On Brand

September 16th, 2021

On Brand

They’re called #trends for a reason.

They’re brief. They’re passing. They’re ephemeral.

I’m struggling to find things on the internet that give me any sense of co-evolution; that is, sites and people who feel like they’re growing alongside me, as a person, instead of chasing whatever trends will get them the most likes, shares, and follows, no matter how brief, passing, or ephemeral those responses may be.

Chasing trends tends to leave behind empty shells, posts bereft of lasting bite or worth.

So, though you may have read this before, maybe at a time when this sentiment was trending, I feel like it bears repeating now: the best brand you can be is you.

Genuine, ugly, deep, defective, reflective, beautiful, authentic you.

I’m so tired of the sameness I see and I feel and I digitally wallow in. And I’m not talking about ideas or emotions I’ve come across a million times; even those are thrilling when a person comes to them and expresses them in their own one-of-a-kind way.

I just don’t see a lot of effort to be more than two-dimensional in a world that offers infinite dimensions.

This is a weird thing to bemoan in the deafening silence of cyberspace, but maybe it’s what one person needs to hear before deciding that, instead of being one “thing” on the internet, they decide they want to be one whole ass person.

They’ll share their hopes and fears and thoughts and dreams, not when they’re trending, but when they feel them and think them.

And maybe we’ll leave something lasting for as many generations are left for this hysterically unstable planet.

The world, as we know, is burning. Let’s burn with it, equally bright and devastating.

Ain’t That Some Sh

September 15th, 2021

I had to walk to school, and home from school, throughout elementary school and high school (and quite a few middle school days, too).

On crisp, awakening fall days, like today, or breezy, renewing spring days, those walks contain some of my favorite memories, the kind they try to recreate in movies that try to recreate our childhoods.

In winter, those walks were a brutal hell that I would wish upon no human, child or elder.

This is a story about one of those walks.

I won’t give away what I grade I was in, but I will say I was old enough to know better. School was over, it was cold outside, and I had to make a decision about whether to go to the bathroom before I left or not. I did the math in my head (though I was still in school, thus still learning what math was) and figured I would be home before there was any immediate danger.

Halfway home, I found myself dead wrong.

At this point, there is nothing I can do. I’m in the middle of town, there are no exits, there is no escape. So I just try to walk faster, which turned into a run, which turned into me shitting myself about four blocks before I got home.

Oh, I’m sorry, did you think this was a story in which I did not shit myself?

I walk the rest of the way home, literally covered in my own feces, and I don’t know how I’m going to explain any of this to the people who live inside — I was no longer referring to them as my “family” at this point, because they were most certainly disowning me after they found out what I had done.

Luckily (depending on how you define “luck”) no one was by the door when I entered, so I was able to run up the stairs and get to the bathroom, where I turned on the bath and just started scrubbing the heck out of every inch of my disgraceful body.

The door creaked. My mom popped in. Asked how my day went. She nodded and smiled and acted like I wasn’t completely covered in my own shit.

And that’s what this story is about.

If you’re covered in shit, surround yourself with people who love you so much that they don’t care that you’re literally covered in your own shit. And when the people you truly love are covered in their shit, you nod and you smile and you ask how their day was.

And if they love you back, they will start sobbing about how they shit themselves today and feel so much better that you still love them anyways.

At least, that’s what I did.

Trash

September 13, 2021

I’m not sure how to talk about anything that’s going on in the world anymore, so let’s just discuss littering.

Generally speaking, one discarded candy wrapper isn’t going to destroy the planet or any one individual’s worldview. And I think the person who drops that single piece of trash feels the same way, but also — selfishly, as human beings can be — they also have the mindset that they are the only person who has decided to litter today.

I believe that the person who decides to take a walk around the lake by their house to do some meditation and find a little peace will feel those individual wrappers add up and have a significant impact on them.

Recently, I wrote an essay in which I pointed out there has never been a time in history when children knew better that adults have absolutely no idea what they’re doing. The internet has allowed us to declare our smallest, dumbest, meanest, most divisive and least compassionate thoughts whenever we feel like it, and the impact of that is obvious.

And now social media highlights comments from your friends and family on posts that you don’t even follow.

It’s like someone sending you photos of all the trash that you wouldn’t find yourself.

I think a lot of those comments that get spotlighted by the algorithm are made by people who don’t think anyone is going to see them.

We do.

They think they’re not going to matter.

They do.

I try not remove people from my lists just because we have different views, but I also look out for my own mental health, and I’m being honest when I say I have blocked people after coming across these seemingly random comments which reveal truly abhorrent facets.

And if you’re wondering where I’m going with all this, how I’m going to tie all this together, what the point of this trash metaphor is, it’s to plead with you.

Don’t litter.

Think about what you drop on this planet. Whether it’s a Big Buddy cup in a parking lot or a comment on the internet that does nothing for anybody or, worse, does true damage or stirs unnecessary pots.

Stop littering.

And watch beauty and sanity fight back.

Dark Dreams

September 10th, 2021

“I know this sounds like a happy, impossibly perfect ending, but it’s not.

I have to work really hard for this. It’s not easy to talk. It’s not easy to ask for help. It’s not easy to accept that others want to help.

Like cancer, there is always the fear that it could come back. I have to be vigilant.

I still have dark days, and sometimes I have dark dreams.

But not every day.

That’s been the biggest change. Finally accepting that not every day will be a good one, but also knowing that not every day will be bad, either. And no matter what kind of day today turns out to be, there will always be at least one more, waiting for me like a light at the end of a tunnel.”

– Excerpt from “Push”

It Should (Not) Have Been Me

September 9th, 2021

There can be an odd guilt with grief that, if understood, can actually be a good thing.

I often talk about all these tools I’ve learned as an adult, sober person, but I usually refer to them in the abstract. One of the specific tools I have to take out of the shed daily is the ability to pull myself out of self-pity.

When someone dies, it’s a common phenomenon to feel like you should have been the one in their place.

I know I do.

You start down a path by imagining a world in which they survived and you did not, and because you can’t possibly know that world, you believe it is a better one. I know there were specific things I had felt; that I should have been the one who was sick, for example, because maybe I would have had a better chance, but at the very least the world would have still had her.

This is a very deep swamp of self-pity. I see people buried in it every day.

Being able to recognize my self-pity — the swamp — and lift myself out of it like Luke’s ship on Dagobah gives me the perspective I need to not only survive, but to live.

Because when you get over a swamp, you can see it’s only a small part of a multitude of waterways, spreading out towards the horizon in every direction. You have choices. You can go anywhere and do anything.

So I take moments throughout my day and I recognize that. If I make someone smile, I remind myself they would not have smiled then if I wasn’t here. If I help someone, I remind myself that that person would have had to do it alone today. If I write some words down, I remind myself that those words would have never existed.

And all of those things happened because it wasn’t me.

And it pushes me to do more.

So if you’re feeling that way, for any reason, just remember the words of the wise philosopher, Shrek — get out of your swamp. Remind yourself of everything that exists only because you exist. And if you’re running low on examples, go out and make some more.

A Little Shove

September 6th, 2021

Inspiration and motivation can come from the strangest and most delightful of places.

Making Brushfire is hard. It’s a lot of fun and it means the universe (multiple universes, actually) to me, but it’s been a ton of work and some days I just can’t. There’s an alternate dream reality in which my only job is a creative one, but I live in a very real world where my bills are also very real and are not paid for by art.

So I’m just a regular, tired human who gets tired regularly.

I’ve been feeling pretty discouraged lately, and then I got a message. It was from the mom of a boy who had made some art for me (I won’t call him out for the sake of his and his family’s privacy). He had done seven original drawings of the characters that I created and they are just adorable and beautiful and amazing.

And it shook my branch a little and reminded me why, even though I am a regular, tired human, I spend so much time trying to make something extraordinary.

I hope you have people like that in your life. And I hope you are the person like that in others’.

I just wanted to thank those people in mine who randomly encourage me to go on. Whether it’s a conversation about something I did or something I’m going to do, a little proverbial punch on the arm or any other kind of thumbs up, I appreciate it beyond words. Or at least these words.

Here’s a panel from that book I’m working on. It shows a few characters looking at something called the Flip Side.

I’ll catch you all over there soon.

The Power of Positivity, Or I Just Watched The First Season of Ted Lasso And I Have A Lot Feelings To Share With You That I Hope You’ll Read

September 5th, 2021

“It’s the hope that kills you.”

It’s a sentiment shared by every Minnesota sports fan and an ironic motto in the show Ted Lasso.

Oh, you haven’t seen Ted Lasso? Let me join the mob of fans telling you to watch it now. It’s a show about two kinds of football, sure, but it’s really a show about positivity in all its shapes, forms like connection, support, honesty, and hope.

It resonates with me in a really special way, because it embodies all of the things that I write about now, and everything I want to be as a human being and regularly fall short of.

Be curious, not judgemental. It’s another phrase that comes up in the series that’s been around for a long time, but not a lot of people pay attention to. And it’s something I’ve learned and held dearly over the past four years. It lets me see people, even people I don’t like, as more than their outsides.

And that kind of perspective allows people to grow.

I think it’s funny that many of the posts that I’ve written that I’m proudest of tend to be the ones that receive the littlest attention, going by internet react and share measurements.

But that doesn’t matter.

Because in my head, I dream that someone comes across one on their hardest day, and that post, which I put my whole heart into in the moment, gives them something they need. Whether it’s just another person who relates, or the hope they thought they lost.

Ted Lasso believes — in positivity, but not the false or toxic kind. Positivity and hope do not always get you the things you want. Be positive and hopeful regardless. Be kind.

Which is the ironic part of “it’s the hope that kills you.”

Hope doesn’t kill us.

It’s the only thing keeping us alive.

If You Like The Way You Look That Much Then Baby You Should Go Forgive Yourself

September 3rd, 2021

I used to think I understood the phrase “forgive but don’t forget” but now I’m not so sure.

Because how can something be forgiven if it can and will be brought up at any time?

This isn’t a simple topic but I’ve been thinking about it a lot so here I am, etching it in the corner of the internet’s desk.

It’s been on my mind because I’ve had to do a lot of work in order to be able to forgive myself.

For most of my life, before I was even able to consider forgiving myself for anything, someone would have to forgive me first. This is a bad system. I wouldn’t even call this line of thinking flawed; it is absolutely broken.

But when you hate yourself, it makes sense. You need to get permission from who the bad things hurt in order to say it’s okay that the bad things happened.

Except that’s not forgiveness.

Forgiveness happens when you say it was never okay for the bad things to happen, but you acknowledge that they did and that you were wrong for doing them. I believe that regret isn’t all bad; generally, it’s hard to learn from something if you don’t regret it.

But forgiveness means it is finished. Forgiveness means you get back up, you move on, you realize how valuable you are, you reiterate that it not your mistakes, defects, flaws, or bad days that define you.

Someone who says they forgive you and then brings up the things that they have allegedly forgave you for might actually have forgiven you, but they are also trying to prevent you from forgiving yourself.

I know this now. And it’s why I can forgive myself anyway.

It’s not selfish to want to keep growing and changing and to be a better person. It’s not ignoring the past if you’ve adequately dealt with the things that you’ve done and want to embrace your future.

It is not bad to forgive yourself when someone else won’t. Because the act of forgiveness means you admit that you have done something wrong.

There’s so much projection going around today and I don’t have anything to add to the multitude of debates and discussions (and I’ve made myself very clear of where I stand on many occasions). I wanted to write something pointing to our insides.

You can breathe. You can be okay with your missteps and sprained ankles and toes that you’ve stepped on, intentionally or not.

You are worthy of being forgiven. And the most important person who will ever forgive you is you.

What Are You Trying To Say?

September 1st, 2021

Let’s talk about words. Specifically, the kind we use to describe people or things we think are dumb or just plain weird.

You know the words.

We were talking yesterday about a situation that’s all too familar: what do you do when somebody says something that’s uncomfortable for you without seeming like an uncool jerk yourself?

For example: when someone refers to a person who is odd in any way as “special ed” or “someone who rides the short bus” or “retarded.”

Usually, what I do is ask: “What do you mean by that?”

What happens next is always very telling.

Do I think anyone who uses phrases like that is an awful, disrespectful human being who needs to be cancelled immediately? Of course not.

But do I think they’re lazy? Undeniably.

Because when someone tries to explain what they meant by what they said, they’ll often say something like, “Oh, I meant they’re stupid.”

And when you ask why they didn’t just use the word “stupid,” they’ll either not be sure, or tell you they’ve just always used that word, since they were young, that it doesn’t mean the same thing to them.

Regardless of the fact that even the least educated adult has a good idea of what words hurt other people.

Because when it comes to using words in a society, it does not matter what a word means to you individually. It matters more what it means to the society as a whole.

That’s the root of all language and communication, if we’re being honest.

And I’ve been that person. I’ve made racist jokes, ablest jokes, sexist jokes, using subjective society and how I saw words reflected in pop culture as a barometer for what was acceptable, generally unaware of the harm I had caused or could cause, but very aware of the humor people attempted to wring from them.

Having deaf parents and an autistic child has definitely made me more aware, but no less guilty.

So the point I’m trying to make is the question that I try to ask, and I hope maybe you’ll remember it the next time you use a word or a phrase that means nothing to you, but could be the most hurtful thing something else could hear.

What are you trying to say?

And then.

Just say that.

The First Anniversaries of a Dog & a Living

September 1st, 2021

Today, I celebrate not one, but two one-year anniversaries: my employment at Harry’s, and the surprise release of my fifth book, Theia.

Losing my job at Old Chicago forever was awful, particularly the way that it happened. To use a exceptionally bad metaphor, it was like I was married for almost 13 years (with a 3-month separation period in which I dated someone else I was not good enough for), and then one day my spouse disappeared forever and nobody seemed even a little bit concerned about it.

“Have you seen my wife?” I would ask around, flyers in hand.

“These things just happen,” the world repeatedly shrugged in reply. There were no good-byes and there was no closure. Just an unsolved open case file.

Joining a team already in progress was a terrifying prospect for me, especially since I had become so used to being the person who welcomed others into what I considered my home.

I got lucky enough to find a place with people who were willing to make a space for me.

Starting a new job in the middle of pandemic while you’re dealing with the news that your mom has cancer is not an experience I recommend. It’s not a good time. That I found a group of people through it who have been supportive and kind and caring and just really dang nice to me has meant more to me than they know, and I look forward to walking through that back door where no stupid people are allowed (am I the exception?!) every day.

On this same day a year ago, I pulled a Taylor Swift and both announced that I had written a new book and dropped it at the same time.

Theia was written, like most everything else I write, because I had to. I had to talk about 2020. I had to talk about one of my defining character defects. I had to write a book with talking animals.

One of my favorite novels ever is Watership Down, and when Richard Adams went to sell it, everyone asked him who exactly it was for. Kids wouldn’t get the adult themes and story. Adults wouldn’t like the bunnies. Turned out, the book was for everyone.

And as someone who has never written for a target audience, I really got that. And that’s why I describe Theia as a children’s book for adults.

I love this story and the characters so much. I love the terrific twist in the middle, which was initially conceived to be the end. And I love the responses I’ve received from people about it, who genuinely seem to adore it as much as I do.

So, anyway. Happy first anniversary to both these things. I’m glad you both exist and have this day to share in my heart.