Left: Los Angeles Wastoid With an Idea for a Book He Says Will Be a Guaranteed Bestseller If He Ever Writes It After Figuring Out How to Connect the Beginning to the End (2015) • Right: Vampire Weekend’s Tour Manager Trying to Get in on a Toast for Someone He Doesn’t Know at a Party Too Loud for His Sensibilities (2019)

Do you know how insanely out of whack your existence has to be for you to huck half your wardrobe, scoop reading glasses you’ve needed for years, and put together three calendars in order to keep track of all the things you always wanted to do but never did?

Let me back up.

In January, I was coming apart at the seams, so I decided to rework myself and the world around me — I quit drinking, I started weekly therapy, I took a hiatus from drugs, I upped my exercise routine, I made a point of getting a good night’s rest, and so on. In February, I reflected on my progress and wrote about it here: I’m Trying to Not Be an Out of Control Mess This Year — and It’s Working. In March, I made the experiment more blood than air, ensuring my life changes were practical, not just theoretical. Now it’s April and I’ve definitely learned five things.

It takes a good baseline to observe the bad.
Distractions don’t hold the same allure after a break.
Self-fulfilling prophecies are preventable.
Acknowledgement and acceptance are not the same.
There’s always time to change.

You see, this all began a long, long time ago…in a galaxy brain far, far away…

Look, here’s the truth of the matter: I trapped myself at some point.

I couldn’t tell you how, where, or when. I only know the who and the why. Sure, it’d probably make for a better story if I could spot when exactly I ostrich’d reality altogether. In fact, I’d like to believe it was a crucial moment at some house party that I could then spectate like the Dickens as some Ghost of Christmas Time-Is-A-Flat-Circle and catch myself sinking into yours truly like quicksand.

But it could likely all be boiled down to the fact that I grew up too meticulous and cautious and then eased up in young adulthood, tasting blood on my lip after a lifetime of chapstick, and thus punted control to the thrashing wind and went spinning into the great wild unknown.

And a lot of that life was damn crazy fun and soul-enriching good! I said absolutely-hell-yes to a score of adventures as a theatrical goofball who refused to slow down. [I put a score of them into a piece you can read if you’re curious — Once: 100 Moments of a Dunce’s Life.]

However, along the way, in parallel, I also created a cycle of distraction, daydream, and destruction. It worked long enough — too long, some would say, including me, which is why any of these words are even here to begin with — and, at the start of this year, I found myself in a rather narrow existential tunnel, a most sudden and drastic realization, which lead to an extremely frantic, panicked escape.

But escape I did!

How far I’ve made it from the tunnel has yet to be called. The jury of understudies I call a conscious sucks ass at existential math.

In reflection, this all sounds like an insane amount of work for someone who lived like this in order to avoid challenges and difficulties, even though hardships and obstacles are a part of…well, everything. So my cunning plan was to basically not fully experience life and the evolution that comes with it, instead cultivating a life largely reliant on ease and instant.

But now I’m here, somewhere between the tunnel and, like, a homestead of some kind…? I don’t know. I’m still figuring out this analogy. Don’t worry, there’s more ahead.

1. Them bad deals glow big-time hot when the rest of you is all good and at peace.

When all is chaos, nothing and everything makes sense. There’s just so much going on you can’t even fathom structure. It’d be like assembling IKEA furniture in the middle of a tornado. So you accept it for the time being and assume the tornado will die down — except you’re the one in charge of the tornado.

Living rent-free in my own head, my default mantra became “I wish” — a throwaway reasoning I lifted from the great philosopher Skee-Lo, manifesting in everything from “I wish I could save money” to “I wish I was in better shape.” Those magical two words were essentially an easy pat on the back, a liner note to call out that I wanted to get better, that I had a general goal of improvement, that I believed I could evolve; but footnotes don’t exactly make a story. For me, where it all began was exactly where it all ended.

Simply put, it was a fantasy — and I tended to that garden of reverie, those precious fields of delirium, because it was easier than replanting the entirety of my estate.

This subconscious decision would, of course, prove unideal. In no way does living in an unreality suit you better in the long run. For the most part, detachment is a coping mechanism; it’s not emotional life insurance. And the longer it went on, the more parts of me came unconnected given the speed and lack of maintenance. I got away from myself.

When I became (wildly) untethered, brought on by a habitual penchant for instant gratification that was unwisely paired with self-destructive tendencies and a season or two of self-loathing, them lively, vibrant cords that formerly connected my core — a complex and firmly held mass of beliefs, principles, and values — to the rest of my existence — extensive avenues of emotional processing and hearty communication, well-founded methods of pursuing rich moments of joy and obtaining a deeper sense of contentment, robust operating systems to deal with disappointment and grief, and the like — went flying. They whipped in the bellowing wind of my extraordinary, labyrinthine cavern.

Who I was at my core had been buried, lost to the sands of everything from diversion to rage. So now I’m in the midst of an archeological dig and these analogies might be a plague.

See, when you lose a connection to your core, your emotions, decisions, and reactions become surface level. They devolve and decay. They turn primitive. You maneuver in remarkably shallow terms, since there’s no source to a deeper, richer well. The scale of what you have to offer is therefore shortened, so frustration can easily erode into fury, disappointment can breezily melt into despair, and on and on until your emotions are essentially grouped together and you come to solely operate in the eight basic colors when you were once an entire glorious spectrum. You more or less remove the concept of complexity from your emotional range.

In a sense, it’s childish. In another sense, it’s reallychildish. Allow me to expand on this because this is my essay and I have all the time in the world.

Let’s say your emotional range as a kid is 1–10. Every adjustment of your world has the potential to feel dramatic. That’s why each change can matter so much; there’s only so much your brain can recognize and process. Ice cream can throw you from a low number to a high one and it feels sweeping. When your entire scale is 1–10, going from a 3 to an 8 feels like a swift arrival of euphoria.

Now, if you’re proactive about your emotional development, the scale evolves. So let’s say, as an adult, your emotional range is more like 1–100. Maybe ice cream still increases your happiness by five points, but going from 70 to 75 isn’t huge. It’s a noticeable spring in your step, but it doesn’t exactly turn your life around.

So you have to work at the scale and maintain it. What that means and how it manifests is different to everyone. I more or less neglected mine and, in turn, it shrunk.

Being centered is important because, ideally, you cultivate what you believe to be the best of you and that hopefully fuels your entire being. It’s not inherently easy and everyone has a different level of skill with it. The work is ongoing and can be strenuous. The level of difficulty has to do with a score of factors, both internal and external, and the quickest way to lose focus is to compare yourself to others. However, that doesn’t mean you’re prevented from admiring others and modeling some aspects of yourself after them. That’s actually a good starting point in my opinion.

All this to say, reattaching the different parts of me has felt like my existence has weight again. I know what feels out of place — I catch myself using too many words when less words would do because I had trouble sleeping the night before, I feel less confident in my decisions because I’m sluggish after not eating right, I feel negative about something I shouldn’t because I’ve been on the go and therefore haven’t exercised much.

Previously, as my only resident head-dweller, I took everything as immediate. Any emotion was genuine and well-founded because my world was all-encompassing and on my terms. When you’re that far in your head, things shift in your favor. Of course you’re in the right! Of course this! Of course that! However, perspective matters and there’s distortion on your end, but you’ve come to believe the fuzz is just part of the picture.

The gut isn’t always instinct; the heart isn’t always truth; sometimes it’s all just noise. [Please enjoy these post-rock album titles that I have sprinkled throughout.]

2. Dealing with the bunk bogusness can prove more gateway than diversion.

All my lively new year/not spaced energy had to go somewhere — and it’s turned out to be everywhere. From writing to running to meditating to organizing get-togethers, I’m being proactive and productive, rather than reactive, in a way I’ve never been before. I’m veryhere — yet somehow not as noisy…curious—and I’m becoming more instinctive about separating problem and solution.

There’s a lot I can’t control in this life. But I can control how I deal with it.

For instance, in February, my father was diagnosed with cancer for the second time. It was the first big challenge for My Big New Brain™ in the matter of dealing with a Giant Fuck That™ entirely out of my control. I couldn’t cure cancer and I had no intention of funneling my energy into the languishing flatline hymn of “I wish (my dad didn’t have cancer).” I therefore informed my therapist that my dad’s cancer may impact my emotional stability and decision-making process, but I didn’t have much to share beyond that in sessions. It wouldn’t be fruitful to complain for an hour. Finally, I recognized my father’s cancer as a dominating presence in my attention range and I allowed myself to dedicate a session shortly before his surgery to getting all the worry and concern out of my system. [Twist: There was a lot.] But even that felt like control. I didn’t let it consume me. I treated the growing dread with patience and awareness.

I had no intention of retreating to my old “fixer” ways —where you basically trial-and-error any given thing until you pretty much smother it — because belligerently texting and calling my dad like some high school crush would’ve felt like final days (when they weren’t). So I checked in with him a reasonable amount, organized a family game day, set up a dinner with my folks, and hyped the good sir’s poetry. [That final effort transformed into friends and family scooping his poetry collections like whoa, thus sending him into the surgery with good vibes. I wrote about it here: Why I Asked Everyone to Read My Dad’s Poetry When His Cancer Returned.]

These were all methods of dealing with life’s bad turns and a general lack of control. Sitting at home wishing things were different does nothing. If anything, it only presents an alternate reality that’s so alluring you think about it more than your actual present — and doing just that is how this whole journey of mine started!

This continued. Last week, sitting in LA traffic on the way to visit my dad in the hospital, I felt the trying weight of physical exhaustion and emotional depletion while knowing my good-hearted father was laid up with scars and staples like 19th-century railroad tracks with my sleepless mom beside him and, hey, fuck that. I got mad. And that would’ve stuck with the old me. I would’ve been wrathful at circumstance — the wily bastard, always doing things and presenting situations! — and there would’ve been no route for me to go but stay there and be irate.

And. That. Is. A. Bonkos. Way. To. Live.

So I asked myself what I could do to improve my mood. Given the seasonal focus on self-improvement, a recent activity I found exciting and rewarding, I concentrated on that.

Thus, in dead-stop traffic, I applied/signed up to volunteer with three local organizations — Big Brothers & Big Sisters of Orange County, Pacific Marine Mammal Center, and Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County. [This part of my life rework actually began in February, when my friend Scott and I decided to get involved with theOrange County Racial Justice Collaborativeand the ACLU of Southern California.] And it worked. I felt way better. I got excited about deepening my role as an active participant in communal good.

I tell ya, blackout drinking energy manifests in all sorts of wild ways! I never considered myself the I-need-a-drink type because I seamlessly slid in and out of hazes and highs, but maybe those regular, seemingly inevitable disappearances from Earth were forever on my horizon and I was on more crutches than I initially wagered. Because now I’m pretty damn jazzed about exploration and everything I can do. Plus, now that I’m sober with what feels like 40-hour days, I’m assembling a future I’m keen on.

Planning reveals intent. It’s not like I’ve ever scheduled, “Refresh Twitter for an hour and then go to war with a college sophomore you don’t know in the replies.” Now I have two Google Spreadsheets posing as existential editorial calendars with my friend Chris — one is for weekly creative projects, one is for weekly non-creative to-dos/activities — and I have one calendar for the book and graphic novel I plan to finish each week in order to hit my annual goal of 100 stories. [I haven’t been close in years because some god gave me juvenile delinquent eyes that went wonky years back and I only got around to fixing up this spiritual season. More on that later.]

I’m writing more than I have in years, I’m expanding my creative output like hell, I’m making my way through cookbooks that have sat on my kitchen shelf, and I’m running like Postfontaine. [Prefontaine was in primo shape and I ain’t there yet. I’ve lost 15 pounds with sobriety, but all my muscles are in my legs and brain.] Anyway, the point is I’m making bad stuff good and good stuff great and god are these analogies somehow getting worse.

3. Self-fulfilling prophecies are basically hoaxes you make real, which is not as hilarious as you think.

Once of the wildest things my therapist has ever asked me is this: “Do you have any reason to believe that?”

Sure, such a casual three-flies-up huck of basic curiosity is more akin to something a dork like me would’ve scrawled on his notebook to impress smart girls back in fifth grade after reading exactly one book by Madeleine L’Engle, but this question honestly struck me like a drunken grandfather clock. It uppercutted me so bad, in fact, that I had to actually ask, “What do you mean?”

Of course, she meant, HEY, DO YOU HAVE ANY TANGIBLE EVIDENCE THAT WHAT YOU ARE SAYING IS HAPPENING IS ACTUALLY WHAT IS HAPPENING?

And, obviously, after the layabouts I have the nerve to declare brain cells glanced at each other with wishy-washy brain-celly eyes and collectively shrugged their brain-celly shoulders, I answered, “No, I guess not.”

Such a revelation was liberating! Holy shit, did that free up my haunted house of a head — like I hit it with a flashlight and the buggos went scurrying (hopefully not to plague someone else’s brain because aw sads) — and it should’ve been how my mind worked goddamn years ago.

[I will likely, at least for a while, keep repeating “and it should’ve been how my mind worked goddamn years ago.” I want to cheer myself on while simultaneously reminding myself that, in my own humble opinion of yours truly, I’m catching up, not pioneering. I mean, I got a degree in print journalism — *in 2008* — so, you know, take anything I say here with a grain of salt.]

It turns out you can fear something so much and so bad that it wholly and unforgivably consumes you. It’s so dramatically in focus as the destination you don’t want to visit that you find yourself heading toward it. Then you get there and you unsurprisingly hate it, and yet never take to asking, “How could this have happened when it was literally the only thing I thought about?”

Don’t self-sabotage.≠ Be your best self.

For years, I have been a dusty archive of warnings whereas now I’m, like, some modern museum of motivations. [I’m still getting used to optimistic analogies, so I figure I’m going to sound like a beach house kitchen sign of cursive on reclaimed driftwood for a spell. Bear with me because we all need to live, laugh, and love, folks.]

I’d long taken to framing my personal narrative as what would probablyhappen because that’s what usuallyhappened or because that’s what I thoughtwould happen (or both!). So I’d defeatedly resign to what I believed was inevitable and be not-exactly-blown-away by my fear becoming actualized. “I saw this coming,” I’d say to a whole lot of no one. “I am a genius.”

EVERYONE CAN SEE THE PROBLEM HERE; YES EVEN ME NOW.

The problem is that you can clearly obsess about an outcome until you “accidentally” ensure it. You essentially come to recognize patterns without source. You see what you usually happens and you take it at face value because you’ve seen it before. And yet you don’t go back to the first time it happened. You don’t see how the dominos were kicked over. You just behold the mess and I just fucking can’t with these analogies anymore; please, someone take my fingers away from me.

4. Acknowledgement vs. Acceptance is the battle of the century but maybe it doesn’t have to be.

Acknowledgement is in passing. Acceptance is head on.

In years past, I would acknowledge certain qualities about myself as unideal — punctuality, everyone I know screamed at once, before clearing their throat and rolling out the entirety of their Times New Roman scroll — but these were brisk tips of the hat to an untrustworthy character. Once I accepted them, they became tangible pieces of actionable change. They went from what I saw to what I could do.

I was like that dumb fucking mayor from Jaws; I acknowledged the shark, but I didn’t accept the situation’s seriousness and thus close the beach right away.

To me, a man potentially and clinically addicted to unnecessary analogies, it’s the difference between driving by and pulling over. Acknowledgement is what I see out the window; acceptance is what I consider the destination.

See, acknowledgement leans too easily on a sense of temporariness, that the bunk quality is a part of you, sure, and…shrug. It’s mentioned as a clarifier — I’m bad with punctuality, I’m bad with money, I’m bad with vulnerability — but it’s treated as more of a disclaimer rather than the beginning of a new chapter.

Hell yes I’m saying shit like “new chapter” now. Watch me move to Sedona and sell CDs and turquoise jewelry, you hip city wastoids, with your pedestrian buckleless belts and your decade-late arrival to the aisle that sells goji berries.

The above are three random personal examples.

I’ve gotten better at punctuality.I actually used to always be 10–15 minutes early or right on time growing up. [I was raised to be an insufferable dork nurtured on manners alone.] At some point, I didn’t like waiting — and sometimes extreme punctuality comes off as a flex, a notion that was veryunintentional coming from a gangly question factory such as myself — so I began showing up fashionably late. Then I couldn’t pull out of it. Then I couldn’t be on time for literally anything.

I’ve gotten better at money. OH MY GOD YOU BASICALLY BECOME A FINANCIAL GENIUS WHEN YOU STOP DRINKING AND NO ONE HAS TO TAKE YOUR CREDIT CARD AWAY FROM YOU AFTER A WEDDING RECEPTION IN DOWNTOWN SANTA ANA BECAUSE YOU’RE TRYING TO BUY ROUNDS FOR STRANGERS — so that’s been good. Also, being of sound mind and choosing order over chaos helps.

I’ve gotten better at vulnerability. This has honestly been strange, surprising exploration for me. I’m a huge fan of vulnerability — more conceptually than personally as it turns out. I think people should be vulnerable! It’s healthy! It makes sense to be your most earnest self! But I’ve more or less unearthed that I resent the actual sensation of feeling vulnerable. I grew up overly empathetic and thus often unguarded, and as a teenager I developed a compulsion to always appear fine that got away from me in adulthood. I figured I was wildly capable of dealing with myself — that if I wasn’t fine, I wasn’t doing my job as Human Being. Yet, in the last two months, I’ve been significantly more open about where I’m at — mentally and emotionally — and, holy shit, it’s less exhausting by a fucking miracle mile. Those in my life are understanding rather than sympathetic. [This is exactly the response I want, because I can also tend to read sympathy as too within range of pity, something else to unpack and work on.] But I used to lowball the enormity of an issue until the problem disappeared or I moved on — thus continuing to carry it with me. But now look at me! Look at this essay! It’s like I’m the mayor of Vulnerable City! [And I’m way better than that fucking mayor from Jaws. Like, seriously, wasn’t he still the mayor in the second one? I mean, holy shit, Amity.]

Repeat something enough times and it becomes true — to you anyway, and that can make all the difference. Inspect specific traits within you. If you like them, keep them. If you don’t, ask what it would take to change them. Go from there. I did and now look at me; I’m 6’4”.

5. Everyone should be evaluating their existence all the time.

On St. Patrick’s Day, after nearly two months of sobriety, I decided to have a whiskey on the rocks at a cast party for a play about King Kong that I somehow wound up in for nine weeks. [Okay, so things have really changed for me this year.]

After a season of practicing mindfulness, all while living the driest I’d been since 17 years old, it felt strange to feel myself drifting out of a moment. It wasn’t an out-of-body experience, but I could tell my brain and body were separating a bit. Internally, it was akin to getting buzzed for the first time as a teen all over again, continually asking, “Is this what I would be saying if I were sober? Is this what I would be doing if I were sober? Where is Katie McNamara? Is she here? Oh my god, what if this is my chance? Is one crazy night enough to turn it all around?”

Okay, so the line of questioning didn’t devolve that hard into youthful resurgence. Instead, I reached the only question that mattered: “Do I even like this?”

But that wasn’t the first time I’d asked this question. I had spent weeks asking that question, about everything from home decor to my phone background. I just kept strolling through my existence asking, “Do I even like this?”

[Of course, it eventually dawned on me that I was basically ripping off Marie Kondo’s “Does it spark joy?” I just added a dour western ‘tude that made the question decidedly more poised for potential desertion.]

I looked at everything anew — emotions, hobbies, relationships, personality traits, lamps; you name it, I interrogated it. Once I had a clear mind, my existence looked significantly different and I had a lot of new opinions about it. I was ready to deconstruct everything.

But it all started with getting dressed.

One Saturday morning with zero plans for the day — save for the play that night, as it turned out to be a good time to become a self-improving recluse; ‘twas metamorphosis! — I stared at my open closet and asked the inevitable: “Do I even like this?”

Well, the answer was a resounding FUCKING NO, I’VE MADE THAT STUPID “I DRESS LIKE AN EIGHTH GRADER WITH A GROWTH DISEASE” FOR YEARS AND THESE CLOTHES AREN’T WHAT I WANT TO ADORN MY ONLY BODY. So, after thinking deeper about this category (that I deal with every single day of my life) for all of ten seconds, I yanked out half my wardrobe and stashed three bags of clothes in my car to donate.

In an instant, I realized that, for many years, I bought or inherited clothes I found agreeable in a style I deemed my wheelhouse. I had a handful of favorite outfits and everything else was a shrug to wear. Clothes were more or less utility to me, a fact that should’ve become extremely more obvious to me when American Express called to see if my credit card had been stolen after buying a single new outfit.

So last month I went shopping like a motherfucker. It was a whole goddamn montage. I had shopping bags. I was spinning. I was screaming, “HE’S GONNA MAKE IT AFTER ALL.” I returned stuff. I told ’em nothing was wrong with the shirt, that I just got carried away. They understood. I moved on with my life. I looked fucking fresh.

From there, realizing I was now who I wanted to be on the outside — most notably with an odd enthusiasm for capris, high waters, and minor league baseball pants — I had to ask who I wanted to be on the inside. [Goddamn, I sound like the delinquent second chance of Mr. Rogers’s grandson.]

So I assembled a word doc that was basically a ridiculous lineup of desired qualities.

I want to be someone who bakes.

I want to be someone who is patient.

I want to be someone who volunteers.

I want to be someone who can do basic woodworking.

I want to be someone who has gone skydiving.

I want to be someone who knows how a fucking engine works.

Okay, the last one’s on there, but I added the swear here because it’s been on my to-do list for a decade and a half.

Do I sound like a body snatcher? Hell yes I do, but otherwise it’s just little notes floating about a study with the windows open. I want to be a million things!

But it’s hard to really sum it all up on a whim. It’s like how you’re a complex being and you have all sorts of dreams and ideas and you interpret the world with robust consideration and you build and strengthen relationships and you enjoy so very many things in life and then someone asks you to describe yourself and you barf the tiniest, “I don’t know, I think I’m pretty nice?”

So I made a list.

After you catch up to yourself, like some fugitive who’s been on the run for a decade-plus, you have to do some digging into the past. What were all those things you wanted to be and do?

This all sounds bonkers, but I’ve already noticed changes.

I say little to nothing I regret. This sounds impossibly easy. It was not. I had trouble with silence. Combine that with my subconscious “fixer” solutions, and I spoke/texted every joke or conversation extender that popped into my manic, feverish brain. Guess what? A whole lot of it wasn’t thought out. Guess who didn’t always like what I said? A whole lot of people (including me).

I make decisions I agree with. Again, this sounds impossible easy. But instant gratification means sabotaging long-term rewards. Now it feels like a superpower to simply think I shouldn’t snack at work and then actually follow suit. On the shield of old me, there was probably a banner of Latin reading, “I Know I Shouldn’t; Oh, But I Must.”

I move slower. Given that I was formerly horrendous at time management and eternally trying to distract myself with as much as humanly possible, I moved with freneticism. It no longer looks like I’m in a hurry to literally everywhere and everything, although I do still have these cursed-ass long legs and nobody under 6’0” appreciates that. I take my time. This in turn has caused me to drop and break less. It’s a win for everyone.

I wear reading glasses now. Holy shit, this change is absolutely the most indicative on me putting things off. I was so in my own world that I didn’t get glasses. I just strained my eyes instead, procrastinating the task of g-e-t-t-i-n-g g-l-a-s-s-e-s — as a f u c k i n g w r i t e r. Now I’m reading in bed again rather than dicking around on my phone and thus elongating my attention span, that should in turn make me more ready for new skills!

With all these changes, I return to a quote, a passage, and a moment.

Quote: My therapist gave me a sentence that immediately replaced my old mantra: “You can only control your thoughts, your feelings, and your behavior.”

Passage:In Still Life With Woodpecker, a book I once held instead of the Bible as a secular minister, Tom Robbins wrote: “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.”

Moment: One night, I found myself on a dinghy with my friends Chase and Rex, drifting aimlessly in San Diego Bay, 21 years old and wildly drunk on cheap rum. We were arguing about superpowers and I made the pitch that any choice of superpower was a reveal of real-life weakness. [e.g. You choose flying because you feel trapped.] “So what’s yours?” I informed them that mine’s always been time travel because my greatest weakness is regret. [I know, I’ve been like this forever.] Neither of them stood for this. I, naturally, pitched having my cake and eating it too. “It doesn’t work like that.” Ultimately, they convinced me that every moment influences who you are in the moments that follow, whether it’s the next day or the next decade. You don’t get to choose what made you who you are and as much as I’d like to have gotten here sooner and have done so without crashing my mind, body, and spirit, that sounds like “I wish” and I ain’t going back to that life. You change when you’re ready.

As much there stays within me a small desire to add an addendum of “but better early than late” to the age-old adage “Better late than never,” this is the very nature of change. You cannot force it. You should not lament it. I am, in every sense of the word, forbiddenfrom changing the past and therefore it is out of my control, and so I can only use what has happened as insight to guide me from here on out. What I was along the way has made me who I am today and, hey, I’m pretty stoked. Things are good. Things are getting better.

Each moment is a decision. That’s all I got.

[Plus analogies — I just have so many analogies.]

Left: A Vision of Your Ex Doing a Pub Crawl at the Renaissance Faire (2016) • Right: The Ghost of Your Safety Net If Unwed By a Certain Age (2019)