A Self-fulfilling Prophecy
I guess I nailed the name of this little publication...
I haven’t published anything here since May 2nd. Yeah, that’s a minute, and I am sorry about that. It’s not as if nothing was going on, ya know? Here’s a dirty little secret: writing is hard. Like, really hard. It’s hard even if you aren’t viscerally reacting to the subjects that compel you to write. Trust me, I am not trying to say that I am some keyboard warrior and that I am trumpeting my ability to meet this challenge, I am just laying it out there.
I originally started writing stuff down here to try to find an outlet for the intense panic feelings that I had been experiencing since the election, if not even for some time beforehand. At first it was very therapeutic, often cathartic even. I was not only able to vent when I was really upset or angry but also found that by getting my thoughts down in some form it allowed my brain to quiet down a bit, especially at night when I really want to get some sleep.
The craziest part, to me, was that some folks out there wanted to read what I had to say. Not a lot, and that’s fine, considering that I never thought I would share these essays, except maybe with my family and my closest friends. And yet folks started to subscribe. Which is very cool, and very humbling.
Unfortunately, it also resulted in me feeling that I now had to cover EVERYTHING THAT IS HAPPENING EVERY DAY ALL THE TIME. And, as we all are far too aware of, that’s basically impossible with this administration. I also started to feel like I was just reporting the latest horrible thing that the admin was doing, which I most certainly did not want to do. As I have said before, there are a lot of people out there who do that for a living, and they do it far better than I do or ever will. And that’s absolutely fine, or it was until I started (subconsciously?) trying to emulate them.
I took a break. Which got longer. And longer. And… longer. Stuff kept happening. I kept reacting to it, but only inside my head. Or in very intense bouts of nearly manic venting, whether to my wife, other like-minded friends, or a text chat or two who somehow have put up with me for a long time. I can’t tell you how many times I thought about coming back here and starting up again, even to the point of opening up the authoring page, only to shut it right back down.
(Hi)Story Time
Quite a while back, I was a student. Not a great student, mind you, but not terrible either. While I did enjoy learning, I didn’t enjoy things like studying or homework. I was a middling student throughout high school, ever the disappointment when teachers/counselors/parents would compare my perceived potential versus my actual output. I did enough to get by.
I applied to, and was accepted by, one college: Florida State University. I had heard quite often that kids that fail out of college generally set the foundation for that failure1 during their freshman year, due to the fact that for many it is the first time they have ever been “unsupervised” and responsible for basically their entire life. I was determined not to be one of those people, so I applied myself in ways that I never had before.
After one semester I had a decent enough 3.4 GPA and was feeling pretty good about things. In the second semester of my freshman year, a couple of things happened. I started drinking alcohol, something I had not only avoided to that point but actively mocked those who did partake. I also, along with about 20 other guys, started a chapter of a fraternity.
One may think that these two radical changes would have ushered in a precipitous drop in my GPA, but the opposite happened. After taking the minimum 12 credits in the Fall, I took the normal 15 credits in the Spring, and really focused on my studies. With about 3 weeks left in the semester, I realized that, if I scored a 98 or 100 on my precalc final, I would get a 3.8 GPA for the term. I became determined to do just that, working through all of the test prep packets the professor offered multiple times.
The precalc final just happened to by the last final I had to take that semester. I walked into that classroom with a confidence that I have rarely had in a testing situation either before or after. I knew my shit cold, and knew I was going to nail the exam. I breezed through the questions and was shocked when I finished, as I had used only about a quarter or so of the 2+ hours we were allotted for the final. I double checked every problem and was still the first person to turn in my exam. As I did, I let the TA know that he could use my exam as the answer key because I had aced the final. He smirked at me with a “of course you did” air about him.
About a week later my grades came to my parent’s house in the mail2. I felt before I opened the envelope that I had pulled it off, and I was right. Four As and one B. A freshman year cumulative GPA of 3.6, nearly a full point higher that my high school average.
But why am I telling you all of this?
You see, life can be funny. I went back up to Tallahassee to take a couple of summer courses, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and if I recall correctly, I got an A and a B. Unfortunately, I think that 19 year old me started to get cocky, believing that I could just cruise through college.
Once I moved off campus (and into the nascent fraternity house) my partying slowly took over my studying, and my grades suffered. I moved around a lot in the 5 years I lived in Tallahassee (two different dorms, two different fraternity houses, three different rooms in the second house, as well as three different apartments and a house with 3 other guys). It was a lot of fun, but not very conducive to creating a solid learning environment, especially since every place was off campus, sometimes just on the other side of a street, sometimes miles away.
In multiple semesters I developed a very specific pattern. I would start strong, making every class, hitting the library to work on homework or studying between classes, basically being a student. But then something would happen, and I would start to miss a class or two. Then it would just snowball. I would get to a point where I was afraid to go back, feeling that I had missed too much to be able to make it up. Or I felt embarrassed to face the teacher after having missed so much class time3. Eventually I told myself that it was too late, I had missed too many classes, so fuck it. Lather, rinse, repeat. Each semester.
It took me a lot of years to realize that I likely could have gone to the teachers, told them that I screwed up, and salvaged my grades, or at least gotten permission to withdraw. I did none of those things, and after a while FSU suggested quite nicely that while they hoped that I would continue my college education, I needed to do it somewhere other than Florida State.
No, Really, Why Are You Sharing This?
Right? That’s a lot of info about stuff that happened literally decades ago, why bother boring anyone expecting some political talk with all of this?
Well, because that’s how I am getting back into doing this, hopefully on a more regular basis. Because a couple of you have asked me if I am ok. Because much to my surprise, some of you have let me know that they actually miss the content. The problem is (was?) that I felt just like I did back in school… that I had fucked around for too long and fucked up, and now it was Too Late to Go Back. But it’s not.
I want to get back to writing. I feel that the moment deserves it, and I want to contribute to that moment in my own, very small way. And I felt that an explanation of where I have been and what’s been going on in my head was a bit warranted, even if it’s only me talking to myself again, reminding myself how I used to be and trying to avoid being that guy again.
So much has happened in the six or so weeks since I last published anything, and I am not even going to try to recap. We all went through it, the good and the (mostly) bad. I am, however, going to try to put out content as I feel appropriate. Hell, there are 17 unpublished drafts in some or another form of completion in this publishing tool, but they are all basically Ancient History now.
If you have read this far, I truly appreciate it. I hope that we can share some time together as we navigate whatever the future has in store for us, as people, as Americans, and as citizens of this human race and this time.
Epilogue
Since there is very little political stuff in this post, please allow me to end with a photo of the sign I was rocking at the Stamford CT No Kings rally this past weekend. I am pretty proud of it.
Take Care and Stay Strong. Together.
If not accomplish the feat altogether.
I told you it was a long time ago. We did have your fancy internet and shit.
My narcissism was strong even then. Most of the teachers probably wouldn’t have noticed or cared. But my brain would not fathom that.