November 5th, 2025
I don’t know if I’ve ever been this stressed out in my life.
There’s a part of me that wants to be cute about this and call it my iceberg era; you can see my head treading above water but nobody knows the size and intensity of the sea monster just beneath the surface, right under my chin.
I know that tmi is my personal brand but this time it’s different; a lot of what’s happening isn’t mine and it’s not my place to say. Can you imagine that? Not everything is about me. Wild.
I’ve been thinking about the phrase “When it rains, it pours” this week. What a dumb stream of words to keep passing down. The more you consider it, the less it makes sense: last I checked, rain doesn’t have one setting but comes in countless variety. Mist, drizzle, scattered, storm. It does not always pour; there are more options than dry or drowned.
It is pouring now though. And it makes me grateful for the forecasts of no rain, or little rain, or possible rain. The rain I make up in my mind. It makes me grateful for the tools I have, the shared wisdom that keeps me safe, the umbrellas lent, the boots borrowed.
Next month I’ll have eight years of sobriety and the fact that I’m standing on a raft in the sea in the middle of a thunderstorm and the last thing on my mind is a drink is nothing short of a miracle. The fact that I am able to be completely present and not a complete dick is a supernatural phenomenon that defies science.
I think being here now, like this, in this state, makes me extra aware and extra patient and extra kind, because I know that if I were touched on the wrong spot it would crack and possibly break me.
The world is a lot and always getting a lotter. I don’t know why I’m reaching out today. Maybe just to say hi, I see you.
I’m into Zen Buddhism and I really love the concept of relative and absolute realities; the idea that we are all one thing but we insist on separating that one thing into many. It’s a stupid, achingly human thing to do; division isn’t new but neither is the deep realization that we’re each a note being played in universal harmony.
Or maybe we’re each a raindrop, tiny beings who stubbornly believe we’re individual units of precipitation until we hit the ground, until we feel ourselves sinking through the soil, until we become one, until we realize it’s all just water.
A realization that doesn’t just rain down on us, but pours.
The Den 