I am old.

Too often, this phrase is thrown around by people who are demonstrably young, when faced with circumstances that make them feel older than people who are demonstrably younger than they are. Sometimes, these judgements can come from external sources: I was at a party, had just turned 30, and a 23 year old said “I hope I never get that old!”

I don’t think she knew what she was saying, and I think she’s probably happy that she made it to 35, if she did. Not everybody does.

With that in mind, I will amend my statement about my oldness by saying what I really mean, instead: I am not a product of this era, I am the product of a previous era.

Because things change, it can be difficult to adjust to some aspects of the era in which we find ourselves, which is what caused me to have this thought (that I am old). For instance, I grew up being able to watch tv shows on one device (a television) and I had to either watch the show while it was on or hope that my VCR recorded it when I wasn’t there. Where I am typing this newsletter, from where I am sitting, I can count five devices on which I can watch a tv show, and only one of those is a television.

As a lifelong fan of science fiction, I am excited by the offerings of this era. I don’t just mean the technological ones, but the social ones, too. I believe that we are continually advancing as a culture, too, and correcting some of the things that we wish previous eras hadn’t done. I know I have evolved, personally, and an acknowledgment of this evolution is what prompted my thesis (that I am old).

GENDERS

I have heard people even older than me say things like “there weren’t so many genders when I was a kid.” Sometimes, they are simply making an observation without judgment, and I prefer to think that most of the people who I hear say that are saying it without malice. I’m happy that I don’t know many malicious people, and almost nobody I know has expressed malice toward people who eschew the relative simplicity of the two genders assigned at birth that those of us of previous eras experienced.

People like me, those who are lucky enough to live long enough to experience new eras, sometimes have difficulty with the features of the new eras. That’s what causes them to say things like “I’m too old to understand instagram” or, sometimes, “there weren’t any trans people when I was young.”

One kind of transition is the root word for those who identify as trans. It is factually incorrect to assert that trans people didn’t exist before our current era. This is like a person living in 1770 saying that there was nothing to breathe when they were kids, because oxygen had not been discovered yet. It was always there. They just didn’t have a name for it.

I am very sad that people who were gay, or non-binary, or trans, before our current era, were treated badly for it. I’m also sad for the way they are often treated in our current era. We have not yet arrived at a point in our cultural evolution where these humans are universally treated with the same dignity and respect that all humans deserve. This is true about a depressingly large segment of humans all over the world, but I am heartened by the tendency for our culture to become more accepting over time rather than less. There are bumps in the road, but the destination remains the same. I don’t know if we will ever arrive at perfect parity among all humans with the same dignity and humanity everywhere, but we keep aiming for it. This is a good thing for all humans, but it is a process that particularly suits me. I evolve. But it’s not always easy.

BARNACLES

I’m going to use a boat analogy. I’ve only ever been on a few boats, and generally avoid them, but I think I’ve read enough books and watched enough movies to have an idea about how they work. Wish me luck:

We all move into the future at the same pace, but we don’t control the winds or the waters. I went through a lot of changes in 2019, and not all of them were good. Some of them were neutral. Some of them were terrible. Some of them were fantastically great. Most of these things that happened to me were out of my control, and those are the kinds of things that are my chief concern here.

BARNACLES FOR REAL THIS TIME

Barnacles are little crustaceans that float around the ocean until they find the perfect spot. They secrete a really strong glue and then do some more secreting and surround themselves with a hard shell and a door that opens and closes depending on whether water is moving past it. Barnacles are hermaphrodites, and they reproduce basically by tickling their neighbors. This video is a good guide to how barnacles reproduce, but if the word “penis” makes you giggle, you might want to wait until you’re alone to watch it.

https://youtu.be/znlU8nR5hI8

One thing I learned from that video is that barnacles have the largest penis-to-body ratio in the world, bringing new gravitas to the name Long Dong Silver.

Barnacles need sea water full of plankton to pass through their feet in order to feed, so they like places with lots of moving water. Sure, that means tide pools but it also means things like boat hulls.

Boat hulls are great for barnacles but barnacles aren’t so great for boats. A boat moves through the water like an airplane moves through the air, which is to say that the smoother the surface, the better. The US Navy estimates that barnacles are responsible for 40% more fuel because of the drag they create in the smooth sailing of their ships. England’s use of copper on the hulls of their ships, which prevents barnacles from attaching, is one factor credited with that country’s domination of the sea during that period, but I won’t digress into naval history as much as it pains me to leave it.

Barnacles are also a pretty fun metaphor for the gunk we carry with us through life. They stick to us and make it harder to move cleanly through the water. The water in this analogy is time, or whatever you want it to be. In my version, it’s *life*. Water is life, yes, but water that our boats move through is also life. The water I move through comprises everything external to me, and it’s important to pass through it with as much ease as possible. This takes work.

THERAPY

Therapy is a way of getting rid of those barnacles. Luckily, time has a way of stripping them away, too, but there are usually more right behind them. It’s impossible to be an active participant in your own life and not accumulate emotional barnacles. Simply accepting that fact of life is an important step toward good emotional hygiene. Imagine the boater who refuses to acknowledge barnacles. It won’t be long before his boat can barely move.

This isn’t a blanket endorsement for therapy, because it’s not right for everyone. Sometimes people think therapy is just paying someone to listen to your problems (it isn’t) but even if that were true, what’s wrong with that? It’s better than burdening my friends and family with my barnacles. Therapy is also useful because it forces you to make an honest assessment of your state of mind. We all need to audit our internal lives once in a while and take a look under the surface. There might be barnacles there.

MY NAME

I wanted to keep this section as far from the section about transitions as possible to avoid any appearance of suggesting that using a new name for publishing purposes has any of the weight or importance of, say, a trans person’s name change. That’s not what this is!

I’ve explained before about my name. James Foreman is too common, and too much like other James Foremans who are more famous than me. If I want people to read my writing, and seek out more of it, then I want them to be able to find me quickly. The best way is to use a name that is completely unique.

Hazlett Foreman is the name under which I’m publishing everything new I do, from now on. It’s distinct from me, James Foreman, because he works and does marketing stuff and writes for money, and that guy is me and the stuff Hazlett Foreman publishes might not be the same stuff that James Foreman would publish. It’s something I should have done a long time ago, but I didn’t think of it until recently.

I remember when Google wasn’t as smart as it is now, and searching for me led to, well, me. It doesn’t anymore.

THE HISTORIES

If you subscribe to this newsletter, you already heard about the Hazlett Histories, so I won’t keep bothering you about it.

Except to encourage you to subscribe to it again. Don’t make me bat my eyelashes, because I will!

xxoo

Everyone gets to be a snob about something.* You can certainly be a snob about more than one thing, but it’s easier to limit yourself to one, and when we identify the One Thing in another person, we should accept it as part of their personality. Like the right to speak freely without worry of violence and the right to worship whatever gods you wish are enshrined as basic human rights inherent to all people, so, too, is Being a Snob About Something.

Before I get into what I’m a Snob About, I’ll discuss what I’m not a snob about. For one, music. My list of most-recently listened-to songs is made up of music I heard in commercials, on tv shows or in movie trailers. For instance, my most recent Favorite Song is Cosmo Sheldrake’s Come Along, which I first heard in an Apple commercial: https://youtu.be/d8LJXcQhD0k

I like Metal

A friend once asked me what music I was listening to lately and I said “metal,” and he, being a fan of the genre, interrogated this further. I listed mostly Megadeth and Metallica music over 20 years old, and he laughed at me. I don’t know if he’s a Snob about metal, but I’m definitely not. I know that there are people who would not consider the “metal” I like metal at all, or at least a very old and dusty version of it. I have listened to what metal fans listen to nowadays and I can affirm that what I heard is not for me.

I am also not a snob about food. When someone asks me where I want to eat, I rarely have an opinion. I have yet to encounter a restaurant where the menu did not include at least one dish that piqued my prandial curiosity, so I’m agnostic about, for instance, where we’re going to eat tonight. I don’t care. You pick. I really don’t care. I’m not being difficult. I won’t shoot down the first thing you suggest. My claim that I do not have an opinion is true. Pick a place and I will go there, with no complaints. I will not blame you afterward if I don’t like it, because by surrendering the decision to you, I have also surrendered my right to complain. I understand this is a fact of basic social arrangement. If I have a preference, I will state it. Tonight, for instance, I crave the fast casual Indian food of Choolaah, and stated that preference to my partner. It is up to her to state whether she wants it or not, and negotiations can progress forthwith.

Gimme the Garbage

More important than accepting what Someone is a Snob About is accepting what I will call accepting what Someone is Extremely Trashy About, though I don’t want anyone to think that I’m denigrating Trash. Trash is beautiful, wonderful, delicious, amazing. Artificially cultivated trashiness is often detestable, because many of the people who would do so also look down on actual trash as beneath them. I am here to say that trash is not beneath any of us and that we must think about our own visceral reactions to what we consider “trashy” and ask ourselves whether we’re missing something that somebody else might enjoy.

Here’s a for instance for you.

My friends were once enjoying the outside air of Pittsburgh and encountered a small family, obviously tourists, who asked where the closest Olive Garden was. They were told about the incredible delectable delights available at the International Food Festival occurring mere blocks away from their current location, full of authentic Italian food from families that probably still spoke Italian in their homes and definitely would never use a microwave or reheat frozen pasta, as Olive Garden does. But this family was completely disinterested in the Festival or authentic food. They wanted the Olive Garden. How trashy!

Indeed, I understand the instinct to reduce these people to hick tourists from across the rivers who probably lived in the suburbs, of all places, and had such unsophisticated palates that they could not enjoy the authenticity of actual Italians producing actual Italian food. That was my first instinct, also. But that interaction has stuck with me, much like the Rule of Snobbery, and thinking about it made me think about how snobbery and trash are simply social codes for how we relate to what we consume and the value we place on them.

Tell the man looking for Olive Garden that Toyota trucks and GMC trucks are basically the same (a perfectly valid opinion for someone who has no use for a truck), and you’ll probably find out that this person is actually capable of an informed, nuanced opinion about something. It just isn’t about Italian food, or maybe food of any kind.

The family looking for Olive Garden isn’t looking for a challenging dining experience. Their relationship to food is different from mine. They don’t really care about how authentic their dinner is, or how Actually Italian their Italian food is, they want a familiar experience. They’re traveling and are probably not in a comfortable emotional space, so the familiarity of an Olive Garden is an oasis of easy expectations. They don’t have to worry about choosing the wrong thing, or making some social faux pas, or accidentally being rude to a culture unfamiliar to them, or stress about navigating streets they don’t know. They just want some breadsticks and some soup and pasta that probably has a lot of butter in it. Can I really blame someone for seeking comfort when they need it? Never.

The unironic enjoyment of trash is a freeing step to take. Remove the idea of “guilty pleasures” from your mind and simply enjoy things without guilt.

Enjoyment is not binary.

Siskel and Ebert used such a scale for their movie reviews, and sites like Rotten Tomatoes continues a version of that tradition, but it does not work as well in practice. I propose a scale.

At the top of the scale of enjoyment is Snobbery, an indelicate term for an indelicate perspective. I am a snob about science fiction and fantasy. I have a high basic expectation of stories in those genres and I will judge harshly a story I find lacking. I can’t simply turn my mind off and enjoy a bad or unoriginal science fiction or fantasy story. It has to have something redeemable to me, as a snob, in order to enjoy it.

That does not mean I don’t enjoy trash in those genres, because I do! There is nothing original about the movie Soldier, but I still love it. It features mid-career Kurt Russell as an obsolete super soldier discarded to a planet of garbage, where he finds himself finding new purpose as a defender of a community of marginalized refugees. I love the movie with no shame and will happily defend it, but I freely accept its flaws. It’s probably Trash. There is nothing original about the story, but it is executed in lean, myth-like segments. The journey of the main character is telegraphed and predictable, and this is what I enjoy about it. I admire a good story told well, and Soldier fits the bill. https://youtu.be/4g2G5POuZCY

I had the opposite reaction to 2009’s Star Trek movie. While exciting and well-made, it had nothing of what I love about Star Trek while also emphasizing aspects of Star Trek that never belonged in it. Star Wars is about fathers and their legacies, but Star Trek is not. The 2009 movie included James Kirk’s father, and had a character lament that he was not more like his father. The biological destiny implied by My Father Was a Great Such and Such So Therefore I Must Also Be is a sad remnant of feudal, middle-age thinking that has no place in the optimistic, egalitarian futurism of Star Trek. That is just one of its many sins that I won’t bore you by writing about.

These themes, as I said, are perfectly apt in Star Wars, which is steeped in fairy tales and Arthurian myth. I liked the second movie in the new trilogy, The Last Jedi, because it subverted and deemphasized familial legacy so common in fantasy stories and added a little note of the much more exciting and modern idea that Anyone Can Be Great. Both ideas can coexist in Star Wars, and that movie was full of new ideas for Star Wars while also rhyming with bits and bobs from the movies that preceded it.

Finally, Here is the scale I propose:

• I’m a Snob About This

• I Love and Defend This But I’m Flexible

• I Have No Strong Opinion About This, But I Usually Like It

• This is Fine, I Guess

• I Have No Appreciation For This But That’s Fine If You Do and I’m Interested in Hearing You Talk About It

• I Don’t Like This At All But I’m Glad You Do and Please Don’t Try to Get Me To Like It, I Already Know I Don’t and I Don’t Enjoy Hearing Anyone Talk About it, But Please Don’t Take it Personally

• This is Terrible and I Hate It

This scale is not intended to be exhaustive. There are many thin layers between these discrete levels, and some of these layers might be different for different people. For instance, one layer I could add to the above would be “Talking About This Around My Sister Will Make Her Leave the Room,” and “I Like This a Lot But Please Don’t Tell My Cool Friends.”

Also note that this is not meant to cover political opinions or things that matter to you on a different level from what you consume for entertainment. Those values might factor into what you’re a Snob about, but this scale isn’t meant to cover anything you might vote about.

Relationships

I touched upon this briefly earlier, but I think it bears further examination. An additional aspect of the scale of snobbery is the idea of one’s relationship to the object in question. It’s important to acknowledge these tendencies in ourselves so we can see them in others and, I think, gain a better understanding of why someone might like something we consider Trash. For instance, my relationship to Marvel comic book superheroes goes beyond whatever surface qualities might exist.

I began reading about those characters as a child, and carried a love of their stories into adulthood. My relationship to a character like Captain America goes beyond the simple, escapist enjoyment of his adventures. They were my companions through the most difficult and the most joyful times of my life, and some of some of them helped me process aspects of my life that were too complicated or nuanced to wholly encompass with my little mind. Captain America, for instance: while you might see a goofy ultra-patriot with an A on his head, I see the best parts of my dad and the values important to him: honesty, honor, truth. It’s not as simple as “me like when man punch other man.” I’m bringing my own beer to the party.

When people ask me my opinion of something like the newest Marvel movie, I give my most objective opinion possible, but with the caveat: I cannot judge these movies objectively. I’m going to enjoy watching Spider-Man fight Mysterio, full stop, so don’t rely too much on my opinion to figure out whether or not you’re going to like the new Spider-Man movie. My relationship to these superheroes is such that movies about them can commit many crimes that I will happily overlook because there is a loud, boisterous child in me that can’t stop bouncing up and down in his seat just at the sight of Spider-Man fighting Mysterio. I have a childish glee about the Marvel superhero movies, but I’m not a mindless consumer. I can excuse a lot of Trashy aspects of the things I love, but only if the soul of it is intact. The 2009 Star Trek movie was Trash, but it also showed a lack of understanding the very things I love about it.

Finally,

Writing these newsletters is always very illuminating to me. I learn more about myself when I write each one. Self-analysis is an important part of being a functioning human in our society, I believe. It’s important to check our biases and preconceptions. Sometimes we need to stamp them out, sometimes we need to embrace them, but we always have to give ourselves permission to have them.

This is the first newsletter I’m publishing in the new year, but I wrote most of it piecemeal over the last few days. I’ve always been skeptical of traditions based around arbitrary dates, but I have also come to the conclusion that everything, in the end, is arbitrary, so why not celebrate one? So while I still eschew the New Year’s Resolution, I will happily celebrate the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020. My fondest wish for you and for myself is peace, joy, beauty and understanding.

—
Footnotes:

1. When I was much dumber, I used to read Penny Arcade a lot. It also used to listen to ICP. Enjoyment of either one was not ironic in any way, and I’ll defend my liking them both at the times I liked them as Better Than You Think but definitely emblematic of my headspace when I liked them. I feel an intense need to defend my liking the things I like, which is a sideways way to approach the topic at hand: being a snob. My theory is based on the idea I first read about in something Penny Arcade wrote or drew, but I can’t find it anywhere. Anyway, I wanted to make sure that they were sufficiently cited as first tossing the idea into my head, where it has rattled around for years and I am only now examining.

The title is stolen from Stephen King, and I am shameless in my theft. I have a pet theory that he stole The Green Mile from an episode of Amazing Stories (a man on death row heals people is not exactly a common trope), so I have zero shame. It is also title of the only book Stephen King wrote that I enjoyed. This is not a controversial opinion among people who write, though I know a few who adore his work. I don’t hold that against them. Opinions change over time.

But some of them don’t. They attach themselves to us and never leave, while some interests flit in and then out of our minds. This seems to happen with more frequency in the young, when everything is more flexible, wits are fast, these things come and go. A year ago a child was obsessed with garbage trucks, but now he can’t be bothered. Is there a time when these interests calcify and define our lives thereafter?

I would say that writing is a phase that I never grew out of, an interest I never gave up, a distraction that captured me completely and became a vocation. I did not wish to become a writer. That life, or whatever vision I had of it, never appealed to me. It still does not, as I write this on an iPad in the same coffee shop I’ve been visiting semi-regularly for the last six years, unemployed and drinking coffee in the afternoon, looking exactly like the person I never wanted to be. Having said that, I like the person I am. I’m happy with the choices I made that led me here. I don’t regret anything. Given the same life to lead again, I would have done everything the same. I made choices that were inevitable for me to having made them. I know me. I was always going to do those things.

Writing is one of those things that everybody thinks they can do, because literacy is a requirement for participation in modern society (though a few seem to somehow get by without it). To me, this is as senseless a summation of one’s abilities as would thinking that learning algebra made one able to solve the Riemann hypothesis.

But life is not that simple, and human endeavor is not that simple, and “making it” is not that simple. One likes to think that good work will be recognized, eventually. But this is not the case. Well-connected work will be recognized while unconnected work can easily be lost in slush piles. The role of privilege and the circumstances of one’s birth play a part here.

Great work goes unrecognized constantly. The greatest living writer could be in this very coffee shop, writing words nobody will ever read. I don’t know how people find out about these podcasts they listen to that I have never heard of, but random chance seems unlikely. The world is not a meritocracy.

We are so often told to reach for our dreams. People accepting awards love to tell anybody watching to pursue their dreams, because they, too, were once watching an award show and some celebrity made some similar declaration. It might be true that nobody who never makes it ever did so by not trying. Effort is an assumed factor. Perhaps less assumed is privilege.

I was at Target the other day, and I saw a children’s book by BJ Novak. I know he had other publications, but this was the one in front of me. I know who BJ Novak is, because I used to watch him on The Office. BJ Novak was a literature major at Harvard, so he has at least a passing familiarity with written words. I don’t know if his writing is good. I will never read a single word BJ Novak has written. He got his start as a stand-up comedian in Los Angeles, and was cast based on the act that producer Greg Daniels saw him perform. Greg Daniels also went to Harvard.

It’s entirely possible that BJ Novak could have produced great literature and would have been widely published had he not appeared on the Office. We will never know.

I got mildly angry at the sight of seeing BJ Novak’s name on a book at Target. It was not the kind of anger that makes its mark, but if you had been there you would have heard me say “blech.” I moved on and went to look at humidifiers. Our apartment is very dry.

Publishing a book is a dream of mine. BJ Novak is a rich, award-winning television writer. Publishing a book might have been his dream, too, and I can imagine a scenario in which he worries whether he is actually worthy of having books published, had he not been on the Office. I have no ill feelings toward BJ Novak. His success takes nothing away from me.

I used the p-word, so I should address it more clearly. I enjoy a certain amount of privilege. My mother has three signers of the Declaration of Independence in her heritage, and an august name respected and admired by many people in Wheeling, West Virginia, where she and I grew up. Some of that admiration comes from who she is related to, but she also made a mark herself. The previous generation of Wheelingites would ask me if I was related to James Hazlett, who was a physician and treated many of them (he was my grandfather). This current generation asks if I’m related to Anne Foreman, my mother. They know her for her art, for her charity, for her kindness, generosity. I do not materially benefit from those famous signers, but my mother’s journey through life has eased the way for us, her children. There is a certain privilege in having a great mom, and that defies class or wealth.

I am blessed with many advantages. But I did not go to Harvard. My father was the first member of his family to go to college, and then to law school. A lean Christmas for our family was fewer presents under the tree, but there were always a few. If I don’t get a job soon, I will not starve or lose a place to live. My worst case scenario was never destitution but temporary reliance on the charity of my family to get me through — a wound to my pride, but just a glancing one.

Jealousy is a disgusting thing. It’s slimy and cancerous and it makes us miserable. There is never a reason for jealousy. I envy BJ Novak having published books, because I want to publish books, but that feeling, that emotional weight, is without purpose or benefit. I banish that feeling when I feel it, sometimes with a “yech” or an “ugh,” or a brief rant, but I get it out of me as soon as I feel it. We have a finite amount of energy. My true love, Shyloh, has worked for a singular goal since before I met her, and recently achieved it. No amount of privilege led her to that achievement — she worked, very hard, and very smartly, for that goal. She is an inspiration to me, and for creative people anywhere. Her art form is hair, but she’s a writer, too. She understands the struggle. She also understands that it takes struggle to make a dream come true.

Because our stores of energy are finite, the sensible thing to do is use them to pursue the dreams we have our own way. I wrote a novel, and I’m proud of it. I still think it’s good. Here’s what I say about it when I send a sample to prospective agents (which is how one publishes books the way I want to publish mine). This was written for me by my brother, Rob, who has a newsletter, too, and a thriving career as a writer. That’s another layer of privilege to acknowledge: a helpful brother who writes better than I do.

Edolphus Pierpont is a luckless smuggler who has been living in one of the Only Worlds, an interlocking complex of simulations of the major eras of human culture and society. To escape a threat on his life, he goes to Vegas, an Only World full of vice and folly where a man called Peachy has taken his stolen family heirloom, as well as his stolen girlfriend. His journey there propels him on a voyage to more Only Worlds than he knew existed. Events escalate until he is faced with a truth long since hidden from him: that he himself may be the creator of these artificial worlds, gone so deeply undercover that he has been made to forget his identity. As Pierpont peels back layers of the truth, he recognizes a cataclysm faced by the Only Worlds, and does everything he can to try to save them. At 90,000 words, THE WALLS OF THE WORLD is a fast, witty science-fiction adventure in a carefully imagined, high-concept universe.

So far, no agents have wanted to represent me and this book, so I have taken to writing other things. Another book is in me, and I work on that. I have also given myself until the middle of January to finish a story I have only recently begun. The story is called The First (And Least) Erotic Story Ever Written, and it is about how heaven handles good people who enjoy a little suffering. There are some scandalized, pearl-clutching celestial beings and some leering ones, too, and I enjoy the premise so much that I can’t wait to make a story out of it.

This is the moral of the story I’ve spun for you today: I write because I love it. I get an enormous burst of joy from having written, even if the process of writing is not always very fun. It is work, and it often feels like it. I don’t write to become famous or to become rich but because I am compelled to tell stories, even if nobody ever reads them.

But it’s even better when they do.

Well, that happened.

As I write this, there are still a few days left in the year, but I’m calling it now. 2019 was awful. But it was also amazing. Despite some setbacks, I would overall say that 2019 was a good year. How is this possible? The truth is, most years fit this paradigm. The only major exception to this would be the year of one’s death, providing a handy guide to whether or not you had a good year or a bad one. Ask yourself at the end of the year, or close to it, “did I die?” If the answer is no, then it was a good year. Full stop. End of sentence. Congratulations. You made it. Pop the sparkling beverage of your choice.

ENDINGS

I’ll start with the endings, because those are at the top of my mind today, because yesterday was the memorial for my friend Elicia, a friend whose value to me I did not fully appreciate until she was gone. This is true for most people we lose, even the ones we know we appreciate, like our parents or spouses. People travel across our lives and leaves grooves in the landscape where they traveled the most, and sometimes we stumble across one of those grooves where we didn’t expect it to be. “I need to tell Elicia about this,” is one of those stumbles. Oh, right. I forgot we shared that particular interest.

Those grooves wear down over time, but never completely, at least not for me. I still think of my nephew Miles when I encounter anything involving photography or skateboarding, and he died five years ago. My Aunt Posy, gone now for ten years, is, daily, on my mind. These memories are sad, and they can stop me in my tracks when I least expect them. For instance, I cannot listen to Into the West, from the Lord of the Rings movies, without feeling like I might cry (which is good, because I like having the option), because it reminds me of everyone I loved who died. It’s a song about death, and being okay with it, so it’s a good one to have on hand when you need a cry.

My job at Carlow also ended, and that was also a thing that happened. It was both good and bad, as so many things are. I’m sad to not see the people I like every day, but I’m happy that I get to try something new now. The best endings are the ones that make us change ourselves for the better.

ENGAGEMENT

The origin story of my relationship with Shyloh has been shared elsewhere many times, but I’ll return to a brief version of it here: she slid into my DMs, I answered her, and we’re perfect for each other. She has a son named Shark, who is a whole person I get to watch grow up. He’s hilarious and loving, like his mom. I asked her to marry me and she said yes. Shyloh hates surprises, so I gave her plenty of warning. I have never met anyone who I feel like I completely understand yet who is always delighting me in ways I don’t expect. She is fun in all the best ways. She likes many of the same things I do, but we tease each other about the interests we don’t share. She is blunt and honest and takes care of me. I try to take care of her. I am excited to spend the rest of my life with her.

PROZAC

I tried two new brain medicines this year, and the first one was good but the second one has stabilized my mind in ways I did not expect, or think was possible. I have spent most of my adulthood on Zoloft, then Lexapro, but I branched out this year. I tried Viibryd, a drug that was great for depression but not so good for anxiety. My psychiatrist and I settled on Prozac as a good one to try, and it has allowed me to interface with my feelings in exciting new ways.

The point of good brain drugs is that they don’t change you, they help you be a better version of the person you already are. Lots of people are afraid to take drugs to help with their depression or anxiety because they’re afraid the drugs might attenuate their creativity, or transform them into a person who is unlike the person they are now. This is an understandable fear, but ultimately foolish. After all, how can an amelioration of suffering hurt you more than the suffering does? Imagine what a man like Abraham Lincoln could have accomplished if he had drugs like Prozac or Zoloft. If Isaac Newton could have taken a few milligrams of Lexapro, maybe he wouldn’t have spent ten years alone and closed up in his room instead of publishing his discovery of calculus. What genius has mental illness robbed us of? It hurts to consider.

Anxiety, my lifelong companion, has become a thing I can grasp. This is as radical an announcement about myself I could make as if I said “I can breathe underwater.” I feel like I have been given superpowers. This is a feeling I have not had since I first started taking brain drugs, twenty years ago, or when I first started wearing glasses in fifth grade. I have the upper hand, now. I seize my anxiety by the throat, push it up against a wall, and demand it identify itself. Where do you come from? Who sent you? Why did you come here?

The biggest, worst bully I have ever encountered, and who has battered and abused me my whole life, is finally under my power. I can yell and stab it in the head, like Eowyn before the Witch King. I’m in control.
It’s not just the Prozac, though it has smoothed the way. I can also deploy the support of my loved ones, and the skills I learn in therapy. I would never claim to have fully mastered my anxiety. The war is still being waged. 2019 tested my anxiety and mental health in ways I could have never predicted, so I will sidestep the implied hubris of claiming I have conquered my demons. They’re caged, for now, and that’s something.

OTHER BODY THINGS

If you’re one of the lucky ones who gets to have a good year often enough (see above), then eventually you’ll get to the point where your body will change. Our bodies go through one major change when we move from childhood to reproductive vigor (this is called puberty, and nobody enjoys it). The end of a woman’s reproductivity comes via menopause, which has the word “pause” in it, as if reproduction will some day resume. Men have no such signifier or end of their reproductivity, which might be some kind of half-baked consolation for not being able to literally create new life inside them.

It is this year that I have discovered exciting, new ways my body can change. Like an old house, the plumbing starts to show wear and tear. The simple things like reading, micturating, even eating are no longer as simple as they once were. New factors have to be considered. Timetables have to be adjusted, often without warning. Activities once enjoyed as simple pleasures, like tying one’s shoes, can cause a debilitating pulled muscle in one’s back so one has to miss one of his favorite bands for which he bought tickets, damn it.

Aging reminds us that our bodies are just pumps and pipes. Millions of years of evolution have created these bodies we stumble around in, with big heads and big brains bobbling around on our shoulders. The lucky ones manage to make it long enough for the machinery to break down after an acceptable amount of time, not too early. One way to make the body last longer is to exercise it, which is a ridiculous concept that would have baffled our ancestors. I have increased how much I do this, but I’m still struggling with a consistent schedule for it. The evidence, below, speaks for itself.

As I age I also watch Shark, who is almost 6, and Ollie, who is already 6, reach thrilling milestones in their respective cognitive development. They are old enough to understand some things extremely well, while other things simply bounce off their brains and they shrug and go back to the familiar boing of a ball or click of a LEGO. If you listen closely, you can practically hear the brain cells dividing and the dendrites growing. No, wait, that’s just Teen Titans.

I WAS ENTERTAINED

Speaking of superheroes, I enjoyed watching them fight and run around and talk and stuff. Our entertainment seems to be dominated by these characters lately, as noted by people who also seem to have a problem with them. It’s just a phase. I’ll enjoy it while I can, but it won’t last forever. We’ll get tired of this eventually. The characters of the Jersey Shore were ubiquitous not long ago, but I challenge anyone reading this to name more than two who aren’t Snooki.

A fun game to try this holiday season, as you spend time with family members you might not see very often, is to ask anyone younger than 20 to name the Beatles. The next-hardest level of this game is to name any of the Rolling Stones (Mick Jagger is only half credit). Ask them if they’ve ever seen a movie with Gene Hackman in it. Try not to cry when they ask you who he is.

Here’s my favorites from the year. They all tickled me in all the ways I like the most, but I refuse to give more details than this [all links go to wikipedia, except the last one]:

TV SHOW: Season 3 of Legion

GAME: Untitled Goose Game

MOVIE: John Wick 3

BOOK: My Age of Anxiety by Scott Stossel

SONG: Life on Earth by Snow Patrol

NEXT YEAR

2020 is coming! It’s a new decade. It’s a new year. It’s bursting with opportunities. I have plans, but they will unveil themselves over time. I leave you with this song, which makes me very happy:

First, a list of things I am not anxious about. This is not comprehensive, but it is illustrative.

Flying

Snakes

Spiders

Strangers

Heights

Public Speaking

Some of these things are because I’m a white, heterosexual, cisgendered, male. I am largely free from the social fears that plague many members of our society. I acknowledge that privilege.

Mood is a weird word that carries a morose weight — simple, short, with the long double o. It’s a word derived from Old English. Fittingly, it sounds like it oozed out of a bog. It’s hard to associate the word “mood” with a positive feeling, and it’s even harder to use it in the first person. How often does one say “I’m in a good mood?” Usually we use it to describe somebody else. Is this because it’s easier to gauge another’s state of feeling than it is our own? It feels that way.

Feelings. Why do we have them? They never did anybody any good. They just lead to broken hearts and bad days. How many crimes would simply cease to exist if feelings were taken out of the equation? Crimes of passion would disappear entirely! Road rage would be a thing of past times. Nobody would ever have their feelings hurt again, so comedians could stop complaining about how sensitive everyone is, and nobody would be sensitive about anything anymore anyway. Cold, clean, clear logic would rule our lives, and everybody would be better off.

Of course I’m a Star Trek fan, and I’m describing Vulcans. They’re an entire race that, as an entire race, decided, after a period of strife and war, that feelings were doing more harm than good and it was time to get rid of them. They developed a whole big philosophy and it rocketed their society into a many-thousand-year golden age. Nothing illustrates the crappy influence of emotions better than this episode of Star Trek, when Kirk has a transporter accident and it pretty much sucks for everyone. Watch this sequence.

Spock is trying to be helpful but he acknowledges his privilege as an emotionless being. He can solve the problem at hand (Kirk has been split into two complimentary but opposite emotional beings) but he can’t really relate to what it FEELS like. Spock understands what Kirk is going through only theoretically, but he’s been around humans long enough to know when they might get angry at him that he isn’t more sympathetic: “If I seem insensitive to what you’re going through, Captain, understand – it’s the way I am.” Poor Spock, we’re meant to think. He can’t feel the feelings that everyone around him is feeling. Not me. Lucky Spock, I say! He’s not missing anything!

I have a severe allergy to evolutionary psychology, but even that broken clock is right once in a while. It’s in that treacherous morass that we find some of the reasons why we feel the way we feel.

SIDEBAR: why don’t I like evolutionary psychology? Because it’s reductive and easy to manipulate. I know it helps people to imagine that their feelings or thoughts or behaviors are endorsed by Mother Nature, but it’s too often used to abuse people who are already marginalized and to excuse intolerable behavior by the people in power.

The human internal experience can be broken into three simple states that start big and get smaller: personality, mood, and feelings. Personality stays pretty consistent throughout a person’s life, mood changes with some occasional but reliable regularity, and feelings can vary from moment to moment.

The one objective fact we can hang our hats on is that the experience of an emotion is universal: anger in one person, no matter what culture they come from, is the same anger in another person. This anger might be expressed differently but the experience of feeling angry is the same for all humans.

SIDEBAR: Not everybody agrees about this, of course, but not everybody agrees that the earth is flat, either. We have to draw some lines, and for the purposes of this discussion, I’m prepared to draw a line around this.

SIDEBAR TO THE SIDEBAR: I do not mean to say that the scientists who disagree with the objective quality of emotions are intellectually equal to flat-earthers. They are not.

We have six distinct emotions, a nice, simple number that is the closest to consensus we’ll get. It’s so common, here’s a graphic for it:

In 2017, there was a new study that suggested that there are actually 27 different emotions. They aren’t really new discoveries, just more granular segments of the 6 we already have words for.

This whole thing reminds of me of light. See, there’s just one kind of light, and we call it “white.” It’s a byproduct of lots of important chemical reactions, like the nuclear fusion happening at the center of our solar system. We evolved eyes that can see all that light bouncing around, though we can only see a certain slice of segments with the eyes we’ve got. Other animals evolved ways to detect some of the segments we can’t see. For instance, reindeer evolved the ability see in the ultraviolet spectrum, because the lichen that sustain them in the frigid north glow like rave kids in ultraviolet. If a reindeer could talk, it wouldn’t say “yeah, I see in ultraviolet,” it would just include ultraviolet stuff in the list of its own visible spectrum.

Feelings are like light. We’ve always been feeling these feelings, but only recently have we come up with names for the segments. For many years, six segments was enough. The 27 “new” feelings are just segments of the same feelings we’ve always felt.

Wouldn’t it be neat if it turned out there were a whole bunch of feelings we had no access to, yet still existed in the experiences of other creatures? Some scientists think this is exactly what happens among humans and some of us just aren’t capable of feeling some of the things that other humans feel. Our list of 27 (or 6) feelings is just the broadest human approximation of the roughly 276,000 reactions they collected (read more about the experiment at this link https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2017/09/09/here-are-the-27-different-human-emotions-according-to-a-study/#595a22a13359 ).

I still haven’t answered my question, bellowed into the sky during a bad day: why do I have feelings?

We’re pretty sure we know why we evolved feelings: to survive. That’s the easy answer. Not everything we’ve evolved was to increase the likelihood of us living long enough to have sex and raise our offspring, but it’s safe to say that feelings are, since they dominate so much of our lives.

For something like anxiety, I’m prepared to accept that explanation. There is a huge physiological component to anxiety. Play the anxiety home game: give yourself a panic attack by taking 30 deep breaths in rapid succession. It’s guaranteed to work! That simulates the sudden stress of being chased by a hungry tiger. The blood rushes from your extremities to your internal organs. Your bowels release. You might vomit, too. Your pupils dilate, letting in more light. Your body turns off everything that won’t help you survive the next few minutes, from reproduction to digestion.

Imagine feeling that all day. You know how allergies are your immune system behaving on false information? That’s what anxiety disorder is. It’s your entire body acting like a tiger is going to jump out at any moment, despite the lack of tigers or tiger-like creatures in the vicinity. I have it, so I take medicine that helps regulate it.

We’re not entirely sure how these medications work, and some of them work better than others on some people and don’t work the same way in everyone. That’s a maddening fact that is crushingly familiar to anyone who has experienced chronic illness (which, if we’re being honest, is most people). If you’ve ever taken an antidepressant or anti-anxiety medication (and if you’re an American, chances are pretty high you have), then you know the experience well. The first one you try probably won’t work, or it will kind of work in some ways but not in others, so the doctor tries another medicine that does more of the stuff you like and less of the stuff you don’t like. My own experience with these medications is common and nonlinear, and supplemented with drugs like benzodiazepines and beta blockers. Clonazepam is the chemical throat-punch that stops anxiety before it gets out of hand, while fluoxetine is the long-term levy that I use to keep the flood of bad feelings in control. I mixed my metaphors there, but you can follow along.

When I lament the burden of feelings, anxiety is my primary target. I highly recommend the book My Age of Anxiety, by Scott Stossel, if you’re interested in learning more about anxiety in general and Stossel’s anxiety in particular (he has it, too). There are two lessons from this book that I want to share with you.

The first: anxiety as a disorder is very new, and, like ultraviolet light to a reindeer, was probably always there but we didn’t have a word for it, and using what we know about how anxiety was treated over the years, we can see how many people probably had it.

The second: one story of anxiety that sticks out to me, personally, is that of an anonymous World War 2 veteran. He was so fearful of his panic attacks that he told his therapist that he would gladly trade them in for the experience of storming Omaha Beach again.

First, the second lesson: this man’s anxiety about his anxiety was so great that he would happily exchange it for the experience of traversing a beach while an enemy army tried to kill him. Anxiety, as a force in this man’s mind, was stronger than the German army, stronger than bullets and mortars. If you’ve ever seen the Normandy scene from Saving Private Ryan, imagine two doors: one leads to a panic attack, but you choose this door instead https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdBEyitJ7Qc [warning: graphic!].

The other lesson Stossel teaches us is that anxiety existed for all of human history, but without a name that encompassed all of its fun iterations. Of the many physical effects of anxiety, a common one is diarrhea and general gastrointestinal distress (see voiding bowels as survival tactic, above).

Here are some famous historical figures who suffered from anxiety:

Charles Darwin. By Stossel’s estimate, based on Darwin’s copious notes and letters, spent roughly a third of his adult life “either vomiting or in bed.” He suffered terribly during the voyage of the Beagle, but eventually published his discovery.

Isaac Newton. One of the greatest geniuses the world has ever seen (if you didn’t know already). He discovered calculus but didn’t tell anyone for ten years because he was so anxious and depressed.

Mahatma Gandhi. While working as a lawyer, froze during his first case and fled from the courtroom in terror.

Emily Dickinson. She barely left her room after age 40 or so.

Samuel Johnson. Britain’s greatest academic. He was crippled by anxiety and found it especially difficult to get out of bed at a reasonable time.

Imagine what these people could have accomplished without anxiety hampering them? Look at what they accomplished despite it!

So what’s my excuse?

Again, it comes back to me, like a spotlight at a stage in a dark amphitheater full of people judging me. Or, even worse, struggling in silence with incessant feelings of low self-worth and stupidity to an empty hall. I’m a bad writer. I’m not good at anything. Even my skills at competitive first person shooter video games have been surpassed by younger people with faster reflexes. I don’t even have a job! Woe is me, etc.

I am a modern day Ælfric, the commander of English forces in a battle with the Danes whose anxious vomiting led to the slaughter of his leaderless forces in 1003 AD.

I wonder what scenario Ælfric would pick, given the choice between his anxiety and reliving the battle that he so decisively lost. What would he had been able to accomplish if he had been able to pop a couple of Xannies as the screaming, blonde, Danish invaders came over the hill and hacked his men to pieces?

I am again faced with my original premise, unswayed from the finality implied by it. Feelings are the worst.

My own age of anxiety began when I was in grade school. I was so terrified of the social pressures of 4th grade that I refused to go. My father promised me anything I could dream of from Toys R Us if I went to school, but I could not. It would be many years after this that I would start therapy and medication that turned my life completely around, but the intervening years were marked by almost constant panic attacks at the prospect of intimate social activities. For instance, I did not learn to greet people by name when I saw them until practicing that very activity with my therapist at the age of 27. I’m still reluctant to do so, to avoid the horror of calling someone by the wrong name.

Fatefully entwined with feelings of social anxiety are feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness. Socially anxious people are more acutely aware of nonverbal signals but are much more likely to misinterpret them as negative. People like me are hyper aware of the moods of the people around us because we’re absolutely certain that they hate us, or think we’re pathetic, and would rather we weren’t there.

There are some signs of hope, however. Anxiety often falls apart when confronted with facts. It’s simply a matter of reminding ourselves of those facts, and letting ourselves believe them, that give us victory over anxiety.

The lesson we can all learn, one that echoes down the ages from Ælfric: don’t be so goddamn hard on yourself.

Author’s note: I really enjoy this opportunity to share my thoughts with you. I have a journal (that I’m not very good at keeping, to be honest) but this is a good outlet for me. Thank you for reading it.

I am unemployed. A day job provides a reliable routine, around which one can construct a life that suits them, and I have decided that I am one of those people who needs a routine. Without it, I am set adrift. My mind becomes a Raft of the Medusa, which is terrifying to consider but also startlingly accurate: my thoughts feel like they’re eating each other and I am paralyzed.

This is leading me to a tangent so skip to the part where I say it’s over if you just want to read about me.

This is a tangent about art

The image I used, above, is not a photograph of the famous painting by Théodore Géricault, which would have been the obvious choice. Instead, I used a photograph of people re-enacting the photograph for a video project in 2009. Rather than restate what is on the artist’s website I’m just going to paste it:

In late 2008 Adad Hannah received a telephone call from an old friend in British Columbia. Gus Horn, a rancher, community activist, and art collector, wanted to stage a version of Théodore Géricault’s monumental painting The Raft of the Medusa (1818-1819) in 100 Mile House, a community of 2000 people in central BC. Although Hannah initially tried to talk Horn out of pursuing the project, explaining that it would be difficult and expensive, the details for remounting this tragic scene were finally worked out in early 2009 and Hannah flew to BC to get started on the project.

The full details are at the above link, but it boils down to this: the whole dang community got together to make sure this project happened. It sounds like a Christopher Guest movie. They posed in front of an audience, in front of a painted backdrop, with props they all created, staying mostly still for up to ten minutes at a time. Snippets of the video are at the link.

The original painting was a representation of an actual event: the tragedy of a ship called the Medusa. 150 survivors from the wrecked ship piled onto a raft and, two weeks later, 15 people were left. Cannibalism happened, along with other assorted horrors.

Géricault painted the Raft of the Medusa right after the actual event, and he did a ton of research, even going as far as viewing bodies of dead people to get the colors right and interviewing two of the survivors. Although the work has been interpreted as a contemporary critique of the people in charge (the wreck of the Medusa was likely the fault of the captain of the vessel, who was a political appointee and apparently incompetent), I’m more inclined to see it as the 19th century version of a True Crime podcast.

Here’s why: Géricault painted it at the age of 27, and it is enormous, clocking in at 16 by 23 feet. He debuted it at the Paris Salon, a vastly popular show of art where every inch of wall space at the Louvre was covered with art. Young Géricault intentionally painted a well-known and salacious tragedy in an unconventional style as big as he could make it in the biggest art show in the world, to attract the most attention possible. He knew exactly what he was doing, and it worked. The painting was a smashing success for Géricault, who nevertheless died only a few years later of tuberculosis. The story of the painting of the Raft of the Medusa is a saga itself, involving insane asylums, severed heads stored on roofs, rotting limbs nicked from hospitals, and other assorted misadventures.

How is Géricault painting the Raft of the Medusa like a true crime podcast? Ask Sarah Koenig.

Back to the image of the video of the recreation of the painting of the Raft of the Medusa: I have no idea why they did it, but that’s the great thing about art. Who needs a reason? The point of art is only itself. It doesn’t serve a purpose, though it can. It doesn’t have to be useful, but sometimes it is. It doesn’t even have to be pretty.

End of digression

I have developed a roughshod routine that serves me well, most of the time. It is vulnerable to the joyful vicissitudes of life with a kindergartener and his mother, the love of my life, but it serves me nonetheless.

I begin each morning in the morning, which is important. As a person who lives with depression, I could easily spend an entire morning and most of an afternoon in bed, should the mood strike me. Part of the purpose of this routine is to keep such moods as far away as possible, and routines are good for that.

What time I get out of bed differs, but it’s always around 9, which is the best possible time for me to get out of bed. Being unemployed means I’m not making any money, but it also means I get to stay in bed exactly as long as I want.

Shyloh, the previously mentioned love of my life, has usually already risen and made coffee. Sometimes she is still there, sometimes she is not. Sometimes her son is there, sometimes he is not. What I do next is wholly predictable and is unaffected by who might still be around: I drink coffee.

The joy I derive from coffee cannot be overstated. I like my roasts light and my coffee black. I relish each of the two or three mugs I drink over the course of the remainder of the morning. It clears my mind and gets it moving, so I can do the next things as well as possible, because they are important.

I spend a portion of each morning on the job hunt, usually while drinking coffee. Sometimes this can take the whole day, sometimes it only takes a few minutes — it depends entirely on the opportunities available to apply to. A good opportunity isn’t posted every day, but I’m highly prepared for ones that are. This is a task that historically generates the most anxiety of anything else in my experience, so I address it each day immediately and with verve.

Let me be clear: applying to a job I am perfectly appropriate for is the most stressful activity in my life. This is not a sensible thing to be anxious about! I have spent hours dissecting this anxiety with my therapist, so I have a pretty good idea where it comes from. As such, I know how to navigate it. What’s funny about this process is that the actual things that make people the most anxious in job searches generates little to no anxiety in me at all. Interviews are fun! I love talking to people. I love being the center of attention. I love talking about things that interest me (and, luckily, what I do for work is extremely interesting to me). In fact, the ease with which I slide into interview mode is a hard point upon which I attach a rare piton of self-confidence (navigating anxiety is often as simple as finding enough things to attach good feelings to and using them to swing through the hard parts).

What happens after the coffee and job search activity is highly variable (see vicissitudes, above). Some days, I drive somewhere to get things or to get people, or take things to people, or take people to things. There are destinations and objects and people and they are always configured in different and exciting ways. This makes me feel that I have purpose, which is also good for staving off the unwanted moods.

Usually before or after the above, I use the energy derived from successfully conquering my anxiety by completing job search activities and drinking two to three mugs of coffee to do house work. This can be laundry, dishes, dusting, cleaning up after the cat, cleaning up after the kindergartener, cleaning up after myself, etc. It is work that must be done and it, like the transportation I provide, makes me feel useful, and without a job to give me the daily affirmation of purpose, I like doing it. That’s not true. I don’t enjoy doing the laundry, but I very much enjoy having done the laundry.

As the day draws to a close, I usually make dinner. We have been using services like Sun Basket, which ship a week’s worth of ingredients and instructions and I do the requisite tasks to turn them into edible food. I also find myself enjoying this far more than I ever expected, though I also equally enjoy not having done it, so it’s not like I would, given the choice, cook a meal every day instead of having the meal made for me. I am not insane! I like cooking, but I also like it when someone else cooks. On days that nobody quite feels like making food, we order food from a place that will, with unpredictable levels of accuracy, bring ready-made food of our choice to our door.

above: an actual photo of food being cooked by me

One thing missing from the above list that might jump out at you is this: writing. I gotta do it, and I do it every day. Sometimes I do it at great length, sometimes I only have time for a little. Sometimes I don’t feel like writing at all, which is when I make sure to write something, even if it’s just a few sentences. I don’t know if my favorite things to write, book-length things, will ever be read or distributed to wide audiences, but I’m trying! That’s all I can ever do.

If you read the last issue, you know that’s a step in the right direction for me!

A final digression about writers

Writers are a good source of historical information because they tend to write things down. Writers are people just like any other, so it’s a good bet that their favorite subject will be themselves. Because of this, there’s a lot of information about their routines, just as I’ve provided information about my own.

One commonality in nearly all of them is that they spend some portion of their day writing. Another one is the ungodly early hour that they ply their trade (writing). I mean, it’s ridiculous. Hemmingway always started “before dawn” so that’s kind of a moving target. Maya Angelou began around 7. W.H. Auden started at 6am. Kurt Vonnegut started writing at 5:30am. Haruki Murakami and Barbara Kingsolver start at 4! FOUR! What insanity!

I need my sleep, man. I don’t think I have it in me to get up at 4. Neither did Hunter S. Thompson, who woke up at 3 and immediately started doing cocaine, drinking Chivas, and wrote for 8 hours starting around midnight. I don’t like drugs, so that’s out. I guess I’ll stick to my own routine of writing when I can, as often as I can.

This is the last digression, I’m serious

My friend Elicia died between me starting this and now, over the weekend. It was sudden and unexpected and accidental. I hate it when people post about somebody dying and don’t mention how they died, but in this case it’s very boring and medical, so it doesn’t merit details. Everybody is still stunned. It’s a weird thing that happens when someone young dies suddenly. You know that scene where Obi-Wan has to sit down because Alderaan exploded and he felt it through the force? It’s like that. You get whacked by the news and and then you keep going and rescue the princess anyway because life is like that. Life keeps going and that person is back from where you just came from. If time is a river, they dropped anchor and waved goodbye as you went around the bend. She’s gone, now. She’s back there.

I’m only mentioning her here because she was a big fan of this dumb little newsletter, and she would have hated me mentioning her. She was always encouraging me to write in general and this specifically. Steinbeck’s writing advice included the encouragement that I’ve taken to heart for years: you can’t write for everyone — that is a paralyzing thought. Instead, imagine one person and write to them. Elicia is the person I wrote for. This one’s for her.

Elicia Parkinson was the best of us. She will live forever in my heart, and I will always be thankful that I got to know her.

Here’s proof that she would also hate me sharing:



That’s it. I’m done for now. Thank you for reading!

How I almost stopped writing. Forever!

I tweeted this:

I have invented many ways to torture myself. I am an expert at destroying my own self worth. In the span of one short afternoon, I can go from stellar mood to debilitating self-criticism. I am my own worst everything (enemy, critic, etc.).

THE PARAGRAPH THAT WASN’T

I nearly began writing the list all of the things I am punishing myself for, but I deleted the first sentence and thought better of it, and wrote this paragraph instead. I was excited that I was able to work in a reference to Pushing Daisies, too — I started it with “The facts were these,” which is a line the narrator would deliver at the beginning of every murder mystery. This paragraph is better than the one I was going to write because it is not a list of everything I haven’t accomplished, which is what this paragraph was going to be when I started writing it. This one turned out better. That paragraph-that-never-was began with a Pushing Daisies reference, a show about solving murders, and would have contained all the ways in which I was going to murder my self esteem. It would have been a bloodbath!

THE LIST OF THINGS I HAVE NOT ACCOMPLISHED IS INFINITE

…so what’s the point in picking out a few and hitting myself with them?

This is true for everyone who has accomplished anything, even those who have accomplished the things I want to have accomplished, also. The feeling that There Is More I Could Do haunts all creative people. I remember an interview with Chris Rock, the comedian. He is incredibly successful and influential, admired by his peers, loved by his fans. And yet he is not immune to this Ghost of Feeling Like a Failure — he looks up from his palatial estate and sees Eddie Murphy’s. He’s Chris Rock, but he’s no Eddie Murphy. The Ghost haunts even him.

My list of things I want to accomplish is very small.

I WANT TO PUBLISH A BOOK

More specifically, I want to publish a book of fiction. I’ve already written one, and I have sent it to agents for their consideration, which is what one does with a novel and one does not have representation. I also want to publish an essay, or even a book, about my experience with brain tumors. If I accomplish these two things (or even just one of them), I would be very happy. Note that I did not say “I would be rich” or “I would be famous” or “I would have no more problems” because none of those are true. All I would have accomplished is that I would have written a book that was published. There are also a million other little, tiny things I could accomplish that would make me feel like I had accomplished something. I am not hard to please.

I had an appointment today with my therapist, who told me to recall my most important writing teacher. That person was Miss Hofreuter, my junior high English teacher. Before her encouragement, I had never considered writing. It was something I had to do, and I never really enjoyed it. I’m not sure I enjoy it now! I feel like it’s something I should do, because I am good at it.

BUT IS HE REALLY?

There is no objective measure of good writing. I can find out if I’m a good runner. I can find out if I’m a good golfer. I can find out if I’m a good cook. The proof is in the running, golfing, or pudding. There are benchmarks. What is the benchmark for good writing?

This might surprise you, but it’s not “getting published.” If bad writing never got published, I would never have considered writing anything longer than a to-do list. A great book gets me excited about good writing, but a bad book gets me excited about MY writing. I don’t know if I’m a good writer, but I know I’m better than a lot of the stuff I read from the science fiction and fantasy shelves. If you were to look at my Amazon book purchase history and compare it to my Goodreads (which lists the books I actually read), you would see that I only actually finish 1/4 of the books I start. I simply can’t finish a bad book. I don’t read very fast, so it’s a decision that reverberates down through my life for weeks. Why waste those precious weeks on bad writing?

A SMALL VICTORY

When Twitter recently used a tweet of mine in its ad campaign at the Union Square subway station, in New York City, I didn’t get a lot of followers. A couple of people tweeted to tell me it was there, or that they agreed with the sentiment, but that was the extent of my exposure. I didn’t expect more than that. I’ve had tweets go somewhat viral before. I’ve had people more famous than me encourage other people to follow me. None of it has ever really translated into anything substantial. I say that with zero regret or surprise. I never used Twitter as anything but a place for me to write little things. I met a bunch of people I’m happy to call my friends (good ones!) but after 12 years on the service, I’m pretty comfortable in my place. My enjoyment of twitter is not diminished or enhanced by the number of followers I have or how many likes or retweets I get. All you must do is look at the popular twitterers to know that popularity is not the reward for quality.

But it was still pretty awesome to see one of my tweets printed out to super size and glued to a wall. Somebody at Twitter read what I wrote and liked it enough to make it part of their ad campaign. That’s a very long way from having a book published, but it’s a benchmark. I have to collect my benchmarks.

MY NEMESIS

My partner, Shyloh, says that everybody needs a nemesis. A nemesis is not an enemy, per se, but somebody who is doing what you want to be doing. You can even be friends with your nemesis, and you probably have more than one. Who is your nemesis? Mine is a writer named Dana Schwartz.

First of all, she’s a great writer. I don’t know if my writing is any good (it depends on the day), but hers is great. She’s a journalist, a fiction writer, memoirist and podcaster. Her new podcast about royal scandals is already hugely popular. She’s written three books: a novel, a memoir, and a nonfiction. She’s also 27 years old.

I have not accomplished those things, but I would like to hit at least one of those milestones. Again, and I cannot say this often enough, the list of things I have not accomplished is infinite.

THIS IS NOT GOING TO BE UPLIFTING

Some people would end this with a hopeful wink. Some people would list all of the people who accomplished great things in their middle age (like Susanna Clarke, who published one of my favorite books when she was 45). Some people would reassure themselves, by reassuring their audience, that life is about more than accomplishments or meeting career goals or reaching some arbitrary pinnacle. Maybe I’ll publish a book. Maybe I won’t. It doesn’t matter.

What matters is the friends we make along the way. I want to live a life I’m proud of, and create good things, and make the lives around me better. That’s all that matters. That’s all I want.

That’s not true.

I want to publish a fucking book.

And Now, We Pivot

I’m sorry if you like the old version of this newsletter. It’s dead and it’s not coming back. I did ten of them! That’s perfect. The Amazing Electric Ephemera lives on in archive form.

I’m shifting this into something more personal, focused, and shorter, but also still entertaining. I have another one I’ve written and it’s ready to go, so I’ll probably send it out next week? I don’t know. I don’t want to give anybody any unrealistic expectations.

Check out the end of this newsletter for information you might find exciting.

I didn’t meet my favorite writer.

Let’s Start with Mickey Spillane

I saw an interview with Mickey Spillane once. He was old and gnarled and scrunched up, like my dad’s baseball glove. He was talking about being angry about something someone else said to him once.

Why was he angry? Someone had called him an author. He wasn’t an author. An author makes books. Mickey Spillane was a writer, goddamnit. Writers are, authors do. Writers write, authors make books. There’s a difference there if you think about it.

I bet he said “goddamnit” a lot, all one word. GODDAMNIT. It feels good to say it when you’re frustrated and you need a word that bounces out of you.

My favorite writer (he’s not just an author) is Neal Stephenson. He is, I think, good at writing exactly what I enjoy reading, and what I want to write. I got to hear him talk to a group of people that was 1/4 the size of the crowd I saw Roxane Gay speak to, which I find interesting to consider.

Who Shows Up?

Neal Stephenson is a mega-writer. His books sell millions of copies. His audience is enormous. Roxanne Gay is accomplished and widely read but I suspect the sales of her books are small in comparison to Stephenson’s. Stephenson rarely makes public appearances, while I think Gay is more accessible. How is it that an arguably more famous author is relegated to the small Carnegie Library Lecture Hall while Gay was able to fill the Music Hall to capacity (the former seats 600, though I estimate only half that number attended, while the Music Hall seats 1900)?

Roxane Gay is active on twitter and is an accessible person. If you tweet at her, she’ll probably respond (if it interests her). Also, her audience trends younger and I think young people are more likely to seek out these kinds of things whereas old people like me would rather stay home. Also, I think that Stephenson’s reputation works against him.

Not a Luddite, But Looks Like One

Neal Stephenson was briefly famous for something other than his novels, kind of. It was a weird modern kind of experience where someone whose work you enjoy and whose name you know does something that brings them into the larger zeitgeist and everybody knows about them for a little while. It’s like finding out one of your friends went to school with your brother and you never knew. It just never came up.

Neal Stephenson would not answer emails. He didn’t do interviews. Social media didn’t exist yet, but there were things on the internet that kind of resembled them, and he was not interested in any of them. He believed, and still does, that his primary mode of communication with his audience was through his novels. If he spent time doing these other things, he would never have time to write his novels, which is what these folks were wanting to communicate with him about. In a time when everybody who could connect was suddenly connecting, and the internet was growing, the people who wrote about what it might look like in the future were the people you‘d think most likely to participate (like Neal Stephenson, whose cyberpunky Snow Crash was like the flashy little brother of William Gibson’s less accessible Neuromancer). But here was a guy whose major contribution to pop culture was a book that half took place in the internet, and he refused to use it! He had a website where he spelled this out and used a phrase that stuck in my head: slabs of time. He needed great slabs of uninterrupted time in order to work on his novels, so don’t expect to communicate with him. This is the Neal Stephenson I know about, which makes it even stranger that I had an opportunity to speak to him and for some reason elected not to.

There are a few factors involved here, so watch me as I unpack them and dissect myself:

Reason 1: I don’t like bothering people.

I know Neal Stephenson is uncomfortable with communicating with his audience. I’m making that up. His reason for not emailing has nothing to do with comfort. I’ve decided that it is true because it justifies my decision to not bother him by asking him to personalize my book (it was already signed). The purpose of personalizing a book is 1/5 to acquire a book that is personalized and 4/5 to have a personal interaction with the author. I saw a photo of Neal Stephenson shaking hands with someone on Facebook and immediately regretted my decision.

This led me to put myself in his situation, and I would absolutely not be bothered to meet a succession of people who liked my writing so much that they would spend money on a book of mine they hadn’t read yet. I would be touched by every single person. I would be thankful that they came to see me and happily exchange a few words and a handshake with them, not because I wasn’t interested in longer conversation but because it would only be fair to the rest of the people in line to keep it short.

You can see where this is going.

Reason 2: My breath was bad from not having eaten all day.

Reason 3: I didn’t have anything interesting to say.

So what? He wasn’t going to remember me. I look like the statistically average person who likes Neal Stephenson, and anything I said would have been pretty close to the statistically average words someone like me would say to him: I love your work, it means a lot to me. That’s pretty much all I would have to say to him, and then I would regret not saying more, or not saying something more meaningful, despite not having much more meaningful things to say.

His writing did not lift me out of depression or “save my life” as I’ve heard people say about writers they particularly like. His writing consistently gives me great pleasure, and has done so since I was very young. I don’t think anything I said would have been meaningful enough to make him remember me.

Reason 4: I don’t like waiting in lines.

This is true and unavoidable. I have likely missed out on a few pleasurable or interesting experiences because I saw the line of people going into it and said “forget it.” Actually, I probably just thought that and what I said was “ugh.” Lines are not just inconvenient, they are also fraught with social danger. What if I’m stuck with someone intolerable? What if they have bad breath and won’t shut up? What if that person is me? What if they want to talk about Neal Stephenson? That’s probably what they’d want to talk about, and I would gladly talk about Neal Stephenson in any context other than a Neal Stephenson reading. It’s like wearing the band’s t-shirt to see the band. It’s obvious. I don’t like being obvious, either.

These reasons all add up to one final conclusion: I never was going to line up to mutter a few words at my favorite writer and shake his hand. I saw a photograph of a friend’s teenage son shaking Neal’s hand. He looked thrilled. Neal wasn’t sitting behind a table, he was standing behind it, and had his sleeves rolled up, sharpie in hand, clearly enjoying himself. I immediately regretted all of those stupid reasons and wished I had stood in that damn line.

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I love writing about things that aren’t me and the Electric Ephemera thing was a fun way to do that. I want to make more things like that, so I’m working on a new project called The Hazlett Histories. I’m going to use Substack.com for that (Substack is popular currently for its monetization, but I’m not monetizing any time soon – I just like its editing tools). It’s under my new pen name, Hazlett Foreman (which isn’t really a pen name since it’s my actual name). It’s going to be about the history of the Pittsburgh region, but told from the corners. There are so many interesting facts about Western Pennsylvania/Eastern Ohio/Northern West Virginia that I want to tell you about!

If you get this newsletter, you’ll get an invite to the new thing, so look out for that. Subscribe if you want. I don’t do this for you, I do it for me! I’m still working on what it will look like, but it’ll be a lot like the Electric Ephemera. I want to have a bunch of them ready to go before I launch it, so it might take me a couple of months. Anyway, here’s a link: The Hazlett Histories

Thank you for reading!