If you’ve known me for any amount of time, you know a big part of what I try to do in the arts is mentoring and teaching. From the theatre classes I taught in high school, to groups like Kaleidoscope and my own writing class last year, to taking opportunities to meet and Zoom with so many young people who have interest in the arts.
On August 24th, I’ve teamed up with Eric at Mind’s Eye Comics in the Burnsville Center to help kids create their own comic book!
Starting at 11 am, I’m going to do a short Comic Book 101 Introduction Course and then we’ll let their imaginations run wild with supplies (and support!) provided.
The event is for ages 7 to 14, and it is absolutely FREE! The only thing you need to do is register with me or Mind’s Eye Comics, in-person or by sending a message. We would love to have everybody there if it were possible, but the seats are limited!
We thought this would be a super fun way to end the summer and to possibly create more kinds of events like this in the future.
I love Tim Walz. To be clear, when I say “love,” I mean I love him as a fellow dog dad and decent human being, not in some cult-like, vaguely-romantic way.
I want to tell you a story about haters.
I’ve worked in restaurants for a very long time. Maybe since they invented restaurants; I was definitely there when they invented the internet.
In my restaurant work, I have done a good job many times. My restaurant has done a good job many times. And most of the time, after that good work is done, we don’t hear a thing about it, especially on the internet.
Now, once in a while, a person will be upset. Sometimes the person is upset because I (or the restaurant) did something wrong; most of the time the person is upset just because they’re an upset person. When this happens, we anxiously await a bad review, every single time, and do you want to know why?
Hate gives people energy.
Hate gives people energy in a way that decency and kindness and peace do not.
So if you’re on the internet today wondering how a guy who is apparently so disliked by his own state got re-elected to be its governor, well — I just told you.
Haters are generally very ineloquent; they can’t tell you why they hate something (that would take honest work and some introspection which, to be fair, is not everyone’s cup of tea), but wow can they tell you they hate it. They’ll hurl insults and lol derisively and you’ll be amazed that a person can condescend from a gutter.
I like Walz because he’s like me: he does the best he can do in any situation, even when that situation sucks and there is no pleasant way out.
I like him for some of the adjectives I used earlier: he appears, to me, to be decent and kind and smart. He’s a former educator and served in the National Guard; he’s a dog dad (perhaps the most important role a man can have); he’s accomplished a ton and he’s a leader for all Minnesotans, even the ones who absolutely hate his guts, even the ones who can’t articulate their hate but can feel it.
Hey, if you’re hating today, look at it this way: he might not be your governor for very long now.
And at least we’ll be able to agree that that is a good thing.
I don’t know if you’ve been on this planet (and this internet) for the past week but has it not been just fucking brutal?
It’s been hard to keep with the idiotic, ignorant, and hateful discourse; it’s been difficult to be a compassionate, empathetic human among those being less than. My stomach gets strangled thinking about confrontation; it’s hard to be a people-pleaser and want so terribly to put some people in their place.
I got so upset on Thursday night that I sat down and wrote an extremely long post filled with objective, irrefutable facts that would show everyone who is making this world a sucky place to be exactly how they were wrong and stupid and mean.
But when I finished it, I realized two things:
1. I did not feel better by writing it. At all.
2. This isn’t the kind of person I want to be.
Don’t get me wrong: I love to engage with people about all aspects of life, but it should be a conversation; too much of this mess is made by people who shout while covering their eyes and ears.
So I thought about who I do want to be, and that person wants to talk about something, anything, that is good.
And that good thing for me has been the Olympics.
Not the made-up culture wars surrounding them, no, but the actual culture. It’s astounding that the Earth stands still to do something together, and it fills me with genuine awe and wonder.
It really represents everything there is about being human: connection, cooperation, competition, excellence, failure, order, chaos, love, surprise, heartbreak, the appreciation of chocolate muffins.
If you’re a naturally curious person, it’s impossible to not get sucked into the excitement and drama of… well, sports you’ve never even heard of, as well as the classic and modern games you think you know so well.
Because they don’t happen often, it’s impossible for me to get sick of the spectacle; I also just love events, and there are few things more eventful than this.
If you’re wondering why I’m just rambling about the Olympics, it’s because I’m struggling: with politics, with wars, with humanity itself. I won’t say these are unprecedented times; things have definitely been worse, and likely will be worse at some point in the future.
But it does feel like a lot. It seems like a lot of people are lost, and their reaction to that personal disorientation, their unremembered spirituality, is splayed negativity and pointed projection.
It feels personal and it’s hard to witness day after day. Like I said, it’s brutal.
So I’d only encourage you to find something that’s not bad. Maybe even something good. Even if it only comes around every few years.
When I first got sober over six years ago, I wrote about it a lot. I did that for several reasons (probably because I was still a little drunk, lol), but the most important was simple:
I didn’t see anybody in my life talking about it. They weren’t speaking about addiction, and they weren’t sharing how not only was it possible to get better, but that I could start today, if I really wanted it.
I know that if I would have felt that kind of hope in my hopeless reality, I would have gotten better sooner.
Since spilling my pickled guts online, I have had countless conversations with good people: people who were ready to start a new chapter, people who had questions, people who needed help, people who knew people who needed help, people who didn’t know what they wanted to do or even what they could do, people who were mad at me (really!), and people who thought they were ready to change but, in the end, were not, and that’s okay, too.
This is a reminder post that if you’re struggling, my line is always open. You can message me here, or at 507.210.1591.
Like Lucy, I’m not a trained professional, but unlike Lucy, my ear is free. It will cost you nothing to reach out, and at the very least you’ll be able to talk to a person who very likely has an idea of what you’re going through — which is the thing that saved my life.
Thankfully, I don’t actually give advice, either. I just listen, and I’m able to share the things I have learned work or don’t work for me.
I hope your summer has been decidedly not bummer, and if anybody sees Snoopy, will you please tell him to return Marvel’s blanket? Thank you in advance.
Can you sense that oncoming chill in the air? Can you hear the sound of leaves crunching under your feet? Have you picked out the perfect Halloween costume yet? CAN YOU SMELL THE IMPENDING PUMPKIN SPICE? 🎃
Believe it or not, fall is almost here. If you’re like me, you welcome it with open arms (protruding from a heavy, hooded sweatshirt). Not least of which because: I’m going on another local literary tour!
Join me on almost a week’s worth of dates in October and November:
MNCBA FallCon 2024: October 12 – 13 @ State Fairgrounds Grandstand. It’s back, baby! FallCon makes its triumphant, two-day return to its old stomping grounds.
Twin Cities Book Festival: October 19 @ State Fairgrounds Grandstand. I’m extra excited for this one, as it’s my first time at this event, and instead of being a book guy trying to swim in a pop culture lake filled with wildlife better suited for those waters, I’m going to be in a pond with fish just like me!
Twin Cities Con 2024: November 8 – 10 @ Minneapolis Convention Center. I’ve been with this con since day one and it just gets better year after year; if you’ve never been, now is the time to stop making excuses and see what all the (well-deserved) hype is about.
If you’re hating because I’m already talking about fall, please go for a brisk jog outside right now and get back to me. 🫠
Until then, I hope you have enough watermelon, popsicles, and Capri Sun to get you through the rest of the summer.
I can’t wait to see you all in a few short months! 🍂
I just saw Deadpool & Wolverine and I need to talk about it, but not actually about it, and I promise (I PROMISE) no spoilers here (for real, I am very serious about this).
No, I really want to talk about Carl Jung and change (the personal kind, not loose).
When we discuss change, I think it’s fair to say we often consider it a form of evolution, of progress, of moving forward. We’re all fucked up to certain degrees, and in the process of improving ourselves, we make attempts to turn our compass in the right direction.
But what happens if we stare at the compass and realize it’s pointing right back at us?
I just finished Jung’s The Undiscovered Self and am almost done reading Jung’s Map of the Soul (I’m firmly in my Jung era right now); there are a lot of seeds for essays and future fiction here, but something unlocked by coincidence tonight was the concept of our core being.
Who we are before the world gets to us.
Before the world, as Jung so eloquently puts it, collides the fuck into us (I so eloquently added “the fuck”).
Most of the time, I feel like I’m trying to burn off my character defects like warts, to become something new, a person I could never be before; I rarely considered that what I am doing instead is shoveling the dirt of the world off me to get to the decent, kind, selfless person I used to be.
The thing about taking these roads back to our core is you have to cross the fiery bridges that shut you off from that core in the first place; the traumatic events that slammed screen doors, windows, brick and steel walls between you now and you then.
Most of the time we see the smoke in the distance as we approach, say “fuck all of that” and turn around.
But sometimes we find the courage to drive straight through.
And change becomes an implosion, an expansion back inside ourselves, and we find out that we’re the exact same kid we were at five years old. Vulnerable and hopeful and smart and brave and loving and deserving of love.
I promised no spoilers, but I only meant that about the movie; the key to change isn’t just forward and different, but sometimes backwards and familiar, if not forgotten.
It’s a lesson Carl Jung and Wolverine would totally share over a cold beer together.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my mom today because I’ve been thinking a lot about change.
Before she passed I was very anti-change, because she was here and who would want to move on from that?
Years ago I was asked to write and sing a chorus for a spoken word song, and the lines were telling:
I don’t know why, I don’t know why / They say change is good, but that’s something that I never understood / I don’t know why, I don’t know why / I think if I could, I’d hit 88 and go back for good
When I got my shit relatively together, I started to accept change, and began to see its necessity and inevitability.
And when she left, I knew that I had to do more than that and actively embraced change, realizing that it isn’t good or bad; it just is, and good and bad follow each other like feet on a path.
We tell ourselves that everything used to be better when that’s rarely the actual case; we’re far enough away from our physical bodies and environments then to give us the distance we need to feel safe, to not feel the fear and pain under our skin.
For some reason, I often think I never got tired when I was young, and when I really think, all I was was tired, but a different kind.
Nothing can be great again because never in the history of humanity has everything been great.
All we can do and be is a little fucking better.
I’ve been getting angry a lot lately and I don’t know what’s up with that. I say “who is your anger good for?” in my head and I remember that the answer is nobody; a character in a Star Wars book asked herself that question and she turned out to be a villian, which is okay, because we’re all villians in somebody else’s story, anyway.
It’s still a good thing to ask myself.
I was talking to my dad today and I told him how I apply all the things I’ve learned in tiny fluorescent rooms to the real world, like listening to others, like really listening, and in the moment all I could think of was all the times I’ve failed to.
It made me angry.
My anger wasn’t good for anyone.
But I still refuse to feel less, to speak less, to read less, to listen less. I’ve been told the room is really hot right now but I never touched the thermostat, no matter how many times the loudest person at the party tells everyone I did.
In fact, the room changed, and I didn’t deny it, or merely accept it; I’m embracing it, because if I don’t embrace change, I’ll die.
And if I die I won’t get the chance to do or be just a little fucking better.
What if we encouraged children to be kind and caring instead of conditioning them to be shrewd business-people?
I thought about this as we drove past a 50-cent lemonade stand the other day.
I can usually have good conversations and constructive arguments with people, except when they’ve been brainwashed about a few specific subjects. These topics include a) guns, b) religion, c) politics, and d) capitalism. (Don’t @ me.)
Since our brains are dropped into a socially-approved solution so early in life, most people can’t identify the rinse (and that includes me; I do a lot of reading, introspection, evaluation, and self-improvement every day, and I’m still a fucking idiot). Not being able to recognize our biases makes us useless when trying to update systems or crumple them up and draw new ones entirely. We (literally) can’t imagine any other way.
I kept thinking about the lesson of the lemonade stand.
Let’s consider socialism (stop shouting, just keep reading for another minute). By consider, I mean think about it in a normal micro-setting instead of the macro.
Ben Burgis writes brilliantly about G.A. Cohen’s book “Why Not Socialism?”:
“Cohen asks the reader to think about a group of friends going on a camping trip together. He doesn’t describe anything out of the ordinary. The friends find a site and set up a tent. Some of them fish, some of them cook, they all go on hikes, and so on.
“What Cohen wants the reader to notice is that the way this trip is run looks a lot like how socialists think society should be run. The pots and pans and fishing poles and soccer balls, for example, are treated as collective property — even if they belong to individual campers. When the fish are caught and cooked, everyone gets to partake equally of the result of the collective effort, free of charge. Cohen’s hypothetical campers act this way not because of anything especially noble about them, but because this is how any group of friends would act on a camping trip.
“To make the point more sharply, he invites us to imagine a far less normal camping trip — one that’s run according to the principles of a capitalist market economy. One of the campers (Sylvia) discovers an apple tree. When she comes back to tell the others, they’re excited that they’ll all be able to enjoy apple sauces, apple pie, and apple strudel. Certainly they can, Sylvia confirms — ‘provided, of course . . . that you reduce my labor burden, and/or provide me with more room in the tent, and/or with more bacon at breakfast.’
“Another camper, Harry, is very good at fishing, and so in exchange for his services he demands that he be allowed to dine exclusively on perch instead of the mixture of perch and catfish everyone else is eating. Another, Morgan, lays claim to a pond with especially good fish because he claims that his grandfather dug and stocked it with those fish on another camping trip decades ago.
“No normal person, Cohen notes, would tolerate such behavior. They would insist on what he calls a ‘socialist way of life.’ Why, then, shouldn’t we want to organize an entire economy around the same principles?”
It’s an eye-opening comparison. I could appeal to the religious and spiritual by invoking Jesus here, but to be honest, I think most people do want to teach our children compassion and empathy.
So why do we encourage them to set up a table and provide drink (and sometimes snacks!) to others on a sweltering day and charge those people for these basic necessities?
“To teach them a lesson,” you say.
Right. So what’s the lesson?
These are children. Hopefully, they are in a rent-free situation where their needs are being met, and they’re in a place where they can simply share with others.
We wonder where capitalism gets its power and we hand down lessons, willingly, that consolidate it. We work so hard because our parents told us we’re worthless unless people pay us for our labor, and guess where they got that reliable information from?
We wonder where the current narcissism comes from, and the lack of compassion and loss of service and unwillingness to help others. That’s our creed, baby. Hustle. Take what’s yours. There isn’t enough. There’s never enough.
If me suggesting that kids should give away free lemonade on a hot summer day (in this economy!) raises your blood pressure even slightly, maybe consider why.
Maybe you’re just thirsty for something more. Something you’ve been convinced you, and everybody else, simply doesn’t deserve.
This year, and for the past month specifically, it’s been hard for me to write stuff.
Not my fiction stuff. That stuff is going strong. I’m in my vampire era and loving it.
No, I’m talking about the real stuff I write here on the internet. I’m not treading water; I’m doggy paddling out here.
It’s not a lack of ideas; I think of at least three things I want to write about every day. It’s the fact that most of these ideas feel negative in nature, like I don’t have any solutions or cute and hopeful takes on them, and the last thing I want to do is contribute to that overwhelmingly dark vibe right now.
So today I just want to share two sentences I can’t get out of my head.
The first was said by Jon Stewart a few weeks ago on his show. While righteously raving (that’s kind of his thing), he distilled this particular rant into the perfect thought:
“We are all living in one reality.”
He said this in response to the common refrain that, in our country today, Americans are “living in two separate realities.”
That just isn’t the truth. Facts do exist. Things have actually happened and things will continue to actually happen. There are things that happen where it doesn’t matter whether or not you believed they happened; they happened regardless.
That is the one reality. And we get duped by the dumbest tricks.
Remember in high school, when that one guy promised everyone free snacks from the vending machines but only if they voted for him to be class president?
And remember how we voted for him, and then we still had to pay for our snacks, because we were idiots and had no idea how vending machines work?
It was actually a good lesson to learn then; we were kids and our brains weren’t fully formed yet.
But this exact scenario is happening in real-life adult politics right now and real-life adults (I met a man in his sixties last week who legitimately believes his candidate is going to eliminate all taxes on my earned income and wrote as much) believe this, against all logic, reason and, frankly, sanity.
What the fuck happened? How have we not collectively evolved to outsmart the high school schemer?
There is only one reality.
And if we can’t all get on this singular existential track, society, democracy, and humanity is going to jump off the rails, explode and extinguish themselves.
I said something earlier about not wanting to be negative (sorry!) so I’ll share the second sentence now, by one of my favorite writers, Brian Klaas:
“We control nothing, but influence everything.”
There is nothing more important to me than these six words when it comes to living a meaningful life.
It means that while I can’t make anything happen, I can create change, big and small, outside myself and within, and have a positive effect on this world. Always.
Years ago, I got a letter in the mail and it kind of messed me up; honestly, in hindsight, it hurt me a lot more than I thought then. It changed the way I see certain aspects of life, especially the modern political landscape.
A few weeks ago, the same person who sent me that letter shot me a text that said they had changed their mind. I was (and still am) in shock, but in the most wondrous, awestruck way.
I’ve long been an advocate for people’s ability to change (hello, look at me, used to be a huge piece of shit and now I am a much smaller piece of shit); it is one of the few elements of existence that I would sincerely consider a miracle. I don’t know what small series of ripples conspired to change this person’s mind, or whether I had anything to do with it, but seeing influence in action can be devastating, or the most beautiful thing you’ve ever experienced, often consecutively.
So what am I trying to say? I don’t know, I guess this:
Tomorrow isn’t fucked, because we haven’t tried tomorrow yet.
I’m in no way alone when I express that some days I wake up and immediately want to go back to sleep, because I just can’t. I can’t with people, I can’t with systems, I can’t exist in the world the way I want to.
But just like I can influence someone to feel better or think better, I get influenced, too. And the only way I can receive those life-changing ripples that turn into mighty, life-affirming waves is by grabbing my board, setting it in the water, and getting out there.
It’s both alarming and comforting that the way we act on the internet isn’t anything new, if you look into the history of humanity at all.
I watched the epic Bob Dylan documentary No Direction Home from 2005 on PBS this afternoon. (“Epic” as in I watched all three-and-a-half hours of it in one sitting without scrolling through my phone.)
The film traces his early life in Hibbing through the era when he became an international icon, a genuine voice of his generation. Considering there were no cell phones back then (can you imagine?) (are you scared?!), there is an impressive amount of footage from that time and it, tied together with a rare modern interview with the man himself, makes for an intimate and compelling experience, which asks us to consider the roles of artist, critic, press, audience, and decent human being.
If you don’t know what happened to Dylan in ’65, here’s your spoiler alert.
In 1965, Bob Dylan, folk hero, went electric. And the people turned against him.
It would be astonishing to see the lengths that fans and the press went to admonish him, to make him feel bad, to ask him stupid questions, to buy tickets for his shows to literally boo at him — it would be, but we have the internet now, so it actually looks like human business as usual, just sixty years ago. The best artists have been both ahead and of their times; the greatest artists embrace change, and most humans abhor it, for reasons arbitrary and evolutionary.
We have a long history of being awful to artists, only to venerate and celebrate them when they get older or, more likely, after they’re gone.
With the internet, we can easily learn that history and from our mistakes; we could collectively vow to be better and grow as a society.
Instead, we use that same internet to perpetuate the worst parts of humanity, the tribalism, ignorance, and close-mindedness that has caused every single fight, battle, and war in human history.
I was bummed to see how Bob was treated then, but I was more bummed that I was not surprised. When you see the historical pattern of sacrifice — that people, instead of taking responsibility for themselves, will always find scapegoats to destroy in an attempt to temporarily keep the illusion of order — you can’t unsee it.
But that isn’t a bad thing.
It means that you have a new tool now: you can see through the mob. It doesn’t make you better than any one person, but it does make you better than a mindless mass of them.
And when you think better, you can do better. You can recognize that nobody is black and white; you know that we’re palettes smeared with gray and color and everyone who wants it is worthy of grace, respect, and rehabilitation in the case of those who have caused harm.
Really think about that last one, because I have yet to meet a human who has not caused harm.
Recognizing that humans have kind of sucked so far isn’t so bad when you consider one final thing: our entire book hasn’t been written yet.
There’s a whole lot of future in front of us. One where we can learn from our mistakes, admit when we are wrong, give flowers to our artists, and build a better path forward together.
The Den 