“All they need is a kind word and a friendly face.”
Kindness is like a thumb on a knot.
I had a really insecure week. Not that the week wasn’t sure of what it was, but I’m not.
I’ve just felt out of place and out of sorts, not myself, wobbly on a sidewalk curb with my arms outstretched.
When I’m uncertain, I’m tense.
And when I run into kindness, I feel an ease.
And I am just really grateful to have run into so much kindness this week, the big and the small.
The nice moments curl into fingers and become a hand on my back, pushing those tight muscles of anxiety and uncertainty aside.
So, thanks.
Thank you for being kind, and this is just a reminder that you never know what a person is feeling like under their layers; under the smiles and laughter and sarcasm and clever jokes and easygoing demeanor.
Sometimes there is just dark, starless and vast. No rhyme or reason for it; just because.
When you’re in recovery and an open book, people love to ask you about the ugliest parts of your story.
“So what was your rock bottom?”
I have never been fully comfortable with that phrase, at least when it comes to how I see myself.
After I got clarity, I would sometimes refer to what happened as a “spiritual vomiting”; it was an involuntary decision my soul made on my behalf to get my shit together before I lost everything.
But lately I’ve been thinking about puzzles.
We’re all made up of pieces. We think of jigsaws in the 100’s or 1,000’s, but we have trillions; our pieces are in our DNA, our circumstances, our choices.
Growing up is us putting them together.
Somewhere along the line, I started to put my pieces together wrong. I would force the wrong shapes to connect, pounding them together with a hammer; I ignored the people who told me to do the edges first, because I knew best how to do it myself.
“I am a unique puzzle,” I told myself. “No one has done one like me yet.”
I think the day I decided to get better was the day I stepped back from my puzzle to take a good look, and I didn’t see a picture there at all.
It was, to this day, the scariest period of my life.
And it wasn’t until I admitted that I was bad at puzzles, and I needed help making mine, did I ever start to put together the picture you see today.
Now I see everyone as puzzles. Some clearly defined, some with pieces missing; I see pieces move from one person to another, and people leave pieces behind all the time.
Today, a friend asked me a great, big question: why?
And how?
Why am I a writer? How did I know I was a writer? Why and how am I the person that I am?
And being put on the spot is wonderful, because you don’t know what you’re going to say, and I ended up telling a story that I don’t know if I’ve shared in this space.
When I was in high school, there was a standardized writing test. “They” gave you a prompt, and you wrote an essay, and “they” (I don’t know who these people are) read it and gave it a score from 0 to 4.
I understood this as 4 being the best piece of writing they could expect from a high school student, and 0 being a piece of paper with not even a name spelled correctly.
We took the test and I forgot all about it.
One day, a phone call interrupted one of my classes and it was about me; I was told to report to the principal’s office immediately.
I sincerely did not know what I had done this time, and it could have been anything. I had once been called to the principal’s office because I wore a diaper to school to promote our Variety Show; the vice principal had to point out to me that my “tallywacker was sticking out” and that indelible phrase will forever be ingrained in my brain.
This visit was terrifically different. I was sat down and notified that my essay, on a scale from 0 to 4, had received a score of 6.
I did not understand. For I am a writer, and not a mathematician, and those numbers did not seem to add up.
It turns out that once a paper received a 4, it was sent to another group of people, of college professors, and they gave it a further grade between 4 and 6. I had received the highest grade.
What did this mean? I don’t know what it meant to anyone else.
To me, it meant that my words could carry themselves.
These people didn’t know me. They didn’t like or dislike me as a person; in fact, they knew nothing of my life at all.
But my words alone were capable of doing great things, and there was something very empowering and comforting about that.
Since I was a kid, I wanted to be Walt Disney. I wanted to be an animator, and comic book artist, and theme park owner, and musician, and as I looked at the list, I realized what they all had in common.
I wanted to be a storyteller. I was a writer.
And even though I still suffer from Imposter Syndrome, like many other artists do, there was something concrete, heavy about that 6 that lives in me to this day.
Which doesn’t mean I don’t worry from time to time, wondering if they mixed up someone else’s essay with mine and made a huge mistake.
This is your semi-annual reminder that my posts are personal opinions made by a very, very flawed person with little-to-no common sense.
It can be hard for us, especially once we designate something or someone as “good” or “bad,” to remember that everything is actually somewhere in the middle.
This feels especially true of me.
More often than I’d like to admit, it happens like this: I write a series of essays. Someone reads them, and finds that they all mean something positive to them. They may even comment as much or click that agreeable “like” button.
Then something else happens. I write something absolutely opposed to the core of who that person is or what they believe. Cognitive dissonance hits. I no longer get them. I no longer speak for them.
Which is funny.
Because I only speak for me. Always have.
Then unsavory things are said about me, depending on the kind of things you find to be appetizing. Backlash follows. Unfollows occur. I die.
Or something like that.
But I live in the gray, which is hard for a guy who just wants you to like him.
I do it all the time in my fiction work, too. In my first book, Them, I knew that I wanted Kim to make decisions that most people would not make. But maybe understand.
In the Faribault Daily News review, her actions were criticized for a lack of motivation, though most male-driven action movies give us nothing of the sort. John Wick’s dog was killed and we got three films and counting (bodies or otherwise).
If you read the last page of Brushfire and felt a weird pit in your stomach as the plan was laid out, good; the gray area between good and bad is on full display.
I know my position on guns is, and always will be, controversial. In my opinion, there is no such thing as a responsible gun owner, because humans and guns cannot peacefully coexist. Do you know how many gun-related deaths there were before we invented guns? Zero. You know how many after? All of them. The objective facts back my sentiment, but don’t bring facts to a gun fight.
You will be shot in the face.
And I go on like this forever, an ocean of word waves and sentence sea life.
I want to remind you that these are all my opinions. But you can agree AND disagree, it’s okay!
And I also want to remind you that my opinions are based on my love for humanity. I listen to people like my mom and scientists and Jesus and comic book superheroes. The best of the best.
And I am just the best of the worst, doing the best I can, drowning in radical empathy, trying to make sense of what sometimes feels like a senseless universe.
It’s a tough question, but never fear, because I have the answer. No one’s going to read it, but I have it.
Over the years, I’ve had to develop ways to deal with myself, because I am the worst. Perhaps the most important tool I’ve gained (besides recognizing and tempering my self-pity, of which I have a lot) is my ability to manage my expectations.
Maybe you’ve already figured out the answer yourself, but I’ll keep going anyway.
I just watched the Light & Magic documentary series on Disney+, about the special effects company ILM, and it is phenomenal. It also perfectly illustrates my upcoming point.
Before CGI, films relied on practical effects to tell their stories. Once the power of computer effects was revealed, we could never go back; this led to resentment from those who were skilled in practical techniques and didn’t wish to join the digital revolution, which quickly dimmed and diminished their industry.
It made them angry.
Which now brings me to my point.
If your expectation is that the world will not change, then you will gain resentment when it does.
That resentment will turn people into ugly things. That resentment will make people mad.
And the world will never, ever stop changing.
Which means that people who hold on to their expectations, who hold on to their resentments, will never, ever stop being angry.
When someone I know finds themselves in a situation that makes them upset, I ask them why.
They usually start by saying, “Well, I thought…”
And I wonder aloud why it’s the situation’s fault that they thought it was going to be anything other than what it is.
It’s not one of those inexplicable things. I know why.
The ASL sign for the word “weird” is to take the letter W and crawl it across your face horizontally.
Go ahead, try it. I’ll wait.
You look incredibly silly but I love it.
My mom would take it one step further (I get it from somewhere) and change the direction of the W, instead shoving it vertically up her face, often getting one of the points of the W, a finger, directly up her nose, or mine.
It reminded me every time how unique sign language is as a form of communication.
Sure, you can say the word “weird” weirdly.
But with sign language, you can literally change the physical dimensions of a word to enhance meaning, imbuing individual characteristics that make words both universal and one-of-a-kind.
No one signed “weird” like my mama did.
And I miss that so terribly about her; I miss her words because she spoke them like nobody else did, and nobody else ever will.
When I went to name my superhero team, a group of absolute losers with character defects for miles, I didn’t have to think hard.
They were all a bunch of weirdos.
In the sense that my mom would love them like she loved the word “weird.”
Love them for their shortcomings, not despite them. Cheer them on, even when she didn’t know exactly what it is they were trying to do.
Know that they were good people, deep down inside, even when their outside parts invariably failed or did bad things.
Weird stuff. I’m thinking about weird stuff.
I just really miss seeing my mom pick her nose today.
But it’s also stupid and people should mind their own business.
I had to understand why I felt this way.
And I realized it wasn’t about criticism.
It was, as the whole universe is, about balance.
People talk shit. It’s just a fact of life. People who say “no judgement” judge, and people who claim “there’s no shame” find shame in everything you do.
Sometimes, when people talked shit about me, I would get really upset. (I still do.) But sometimes, I wouldn’t.
I finally figured out that the people who didn’t bother me with their negative criticism were the people who said positive things, too.
It is the people who only ever express their disdain that make me defensive.
For example, I read a review of Cold World that said they enjoyed it, but they also wished it would have slowed down to spend more time in moments or with characters.
I find this to be a valid, subjective opinion. I get why someone would want that. I also knew the story I wanted to tell and how I wanted to tell it; I knew that a lot of stuff happened in a short amount of time, and there wasn’t going to be space to breathe.
Both their opinion and my way of telling the story can be correct, at least subjectively.
Conversely, there are people who live to complain about the latest thing they read or watched or played.
When I ask them why they didn’t like it, their answers range from “it sucked” (super insightful) to “well, I would have done it this way…” (an answer so narcissistic I sincerely believe the other person is joking as they explain how they would have made the thing they did not create “better”).
And often while they’re answering, I’ll remember that I’m talking to an avid complainer, a serial Debbie Downer, and conversation is futile.
Are negative people wrong?
Well, no. Not always. But they’re something worse.
They’re lazy.
Just like there will always be something bad to find, there is always something good. And certainly, the bad things are almost always easier to spot.
The people who stop when they spot them and think that’s all there is to find are people who don’t care.
And people who don’t care are the least interesting people on this planet.
How does a person get another person to like them the first time they meet?
That’s what required of us when we write these stupid distillations of ourselves.
If you hate me two sentences in, then I lose you. Definitely for the moment, most likely for today, and possibly forever.
No pressure.
I’ll start with my name. It’s Dennis. You can call me Denny (my dad’s favorite), Den, or even just the letter D and I’ll probably turn my head.
I’m glad you’re here today.
I talk about kindness a lot, and this is a photo of me giving you the finger, which doesn’t seem very kind. In actuality, my mom took this photo, and we flipped each other off all the time, and I love her more than life itself.
I’m a writer. I do other things, too, but let’s start this simple and call a spade a spade.
I was born in the 80’s and am a lifelong comics & pop culture obsessive. Pop culture has saved my life and helps me explain our existence. I’ve expressed myself artistically in a lot of different ways over the years — I started a company called Sleeping Kitty Productions when I was in high school, I released a trio of full-length music albums as The Next Step when I was a puppy, I began publishing my own books in 2013 with the help of Kickstarter, I fell into a character business called Awesome For Hire — but words are the thing that I have held onto through it all.
In 2013, I released a punk-rock sci-fi novella called Them, and in 2014, its sequel, Us; in-between those two books, I put out a novella about dreams called Flip.
I derailed my personal and creative train after releasing those first three books within a year; after getting sober in 2017, I put myself back on track.
In August of 2018, I released my first comic book: The Flying Squirrel, which is part of a flawed superhero series called The Weirdos. Over the next two years, I released a total of five issues of the series, eventually collecting & coloring them for a graphic novel volume that was published in May of 2020. The heroes in The Weirdos find each other through their struggles; they deal with things like alcoholism, depression, cancer & mental health issues. Later in 2020, I released a novella called Theia, about a silver Boston Terrier in an animal shelter who just wants to run away.
In 2021, I put out Time is a Solid State, my first non-fiction collection of essays; I also released Push, the sequel to Flip, later that summer.
In 2022, I released my two biggest projects to date: Cold World, my first full-length novel, a sci-fi story about spirituality on a future Earth where there is only winter; and Brushfire: Wave 1, my first all-ages graphic novel, about an underground society of wildlife.
I write, draw & produce all my own work. I did go to art school for a minute, said, “Nah, I’m good,” and am mostly self-taught. My books are readable steps of my journey.
The back of my business card has my motto: “Always Love.” It means to try to make your decisions based on love, as opposed to fear, or hate. To have compassion over strength, understanding over exclusion, radical empathy over power. I really believe in that, and am always trying to progress, never close to perfect.
I love my dog, I love words, I love art — and I ❤ you. And that’s it.
The Den 