I really didn’t have high hopes for Joe Biden when he was elected president. I honestly thought we’d be seeing more of the same neoliberal corporate lobby bullshit that both the Democrats and Republicans have been hawking for the last fifty years. The “trickle down” bullshit. The ass-kissing of the most wealthy Americans. It’s almost pathological how much impoverished Americans kiss the ass of the wealthiest. Few people truly realize that “The American Dream” was a lie sold to impoverished immigrants in order to lure cheap labor to the states. Through a rather rigorous propaganda campaign stretching through decades and generations, this lie has persisted to present day, and it truly is the forebear of MAGA in every way imaginable.

It keeps creeping closer and closer. Minute by minute. Day by day. It’s almost here and I’m insanely excited. I’m building a life with an amazing partner and we’re doing amazing things together. The excitement is really starting to well up and I can’t avoid just popping off anymore. I can’t wait. There are so many awesome things we’re planning and it’s going to be so much fun. I’m gonna network the shit out of the house with smart everything. It’s gonna be awesome.

My anxiety is through the roof these days. I’ve been working on the same massive project for nearly six months now. Maybe it’s been longer, I honestly can’t remember. It has felt like many eternities. As if that weren’t anxiety enough, I’m possibly being poached by our software development team. I love programming and tinkering but I really don’t know what to think.

Not only is all this going on, but we’re closing on a new house in the comings weeks. It’s a damned big place in a decent area and it’s a new construction. I’ve never owned a house before, let alone a new house. It’s wild.

It seems like we’re devolving again. It’s crazy to think that at some point we perceived ourselves to be quite close to becoming a space-faring species, at home amongst the stars. That imaginary society is so far removed from every society that thinks it’s important to regulate people’s genitals and bedroom activities. It’s all just so stupid, and the more you zoom out the dumber it gets. Billionaires are jockeyed into space on giant dicks that they could only afford because they don’t pay living wages or reasonable benefits or even taxes. Southern evangelical Christians feel as though worshipping a rich man is more important than the homeless guy who kicked over merchant and money changer tables at temple. Everything about conservatives is trash these days, but they have no introspective. They have no ability to analyze how garbage they are, and they’re incredibly effective at ignoring facts and information that they don’t like. It wouldn’t be as much of a problem if the left didn’t follow suit. Now we have a massive divide between two absolutely inane groups that have zero self-awareness. The world is going to be consumed by this before it collapses. We as a people have wholly lost our way. You can’t discuss this with anyone because they’ve probably aligned themselves with some hyperbolic side already. You have conservatives defending klansmen and liberals championing body mutilation and mental illness as “the new normal”. Both sides are hyperbolic psychopaths but finding people in the center is becoming more and more difficult. We get no reprieve from the cadent spiral into oblivion.

There are times when I can barely believe what my life is like. I have a partner who is my best friend and sexy as hell. I have wonderful kids. I have a career. I have everything I could wish for. I need to take time out to explain how appreciative I am for the privileges I am gifted. I’ve never had a love like this before, and I’ll never have another love like it. It’s important to me because it’s an immense source of my life satisfaction, and it’s only so satisfying because I was already happy before we met. The ability to take happiness and compound it the way my Amber has, I just never imagined getting to experience a true love that’s based on communication and boundaries and a real and working healthy relationship.

Sometimes it feels like people like me more or prefer my company more when I’m not asserting myself. I don’t know if it’s a me problem or if it’s just how interactions go. I’ve always been a pretty laid back person, and I really still am, but I’m trying to not be avoidant to a toxic level. I don’t really have anything outlined ahead of time to get off my chest, so the best I can do for the moment is some “stream-of-consciousness” style rambling. I’m just working with what I have.

Like many teenagers growing up, I had been conditioned to reserve things that I thought or felt that weren’t in line with what my parents expected of me. I had to reserve things I actually thought or felt for when I was around friends, where I could mostly express myself without fear of reproach. I feel like this is a pretty normal situation for everyone in my age group.

What became incredibly unfortunate was me taking this mindset into relationships. My first relationship was all teenage lust initially, and when that wore off it devolved quickly into disdain and eventually divorce. I couldn’t really be myself. I hated my situation in its entirety. At that point I didn’t really like beer, but I tolerated wine pretty well. It ended up becoming an issue, as I would buy a bottle of wine and down it in one sitting semi-regularly. Thankfully, once that relationship was over I never went back to that sort of situation.

So You’re Dating a Nurse

You’ve met someone, you’re dating, and you feel like you’ve found an incredibly intelligent and compassionate person to share your life with. You’d be completely correct, but if you aren’t sure of what exactly this entails, please do read on.

Tis But a Scratch

You may not realize it yet, but you’ll soon learn that you’re being a gigantic baby. Stomach ache? Headache? Feeling some kind of way? Walk it off, you’re fine. You’ll soon learn that the threshold for “I’m dying” is further out than you could’ve imagined. Your nurse knows, and she’s not going to be shy about sharing it with you. After all, “tis but a scratch”.