, and for others, being pampered or taken care of brings them comfort. It doesn’t have to be perfectly balanced, but it also doesn’t have to be one-sided all the time. The best you can do is be aware, and make an effort to give more, and to accept what you are given. If a taker makes an effort and is rebuffed or feels unappreciated, the chances of them trying again greatly diminish.
Like everything in life, try to be more complete, and encourage and cultivate all your complexity. When you do, find someone who is just as complex, and appreciates you for it. If you are already in a relationship, try to grow together. Beware, though. If the other person isn’t ready or willing to change and grow with you, it will probably not end well, but staying with someone who isn’t willing to grow is much worse. Just try to be encouraging and patient, but that is hard sometimes when you start to discover who you are. It often feels like other people are holding you back, and resentment grows, unfairly or not.
Or just continue on in your stifling giver/taker relationships. The world has been running on them forever, and will continue to do so. But take a look at the world. Look at all the bad relationships, the misery, the broken promises, the abuse, the children who are often left behind, the entire dysfunction the world struggles with on a daily basis. Is it really good enough, or is it time for a change?

Decisions, Decisions ...

Everyday starts with big decisions, just like today. For instance, will it be murder/suicide, or just suicide?
That's a joke, kind of, anyway. Life is hard, and although there are a lot of wonderful things to live for, sometimes you seem to hit a patch where there seems to be nothing but bad things. It doesn't even matter that you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, you start to wonder what the point is of getting to that light if there's just another tunnel beyond it.
Some rare and lucky people go through life and never find themselves bogged down with thoughts about how life isn't working out for them. They don't deal with the frustration and malaise of everyday life. They don't think too deeply about the things they'll never have, or lie awake nights wondering what might have been.
Then there are others, and I believe it's the majority of us, who are deep thinkers, who see the world for what it could be and what it really is. They believe all the things they were shown in movies and books, and they love harder and are loyal and true, they want their happy ending, and every year that goes by without it just hurts that much more.
It's not that life is intolerable. It's not that their lives are devoid of happiness. They are just unsatisfied. The things that seem to do it for most people don't do it for them. They are what people derisively call dreamers, with their heads in the clouds, and eventually you might get to a point where you don't even remember what your dream was, it just feels like there is some unattainable thing missing from your life.
But most of us make it work. We accept that the world isn't going to be what we thought it would be. We find our happiness here and there, we take care of our responsibilities the best we can, and we go on. We even keep trying to make the world better. We fight for change and progress, we help when we can, we try to bring some happiness and joy to others, to make the world that magical place we believed in for so long, even though we now see more tunnels than light on the road ahead.
Sadly, there is that other group, the people who see no way out. It's all just too much for them. They will never feel like they belong, they will never feel like anyone could ever love them, or if they did, they would not deserve that love. They feel overwhelmed or completely drained, and one sad day they decide that enough is enough.
Some do it quickly. Some when they are young, with their whole lives before them, and that is a real tragedy. I tried it young, and it didn't work, and I'm eternally grateful it didn't, because I would have missed out on so much, the tunnels and the light. Some do it slowly, they just stop caring or trying. They live dangerously, they give themselves over to addiction, they go out in a blaze of glory, or they just wind down while destroying themselves with whatever means are at hand. Some suffer from mental illness or depression, and every day is a struggle, until one day it just seems easier to give up the fight.
It's all tragic. They leave us behind to pick up the pieces, and we often feel resentful. We get angry, we feel hurt, and in turn that can make us feel guilty and ashamed. We feel like we could have done something, but sometimes there is nothing we could have done that would have made a difference.
We should still try, though. We should check in on the people we know. We should let people know we care and we love them and they matter. Not just the sad ones, but everyone. Many times, it is a complete shock when someone takes their own life. People are so good at masking things. That's why life and love and caring is so hard and so scary.
By the same token, if you are having a hard time, reach out to the people who love you. If your brain is telling you that no one loves you, it is lying. There are people who have done some unforgivable things in this world, and still, someone loves them. There are people who have done heinous and hurtful things to me, things that have left deep and lasting scars to this day, yet I still love them. No matter how unlovable you think you are, you are not. You might even resent or hate someone for loving you, because you hate yourself that much, but that's your brain or past trauma talking, it's not reality.
Take me. I have more people in my life who love me than most people do. They tell me all the time. Honestly, hardly a day goes by without someone I know telling me they love me, how much I mean to them, or just thanking me for being in their life. Part of that is because I'm lucky to have a family who is close and caring. I'm lucky to have friends who know that love and trust and companionship matter. We forge deep bonds over music and movies and philosophy and science. We are deep thinkers, and we get it.
I also really put myself out there. I'm accessible, I'm open, I'm honest, and I put long rambling things on Facebook about the meaning of life, and talk about real things, and that matters to some people. That's how I know about that middle group of passionate dreamers and the love they have to give.
So yeah, my life is filled with people who love me, some of them fiercely. Still, not a day goes by where at some point I feel that I am unlovable. I am surrounded by love, yet my fucked up brain whispers to me that no one could really love me. It tells me I don't really fit in anywhere. It tells me all the same things it tells everyone at some point or another, whether you're a huge success or living in the gutter.
We tend to base our happiness on things that aren't real. Not just movies and TV shows, or advertising, or pop culture. We look at others, with a distorted view of their lives, and we compare, we covet, we grow envious of some facet of their life that makes it seem like they have it all figured out.
But they don't. They are just like us, going through life with some wonderful things and some advantages here and there, but the same big missing pieces we all have. They have a lot of the same worries and fears we all do, because any of us can only have so much control, no matter how hard we try. In the end, so much is still just random chance.
The good news is, the chance that comes along, the random and fickle thing that will impact your life, has just as much of a chance to be something good. We usually view change as bad, but change is constant, and more often than not, it's a win. On top of that, you can exert a lot of influence on those seemingly chance occurrences. You can put yourself in a better position to have good things happen. You can work to make better decisions, you can work towards positive goals, you can make a conscious choice to figure out what makes you happy and go get it.
And yeah, that's not easy, and the older you get, the harder it is. Life is not kind to dreamers and lovers. It tends to punish you for caring or trying, and in turn, you learn to punish yourself. When you know what love is, it makes you feel lonelier to go without. Still, lots of people realize their dreams, or at least enough of them to be happy and find fulfillment. So can you.
A lot of those happy and fulfilled people were just as miserable as you might be at times. It's normal to think that everything sucks now and then. It's normal to play that game of rows and columns, whether it's worth it or not, or if it could ever work out. It can always work out. There's always a chance. Life has always been a fight against the bastards and fate and our own insecurities.
The dreamers and the lovers win more often than not, and I'll cast my lot with them every time. If you're reading this, chances are very good that you're one of them, and I couldn't be happier to be your friend. Together, we will forge our own happiness, our own corner of the world, where things make sense and we belong, and we will go on.

Now just so you know, I am not going to be killing myself any time soon. I have way too much to live for, and even though my shitty brain tries to tell me I'm unlovable, I know I'm not. So thank you to everyone who makes me understand that.
But more importantly, if it ever came to it, and I had the presence of mind, of course I would choose murder/suicide. Not randomly, of course, that's horrible. I would definitely try to take out some rapists, or animal abusers, or the antichrist, if they showed up. Or maybe just some of the people who have hurt the ones I care about so much. That's probably just a fantasy, but again, it's probably one many of us have played it in our heads. Or maybe not. Maybe that's some dark thinking that no one else ever pondered, but oh well. I told you I put myself out there, and some of that is bound to make you uncomfortable. We're all dreamers, but some dreams are dark.
Like I said, I know I'm lovable, but I never said I'd make it easy.

Change The World

I usually make a point to say that there is more good out there than bad. I try to illustrate that people are complex, and have a lot of different experiences and situations that have influenced them throughout their lives. I always say it's easy to label someone based on one or two aspects of their personality, and totally miss the rest of the things that make them human. 
Basically, I try to remind people that most of us are good, not evil. Even people with some really fucked up views can be kind and generous and caring. 
I firmly believe that, too. I think when you make a snap decision on a person based on a comment or two on social media, you might be cheating yourself, and missing out on all the other things that person, and humanity, bring to the table. I'm guilty of that as well, depending on my mood, and I'm not proud of it. We live in polarizing times, and we are being conditioned to choose a side first, ask questions later, but don't even actually ask questions later because anyone who disagrees with you is instantly worse than Hitler. 
So we should work on that a little. If you simply jettison everyone from your life who doesn't think exactly like you do, then you are effectively eliminating everything that makes humanity into humanity, and gives us any advantage to survive and progress. You might think “it's just Facebook, I haven't even met most of these people in real life, who cares?” The problem is, you're training your brain to think that way, and your brain isn't going to make that distinction between real life and social media. You will eventually isolate yourself everywhere, and live in a sad, lonely bubble, where nothing challenges you to think, just like a lot of the people you claim you hate. 
Now, all that said, even good people are capable of some pretty horrible things. Normal, everyday, decent human beings can say some really horrible shit from time to time. Most of them don't even understand why it's horrible. Sometimes it can make me feel physically ill when see some of the hateful and nasty crap that spews from someone who up until then seemed perfectly fine. Of course, sometimes I go back and look at it later and realize that I was projecting other horrible people’s comments and attitudes on them, and in hindsight, it doesn’t seem nearly as bad as it did an hour earlier. Emotions can cloud your judgement, and past experiences can dictate our responses, which is often why people have bad or damaging viewpoints in the first place.
That’s when I have to remember all the good things I liked about them up until that point. It's then that I have to realize that if I'm going to try to hold myself to a higher standard, and actually make the world a better place, then I should really engage them respectfully and try to understand why they think the way they do, and to voice an alternative opinion. Chances are you’re not going to change their minds. Not by calling them names. Not by dismissing them and treating everything they say as stupid and wrong. Not by condescending or berating them. By being calm and rationale, though, you might plant a seed in their mind, and give them something to think about. 
And yeah, that's not an easy thing to do, especially in these times when it seems like the whole world is run by psychopaths and is about to fall apart. It's so hard to keep your cool, and remember that even though some people have some pretty drastic and horrible views, maybe they are worth saving. Maybe they are victims themselves. Maybe they are lost and scared and lashing out. Maybe they are pissed off and even they aren’t sure why, they just know that things aren’t right. They might even be mad about the exact same things you are, but they don’t have your perspective, or the support and nurturing that you grew up with, or capacity for logic or reason. Maybe that's how they were taught to deal with problems and their emotions. 
Of course, maybe it's not your job to fix them, or care about whether or not they figure it out. Maybe you shouldn't have to care if these people just go on feeling broken or damaged, and it possibly fucks up their families and children, and it infects the world even more. Because don't kid yourself, you're broken or damaged somewhere as well, and if you think you're not, you're even more broken and damaged than you think. Perhaps you know how to fix yourself, and if so, you’re very lucky, but what about all the people who never got those tools? What does a truly loving and kind person do, abandon them, or help them out? Keep in mind, everyone like that who you abandon is most likely just going to be an impediment or an enemy moving forward, so aren’t you hurting yourself as well?
Maybe it's just really, really hard to even imagine doing any of that, and it's too big a thing to ask of yourself to try to change the world. Maybe changing the world doesn’t come from simply attacking and denigrating the people who make up the world in the first place. Changing the world involves changing minds. It involves changing attitudes, and tempering reactions, and providing different viewpoints. It involves nurture and care and patience, and a whole lot of understanding and perseverance. So yeah, it is so nearly impossible to change the world when you consider what you actually have to do to achieve it, one little bit at a time.
But people change the world everyday, people we look up to and admire and want to emulate, and not one of them ever did any of it the easy way. 
So if you really want to change the world, what exactly are you going to do?

PSA for anti-Trumpers

PSA for anti-Trumpers: don't waste your time getting into fights with Trump supporters who think that this summary from the AG clears him of anything, or that this whole thing is over. It's not. But Trump lovers don't really live in the real world, that's been established a long time ago. For whatever reason, they want to believe that he's good for the country. Some might be fooled, some might be racist xenophobes, but the vast majority have no clue about most of the garbage they parrot from Fox News. Like I keep telling everyone, they don't actually care about politics or people or the country, they just want to feel like they do to cover up the fact that they are just angry and feel marginalized and condescended to, that's what draws them in. If they actually sat down and analyzed the situation and themselves, they would see that, but that's not how their brains operate. They just feel cheated for whatever reason, they want things to remain the same as they live in their arrested development, and want someone or something to hit back, whether it's the enemy or not. There will always be a segment of the population that fears change, and feels like the world passed them by. They want to return to a time when they felt like they mastered, or that had some control, which most likely never even existed. That is how unscrupulous leaders have controlled mobs since time began, by playing on their fears and emotions. So let them crow about how they think this is the end, when it's really just the beginning. If you really thought that the fight would end in some magical moment when the report came in and forces would swoop down on Trump and haul him to jail, and he would go quietly, you're delusional. Here's the thing about battling corruption and evil: you never ever stop battling it, because it will always be there, and it will always fight back. What's your option though if you're a good person and you have the capability to see it? Just ignore it, and let the world burn? There are enough people willing to do that, don't become one of them. That's what the enemy is counting on. This investigation and report is going to be a gift that keeps on giving, and anyone who tries to cover up or dismiss any crimes contained within it are going to be called out on it. Everyone involved is now under a microscope. This is where it gets fun, people, don't bail now!

International Women's Day

So today is International Women’s Day, and by now you know with me that things could go either way. I could get all cynical, and talk about how one symbolic day a year means nothing, and is a joke, considering all that women do, and how sad it is that one stupid day is supposed to make up for all the shit they have to deal with. Or, I could go on about all the injustices and inequalities that exist, and write some big thing pointing it all out and how important it is to support women.
But no, I’m just going to tell you about some of the strong women in my life.
I was lucky enough to know two of my great grandmothers. The first, who we simply called Mother, was a spitfire. I have heard countless stories about how she didn’t take any shit from anyone, and was a self made woman back in a time where that wasn’t an easy thing to be. There is a story I heard about her when I was young, and I can’t say if it’s entirely true or not, but supposedly she was dating a fairly well to do guy, and she found out he was cheating on her. Legend has it that she showed up in public and tried to horse whip him!
I got to meet Mother later in life, when she was near the end. She didn’t get around much, in fact, she went into a nursing home by the time I was about five, and I didn’t see her that much afterwards. Whenever I did see her, she did nothing but tell me not to take any shit and be proud of myself and strong. You might think that is a lot to lay on a preschooler, but it was actually pretty helpful.
My favorite Mother story is one that I don’t really remember, but my mother tells me about it all the time. I was probably three or four, and I was sitting on Mother’s lap, and my mom came into the room just in time to hear Mother tell me “Remember Dave, whenever anyone tries to tell you what to do, do the opposite!”
My mother freaked out, and chastised her for telling me that, but I have to say, the lesson stuck. I question everything, and I’m really good at spotting bullshit, so it’s not that easy to get one over on me. That’s what Mother was always trying to teach, that there are a lot of people out there who are full of shit and want to take advantage of you, so be on guard.
My other great grandmother was Mar, which might have been short for Margaret, or just the way “ma” came out with our Jersey accents. Mar was my favorite person on earth as a little kid. She was tough as nails, but also very loving and caring. She lived with my parents, even before I was born. To illustrate how no-nonsense and direct Mar was, after my brother was born, my father was driving home with her from the hospital. She told my father that my mother wouldn’t be able to perform her wifely duties for awhile, she hoped he understood that. My father awkwardly assured her that he did, but to make sure she added matter-of-factly “you can do what the boys did on the farm when I was young, and put a piece of liver in a can and use that.” My father drove on in stunned silence, grappling with the fact that his wife’s grandmother told him he could fuck a can of liver if he got horny.
Mar helped raise my brother, and helped raise me. Like Mother, she always demanded respect, and she expected you to understand that life wasn’t always easy, but there was no use complaining about it all the time, you just kept at it. Later, when we got a little older and moved, and she went to live on her own again, she would still come for overnight visits. I loved that. Mar had a way of making you feel very special, and I ate that up. She had possession of the family bible, and we have a very rich family history. One of my favorite things that was in there was the newspaper from the day Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. My Great great grandmother adored Lincoln, and saved the paper from that day, and put it in the bible. It always fascinated me, and before bedtime, Mar would take it out from the bible, and we would read it together, and I would hear stories about her life and of relatives I never knew who were dead long before I was even born. She promised me that I would get the bible, or at least that newspaper when she was gone. It felt like my birthright.
She ended up living with her son and his wife, in a basement apartment in my aunt’s house. I used to go see her whenever I went to sleepover at my cousin’s, which was a pretty regular thing. I remember one time when I was older, maybe 12 or 13, and my cousin and his friends were picking on me, and told me to go home. So I did, but my aunt was away, and the house was locked, so I went downstairs to see Mar. She told me not to worry about those jerks, and asked if I wanted a sandwich. I told her I would like an egg sandwich, which in my mind was either egg salad, or just a sliced hard boiled egg. She asked what I wanted on it, and I told her mayonnaise and lettuce, and she looked at me funny and asked if I was sure about that. I told her I was, and was shocked when put down a sandwich containing a fried egg, over easy, with mayo and lettuce on it!
Now, to show you how much Mar meant to me, and how I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, I ate that whole thing. It was as gross as it sounds, and I was one of those kids who was a very finicky eater, but I would have rather eaten a hundred of those sandwiches than make Mar feel bad.
Mar died a few years after that, and her son Mickey, who she was staying with, was married to a miserable and mean woman named Melba. No one in the family really liked Melba, and that included Mickey as well! She grabbed everything Mar possessed after she died, and wouldn’t let any of the family near it. There went my Lincoln paper.
Then, a few months later, Mickey got ahold of my mom, and gave her the newspaper for me. Mar had made it very clear to him that I was to have that paper no matter what, and Mickey stole it out of the bible and sneaked it out to me. One last thing that Mar gave me, that I treasure to this very day.
Both of those women pale in comparison to my mother. She is the strongest woman I know. She is the matriarch of our family, not in a domineering way, just with her quiet strength and dignity. No one has done more for our family, no one has sacrificed and held us together and cared for and loved us like my mother. We are all chafed by her at times, but we know she’s right. She is understanding and compassionate, while being completely no-nonsense and tough, which is not an easy thing to achieve.
My mother had a pretty rough childhood, but to hear her tell it, that’s just how it was, so why worry? She held everything together when my father was in and out of the hospital when I was a little kid, working, taking care of us kids, and visiting him in the hospital, never knowing if he was going to live or die. My brother and I didn’t know either, and we were terrified most of the time, but mom held us together. I remember we had to put our beloved dog Max to sleep while my father was in intensive care, and she handled it and us kids, and didn’t tell my father for a couple weeks because it would crush him. She told him in the car on the way home from the hospital, and it was the first time I ever knew my father to cry.
But my mother didn’t cry. To be clear, I’m sure she cried constantly, but never in front of us. And we were being jerks the whole time. My brother was on the cusp of his teens, and he processed his pain and fear by lashing out and acting up, and I kind of followed along. We didn’t make anything easy on her, but she handled it all somehow. It was then I realized the kind of strength that women possess. It something few men could ever understand. Women get the shitty end of the stick nearly all the time. They are condescended to, they are viewed as the weaker sex. They are looked upon as the whole Madonna/whore thing, expected to fill certain roles as wives and mothers and girlfriends, with little regard to who they are as a whole person.
My mother was always a whole person. My mother is who she is, unabashedly. She was always honest and open with us kids, and she was and is always there for us, no matter what it is we need. She has also made it abundantly clear that she is not our handmaiden. She raised us to be independent and secure and tough as well, although we don’t come close to being as tough as she is. My mother is very understanding and sympathetic, but can only take so much whining and feeling sorry for yourself before she kicks you in the ass and tells you handle it. And you respect that, because she has done that in her life countless times.
She doesn’t take any shit, either. You can’t put anything over on my mother, and she won’t tolerate anyone treating her kids poorly as well. There have been several times in my life when I remember my mother marching into school to tell a teacher or principal off, or coming out the front door to put a neighbor in their place. My mother isn’t an angry person in the least, but you do not want her mad at you, trust me!
So yeah, I was raised by strong women, and the three I have told you about here weren’t the only ones. My grandmother on my father’s side was a very strong and amazing woman as well, and my Aunt Ann is another strong woman I always loved. My sister in law is strong as hell. I know a bunch of strong women now, and I know to treat all women with respect, because the women who raised me demanded it of me. You will never have to worry about me leaving the toilet seat up, I can assure you that!
So happy International Women’s Day, even though one stupid day is almost an insult, and we still have a very long way to go in regards to how women are treated in society. One day does not begin to make up for it, but honestly, I don’t think most women really care that much. They know it, and they know about a whole world that we all live in that men are basically oblivious to; so yeah, they aren’t really counting on some special day once a year to make it all okay.
Women know better, trust me on that. Women are used to meaningless platitudes. They know the score, and they know the power they possess. Women know.
And men are going to find out sooner or later.