Stuff I Don't Publish

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How We Doin’?!

It’s been a month since leaving Facebook and... I miss precisely nothing. One thing I’ve noticed is that my hands want the busy time. I keep grabbing for my phone and thinking I need to check something, and that’s some Pavlovian shit right there. I have to keep telling myself that it’s okay to leave my phone in my pocket.

I’ve read a couple books - Talking To Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell and most of Range by David Epstein. Both have been incredible in helping me to understand interactions I have with people, and what my expectations are of myself.

I haven’t played a ton of guitar, but some of that is due to just being fucking exhausted from the holidays. We spent time with Sheree’s family in Texas, had a new year’s party, etc. etc... It was tiring, but good socializing. Oddly, neither of us seem to have contracted COVID in the process which is actually surprising. I have a test this Saturday to be sure, but things are looking good.

I feel happier. More even-keeled. I got super pissed at a co-worker who was being tragically unprofessional, but settled down eventually. For the most part, I miss nothing about Facebook and feel more emotionally healthy. I’ve even nearly stopped thinking of daily events in “Facebook post” language. Why on earth would anyone stay?

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Fifteen Years

It feels stupid to have feelings about leaving a lousy website, especially one as toxic and abusive as Facebook. I spent 15 years interacting with friends and relatives there, but in the end, it was just colossally bad for my emotional health.

And I’m not going to project and say that passive-aggressive (or just aggressive) behavior was solely the acts of others. I was seldom ever at MY best on that site.

But there’s still something sad about downloading my Facebook history and having 15 years of interactions distilled into 12 Gigabytes. That feels... wrong. Data doesn’t show the emotional labor that went into many of those interactions. It doesn’t account for time I spent in therapy trying to make sense out of why some relationships had gone so wrong.

And ultimately, does it matter how much data there is? Would more have made it less upsetting? Less? I was, at times, an asshole. So were some other folks. This isn’t to say I won’t have bad days in the future, but they just won’t be because of Facebook - a social interaction experiment that I hope comes to an end in a fireball of lawsuits, Congressional hearings, and the exile of monsters who profit off people’s emotional trauma - like Mark Zuckerberg.

But that’s a pipe dream. For now, I’m going to continue to get more emotionally healthy by simply not being there.

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Conflict Avoidance

As I’ve been working to distance myself from the world of Facebook, I’ve noticed a few things.

First is my more stable sense of well-being. I’m not agitated by content online as much, and that’s highlighted by an Instagram photo I accidentally cross-posted to Facebook. About a day later, I realized there were reactions and comments on Facebook so I read them. One of the comments was “Where is that?” and I thought about what my response would be. THIS SHOULD BE SIMPLE. But it wasn’t. I ended up not replying at all because a script developed in my head. I figured I would say, “It’s upstairs from the post office in __X__ building...” That post office location is kinda hidden and not one most folks are familiar with. So my brain - based on 15 years of previous Facebook experience - filled in the other person’s reply: “There’s no post office there...” And then there’d be this entire back-and-forth where I’d get all pissed off, walk over there, take a video and post it as a response, then unfriend the person.

Would they actually have responded that way? Maybe not, but I don’t have the energy for the stupid things people choose to disagree about anymore. I just don’t. And I’ve had NONE of those interactions over the last month.

I’ve also noticed that I’ve put more time and energy into direct messages, phone calls, texts, etc. with people I care about. I’m nourishing relationships. On Facebook we’re so focused on getting reactions and comments that we don’t spend any time actually developing relationships. I’m loving it.

With all that in mind, I know I’d been planning to keep it until the end of the year, but I may actually bounce after the holiday show I’m doing on the 27th. Just cut the cord altogether. I dunno. We’ll see.

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Organize

I've been seeing a bevy of content online in support of workers' rights lately. People sharing their text message conversations with abusive bosses that end in the worker saying, "Cool, then you're losing a worker. Bye," and so forth. It's great to see, honestly. If COVID ends up bringing about a worker revolution, I will be a happy puppy. And the wealthy would have me think low-wage workers are coming for my assets, but the reality is, I'm safe. Despite the fact I make more than the average, I still make 180 times less than my CEO and he's not even a billionaire. No one's coming for me. Ever.

I recall at the beginning of the pandemic the colossally tone-deaf commentary from "leaders" about how they had to share their relative mansions with their college-age kids or how their internet bandwidth was now parceled up between them and three other people. Never mind that most workers couldn't afford good enough internet to reliably work from home. One executive even joked on a town hall meeting about how he used to "reel toilet paper off like [he] was on Wheel of Fortune. Now [he] has to be cautious how much [he] uses." I heard him joke about admitting he was surprised he couldn't be wasteful anymore while I was packaging up the last of the toilet paper from our nearby Walgreens to send to my mother who had run out a week before. She would receive that in the mail weeks before her local stores were ever restocked.

The callousness with which the wealthy feigned perturbance at inconveniences otherwise commonplace for the poor was just a sample of the tapestry of class divide laid bare in the early stages of the pandemic. For those of us paying attention, we were pissed. Maybe even more than usual, because the things that had already been impacting everyone else (shortages of basic goods, freedom to go where we please, etc.) were now impacting everyone and the wealthy were still oblivious to the reality that they were so privileged. The question was whether that anger would hold.

So, twenty months later, to see workers uniting behind each other and attempting unionization in even the least likely of places warms my heart. The anger is still there. And it's moving people to action. Good.

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The End of Facebook... for me

In the wake of the (fully unsurprising) revelation that Mark Zuckerberg intentionally permitted, throttled back, then re-permitted algorithmic promotion of hate speech for profit, I finally decided to leave. In doing so, I decided to start a list of all the reasons to leave vs. the reasons to stay.

I should have made this list years ago. The negatives so far outweigh the positives that quitting became the only logical solution. Why stay somewhere that's so awful?

The things I won't miss:

People finding literally any reason to disagree or be contrary. 

Attention-seeking.

An algorithm that A. devalues attempts at promoting work, even among friends, B. promotes high traffic posts regardless of their content and thereby promotes hate speech, C. makes me see the same ONE post by the same ONE person over and over again instead of literally anything by the more than 1,000 other people I know. 

Seeing the "laugh" react on posts about voting rights, LGBTQIA issues, and other very NOT funny topics. These issues aren’t funny, and “laughing” at them says an awful lot more about you than it does about the issue.

The anonymity that encourages people to constantly be at their worst. 

Every discussion devolving into an either/or paradigm. No room for nuanced discussion. 

People with tragic writing skills telling others "your an idiot."

Doomscrolling 

The addiction to staying up too late scrolling for that one post that might make it worth the effort. 

Getting added - without permission - to people's vanity projects veiled as well-intentioned social issues groups.

The internal monolog of how regular-ass events would sound as a Facebook post. 

The annual reminder that one of my and Sheree's first dates was at what is now a mass shooting site.

Absolutism and cruelty in "education" about important issues. You can't claim to want to change people's minds if you're calling them a piece of shit. Just admit you either want them to have always believed exactly as you do (without giving them the time to learn as you did) or that you'd rather they be dead.

Links to bias-confirming articles where the author assumes everyone else is ignorant of something they just discovered and are very indignant about.

Hot takes

Movie spoilers

Unsolicited advice

Reminders of friends long-dead.

Reminders of friendships long-dead.

Trashing on people's airing of grievances on their own page with a high and mighty "Let people enjoy things." I dunno - maybe, let people vent about shit or just keep scrolling? Would you grab someone's lips in real life and say "Shh" to them? No? Then maybe you're the one who needs to "Shh." Let people express themselves on their own pages. A post is not an invitation to judge someone, just an invitation to share in their experience. Don't want to share in their experience? Unfriend or Unfollow. We shouldn't feel obligated to view everyone's content just because we're "friends."

The assumption that - because we’re connected on Facebook - we’re actually friends.

The impulse to think "Everyone else needs to be as outraged by [this] as I am! To the Facebook machine to prove how aware/woke I am!"

Pearl clutching "OMG, one tiny thing happened - my neighborhood must be going to hell!" posts on suburban citizen pages. Just share data about when your ibuprofen-sponsored kickball league is playing and shut up, please.

Posting about going somewhere and having some well-meaning person say, "Hey, I'll be going there, too! Let's hang out!" No no. If I had wanted to meet up, I would have sent an invite. 

Watching people give up their private information to social engineering scams and/or sharing nonsense that's easily debunked with minimal effort. 

Dehumanization. Facebook has done to the general populace what military training used to do to soldiers. If you view your “enemies” as less than human it makes them easier to destroy. 

False friends. People who sit there and quietly seethe at you for years, never telling you they have a problem with you. Then one day they just snap, berating you and attempting to publicly demoralize and assassinate your character. No one would do that face to face, but Facebook knows how much time those people spend looking at your posts (even though you don't) and keeps promoting your content to them until they can't handle it anymore and just blow up at you. Yeah, I don't need that.

The desire to post random annoyances as grievances. Then you have a whole discussion about something completely unimportant that frequently devolves into a battle involving self-righteous folks saying "Try to see things from others' perspectives!" without a hint of irony that they're refusing to see the event from the perspective of the person whining about it, and people insisting they have a right to be frustrated with that random stupid thing.

The shitheels who turn even the kindest or most innocuous posts into an opportunity to bash an unrelated group. E.g. "owning the libs"

Treating people like shit for asking harmless questions.

Perverts who constantly friend request people (particularly women) who have no interest in them.

People who are mean to my wife because we got married.

Things I will miss:

Sincere birthday messages. 

My wife's content (though I'm sure she'll text it to me).

Snarky takedowns of malignant trolls.

The even half-baked attempts at identifying missing stairs in the theatre community.

Giving the laugh react to well-placed GIFs.

Photos of my friends' trips and daily events.

Reminders of good times had.

Reminders of lessons learned.

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Pandemic Thoughts: End Capitalism

So what happens to capitalism? Never has it been easier to protest bullshit job conditions than when you don't even have to make signs or take a bus to get there, right? But how do we mobilize to do it?

At what point do we say these major corporations who lobby against welfare, but can't sustain a lousy month without obscene profits aren't worth keeping? At what point do we say the entire financial sector is just a shell game used to keep people poor, and stop showing up? At what point do we say, "That person needs food, let's give them some" instead of "They only have value if they're making money for someone else"?

Never has the impotence and inherent bias of capitalism been laid so bare, and yet, here we are, working from home - or worse, still having to show up for uncaring bosses who can't see fit to diminish their own grotesque salaries so others can eat.

How do we convince the workers at the utilities to keep the lights on regardless of what money's coming in? How do we convince the food suppliers and sellers to keep providing regardless of the income of the starving? How do we convince all those who provide essential services that the rest of us will take care of them, so long as we all agree to start working for each other and not for the greedy at the "top?"

All it would take is for us to close and lock the cash registers, and keep doing what we're doing. But can we do it? Can we give up that safety net of 1s and 0s regulated by the wealthy for the trust of our neighbors? Can we promise to support those who maintain the utility, food, and medical pipelines by keeping their lights on, bringing them meals, and giving them momentary escape?

And who's got the most difficult job of all? Convincing police, security, and military not to listen to their wealthy overlords when told to shut the factories, grocery stores, and hospitals down? Who's got the job of convincing them that they're on our side?

We're there. Our leaders have failed us. There's never been a clearer opportunity to end the capitalist oligarchy. What are our next steps?

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The Simultaneous Genius and Mediocrity of Mike Birbiglia

A number of storyteller/theatre-type friends on social media recently clamored about the genius that is Mike Birbiglia. So much so, that I thought, "Hell, I better check this guy out!"

As a writer/storyteller, I'm constantly on the lookout for new styles, motifs, and tips I can learn from other storytellers. Hannah Gadsby's Nanette, for example, is an eye-opener in how thoughtfully expressing anger, frustration, sorrow, depression, and humor can actually be beneficial for not only the storyteller but the audience. Something we actively try to avoid is "theatre as therapy," and Gadsby sidesteps this entirely while convincing the audience why the things that have happened to her should also matter to them.

By contrast, Birbiglia's latest 90-minute special New One is an exercise in already presuming the things that happen to him matter to us, when there's no reason they should. He possesses all the same skills and talents: humor, timing, pace, variation of pitch and tone, patience, and a willingness to "go there." But, the "there" for Birbiglia isn't some mystical map to uncharted territories. It's a heavy pickax into the potholes of well-worn roads.

While Gadsby's story is about genuine human suffering, and the need for society to do better - to be better, Birbiglia's story is about an upper-middle class white man failing up. By the end of his nearly 90-minute story (which is full of memorable, well-crafted moments of storytelling), we realize we've been duped into feeling for a guy who lost his favorite couch due to his own inattentiveness, and FINALLY learned after ten years of marriage that he shouldn't have to be asked to do the dishes. That's it. 90 minutes. He lost a couch. His wife shouldn't have to beg him to do the dishes.

At every step of the way, he repeats a pattern of being almost touched into decency and kindness, only to resolve in a punchline about how that's really annoying for him. The set focuses on he and his wife's decision to have a baby, and the year or so that follows. He constantly reminds the audience that he never wanted a child, which functions well as a comedic device, in part due to his exceptional talent as a storyteller. But the reality is, he's reminding us of his reluctance to be a parent, and that he chose to be one anyway. He refers to his wife as alternately crazy or illogical in coded terms, both societal tropes so firmly-ingrained that you almost don't notice at first. "Oh yeah! Here's the part where we laugh at her for hormonally demanding [insert random food here] - that's funny because women are hormonal!" Nary a man has performed a set about pregnancy without trotting out that old chestnut. It's funny (I guess?) but it's boring, and his wife is now a punchline.

And here's the thing. Birbiglia is not acting with bad intent. I'm sure that moment actually happened to him and his wife, he's explaining it for comic effect, and he's gifted at it. But why tell the same joke for the millionth time? We're once again faced with a person capable of so much more resting on easy tropes for laughs, in a culture where they no longer exist in a vacuum. His material is tired: "White man is cajoled into parenthood by pushy wife and is supplanted in importance by the child." And if that's his genuine experience, I can't feel sorry for him. We're all responsible for our own choices in life, though he makes it out like he was a captive observer in the whole thing, including a bit about how he had surgery to be able to help conceive - which, dude. If you didn't want to have a kid, WHY would you do that?! The audience is left with no assurance he respects his wife or the effort she puts in, or that he intends to be a part of the family for any reason other than that his wife is the only woman who will settle for him. That's not a compliment, and it's not a promise to be an equal partner.

So, if you're looking for a master class in storytelling, you could watch either Nanette or New One, but if you want a master class in making that storytelling matter, Nanette is where it's at. Mike Birbiglia is a white guy doing his best; which is to say, taking a mountain of talent and doing only what's necessary to get a laugh. And truthfully, he's under no obligation to do better. But he could, and we don't have to watch him reinforce such mediocrity.

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The double-edged sword of mental illness

CW - abuse, mental illness, sexual assault, gender issues, gun violence

In my experience, most people think of mental illness as either a backseat companion, or a scarlet letter. Those who suffer illness are forced to treat it as a constant, permanent presence in their lives. Those who do not (or don't know they do) view illness in others as weakness, or even a weapon.

However, the way we view illness in others is colored by socioeconomics, whether we want to admit it or not. One need only listen to the media to see the stark contrasts in how mental illness is addressed in white men verses literally anyone else. Are you a woman whose PTSD caused her to relay her story of rape and abuse a few years later instead of the same night? You're crazy, and you're using that to harm a man. Are you a person of color who has the audacity to own a cell phone? Your unpredictability is threatening and a police officer's only recourse is to shoot you. Are you a trans or non-binary person who deigns to insist people use your desired pronouns? You're confused and nuts for insisting anyone else spend a half second to be thoughtful. Are you a white man who meticulously collects weapons, plots a rampage, then enacts it - killing dozens of people, or who rapes and abuses women for decades on end? Well then, hold on. You may be mentally ill and we want to find the best way to help you with whatever it is you're going through. Why throw away a white male life?

When put in those stark terms, it sounds asinine that we would ever treat the proactive sociopath with more decency than the passive humans who just want safety and dignity. And yet, we seem to be treating genuinely dangerous people with extreme care and caution, while treating everyone else like they better get over it, conform to the norm, and - oh yeah - get busy turning into a cis-het white man if they're going to be on the receiving end of compassion. Because, once you carry that card, you can shoot up a school, a casino, a concert, a nightclub, or send death threats to sitting presidents and congresspersons and be handed a complementary bottle of Xanax.

The treatment of mental illness in this country is, obviously, all about gender and race. If you can't admit that, you're part of the problem.

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A vote for Ellison is...

In the Minnesota Attorney General race, we appear to have a choice between an abuser with NPD, a flagrant bigot, and Noah Johnson, a completely inexperienced man whose greatest contributions so far seem to be promoting Doritos in a publicity photo and prompting MinnLawyer writer Kevin Featherly to pen the clever headline "Weed backer hopes to smoke competition in AG race."

Seeing as how a State Attorney General should have at least some experience being a lawyer, and preferably some comprehension of the scope of the job, we'll leave Dorito Noah (really tried to come up with something catchy there) out of the discussion. With the munchies out of the way, we look at the abuser and the hate group representative.

We'll start with Wardlow, who has promised that any Democrats in the AG's office will be fired if he wins, making it very clear he has no intention of being an objective public servant. He works for an organization listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group, and is firmly committed to Trans erasure, among other heinous beliefs. If he refuses to work with people who have differing political views than he, and is a known hate-group member, we certainly can't vote for him.

This leaves us with Keith Ellison, a long-tenured representative of Minnesota in the US Congress and purported abuser of former girlfriend Karen Monahan. First off, I believe Ms. Monahan. The details of abusive behavior she enumerates are consistent with symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder. And Ellison is a prominent politician whose position frequently requires a level of self importance commensurate with disorders like NPD. The behavior, person, and position all seem to line up.

Monahan's letter is troubling to be sure, but for more than just the abuse it alleges against Ellison. To me it is a clear perversion of both the #metoo movement and disrespectful to Ms. Monahan herself. Because I don't think she wrote all of it. The beginning and end of the letter talk in broad abstract terms about the value of the #metoo movement and how we need to believe victims. But wedged in the middle is Ms. Monahan's story of her life with a man with NPD. Nowhere in this central account does she reference any kind of movement, but rather legitimate psychological goings on of all-too-common relationships with abusers. It's also not as well-written, edited, or punctuated which (to me) lends to its credibility.

I believe Monahan was in a relationship with a man who has NPD, in large part because of the medical notes from her visit to a Park Nicollet clinic in 2017 and that central part of her letter. But I don't believe she published the letter. I believe she is being used, in part because of the inconsistency in style, but also because of her inability to produce the video she, her son, and others originally claimed existed of the incident where the abuse moved from emotional and psychological to physical. And normally, I wouldn't demand evidence. We need to believe victims when they have the courage to speak out. But I wouldn't care about a video of the incident had she not brought it up. If she'd said nothing about a video, no one would be asking for it.

And you may ask, "Wait, you believe Monahan and still vote for her abuser? Wow!" and in a perfect world that decision would make me a super shitty person. But I also have to acknowledge that my decisions impact more people than just me and Monahan. My vote also has to acknowledge the entire communities that Wardlow will refuse to defend or represent, not to mention the majority of the state's voters who vote Democrat. Ellison has repeatedly beneficially represented all of the people of Minnesota. Wardlow is an avowed bigot who intends to represent only a minority of the state and promote hate speech and intolerance while doing it.

This decision super sucks. I get that. But it's also really simple. If we believe everything said about both of these men, one abused a woman, and one would stand by and watch entire communities be erased. Our lives are more complicated than we want to admit. Decisions on political matters are almost always a messy melange of gray area in between the moral purity we desire and moral decay. In this instance, there is no morally pure candidate. Noah Johnson is an opportunist with no experience and a limited platform whose only function here is to muddy the waters. Wardlow is hateful trash. Ellison is the right man for the job, and while compromised by his personal life, is the gray area we're left with when we eliminate the other two.

I'm not here to shame you into voting for Ellison, just to share why I am. I'm not as happy to vote for him as I have been in the past as a long-time resident of District 5, but I believe I have to make a moral compromise to help fight the rising tide of fascism, of which Wardlow is most certainly a part. That's what this boils down to for me. I do not envy you the same difficult decision. Particularly if you are a victim of domestic abuse, voting for Ellison may be a singularly triggering affair, and that's awful. I'm sorry that is what we've been presented with this time 'round.

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Imperfect

Nobody is perfect. We're all blemished by the reality and the memory of the things we've done. And we give more weight to the sporadic blemishes than we do the tapestry of good and good intentions. Perhaps, we are right to do so, though I'd rather these marks not be limited to the singular dots of the incidents themselves, but elongated like comets in the sky, both softened and illustrated by the learning each leaves in its wake. Some learnings will be short and devoid of pigment, lessons sure to be repeated. Some learnings will be long with an immeasurable swath, lessons that shaped our lives whether gracefully or painfully.

I desire to see my mistakes leave vast, overlapping change in their wakes. My life becoming more colorful and more awash in dazzling scar tissue as the years progress. And if, perchance, I reach the end having learned nothing - my lessons isolated to meaningless blips on an endless radar screen - then I will have lived a truly forlorn life, bereft of merit or a willingness to change.

I will change. I will embrace change. I will continually encourage others to change. And I will endeavor, daily, to welcome the feedback and insights of others that will help me change.

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Won’t someone think of the children?!

A couple years ago, I penned a piece on Facebook for mental health awareness month. It was about having been saved during a suicide attempt and all that would have been lost had I succeeded.

I think it’s a valuable piece, but it lacked something. Mostly, the personal element of what was gained. I think tonight I had another arrival point in my life. A moment when I sat back while watching Guardians of the Galaxy, remotely enjoying the experience of some dear friends, and thought, “Younger me would be amazed to know where I’ve gone in my life.”

Over the past couple years, I’ve greatly expanded how I view relationships both with friends and intimates. I say “I love you” more freely - never letting my friends go away without the assurance that I believe in them. I call on people, personally, to spend time together more frequently (still not a lot - this is a serious work-in-progress). And I feel like I’ve found purpose.

I don’t understand people who think they can do it all by themselves. I’ve had people save my life, numerous times, and on that count alone I could never surmise a human life can subsist in a vacuum. But more than that, I’ve never accomplished anything alone. Over the past year, I’ve started playing guitar more regularly; learning new styles, new songs, and backing up talented vocalists. I’ve also started the “A Man’s Guide” blog in the hopes of creating positive change in men’s role in society.

These things and the relationships I’ve developed have taught me something crucial in my development as a human: I’m at my best when I’m helping others. It’s not that I don’t see myself as a leader - I’m sure I have leaderships qualities - but that I value supporting roles so greatly that I’ve made it my mission. I want to see others succeed.

And it took 39 years.

How do we solve for that? How do we convince children who are going through hard times that things will be better if it means almost 40 years of it not being better? And I know, there have been myriad good-to-amazing times along the way, but I’ve never really felt purpose until the last couple years.

Please understand that I’m not ungrateful for my discovery of purpose. But I’m also not blind to the realization that convincing people of a road that long is an extremely hard sell, particularly in this age of greed, quick bucks, and oligarchic rule.

I am so intensely grateful for where I’ve arrived. Maybe that’s enough for now.

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Passage

Sometimes, things pass and you don’t even notice. On my way home after work today, I went in through the back door of my apartment building. Something I’ve grown accustomed to doing. I say this, because I used to walk all the way around the front of the building just so I could check the mail.

Because, apparently, people still mail things. For a time, at least for me, that was true. But I’d forgotten. Time passed, I hadn’t received anything, and eventually, I stopped checking. You don’t notice when that happens. It just does.

And one day, you get out of a Lyft at 10 at night after rehearsing something silly and check your mail because the Lyft driver doesn’t drop you off in an alley. And as you look at your mail, you think, “Please no bills...” and throw everything away when there are none. And partway up the stairs, you think, “I used to check for something else. For years. I used to check for postcards. From other parts of the world...”

Because I used to receive postcards from other parts of the world. But they don’t come anymore. I used to check for them every day, with their familiar handwriting and wistful musings on travel and thoughts of me. The last one I received was from Ireland a year and a half ago. Somewhere in that time, I stopped checking my mailbox regularly.

It was never permanent or really real to begin with. I’d created this jet-setting distance lover without account for their individuality or their lack of interest in me. And one day, they were gone. Just like my desire to check the mailbox. Disappeared through prolonged absence. Were it not for the writings, I wouldn’t know they’d existed. I’m still not 100% sure they ever did. At least not they way they were in my mind.

I’m glad they’re gone. Their passage into a figment of imagination means I’ve moved on. And I’d never noticed until today. Because I stopped caring about my mailbox.

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Obnoxiously efficient

I don’t think I’m alone in saying I spend a great deal of time on social media. Probably too much time. So much so, in fact, that access to it becomes a driving force in how I accomplish my other daily tasks.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been tidy and efficient since the beginning, but I realized something this morning. As I was accomplishing my usual routine of blending a breakfast smoothie and grinding coffee beans all in the time it takes water to boil for my French press (which is a really well-planned use of time, if I say so myself), I realized I was doing it so I could sit down, relax with my coffee, and scroll through social media.

Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram... you know the drill.

And why? Is that really the best way for me to relax? Do I know how to relax? Other than watching baseball (which is almost over - sniff)? Why am I so remarkably bad at relaxing that I don’t even know whether I’m doing it right or not?

I realize relaxing varies from person to person and what’s completely relaxing to one may be hair-raising and stressful to another. But hey, I have my coffee and smoothie. And Tumblr. And Facebook’s over there on the left where I have an event to create and some messages to reply to...

My back hurts in this ancient, fall-aparty chair. I need a new chair. That should go on the list.

See?! There I am, doing it again.

[scotfroelich]

1 Day of... Life, Day 1

I moved into my current apartment (my first real HOME by myself) 5 years ago. I was divorced 10 years ago. I graduated college and high school 15 and 20 years ago. The overriding, inescapable theme throughout those 20 years has been romantic relationships.

For starters, my ex is an amazing, fierce, ridiculously intelligent woman who encouraged me to go find myself as a human. Prior to that I'd been unwittingly going through the motions: job, marriage, house... until I realized I didn't want any of them and that I'd only sought what I was told I should. That was a lie to myself and extremely unfair to her. So we moved on.

Over time, I’ve grown more comfortable in uncertainty. In fact, I’ve become somewhat suspicious of certainty. Suspicious of complacency. I’ve tried relationships of many shapes and sizes, and in different arrangements and variants of closeness. I haven’t found what works for me, but I’ve become less afraid of being alone. I still struggle to be open with people, to share my feelings, or to allow people in. But I try. And as time has gone on I’ve discovered just how much other people are trying as well. Discovered that we’re all in some state of disbelief that anyone else shares - or wants to share our loneliness, desires, or curiosities. Discovered that everyone is hiding pretty much exactly the thing they should more readily be showing.

I learned that I don't need to have a partner to be a person. The societal imperative to find a partner is just that: societal, not individual. From now on, I seek to stop looking at singlehood as a temporary and lesser state of being or that I'm not whole unless I'm happily coupled, because that's not true. I've been whole all along and ignoring that because I believed I wasn't whole without a partner.

There's no transmutational prize at the alter. No godly being reaches out, touches you, and causes you to suddenly be a complete person. If someone else does that for you, great! That's fabulous, but relying on a bond with another person to resolve your individual personhood is dangerous. They didn't sign up for that. Even if they think they did, no one signs up for that. You can't change another person and when you try, it has disastrous results.

In my mind, relationships and human closeness are functions of physics. Individuals are like celestial objects with long, sweeping orbits around a gravitational center of mortality. Out of billions of objects in a vast universe, some orbits will converge for longer or shorter periods of time.

I used to think I'd failed at my previous relationships, but that's not true. I'd merely fallen victim to one socially acceptable definition of success. In precisely zero relationships have I learned nothing or had no fun. I'm choosing to define that as success from now on. My ex wasn't NOT the right one. We didn't NOT work out. We had human orbits that converged for a time and then diverged. I refuse to view that as failure.

From now on, I will breathe in... breathe out... and step forward into the universe afraid but welcoming of my individual and unique orbit. Because, whether it converges with another again or not, the universe has a place for me. And that is enough.

[scotfroelich]

7 Days of Single Life, Day 7

ALL GOOD THINGS... There are a lot of other single person subjects: The Third Wheel, Solo Movie Going, Online Dating, Rent/Mortgage Applications, Events (like conferences or reunions), grocery portions, and a host of others. But, something that struck me recently was how singles are treated when they're freshly single.

We don't need pity. We need dishes. And maybe some therapy. "You know, I didn't like you when you were with her. I'm glad you're on your own again now." This may be one of the best things anyone said to me after a particularly unfortunate end to a particularly unfortunate relationship. It sounds harsh, but it wasn't apologetic or trite. It was honest and I really needed that.

But telling someone, "I'm so sorry you went through that! I wish I'd said something," or "Oh, that makes me so mad!" does nothing to help the person whose relationship has ended. When someone says those things, it makes the conversation about them. And this isn't about them. The newly-single person isn't being helped by you feeling bad or guilty about it. Offering anger or regret means they have to start consoling you when what they need is a safe space to be consoled.

And I understand that we all process information as honestly as possible and that we may be angry in that moment. Consoling another person may well require the most advanced friendship skills out there. That's probably why therapists are paid to do what they do.

I don't have any great advice, though. Maybe just say, "I'm here for you. What do you need?" I don't know. I think the best we can hope for is to remember that our friend isn't less of a person because they've lost their romantic partner. They're still an individual - actual and whole. They're hurting now but will be strong again. And they'll be there when we need them, too.

[scotfroelich]

7 Days of Single Life, Day 6

It's wedding season! And I love weddings. That's not sarcasm, or some bait and switch to reel you into my web of loner resentment. I really love weddings. They're tense, glorious events where complete strangers and long-time family rivals are tossed into a melange of nervous angst, from which pours forth an accidental party where some folks even have fun.

I am one of those folks.

Yeah, there's the occasional remorseful soul who asks, "Did you bring anyone?" or "So when's your turn?" but that's easy to navigate. Typically, folks who ask those questions are just anxiously trying to avoid silence, not instigate a brawl. So, when you reply, "Oh, I'm just here to shop from the wedding party," they aren't likely to call your bluff, but very likely to leave you the hell alone.

A priest leaves a mic open and gets locked out of an ante-room. A baby won't stop crying. A meth-head cousin gets blitzed and takes over the dance floor at the reception. Six people crowd into a five-person car in a muddy parking lot to suck down alcohol at a dry reception. You're all in it together!

At its most essential, here are two people making a loving commitment to endeavor upon the trials of life together. It's something I've done before (amazing party, BTW) and take great pleasure in seeing others enjoy. Are there times I feel sad or even a bit envious? Of course. But when it's genuine, and the two people involved really love each other, I smile, and cry, and think, "I may be going home alone tonight, but the looks on their faces alone will light up the night sky. And my world is better for having been witness to it."

I love weddings. Will I ever have one of my own again? Who knows? But it doesn't matter. Someone else is, and as long as they love each other (and there's a flask nearby), that's enough for me.

Happy wedding season.

[scotfroelich]

7 Days of Single Life, Day 5

"You'll find the right one some day!" Two questions: What the hell does "right one" mean? When is some day?

RIGHT ONE: Why not five? Why not zero? And what does "right" mean? Maybe the right one is me. Because I'm a fascinating, beautiful mess in my own eyes and I've only just now (at 38) begun to get in there with a tool kit and tinker with the buttons and gears. Is that not enough? I was born alone - how can partnership be the mandatory, attained state of content being if the acquisition and maintenance of such is so seemingly out of reach?

SOME DAY: Why not today? Why not five years ago? And for how long? Maybe I've met the right one three or four times, but it just wasn't meant to be a permanent affair. Is it possible to attain rightness as a perpetual relationship status? Do objects retain a stable, complimentary trajectory, always equally affected by tertiary obstacles and variables? If not, then why would people? Also, the phrase "Til death do us part..." was penned before the advent of antibiotics. Our lifespans have changed, so why haven't our expectations of what to do with them?

And some people never find the right one. Loneliness is not made more tolerable by hollow reassurances of fictional relationships. I don't think it's fair to insinuate that someone will only be happy once they achieve this mythic thing we've all shoehorned into our cultural demands for happiness. Plus, couple-dom isn't guaranteed to resolve loneliness. It just makes the sufferer feel obligated to act content for the sake of their partner. Is resentment truly preferable to being on our own?

Maybe we can start replacing the phrase "You'll find the right one some day" with "I hope you find what you're looking for." I exist here, now, by myself with the help of my friends. I do not exist in a future, as-yet-to-be-determined state of being. When that future state comes, I'll deal with that then. For now, this is what I've found, and I'm good with this.