What’s crazy to me is that Jesus Christ was killed by the state for embodying and promoting such traitorous and terroristic behaviors as loving thy neighbor, no matter who that neighbor is.
What’s crazy to me is I have spent my whole life listening to people tell me that they needed their guns over our children’s safety in order to fight the government if need be and they are nowhere to be found.
What’s crazy to me is that we’re expected to keep living some version of a normal life when the federal government has all but declared war on us and our state in particular.
What’s crazy to me is that this is probably what life in Germany was like in the forties: unaffected people generally lived their normal lives while the Gestapo knocked on doors and hurt their neighbors and tore families apart and murdered people.
What’s crazy to me is that the same people who defied federal orders during the height of the pandemic because they felt they were unconstitutional are now telling us to just comply to unconstitutional federal orders and everything will be okay.
What’s crazy to me is that people think the United States can do something about Iran, when it’s clear that Iran is in the position it’s in because of the United States, and if the situation in Venezuela has reminded us of anything, it’s that the United States government does and takes whatever it wants and isn’t that interested in freedom or democracy, here or abroad.
What’s crazy to me is how many people have abandoned morality and continue to twist themselves into cognitive knots to justify any of this.
But what isn’t crazy to me is how many sane, kind, brilliant, courageous, beautiful people have stood up to say something, do something, be something.
What isn’t crazy to me is how easy it’s been to quietly cut online ties with people in my life. If you think that’s harsh, I’ll just have to disagree with you and declare: this is my line.
What isn’t crazy to me is that we’re not being quiet about our descent into fascism, and that art, past and present, has been a light that refuses to dim.
I don’t know what else to do but to keep aiming the light of my words on what’s happening here. It’s not too late, by the way: to change your heart or mind or direction. Love you all; stay connected and stay safe.
Like, the kind of essay that could cost me my job, lose me hundreds of followers, inspire wellness checks.
It was unhinged, full of rage and despair, my words as vindictive and cutting as a pair of scissors laced with cyanide.
It was actually pretty fucking rad.
I wrote it because I felt it, because I couldn’t stop feeling it, because I couldn’t stuff down deep how I was feeling, because writing and art is how I deal with life. And then I went to bed and woke up in the morning and decided that I didn’t need to share those words with the world.
Because that is actually one of the very few things only humans can do.
We are eminently capable of hurting others and also have the ability to choose not to.
Everyone has an opinion on what the teams are. Obviously, it’s us versus them, but how do we decide? Is it red versus blue? Rich versus poor? Up versus down versus sideways?
I want to make it clear that none of what is happening in this country is political anymore. The last decade has decimated the ideas of decorum and policy and that old-fashioned game is over. Instead, we have watched every person around us reveal who they are morally: through their posts and arguments and alignments and actions and what they actually stand for.
And it turns out that there are a fair number of people whose only ideology is agreeing with what Donald J. Trump and his authoritarian administration said today.
That’s it. They have no ethical legs of their own to stand on; their moral framework is unrefrigerated Jell-O, transparent and eager to fill any available mold.
And I see their words daily and their actions daily and I am reminded: a human being can choose to not hurt others.
And that’s when I figured out what the real teams are.
It’s human beings versus the inhumane.
That’s it.
Those are the teams.
And this is why so many of us are heartbroken and furious, crying and screaming into notebooks and laptops and cell phones and pillows. We’re human beings on the side of human beings, unable to accept the inhumanity of the world that is.
I wrote something insane yesterday because I feel insane, and I didn’t share it because I don’t want to hurt anybody.
That means something.
Honestly, today, that means everything.
And I have come to the conclusion that I could lose my job and hundreds of followers and be subjected to countless wellness checks but, as long as I’m on the side of human beings, as long as I retain my compassion and kindness and humanity, I’m totally cool with that.
I could die well with that.
Anyway, no human being is illegal on stolen land and America needs to deal with the shadows of its past, as well as its Constitution-shredding present. I could not be more proud of Minnesota and my community here; keep up the good fight and I’ll do everything I can to support you. All my love.
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.
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!
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)
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
The Den 