Don’t You Forget About Me

January 31st, 2022

Nobody likes to think about it, but at least once a day, someone criticizes you.

For every book you adore, film you love, television show you’re obsessed with, work of art that inspires you, there are people out there who will tell you why it is bad.

Cynicism, though, is a fad. And, like all trends, it is cyclical, but only because it has never been worth remembering.

Here’s what I mean by that: there has always been optimistic art, and so much of that art becomes classic. But, for every positive work, there have been examples of negative critics, and then waves of artists who become reactive, reductive, or both.

Years pass. And time after time after time, the work is remembered — and the criticism is not.

That’s not entirely true, of course. You can look up the response to pretty much any work of art — any piece of music or play or essay or film or book.

But for every work you would assume had universal praise upon its release, you’ll find folks who wanted to make their mark by trying to tear it down. And the forward passage of time tends to wash those footprints in the sand away, while the art transcends and becomes the rain itself.

So what does that mean now?

The trolls on the internet — the people who complain and insult and lend absolutely nothing to culture and add nothing to the positive nature of this world — will amount to nothing.

They will not become anything.

They won’t be everlasting.

And the best part is, with the accelerating speed of our times, they’ll be left behind faster and faster.

But the things we love, the art we cherish? It is even more accessible now. It’s easier to keep. It’s easier to defend. It’s easier to share.

And it is more likely to live to as close to forever as we are.

A Ton of Feathers

January 28th, 2022

When people leave you, they leave the things you can’t ask them, too.

Sometimes those mysteries are big and heavy and revelatory.

Sometimes they’re not. But they take up space in your mind just the same.

I saw a lady in a coat today, in the parking lot before we opened our doors. Her coat reminded me of my mom’s, so for a long moment, a moment I have lived through so many times in my life, I thought my mom was there to visit me.

She, of course, was not.

But in that moment, I knew I wanted to ask her why she would sweep her finger across my eyelashes to see if I was sleeping as a child.

I never asked her why. Or maybe I did. But if I did, I don’t remember what she said.

Because, if and when I asked her, I didn’t know I was never going to be able to ask her this again, and I held on to the answer uncarefully, confident that she would be there to answer this question if it ever recrossed my mind.

Instead, I spent a moment staring at a stranger in my mother’s coat who had none of her memories at all.

It’s in these moments that I feel the worst in me. I love humanity, but I question why so many horrible people get to continue to exist, but this extraordinary woman, who I have so many questions for, does not.

Years ago, I was missing my mom’s sloppy joe recipe, so I texted her for it. She wrote any- and everything down, so she dug into her store of recipe cards and found it for me.

I saved a photo of the recipe, and imagined that decades from now, when she was gone, I would be able to pull out these ingredients, this answer, in case we ever forgot.

I don’t know why I held on to this answer so well and let the other slip through the grates under my memories.

I meant to ask more questions. I meant to remember more answers.

The heavy ones have been easier to let go. The light ones have never felt so heavy.

One Week Away!

January 26th, 2022

In just ONE WEEK from today, I’ll be making an appearance at Labyrinth Puzzle Rooms in Lakeville from 4 to 8 pm, to talk about and sell my work, and to announce my next novel!

On top of the announcement of the title and release date of my upcoming book, I’ve created 15 editions of the first chapter, so you can bring the first seven pages home with you! (These individually numbered and signed copies are FREE and will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis.)

On top of on top of that, we’ll have refreshments, and delicious treats courtesy of Cookies by Ava! And if you haven’t already, you get to meet the fabulous people of LPR and learn about their magical rooms.

It’s going to be a trip. I will see you so soon.

Event: Dennis Vogen Appearance @ Labyrinth Puzzle Rooms

Where: Downtown Lakeville, Minnesota

Date: Wednesday, February 2nd, 2022

Time: 4 pm – 8 pm

RSVP on the Facebook Event Page: https://fb.me/e/4iVxYBHAI

Delusional Resolutions

January 24th, 2022

Have you ever started a day by telling yourself that this is the day you’ll get better, and at the end of it you’re not?

If so, then this one’s for you.

When I was a mess, I would often have conversations with future me.

I would say, “Hey. It’s me. I’m so sorry I’m putting you through this again. If you can just get us through the rest of today, I promise you that tomorrow will be different.”

I’d go on.

“I promise that I’ll take it easy on you. I won’t drink, the whole day. I’ll let you detox and rebalance. I’ll apologize to whoever is mad at us for whatever it is I’m doing right now. I’ll be nice to people. I’ll be kind to you.”

And future me would get present me through that day.

Then the morning would come.

And I would tell myself that this is the day that I will get better.

Sometimes I would dash that hope within moments of waking up. Sometimes it would take a few hours, but I would find a reason to resort to who I assumed I was at my core.

It was often as simple as realizing I had scraped by another day without losing anything significant, so I could scrape once more. By the end of the day, most likely, I had deflected and projected and irrationally rationalized myself to the place and person I had been the day before.

It was demoralizing. I often woke up already defeated. But — and this is the point of me writing this down — I never stopped telling future me that tomorrow was the day I was going to get better.

And one day I did.

And it was awful and led to one of the worst weeks of my life.

And that week led to me finally keeping a promise to myself that I never thought I could deliver.

Day after day after day.

Hope isn’t something you have to go out and find.

Hope can be something as easy as saying the most delusional thing to yourself, over and over and over again.

And then, you know — doing it.

What if God was (not) one of us?

January 23rd, 2022

I wrote a little last week about this book, “God Is Not One,” by Stephen Prothero, and now that I’m finished I could not recommend it more.

Learning about all the things the world believes in makes you believe in the world more.

The book is both expansive and intimate, covering the people, places, history, traditions and words of the eight greatest and most influential religions, and it is casually readable, like a conversation over coffee with a world-class pal who happens to be a religious scholar.

It presents the idea that religion is not one mountain or singular goal with different paths; no, each religion identifies what it considers to be life’s big problem, and then offers what it believes to be its one big solution.

And it has deeply affirmed what I already believe.

In each religion, I found at least one thing I wholeheartedly agreed with that was not to be found in any other. As the chapters on each end, you start to see them borrow and swap and integrate ideas from others into their own.

You might guess the next thing I’ll say is that means each religion is wrong.

But no.

My assessment is that every religion is incomplete.

And only by keeping my eyes, ears, and heart open might I find the thing that I’m looking for, the thing that other people might miss because they’ve already decided their incomplete thing is the right one.

One of the most interesting things I noted: every single religion in this book highly values justice, compassion and, in particular, helping the poor and the less fortunate. It’s one of the only universal traits they share.

In that regard, every single religion has objectively failed on the large scale, despite individuals who do their part to help their friends, families, and communities.

This isn’t a condemnation of any religion, but rather something to contemplate if you ever think that yours is any better than someone else’s.

One of the best ways a person can see more of the world is by seeing the same world through somebody else’s eyes. It can expand your empathy and perspective and appreciation, and this literary trip gave me all that and more.

Amen, L’Chaim, and may the Force be with you.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

January 19th, 2022

I still don’t know what a Wordle is. (I’m actually not fully convinced it’s not a Pokemon.) But I love me some Wheel of Fortune.

So, here’s the name of my next book! Well, okay, here are blanks that represent the letters in the name of my next book.

_ _ _ _    _ _ _ _ _

Happy guessing! Oh, and want to be the first to know what it is?

I’ll be seeing you at LPR in Lakeville on Wednesday, February 2nd (2.2.22) from 4 pm – 8 pm, where I’ll be debuting the name and cover of my new novel, as well as talking about, selling and signing my current work.

See you soon!

The Fastest-Growing Religion

January 18th, 2022

God Is Not One has been one of the most enlightening and empowering books I have read.

Religion isn’t going away. I’m not a religious person, but I take it as a personal responsibility to learn about the people I live with on this planet. Like most people, I always felt religion was one mountain and the varieties were different paths leading to the same peak. I realize now that’s akin to saying “I don’t see color,” discrediting billions of experiences I didn’t really understand.

Now let’s talk about Islam.

I learned so much about the fastest-growing religion in the world last night (Christianity is still the largest but dropping, from 35% of the world’s population to 33% in the last hundred years, while Islam has doubled in the last 30 years, from 11% to 22% or more). But I really want to share a revelation that helped me see things as they are, and not how America wants me to.

In the Bible, there are passages that blame the Jews for the death of Jesus Christ. This is accurate information.

In the 1940’s, some Christians pointed to these passages to justify the genocide they were commiting against the Jewish people.

These Christians were also called Nazis.

Now, if I were to tell you that you were a Christian like those Nazis were Christians, you would be upset. You might even punch me in the face. You would tell me your understanding of your religion would never allow you to murder innocent people.

Still with me? Because those Christian Nazis are to most Christians what those terrorist bombers are to most Muslims.

For example, the people who crashed into the Twin Towers broke countless rules of Islam, including laws against suicide and the killing of other Muslims, not to mention the basic principles the religion is based on, like justice and peace.

In short, they were crazy people.

Every religion, every workplace, every family has crazy people.

And if you’re the type who says, “The Quran says scary things!”, I’ll play a game with you: you give me a scary line from the Quran, and I’ll give you one from the Bible. Probably one of the passages where God literally tells people to kill other people.

And the thing is, you’ll lose, because the Quran is way shorter than the Bible.

There are Moderate and Progressive Muslims, who can recognize the parts of their religion that may be antiquated and grow from it, just like there are so many brands of Christianity. I’m kind of obsessed with Sufis now and how they see the world.

It really is a beautiful religion.

Anyway, this is a reminder: if you decide to not learn about the people around you, whose fault is it when you don’t understand?

If you’re having trouble answering that question, then your problem probably has two thumbs.

Dennis Book Club

January 16th, 2022

Today, at work, some of my co-workers, organically, spontaneously, decided to choose one of my books and started a book club around it.

It was one of the neatest, sweetest things I have ever, as a writer, watched unfold around me, and I literally did nothing to make it happen.

But I did say, “Hey! If you’re all going to buy the same book of mine for a book club I can give you a discount on that!”

And I thought I’d offer it to you, too.

If you ever decide that you want to start a book club with one of my books, reach out to me and I will give you a discount on books. I would say a club consists of at least two people, so it has to be at least two books. And the more books you need, the better a discount I can offer.

Even if the book club formed today doesn’t manage to get together or even finish the book, the sentiment gave me an overwhelming case of the warm fuzzies. I can still feel them. Plus, they paid me in cash so that’s easier to hide from the IRS. More warm fuzzies.

Maybe someday I’ll even crash some of your book clubs. I’m a great houseguest. I like cheese and am allergic to wine.

All my love.

P.S. They’re reading Flip, if you’re curious.

My Covid Diary

January 14th, 2022

I just made it through my CDC-recommended quarantine.

I think most of the people who have had covid (and talk about it) share their physical symptoms. Because of this one-dimensional barometer, you’ll find other people minimize what it is that happens when you’re infected.

By that measure, I had sniffles and coughs. I was more exhausted than I have been in recent memory. My breathing is weaker. As a person who is fully vaccinated and boosted, it actually causes me concern to think about what would have happened to me if I wasn’t.

Let’s talk about the other stuff, though.

This week, my anxiety about money destroyed my nerves. I don’t have a salary. I don’t have vacation or sick time. I’ve been dealing with pretty severe loneliness issues that I know are related to grief, and being isolated from everybody actually tore at my sanity. Every day I woke up wondering if I was going to get worse in a way I hadn’t imagined, and briefly before bed every night, I hoped that I would wake up to find out. The exhaustion I had exasperated my feelings of worthlessness, which, as a creative person, is something that is already hard for me to regulate. Scrolling the internet, I got so angry, unthinkably furious, at the people who persist in not caring about others and being ignorant and obstinate, because now, laying in bed and feeling all the things I just described, it felt deeply personal.

I had a real bad week, you guys.

It’s these layers of being sick in a pandemic that are hardly discussed. We say “it’s like a cold” if one person describes their physical symptoms like a cold, but what I described, for me, was not a fucking cold.

And I will joke and I will laugh it off and I will do all of those things that I do, but I also wanted to be honest with you, because that seems to be in short supply lately, along with compassion and that radical empathy our pal Jesus endorsed.

I’ve never meant this more: I hope you’re hanging in there. I hope the people you love are staying well. I hope you’re safe. I hope you know, if you’re feeling any of the things I felt, you are not alone, and we’re going to get to the other side, together.

I’m back in the real world tomorrow. Wish me luck. All my love.

Nothing Around Us Changes

January 12th, 2022

Weirdly enough, I finally got covid, but that’s not what’s inspiring me to write tonight. (Presuming nothing terrible happens to me over the next few days, I’ll probably write about that later.)

No, I’ve been quarantined all alone in the bedroom (with occasional visits from my doctor, who is actually my dog), so I’ve just been catching up on a lot of TV. And one of the shows that I finally got around to was Midnight Mass.

It deals heavily with spirituality and addiction, which I dig.

When I first got sober, I thought the hardest thing I would ever have to do was not drink. After I did some work and realized that was an attainable goal, which I could reasonably achieve, another hardest thing would present itself. And I would conquer that. And so on and so on.

Until I got to the actual hardest thing I will have to do again and again.

In the show, two alcoholics are talking and one asks the other, “Does it ever get any different for people like us?”

The other shakes his head no, and says he doesn’t think so. Then he added four words that shook me, the four words that define my life now:

“Nothing around us changes.”

Getting your shit together does not mean the rest of the world will get their shit together, too. And you can share and inspire and support and help all you want, but there is nothing a person can do to make another person want to be better.

And it is impossible for me to fully accept. Which means I find myself having to accept it again, over and over, every single day.

This isn’t pessimism. In fact, I spend a lot of my life talking about how I used to be and how I got better in the hopes that somebody else will hear it and get better, too. If I were pessimistic, I would keep me to myself because I’d figure it doesn’t matter anyway.

It matters. What we say and do matters.

But what we say doesn’t matter as much as what we do, and even if you decide to do, the world will mostly not follow suit. Jesus said stuff thousands of years ago that is still revolutionary today, which is a clear example of how slow we are to catch on. Loving people should be easy as hell.

I’m not saying we can’t be different. People are glorious, complex creatures that are capable of limitless change, internally and externally, from the quantum to the cosmic.

But that change is up to you, and whoever you think is in charge of you. And whoever you think is in charge of you isn’t going to make the world change with you.