Category: Daily Story Project

Spending time writing on my blog every day means that sometimes, I go back and read old posts. It’s fun. Sometimes. Sometimes it’s fun. Other times there are other emotions I feel, reading what I used to write down.

I read posts that remind me of old relationships, and that’s always an emotional minefield. The posts are often about the good times, but thinking of those times and those people from the vantage point of right here right now I can’t help but also think of the bad times. I can feel my Negative Inner Voice spin up, ready to beat me over the head with words I can’t unspeak and actions I can’t not do. I’m sure you know what I’m saying.

Is this too vague to be a good post? I don’t want to pick at old wounds, and I don’t want to find the posts and link them here. So this isn’t very useful or informative. Maybe this isn’t a good topic.

But there are also the good times, often right there on the screen. And if I focus on those words, I can remember feeling good, and feeling happy, and feeling a connection with another—not just another, but The Other, the self that isn’t my self. Seeing a glimpse of the whole universe that lives inside someone else’s experience, that’s informed by someone else’s lived experience. And, wow, how magical is that (asks the scientist-skeptic, which is not a contradiction; many scientists allow themselves to feel that sense of wonder that observation of the universe inspires. It’s why they are scientists.)

I’m happy I’ve been able to document some of that in my own life. I’ve been writing this blog for a long time now, and even though I’ve been here for all of it, and nearly every word here (except for a handful of comments and a few guest posts here and there) was written by me, I still forget the specifics. 

In some ways, reading old posts is like finding and going through an old photo album. Each story is a milestone I’ve passed and made note of before moving on—a view of a forgotten shore from the seat of a boat in the river of time.

Writing it down now feels trite and simple. Despite my practice, I do not consider myself a poet. Poetry needs mystery and deliberate vagueness; my vagueness comes from fear of over-explaining and a strong desire for being direct and sincere. Feelings are all well and good but true feelings don’t come with words attached, and I resist attaching words to ineffable feelings for fear of diminishing them. 

I can’t blog feelings, though, so I have to make do with words. Hopefully these are enough.

Writing daily has been a great experiment and it has only gotten easier as I go along. I still don’t necessarily have something interesting to say every day, but I don’t stress about not being able to write something down every day. Last night, for instance, I didn’t know what I was going to write until I sat down to write it, only an hour or so before I planned to go to bed. I even heard my Inner Negative Voice whisper that maybe I should not do it today. 

I’m glad I persisted. I’m happy my streak continues. Even if I’m rambling in vagaries right now, from my desk at work (shhh! don’t tell IT (haha, that’s me)), I’m glad I am keeping up the practice.

Because maybe in the future, I will look back on this post and remember the feelings I am trying and probably failing to document—but Future-Me will have had enough practice to describe them better. I’m building something here, and every brick I lay makes a stronger foundation.

Or it’s all just typing practice. That’s OK, too.

I had an idea for what I was going to write today but now, now that I’m home and sitting in front of my computer with nothing else pressing to do, I can’t remember what it was. You know the drill; I’m just going to keep typing until it comes to me or I get over my word limit.

Was it about work? No, it was not about work. That was not the subject about which earlier I said to myself “Self, this is what you should write about!” Work today was a bunch of little stuff: Outlook crashing, new users to set up, weird intermittent network issues that vanished as soon as I realized something was going on… Nothing pressing, no ongoing issues, no meaty technical problems I could research and then feel good about resolving. Just piddly little shit. Day went by fast, though, so that was good.

Was it traffic, or my commute? No, that wasn’t it. Although, now that I mention that, I have discovered an interesting new way drive. My commute is 30-40 minutes one way since I’m driving from far Southeast Portland to Canby, in the valley of the Willamette River.

Normally I take SE Division to I-205, then south on 205 to Oregon City, where I hop on 99E and ride that up the hill and along the river into downtown Canby. It’s just a series of boring straight shots, except for the pretty river view on that last bit. But even then, most times I use Google Maps during the drive to and from work; sometimes it directs me around big traffic jams, and, if nothing else, it gives me a readout that shows approximately when I will arrive at my destination.

Well, several times this week, in the morning, it told me to take backroads home and to work, and I let it. The route runs through farmland and past big brand-new housing developments, and then into the tiny little town of Carver, OR, on the upper Clackamas River, and includes a nice run past more farmlands along S. Clackamas River Drive into Oregon City. It’s very pretty, much more so than the view from the freeway, especially in the morning with some light fog.

I hadn’t been to Carver in many years, even though as the crow flies it’s not that far from where I normally go. My strongest memories of it are of it being a destination for weekend day trips as a kid, where the whole family would pile into the car and go out on the river. Dad would wander off to fish, my sister would play in the river or chat with her friends who tagged along, and I’d find a shady rock somewhere and read books and comic books. Carver was the town we’d buy soda pop and sugary treats and sandwich makings. That little store is still there, right by the bridge that crossed over the Clackamas River (though the bridge I remember has been replaced by a much sturdier concrete thing, rather than the wooden-railed one that may be a false memory).

But that wasn’t what I was going to write about. Just a happy coincidence that I have been routed through there this week, for some reason only The Algorithm knows.

Was it my poor sleeping patterns this week? No, not that. Last night I went straight to bed as soon as I got home, I was so tired. When I woke up it was after 10:30 PM, so I rose, nuked a burrito for dinner, watched some YouTube, and went back to bed around 1:30 AM. Not sure broken sleep like that is any better than whatever else I would have done, and tonight, again, I’m very tired. Maybe a bit rambly, too; have you noticed?

I feel like I was tired because I felt a serious but mostly-low-level anxiety all day. Tightness in the chest, dizzy, distracted, weird changes in appetite. Many (but not all, mind you) of the symptoms of a heart attack, which only increased my anxiety. But I’m pretty sure it was just anxiety. My stress was not helped by the ongoing political… spectacle? Yeah, that’s a good word. But the less said about that, the better. So I can state for certain that was not what I wanted to write about.

Maybe it’ll come to me again later, that nifty idea I had earlier. I have to remember to make a note of these things when they come up. It’ll help me in the long run. I would love to post some focused, tight, emotional writing here, rather than these stream-of-consciousness blatherings.

I do appreciate my readers, though. Thanks for sticking with me in these trying times.

I’ve had a tiny increase in traffic over the weekend and it’s fun to think that there may be people out there reading my words who aren’t close friends or family. Not a lot of other people. Just a handful. But, y’know, still.

Have I written yet about the odd-but-nice encounter I had at Rose City Comic Con a weekend or two ago? I was standing in some booth on the show floor in my Vault Suit and I turned around and saw a guy looking at me. He was wearing a nifty N7 jacket and was probably 20 years younger than me.

He smiled and said, haltingly, “Luna Rob Verse? Is that you?”

I laughed and (hopefully) mildly corrected him (“Lunar Obverse”) and admitted that that name was mine, and he said, to my mild surprise, “I’ve been hoping to see you! My friend has been talking about whether or not we would see you here.”

It turns out he and his friend ran into Max and me last year. We had all been wearing Fallout-inspired costumes, that’s how we noticed each other. And Max and I had told them about our podcast, Uncasting. While Max and I had been blissfully unaware, these two guys had been listening to our podcast, and it stuck in their minds enough to wonder if we would cross paths again.

This is a tiny little glimpse of what it would be like to have a small bit of celebrity, and it was surprising and heartening. It made me feel good, and it also worried me, that I had done something wrong. Somehow. I don’t know, I just know that my positive voice and my Inner Negative Voice were in a battle. Luckily, as I may have covered earlier, that weekend my positive self mostly won. I enjoyed the moment, glad that some small bit of my creativity and effort had gone out into the world and been noticed.

I made sure to let Max know about the encounter, and it inspired us to produce more podcasts, once Max has returned from his sojourn in the arid deserts of Utah learning how to fly.

And then, this weekend, seeing the little graph of visits to my blog spike, I felt that glow of attention warm my heart once more. The blog stats include not just visits but which pages are getting views, and it showed a wide range of older posts and the home page. So I clicked through to see which posts they had landed on.

From there I fell down a memory hole. I’m not going to link the posts, but a bunch of them were from the very first year of my blog. I read about being on the bus and observing people around me; I read about yearning for a connection with someone else, especially a romantic connection; I read about being in dive bars and strip clubs and drinking and my friends drinking; I read little one-off jokes and about boring weekends where I did nothing at all but eat and run. I read about complaints about politics and complaints about my neighbors.

There was a consistent cast of characters: random unnamed customers for whom I did computer work; a shortlist of strippers I really really really liked, like Sharai and Áine and Stormy; folks in my neighborhood like the barista J., and my next-door neighbor Old Barfy, and the convenience store guy Dave; and my friends, Tracy, Ken, and Kevin; and a random assortment of fellow bus passengers or bar patrons.

People who did not regularly appear: women I was dating—for the most part, those women did not want to be immortalized in a podunk blog, but also, I didn’t start dating much until much later in my blog’s timeline.

There were many posts I did not remember writing at all. Once I read the post, I could vaguely recall the experience, but the memories and feelings of those events I had decided to document had fallen out of my brain; the only emotional connection I had was in the words on my screen. It was as close to an out-of-body experience as I have ever had. Yes, Brian had written those words, after living through those experiences; but that Brian was gone, had been gone for a really long time.

But by all that’s holy the way I had written those things were inspirational to me now. I had written those posts! Me! Imagine it! Those words had come out of my mind and through my fingers onto a screen. I nearly wept from the conception that I had once been capable of capturing the yearning, the joy, the reckless disregard I had for saving face or covering up my flaws. My flaws, my human nature, was all there on the screen for anyone to see.

I had written with the dream that someone, someday, would read what I had to say. But that had been followed by years of beating myself up with the club of believing no one had, and no one will, ever read them, only to wake up one day seeing a bar graph tell me that someone is out there.

And it all turns out (turns out!) that the most emotional impact my old posts would have is on me, years later, remembering the Brian-That-Was.

Hey, Past-Me. Thank you for the memories. I miss you, sometimes.

Yesterday at therapy, the topic of my strengths came up. A touchy subject, because one of the reasons I’m in therapy is because I’ve got a very loud internal voice telling me I don’t have any. In fact, during the session, my Inner Negative Voice actually got channeled and became my literal outside voice for a brief moment. As it (as I) spoke, I was able to notice that I shifted my posture, I used more forceful hand gestures, and my tone of voice deepened and became louder. It was an act, though. The Inner Negative Voice is definitely me, just a part of me.

Even when I allow myself to think of what my strengths might be, even if I can direct my attention at myself long enough to list some off, the Inner Negative Voice is there to critique and denigrate them. It’s not letting me write anything down, even now. That’s how strong a hold it has on my actions.

I don’t think of myself as particularly attractive. I’m short, bald, old, fat. Those are descriptors and they do describe how I look. I’m hard-pressed to think of more positive adjectives for those attributes. I am what I am. So in an effort to be more positive, I try to think of things I can do that may be more attractive. Actions, over physical appearance. Choices I can make that would make me a valued friend, co-worker, citizen. Those things I have far more control over than the number on a scale or a measuring stick.

So I can honestly say I work towards compassion. I try to be kind to others. I strive to see value in others, in their lived experiences, and I do what small steps I can to make space for marginalized people, to amplify their voices. These are choices, and while the world as a whole may not 100% agree that these choices make someone valuable, it is enough to me that these would all be strengths in the eyes of the kinds of people I want to be around. They would attract people I find attractive.

And then in comes the criticism, like a nuclear-tipped missile aimed right at my metaphorical heart: compassion and kindness are not inherent traits. They’re not who you are, they’re things you give to others. They’re services you do for other people. You’re just giving a gift and hoping they will return the favor. You’re buying their attention. How crass. How commercial. How very capitalist of you.

Kindness is a strength, though. Compassion is a strength. It may be like a muscle that needs exercise to improve, but it’s still something that is inherent to me. And the value in it is there regardless of the amount of return I get on it. I may never see the returns from it, but putting more empathy out into the world is making the world a better place, even in my small corner of it.

Another strength I would like to claim is intelligence. But here, too, I can pick it apart. I know a little bit about a lot of things. I’m a whiz at trivia, which is the most Straight White Man party skill ever. Tidbits of facts, factoids about the world, about politics, about science, economics, philosophy, pop culture, geography, you name it, I can… um… name it.

I have even been known to integrate and sort through and make odd connections between those topics. They don’t all just exist separately; they’re in a matrix and it all falls into place, each topic supporting conclusions in other areas, making an overall philosophy of life and the world.

Where the Inner Negative Voice finds a crack into which it can drive a wedge is in the application. I don’t always put that web of knowledge into practice, in my own life. In short, I often make dumb mistakes, for someone who is seen by others as so smart. Why is that? Why can’t I take this well-crafted model of the universe and use it to make a place for myself in the world? Where’s the disconnect between knowledge and praxis? The Voice hammers away at me.

Is it just that the Voice is the one holding me back? The Inner Negative Voice is there as a defense mechanism. Sometimes, defense is required. At one point, it had a use, and it helped get me and my psyche through tough times; I was a sensitive child and required mental armor and a way to hide.

I don’t necessarily need that now. Now that I’m in a better place, I can hopefully choose when I need defense and when I can relax my guard and let a little bit of me shine out. Scary thought but I’m going to be OK.

I hope.

Today I am writing the post that represents the finish line, as well as a new beginning. Maybe I shouldn’t think in terms of lines crossed; maybe it’s better to think about this as just another point of information. Regardless, 30 days ago I set out to do a thing (30 days of at least 500 words each), and to create a thing (a habit for making space for writing on a regular basis), and today I demonstrate that I have done both of those. So, good job, me!

I don’t have the exact number right now (requires manually adding them up (if someone has a suggestion for a WordPress plugin that will add up word counts for selected posts, I’d love to hear about it!)) but, not counting today, I’ve written over 16,000 words since I started this thing. That is basically a third of a NaNoWriMo.

I can do daily writing, I can do it, I can do this thing. Can I increase my output? The stupid Inner Negative Voice that lives in my head and narrates all the bad in my life doesn’t think so, but that asshole is not me. Not 100% me. It’s a part of me, but not the whole.

I can let the negative soundtrack run in the background, or I can talk over it, and talk back to it. Here is something I am trying. This past weekend I went to Rose City Comic Con, and one of the panels I saw was Wil Wheaton. He has been very open about his mental health and how he feels working with it and what works and doesn’t work for him in living his life. Something he said on that panel has stuck with me. I don’t have the exact quote but the gist of it was that he realized that his internal monologue is very mean to him, and that he would not speak to his dog the way he talked to himself.

“That’s why I can sometimes be heard to say, ‘Good job, Wheaton!'” he said, and I can’t really capture the bright and happy tone he used when he said that, but just imagine how someone talks to a dog they love and you will be able to hear it in your own head.

That’s what I want to try. I want to try to create the habit of praising myself for doing good things, and to be gentle with myself when I do things I shouldn’t. And, y’know, sometimes, I just want to give myself mental pets and tell myself I’m a Good Boi, because I am, and I can, and who doesn’t want to hear that?

After today, I will continue writing daily. I may not publish what I write daily, however, but I will publish regularly, so keep checking back. I’m going to aim for between 500 and 1,000 words per day. And I’m going to drop the numbering.

But for today: good job, Moon! Who’s a good boy? You are!

17 years ago I purchased the domain bamoon.com. I don’t remember what registrar I bought it from. I’m reasonably sure I paid US$35 for it, a price that has, surprisingly, only gone down from then; my last renewal for this domain was US$15.50. How many things you’ve bought in the past have gone down in price?

At the time of purchase, I felt pretty lucky to have gotten a six-character .com domain. I wanted moon.com, for obvious reasons, but it was already owned by Moon Guides, a travel book publisher. I dreamed for years of being able to snipe the domain from them, but that’s a cheap way to get something. I’m happy with bamoon.com.

For at least the first year and a half, I didn’t do anything with it. I didn’t know what I could do with it. I didn’t understand DNS or hosting, not really. I did already have a blog, of a sort, which was a personal site provided by my ISP at the time, a little company called IO.net, a.k.a., the infamous Illuminati Online, the BBS (kids, ask your parents to ask their grandparents what BBS’s were) that was raided by the Secret Service, a raid that led to the creation of the Electronic Freedom Foundation, a group that to this day fights to internet rights and network neutrality—things we need now more than ever.

My blog, known as Lunar Obverse even back then, was hand-written in HTML with pages I uploaded to the server using FTP, which is a lot like walking through the snow uphill both ways to school, you ungrateful kids with your Tumblrs and your WordPresses and Squarespaces. I think all told I posted less than 20 stories. I still have those somewhere. They may even exist as posts in the archives of this site. Y’know. Somewhere.

But this particular incarnation of Lunar Obverse didn’t begin until November of 2004, over two years after I bought the domain to host it. I had a friend who wrote his own blogging software, and I used it to host the actual files of my blog on his personal server, Small White Cube. I used Blogger to compose my posts, and Blogger, in those days, allowed me to publish to any host I wanted. It was fun, and I learned a lot more about the backend of how the World’s Widest Web works.

The domain bamoon.com is my name: Brian Aaron Moon. But it can also be read as a pun and a directive: be a Moon. I don’t really know what “being a Moon” would be, except that I would hope it meant to be creative, and kind, and skeptical of extraordinary claims, and a wee bit anti-authoritarian. But to you, dear reader, to you it can mean whatever you wish it to mean.

B. A. Moon is a common enough name that I get mistaken emails for other B. A. Moons all the time. I mostly ignore them, but sometimes I will reply to the sender and explain they’ve got the wrong email address. There’s a Barbara A. Moon out there in the midwest who likes gambling at casinos, though, who either doesn’t care that she’s not getting her update emails or doesn’t notice. I’ve long since given up trying to correct her mistake. I just quietly click “unsubscribe” when I get them, which slows down the incoming emails for a time, but never stops them entirely. If anyone knows her, could they let her know she’s putting someone else’s email in the boxes on websites? Thanks.

Four weeks! I’ve been writing at least 500 words every day for four full weeks. Another day and a half and I’ll have a Lunar Month’s worth of blog posts on Lunar Obverse. How cool is that?

I don’t know that I’ve ever explained what Lunar Obverse refers to. I’m not going to go digging in the archives to see if that’s true or not. Maybe it’s time for a Station Identification Break; a periodic reminder for those of you who are new, and those of you who have been around and might just want a reminder. A useful post to point to in the future (although, to be honest, I’ve got so many posts on here that a few years’ from now, I’m far more likely to do what I am doing now: punt on searching and linking this post, and just re-explain).

My online handle, if I run it together without CamelCasing it, is often read as Luna Rob Verse, which is amusing, and sometimes has led people who read it that way as being a femme name. Reading it that way also leads folk to think I’m a poet; alas, no. I’ve written some poetry, here and there, but I’m primarily a prose writer. Very little verse from this Luna Rob Verse. And my name is not Rob, Robert, Robbie, Bob or Bobbie, nor is it Robin. I’m Brian (although my dad is Bob, so I have sometimes called him Luna Bob Verse (OK, I haven’t, I just thought about that, but now I pretty much have to, don’t I?))

No, the handle is properly (at least from my perspective) read as Lunar Obverse. The Lunar part is clearly connected to my family name of Moon, which has generated so many nicknames for me through the years. Moonie, Moonman, Moon Pie. Reverend Moon was a popular cult leader in the 70s and 80s, and because of that someone shouted out “Reverend Moon!” when I walked across the stage to pick up my high school diploma.

Back in the early days of the various Nets, before all of them were Inter-connected to make a Network of Networks, or Internet, and I had to pick a handle that was not my name, I chose… Mithras, because he was a mystery cult figure from around the time of Christ or shortly before, and being an atheist and Christian skeptic at an early age, it was the kind of subtle trolling of Christians that I enjoyed (I was, and remain, deeply nerdy).

But I remember a bulletin board (kids, ask your parents to ask their grandparents what a “bulletin board system (BBS)” was) I wanted to sign up to, and it was popular enough that “Mithras” was already taken. Rather than be “Mithras1964” or some such abomination, I swerved and chose “Lunar”. Handles without numbers were much cooler. And it stuck.

As the networks converged, though, Lunar became harder and harder to hang on to as a unique name, and eventually, I added Obverse, which I thought was really clever. See, in coin collecting, a hobby I have never ever done, coin sides aren’t called “heads” and “tails”, they’re called “obverse” and “reverse”. Since Earth’s Moon only reveals one side to Earth, it can be like a coin. The Dark Side of the Moon would be the “reverse”, and the Bright Side is… the “obverse”.

Welcome, therefore, to the part of me I share with the whole world: Lunar Obverse, the Bright Side of a Brian Moon.

The past two weekends have reminded me—more like smacked me over the head with—that I still have the capacity for happiness, for creativity, for connection and communion with people who share my interests and who care for me. I am happy for that timely reminder because my Inner Negative Voice does everything it can to shout the opposite conclusion. So I will try, in my meager 500 words, to outline some of the basic points, an incomplete but potent list, that I can use to tell my Inner Negative Voice it can fuck right off.

Last weekend I spent with four of my closest friends, sitting on a lawn, listening to musicians I love, whose work has meant so much to me over the years, simply enjoying the moment. I laughed, I joked, I danced, I sang. At one point, someone pointed out that they had not heard me laugh like that in a long time, and I was surprised and delighted to realize that they were correct. I smiled. It’s possible it was the company, it’s possible it was the entertainment, it’s possible the small edible I ate contributed to positive brain chemistry, but whatever it was, I felt good and centered and connected and happy. So happy I completely brushed off getting rained on and being cold, that’s how happy I was.

I always look forward to being with my friends, Terry and Ken and Tracy, but I am not always laughing when I am. Bad days happen. But let last weekend’s outing with them serve as one of many touchstones that I am still able to feel joy.

Then the work week rolled through and my Inner Negative Voice doubled its efforts, and it even caused me to miss a day of work so that when Friday came, I was not looking forward to going to Rose City Comic Con, something I’d planned to do with Terry for months. We even missed the first night of the convention because of my grumpiness. Then standing in line to get in Saturday morning, I felt overstimulated and on the verge of falling in to a dark cloud.

But a funny thing happened. Wandering the show floor and being surrounded by people enjoying their passions, I got a distraction from my Inner Negative Voice. And I remembered that there are things in the world I love, too. Sure, it’s superheroes and space battles and good and evil, but there is a moral center to the stories I care about. Heroes may not always win, but heroes in those stories will always fight back against the darkness. If they get knocked down, the best of us will always get back up. They can do this all day if they have to.

And even when one is surrounded by darkness, joy can be found. And the darkness can’t silence the voices of those around me who also need joy and light.

I have far too many little examples from this weekend to fit into one of my 500 word posts. Maybe in the coming days I can document some of them. But one of the mementos I bring from the comic con this weekend is a little silver-and-green ring, pictured above: Green Lantern’s ring of power. To some it may seem a cheap trinket, but for me, it’s a reminder of a few things I value: determination and willpower are what makes the Green Lantern a hero; connection and teamwork makes them stronger, being part of the Lantern Corps; and that even heroes need to recharge from time to time, even though they will never completely retire from the good fight.

I’m happy to be here, and happy to tell my stories. Thank you for listening. There are more, and many many more, to come.

Should I be writing this at 1:09 AM in the morning? Sure, why not? It’s late but it’s after midnight so it’s technically Saturday which means it’s technically the next day, and I have a busy day planned to so I might not have time otherwise to write my 500 words later. I’m writing those 500 words now, before I fall towards bed.

I’m feeling drunk (duh) and lonely and unconnected. Did you read my previous post? Obviously I’m not feeling happy and content lately. It’s a sad, angry, lonely feeling. I lack something that I want, or need, to have, and that something is understanding and connection.

If any of my friends are out there reading this, it’s not your fault. You tell me you’re my friends, and I have every reason to believe you. You spend time with me, and I appreciate every minute. You reach out to me, you say you care about me and love me, you encourage me to do the things I’m dreaming of doing and you praise all my good qualities. I do not doubt you when you do and say and encourage and praise. But there’s that Inner Negative Voice in my head, that’s working to counter everything you say, and the voice in my head is stronger than a hundred of you (if only there were a hundred of you, out there, saying and doing and encouraging and praising, alas.)

But I’m stuck with the head I’ve got, and it’s telling me I’m a piece of shit in a short, hairy, old, wrinkly body, and it’s really really hard to not see it that way, when I look in the mirror and see a bald old ugly fat lump looking back at me. This is the place I’ve ended up, and this is where I live now. It’s really hard to talk back to that Inner Negative Voice and tell it it’s full of crap. It’s much easier to fall into the warm mush and see things the way the Inner Negative Voice sees them.

You understand, don’t you? Or maybe you don’t. Maybe you’re like my closest friend, who has always seemed to be lucky and connected and accepted everywhere they go. Maybe you’re like my other closest friend who has had bad things happen to them because of their own behavior but has never actually changed how they act because of all that, and are still succeeding and going strong. Or you’re like another close friend who has seemingly always made the right decisions and is now living a life doing what they’ve always wanted, having built the life they want.

I’m not any of those folks. I’m the one who has always zagged when everyone else has zigged. I’m the one who has run away from any kind of foundation, who was balked at building up anything of value. I’m the guy who has spent any savings they had, whether financial or social or cultural. I’m just me, and I’m tired, and it’s late, and I’m drunk, and I’m feeling that self-pity kind of feeling. I get what I get, and it’s less than some and more than others, but somehow I can only see the lesser-than, tonight.

I’ll be better tomorrow. There’s always tomorrow.

I love you all. I always say that, and I always mean that. But tonight I do not love myself, and that’s where I’m at.

This song speaks to me. Is that bad?

If you’ve never heard it, t’s about dragging one’s self through an awful situation with some glimmers of hope. It’s about Young Man Anger and resentment, and making promises to yourself about how different things will be… later, always later. When will the good times begin?

But the narrator (probably not 100% autobiographical on the part of songwriter John Darnielle, although perhaps there are some truthful bits—he’s a talented storyteller, but he’s also an adult man, so who can say? I haven’t been able to find any comment from him on how much of it is based on his own life) is also missing some of the good things in their life. Cathy, for instance, although the narrator treats her, like most young men, as an adornment and recipient of his need, rather than a person.

The narrator also has enough freedom to own a car. Somehow has gotten a hold of some booze—probably stolen from the off-screen but looming stepfather, he who does not approve and with whom the narrator comes home to fight.

I’ve been that angry young man, with some differences. My Cathy was named Amy, and we mostly didn’t have a car during the three years we were together. And it wasn’t a stepfather, it was my own dad. But I did steal booze from him, and Amy and I would steal weed from her mom, and we’d sneak off and dream and rant about how things were going to get better someday.

And, lean in close, because I have a secret to tell whoever is reading this (thank you for that, dear reader): for no good reason, I have that same angst and anxiety right now. I feel trapped. I shouldn’t, but my brain is clearly stuck in a fight-or-flight mode. I want to quit everything and just run away into the sunset. This, my rational brain knows, would be bad. I need some income. I need my health insurance—not least of all, I need health insurance to get my brain sorted out, quieted down, brought back into alignment with my overall goals.

It’s a battle inside my head, between flight (quit everything, hide, run far away where noone can hurt you) and fight (stay, dig in, throw metaphorical punches at the negative voices, build on the positives). I know who I want to win but there it is.

If you got this far, know that I am seeing a therapist, and have a doctor’s appointment for a physical (in case this black cloud has some biomechanical/biochemical cause), and at least this time I’m aware of the scope of the problem. I’m aware of it because, to no one’s surprise, I’ve faced these feelings before. Mostly running did not turn out well, despite some incredibly good luck. Most recently, I survived thanks in part to a large insurance settlement, offered to my complete surprise years after the accident that shook me to my core, oddly enough; what goes around comes around, don’t you know?

And this time?

I am going to make it through this year if it kills me.