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The Ends of the Earth

September 1st, 2025

There’s a trend, but it’s not new; it’s as old as internet time (was there anything before?). It’s the idea of sharing something that absolutely does not need to be shared, in order to signal to others what tribe or political feed you subscribe to.

There’s a version of this making the rounds this week (see: my last essay about ugly), in which a person “bravely” announces that they will be raising their boys as boys and their girls as girls, because the world is already so confusing and God something something, as if this stance is not the default mode in which humanity has been raising children since the beginning of our species.

This, to me, appears to be a decision one can make in the comfort and privacy of their own home, with their own family, no formal announcement necessary — unless they’re trying to say something else.

But who’s to say?

I imagine a dad who says, “I’m going to raise a soldier, because that is the only job that means anything to me.” And he does everything he can to raise that job — not that child — ignoring who the kid is on the inside for the sake of what the dad wants him to appear to be on the outside.

So brave. Way braver than the search for meaning and purpose and identity nearly every human being has participated in since our inception.

We’re complex, and it’s fucking amazing. We’re not and have never been binary creatures; nothing about us is black or white, 1 or 0, and that includes the near infinite options that God (if you wish) has to choose from when it comes to our chemicals and chromosomes and genetics, the amounts and balances, our personalities and dreams and souls. It’s why a straight boy (hi) can be more effeminate and empathetic and into show tunes than other straight boys; it’s why an addict (hi) can’t have one after-dinner cocktail like other people can without it destroying his entire existence.

You know what posts are brave? The ones where a parent says that they’re going to follow their child to the ends of the earth; the ones where a parent vows their unconditional love. Do you know why? Because that is not the default. For every fucked up person, there is more than likely a fucked up parent or relationship or traumatic life event that found no healing or resolution. We say mental health matters; this administration took away $1 billion in mental health care this year so we are what we do, not what we say.

This photo is me, and I’m a witch. Not a wizard; a witch. I clearly wanted to be a witch and my mom was like “fuck yeah, you be a witch” and she helped me. It wasn’t confusing. It didn’t disrupt my worldview. It confirmed something that I never, ever doubted: my mom loved me unconditionally and she would go to the ends of the earth for me, her little witch.

If only every child could feel like this. If only their parents could stop politicizing every piece of their lives and just saw them, held them, protected them. Not from the big, bad world, not from abstract outside forces; from the insidious biases that feed on us all.

I Was A Human

January 7th, 2026

Goddamn it.

I try to be a voice of reason and sense, of kindness and decency for the people in my life who are close to me; but what happened today, and what has been happening in this country for years under the watch and thumb of the man responsible for this administration, is unreasonable and nonsensical, unkind and indecent, as well as cruel and inhumane.

How do you explain the inexplicable?

The comment sections are full of people who clearly would have sold out Anne Frank for a seat at any table; this isn’t surprising but it is always disappointing, today and through every instance in history.

If it wasn’t clear that this nation is not a Christian one, or one that follows its own ideals or carefully crafted Constitution, but is definitely one in the grips of authoritarianism, here’s your final sign. You can disagree with me in the aforementioned comment section, but all it will do is prove that you do not know the definition of several important words and phrases. It will do more to undo you than me. I’ve already pledged my allegiance to the decency and kindness I sang of before, and no nation or party above man; too many are too deep in the weeds to notice that they have lost their humanity, the deep connection we have to each other when all the other bullshit disappears.

And make no mistake about it: this is all bullshit.

I am proud to be a Minnesotan and so heartbroken and heartsick over the state of our state. I echo the sentiments shared that highlight the strength we gain from the diversity of our neighbors; I strongly refute the idea that trouble comes from specific places as opposed to certain individuals.

If you don’t believe me, please look up the list of white male U.S. citizens who have both orchestrated massive fraud and been pardoned by the Trump administration. You’ll only be surprised if you haven’t been paying attention. (Happy Insurrection Day yesterday to all who celebrate.)

So what do we do? I don’t know. I have never known. Shit, I stopped drinking at least ten years past the date I should have. I’ve been thinking about the concept of naive reality lately; the idea that we all believe our individual perception of the world is the objective one. I also read something lately that hasn’t let me go: that it’s likely that everyone we meet, including the people we dislike, are more intelligent and complex than we think they are.

But not everyone has the same motivations. I feel like I’m driven by empathy and connection and understanding and truth but others seek the exact opposite: power and polarization and misinformation and control. It’s been suggested we can’t find common ground because we’re living in different realities when the truth is we just want different things.

And some of us want truly evil things.

An evil thing happened today. Some people will try to tell you it wasn’t. Those people are not stupid. They just have different motivations than you. You will just have to ask yourself what they are, and what it is that drives you.

I hope it’s light and love and compassion, and I hope there are more of us driven by that than it feels like right now. So what do we do? Again, I don’t claim to know. But I’m choosing to continue to love my neighbors, even the ones with different motivations, to continue to try to talk to them and understand them and connect with them; god knows none of us get out of here alive, but when I do, I want my motivations to be clear:

I was a human. I cared about other humans and this planet as I cared for myself. I fought to keep my humanity, even when it was unpopular.

Especially when it was unpopular.

Goddamn it.

Best of 2025

December 30th, 2025

It’s that time again to list my favorite things of the year! (Wait, nobody asked? I don’t care. Everyone loves lists.)

I was able to choose a top ten in every medium except television, which got thirteen picks and I could not reduce it any further (for real, I tried and it broke me).

Feel free to share some of your favorites from 2025 in the comments, and happy new year!

Comics

Absolute Martian Manhunter
Escape
Exquisite Corpses
Fantastic Four
Feral
Monstress
Moon Knight
Saga
Wonder Woman
W0rldtr33

Film

Fantastic Four: First Steps
Final Destination: Bloodlines
Friendship
The Naked Gun
One Battle After Another
Sinners
Superman
Thunderbolts
Weapons
Wicked: For Good

Music

Durry – This Movie Sucks
Garbage – Let All That We Imagine Be The Light
Gully Boys – Gully Boys
Hayley Williams – Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party
Lucy Dacus – Forever is a Feeling
Mallrat – Light Hit My Face Like a Straight Right
Marina – Princess of Power
Motion City Soundtrack – The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World
Taylor Swift – The Life of a Showgirl
Twenty One Pilots – Breach

Television

Alien: Earth (FX)
Andor (Disney+)
The Chair Company (HBO Max)
The Daily Show (Comedy Central)
Hacks (HBO Max)
The Last of Us (HBO Max)
Peacemaker (HBO Max)
Pluribus (Apple TV)
Rick & Morty (Adult Swim)
Secret Galaxy (YouTube)
Severance (Apple TV)
South Park (Comedy Central)
Stranger Things (Netflix)

Fall Semester 2025

December 24th, 2025

Feelin’ like Kevin McCallister over here because grades dropped today and, for the first time in my middle-aged college era, I did not get straight A’s.

I got one A-.

To be honest, I am surprised I survived this semester, much less was able to sustain a 4.0 GPA overall for my academic career. I’m grateful that the past two months didn’t break me and I’m able to spend this week with the people who mean most to me.

I want to say something else, too, on this Christmas occasion, that I’ve been repeating on the internet and I want to make official here:

A Christian nation would not have ICE. If you don’t believe me, ask Jesus.

If you’re getting whiplash and thinking, “Whoa, how did this dorky and self-congratulatory post turn political,” it didn’t.

Existence is not political. Being alive and on this planet is not political. No human being is illegal. No one asked to be here, and the majority of us are doing our best with the time and resources we have.

I don’t like some of you, but I try to love all of you. I have seen some of the most disgusting and inhumane comments and actions lately and I refuse to believe that it represents humanity at large. I think it’s the season for reflection and we should all deeply consider who we want to be, truly, as individuals, as a community and as a country.

Anyway, I graduate in a few months. That’s crazy. As long as I put as much of myself into this as I have for the past two years, I don’t care if I barely earn C’s. I’ve already learned so much and it’s only stoked my lifelong passion for education and the pursuit of the fire of knowledge.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a wonderful New Year. I hope you have health and wealth in the only way that matters: love.

Cat Mom

December 16th, 2025

I may have mentioned this once or twice before but I am a very anxious person.

I am a tragically empathetic sponge (which my drinking used to magically squeeze) and a standard-issue artist; I feel too much and when the world feels like too much my brain crosses streets like a squirrel.

To combat this anxiety, I read and watch a lot of content from those who are content; I’ve been really into Zen Buddhism because I love the ideas but I also want to find something in the practices.

I read a lot about breathing (like a nerd) because I am a terrible breather and how stupid is that? But I came across an article that explained a technique called bee breaths and it’s kind of changing my life.

Do it with me: take a long breath in through your nose. As you exhale, deeply hum the letter M, noting that you do sound like a bee.

The first time I did this, I got really emotional and I couldn’t pinpoint why. It made me sad but then comforted me at the same time. I continued the pattern for a minute before I figured it out.

If you don’t know, my mom was deaf. And something she did my entire life was hum. She did it all the time, she made noise constantly. Though calling it a hum doesn’t accurately describe it; her vocal cords would vibrate in waves, like a purr. It seems like odd behavior, especially from someone who couldn’t hear it.

But she could feel it. Now I figure, like me, she probably needed it.

And as I made that connection and exhaled another bee breath, I realized that this was the closest I had felt to her since she left and let my body do what it needed to.

When things are a mess, you reach for certain people like the handle above your head in a car. This is easily the most trying my life has been in her absence and this simple act of breathing was like grasping firmly onto a phantom hand.

Parents worry about their children and they’re right to; everything that my mom was scared could happen to me has happened to me (save death, but rumor has it that one’s promised). If things work out right, though, then they give us enough to not only survive them, but to make something good out of them.

Sometimes it’s just a hum.

And if that’s what you need too, please feel free to take it, share it, use it as many times as it takes. It hasn’t cured my anxiety; likely nothing ever will. But it does take that fearful breath and turns it into something good.

Matchy-Matchy (Eight Years)

December 9th, 2025

I know exactly how that raccoon feels. The shame and guilt and all that existential crisis garbage.

But it’s been a minute.

I’m eight years sober today.

I know I’ve been missing lately from your social media diet. (The FDA no longer recommends me.) Like I mentioned in a previous post, the last two months have been among the most eventful and stressful of my life. If I ever find a moment and an ounce of grace, I will try to catch you all up sometime; otherwise, if you see me in real life, I continue to be an open book and I will fill you in.

These posts tend to get a lot of attention so I want to talk about something really important to me; this idea is not just the catalyst to me getting clean, but the thing that keeps me sober every day.

Over the years, I’ve written a lot about concepts like cognitive dissonance and self-selection to try to reach people who I feel have lost themselves. As you can see from the world we’re living in, there’s still a lot of work to do; ignorance and bigotry and hatred are still burning bright in their dumpsters. I want to help put those fires out with intelligence and kindness and love. So I’m constantly wondering if I could find better ways to say it and I think I can.

Whenever I write or say or do something, I ask myself a simple question:

Does it match?

Does what I say match who I say I am? Do my actions match who I think I am? Does what I type match the type of person I want to be?

Because, for a long time, they didn’t.

When I was actively drinking, I did not match. I have said and done things that I do not consider to be who I am in the deepest, truest sense of me. And I’m not saying I didn’t do those things; I did, and I have felt the hopelessness of that raccoon, desperate on the cold bathroom floor of a liquor store down the street.

If you think that these are just the ramblings of a former drunk, then you clearly have not been on the internet lately.

How many Christians match today? How many followers of Jesus? How many people who wear crosses around their necks or t-shirts that say shit like “Kindness Matters”?

How many Americans match today? How many people who claim to love freedom and family and our extraordinary constitutional rights? Those who insist on protecting and caring for all children and honoring just laws?

Who among us matches?

And who is wearing just one sock?

And if you were about to congratulate me but now you’re offended for some reason, I am terribly sorry to be holding up the same mirror to you that I’ve had to unflinchingly hold up to myself for the past eight years.

I didn’t have to learn how flawed and biased I was; I had to accept it and then work hard to reverse it and promise, promise, promise myself that I would try to be a tiny bit better every single day.

But when you get better, the world doesn’t agree to with you, and that might be the hardest part.

I have so much gratitude for the people in my life who have stuck around and loved me long enough for me to catch up and love myself; I am so sick at the world but I also pay attention to the universe and know how much good and wonderful and awesome exists in it simultaneously. In fact, I will argue until I return to dust that there is more light than dark on average.

I love you. Remember that. When you see all that hate out there, just remember that I love you and that is all that matters.

And I really love that raccoon. He’s just like me. If anyone has his number, send him my way. I’d love to sit down and talk trash with him.

Sip & Shop @ Gary’s Supper Club

📸: Steven Starks

November 14th, 2025

I could not be more excited for this unexpected late development: after years of working the Sip & Shop brunch events at Gary’s Supper Club, I’m finally sitting behind a table with my books at one!

These events are always full of energy and fun (and cinnamon rolls and mimosas, if that’s your thing!). I’ll have my brand new vampire novel Maple Island and the rest of my published work for sale; feel free to bring in anything you already own and want to get signed!

I know we’re always pretty packed but I’d love to see you there. The vendors are amazing and there are so many holiday gift ideas, made by incredible local artists, artisans and craftspeople. We’ll see you next Saturday, November 22!

Twin Cities Con 2025

November 9th, 2025

Wow. I know I go on and on about how much I adore this community, but it’s only because this community has so much to adore.

What a surprising and delightful, thrilling and exhausting weekend. My eyes, mind and nervous system are shut down for repairs as I type this letter to you.

I chose Twin Cities Con to debut Maple Island because I knew you would welcome it like nobody else. Thank you for your trust and acceptance and horny enthusiasm.

I joke, but it’s true. I did not know how this would go over and I was nervous. But people kept picking it up and bringing it home and then I did a live reading from the book on Saturday night during the Writing After Dark panel; the response was unbelievably kind and generous.

This morning, one of my first visits was from an attendee of that same panel; he said that this type of book generally wasn’t his thing, but that the writing was so good. He ended up taking video on his phone during the reading and sending it to his friends. That is just the coolest kind of thing a creative person can hear and the kind of stamp that Maple Island kept getting this week. I know that there will be people who hate it for whatever reason, but having the initial reactions glow like this is da bomb (and if you’ve read Chapter 11, you get that reference and you’re welcome).

There were too many magical moments to count, or recount. I met Amy Jo Johnson, the pink Power Ranger; I have now met all the OG Rangers (with the exception of Thuy Trang, who played the yellow Ranger and passed tragically young). I connected with so many new fans and friends and writers and artists, and reconnected with the longtime ones too.

Conventions, for me, have always been a reliable bellwether and microcosm of the world we live in. If that’s still true, then I noticed two things:

1. Most people are extremely anxious about living in this country in its current state and are increasingly worried about its descending trajectory.

2. People really care about each other, especially in times like these, and local communities like this are the most important thing to them. For some, their families live within and depend on these vibrant communities; for others, these vibrant communities are their families.

I was eloquently summarizing it all weekend to anyone who would listen: the world is weird right now. All of this is weird. But talking about the weirdness is how we understand and get through it.

I had a lot of people bring up my post from last week. The one where I talked about the unbearable stress. And I had so many insightful conversations about it. People who related. People who wanted to support me and my family in any way they could. People who wondered why I would even write something like that.

Those last people have clearly never been here before.

I want to share part of a conversation I had with my friend Paul (and I don’t think he’ll mind because it’s a good reminder). He’s the Chewbacca you’ve met if you’ve ever met Chewbacca. I brought up how uncomfortable it must be in that Wookiee suit, and he dismissed that part as unimportant. The reason he does what he does is to bring joy to a child. Because that is what this is all about.

He shared a story about meeting a boy in a hospital. The kid had a blast meeting all these characters from a galaxy far, far away. And as the boy was rolled away in his bed, his father told Paul that it had been the first time he smiled in weeks.

I got emotional as he told me this story, as I deal with my own stuff, because who among us hasn’t had this conversation? In our friend’s kitchen after dinner or on the back porch on a warm summer night?

The idea that all we’re supposed to be is kind. The idea that all we’re supposed to do is protect our children and let them be happy. The idea that we’re all connected and most of this — the pain, the politics, the division, the cruelty — is bullshit that doesn’t actually mean anything.

We have these conversations every day and then go out and ruin the world anyway.

Anyway. All of this to say that I’m grateful. For this community, my friends and family, and for conventions like this that let us all get together. These reminders of kindness and joy and connection. A special thanks to the people who put Twin Cities Con together and make it run year after year for five of them now; this event is my favorite and is basically an official holiday to me. My pals Rio and Caitlyn made me a Five Timers jacket (that I have to pass on to someone else who has five years next year, per stated tradition) and that gift (and sentiment) really symbolized everything you all mean to me.

Love you. And if you haven’t bought my slutty vampire book yet, shame on you.

We Shine Together

📸: Steven Starks

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.