More Than I Deserve

August 10th, 2021

I’ve mostly learned the ways to curb, deal with or soothe those devastating feelings of crushing loneliness I get when I think about my mom.

Mostly.

Sometimes something said will stick in my ribs, or hurt like chewed tinfoil in my head.

With those, too, I can usually use my tools to adjust my settings and resume normal operation (or, at least, as normal as I get).

There is one thing I don’t think I will ever be able to get over, though.

It’s when any mom refers to her son as her baby, regardless of his age.

That one, when bared, refuses to let go or let up.

And it might sound like I’m sharing this to call awareness to my sensitivity to it, but it’s not that at all. Honestly, I hope I can use it as a gift to any mom reading this.

Because telling your son that he is your baby, no matter how old he is, no matter what he’s done, no matter how successful or not he is, no matter who he is to anyone else, will most likely be the most significant validation he will receive in his life.

And he might roll his eyes, or push you away, or tell you to quit embarassing him, but he will never be able to express how much that means to him.

So I’m giving your baby’s secret away.

He loves you more than he’ll ever admit, or ever be able to. He doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve all this love, and he’ll never think he does.

But he’ll know.

So, please, keep calling them your babies, with this knowledge that it kills me every time and it’s only because I know.

I’ll never get over it, because it was given to me to never get over.

It was given to me to remember that I was loved in a way that was more than I deserve, in a way that I will never understand.

How You Remind Me

August 9th, 2021

I like everything.

This isn’t true, of course. In fact, if you’ve ever played Nickelback in my presence you are well aware there are things I actively dislike.

But I’m told this a lot because, generally, when people start shitting all over something, I am one of the first to try to defend or understand it. Some people say it with admiration, like they wish they could try to find the brilliant aspects of dull stones; some say it with derision, like I am incapable of distinguishing good from bad.

In reality, it’s something both natural and something I had to work hard for a long time to weave back into the fabric of my DNA.

I had to mutate into positivity.

I skip most of the memories that pop up in my feed now because a lot of them make me cringe so hard I border on convulsions.

Self-pity and negativity are surefire ways for attention-seekers to get feedback, and I generated waves and waves of it, in real life and online, even though it never really felt like who I was at my core.

The kid who liked everything.

Being him felt increasingly difficult.

Hating everything, especially yourself, is easy.

Recognizing the good is hard. The world around you and the people in it can make it harder.

Until, I finally figured out, it isn’t.

When I started to make that change, which was really just reverting to the better parts of me that I felt like I had to adapt and change as I became older, I could feel people around me who were skeptical.

Like someone who said they were born again to erase their sins without putting in the work.

But as I actively scraped off years of character defects that I put there myself, I found it easier and easier to find the good under the defects of everyone and everything else. I learned that there is worth in choosing to talk about the things I like as opposed to dwelling or obsessing over what I don’t.

The idea that people around me would refer to me as the positive one in a group or a situation seemed beyond my wildest dreams of who I could be.

That that idea is reality is nothing short of hard-earned magic. And so I continue to choose to like everything.

Except Nickelback.

Okay, maybe one of their songs is okay.

Words About Words

August 5th, 2021

I speak in metaphor.

I know it’s normal for people to use things to talk about other things, but I sincerely can’t express myself without it.

(Mild spoilers for Theia ahead so if you haven’t read it, like, what the heck are you even doing, get out of here and read it.)

If you missed it, my last post was a massive analogy that was drenched in both heavy sarcasm and hopefully some truth. What it was an analogy for is up to you; that’s the beauty of metaphor and I have no interest in talking about the actual thing I was referring to.

That’s because the analogy gives you and me distance. From the topic itself, from the intense thoughts and emotions related to the topic; it also gives us distance from each other.

It can allow for the kind of thoughtful communication that you just don’t see in the world very much anymore.

All of Theia, the book, is a metaphor for the year 2020. It gave the hard things to talk about adorable, fuzzy faces and compassionate, impossible voices.

Theia herself is inspired by my dog, but she’s really a metaphor for me and one of my many major character defects: the fact that I spent most of my life trying to run away from everywhere and everyone.

Nowhere is this more apparent than when she addresses all the animals in the shelter.

“I’m sorry,” she started. “To you, Apple, and to all of you. I have not been a good dog. I’ve treated you poorly, and spent all of my time here thinking about myself. I’m an asshole!”

This was Theia starting to apologize for who she had been. But more importantly, this was me apologizing to everyone I had ever crossed, tripped, pushed away, ignored, hurt or ran away from in my life, in the only way I know how to say anything meaningful.

Words about words.

It is not easy to be a human right now. Sometimes it is intolerable. There are days where all I’m doing is holding off gnawing waves of anxiety and loneliness.

I don’t even know what to say.

But a thing of a thing, a word of a word can find exactly how I feel and give me enough distance from that pain to be able to come back around and understand it, and hopefully care for it.

Whether that be a boy who has a vivid dreams, a superhero, or just an asshole of a dog.

Live Free or Drive Hard

August 4th, 2021

Hi.

Today I would like to talk to you about seatbelts.

Even if you wear a seatbelt, you can die if you get in a car accident.

So, please: stop wearing seatbelts, because my anecdotal evidence, my opinion, is more true than what Big Automobile and car safety professionals will ever tell you.

In fact, they make more money by charging us for the seatbelts they install, without our permission, in our vehicles. In a sick move, there are real laws out there trying to force us to wear them while our personal property is in motion.

It doesn’t matter how many lives seatbelts have saved. It doesn’t matter that people have dedicated their lives to developing the safest way for us to travel by motor vehicle. It doesn’t matter that you can literally fly out of the windshield and unwittingly destroy countless other people’s lives after you roll your F-150.

You can still die wearing a seatbelt.

If you don’t believe me, do your research.

And by that, I mean build a state-of-the-art facility on your own dime and test out hundreds of seatbelt designs to see for yourself, but only after dedicating years of your life to the knowledge in this specific field.

And you will see.

You can still die wearing a seatbelt.

So don’t listen to people who say this isn’t about personal freedom, but the health of the population of this planet.

They don’t understand freedom.

Which is why I won’t be wearing my seatbelt anymore. For it is better to die free.

Special, Magical, One-Of-A-Kind Being

August 2nd, 2021

You are a special, magical, one-of-a-kind being.

But this isn’t one of those fluff “You are a special, magical, one-of-a-kind being” pieces. No, I bring evidence to my parties and you’re about to be handed some.

There are some skills that are obvious, rare and undeniably cool. Successful chainsaw juggling, for instance. (Any dope with access to chainsaws can try to juggle them, so let’s focus on the people who are good at it.)

These kinds of abilities are what we tend to think of when we contemplate what it means to be talented or special.

What we often fail to consider is even the most basic skill to you can be extraordinary to somebody else.

For example: I know sign language. Not once in my life have I, internally, considered that a “skill.” Imagine if I ran into you on the street, you said a couple of words and I exclaimed, “Holy shit! How did you learn how to talk?”

That would be weird, right?

As I got older and started to realize that more people were not like me than were like me (were they ever…), speaking sign language as a hearing person was regularly referred to as a skill and (while internally nothing has changed) I begrudingly allow others (and sometimes myself) to refer to it as such.

You have one of these. You probably have a dozen. You easily have more.

And these abilities and skills are boring to you but interesting to others, and the most interesting part is that nobody has the same combination of them, and they all affect your life in different ways.

On top of that, there is a near-infinite list of jobs, genetic wins and losses, resources — not to mention the choices you make, the decisions you avoid, the random events that occur and the things you feel like happened for a reason.

You are literally — say it with me — a special, magical, one-of-a-kind being, and there are people out there who are in complete awe of you and what you can do.

Yeah. You.

And I just slipped you the proof.

Party On

August 2nd, 2021

Though I am sober, it is important that I party.

Let me tell you P-A-R-T-why.

For a long time, my life was unmanageable. “Unmanagable” is a terribly nice way to say “completely f—ed up.” I believe that it continued like that for a variety of reasons, some of them complex, but some of them as simple as I couldn’t imagine how to live my life any other way, as though the way I got through the day was living at all.

I couldn’t imagine it, because I didn’t see it around me.

We live in a drinking culture. It is dominant and it is expected. Every single one of our rituals — weddings, funerals, birthdays, BBQs, holidays, sporting events, those religious brunches where you dunk the baby in the water, bridal showers, baby showers, just getting into the shower — revolves around alcohol. This is fairly apparent if you think about it for two or three seconds, and very apparent once you start to do things (or try to envision doing things) without the assistance of spirits.

I could not imagine functioning in any aspect of my life without the support of alcohol. I also work in an industry that is notorious for its alcohol use and tends to rank the personal, mental, and emotional care of its workers very low.

I feel strongly that if I would have had people around me who deftly navigated the same world I did without alcohol that it would have convinced me sooner.

And that is why I have to party as hard as I ever did.

I figure that if I can hit up a dive bar, play a game of pool and have as much fun (if not more) as the other people around me, then it could inspire a person who is struggling that maybe there is another way to do this whole thing. There’s an expression: people need to recover loudly to reach those suffering silently.

This is not to say that anyone around me needs help. This is also not to say that it is easy to do any of the rituals in a completely different way, or that I nail it every time or it’s never awkward.

This is just to say that I know I needed help. And that I wish I had known another way.

So hell yeah. Invite me to that new tap room. Hand me an axe to throw. Give me that damn mic, because my heart needs to sing karaoke both like it always has and like it never has before.

The life I have now isn’t for everyone. But it’s the only reason I’m alive now at all.

Five

August 1st, 2021

Happy 5th birthday to my baby girl, Marvel.

It is stupid to say a dog is my rock, but here we are.

She helps me get through things that have been really hard for me, like sobriety and the death of my mom; she sits on my lap when I’m drawing characters and writing stories, only occasionally giving me notes but overall being very supportive; she’s the clear inspiration behind Theia; and she’s just a clear inspiration all-around.

On those days when I feel like I’m an awful, no-good, terrible person, of which there are many, she is the only convincing argument that I am not.

Also, at this point, my dog has lasted longer than the Confederacy, so if we want to build statues dedicated to something worthwhile and full of goodness, may I recommend this adorable creature.

Happy birthday baby girl, little puppy, sushi dog. May you live forever (and may I go John Wick against whatever stands in the way of that noble goal).

Brushfire Contest!

July 31st, 2021

Calling all artists of all ages! (Check out my video on social media for all the details, or you can read about it below.)

When I was a kid, one of my favorite parts of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic were the back pages, where they published drawings of the characters made by kids just like me. I thought it was so cool that anyone from anywhere could put their art into a real comic book.

Fast forward to now, where I’m the guy making comic books, and I want to give everyone the same opportunity!

I’ve shared the character design sheets for Brushfire on my website — this one you’re on right now! — you can find them here. If you or a kid in your life is an artist, pick up a pencil or crayon or mouse or stylus and draw whichever characters you like from Brushfire. I’ll choose my favorite ones; those drawings will go into the back pages of Brushfire: Wave 1, and the artist will be credited and receive a free copy of the book as my thanks!

Right now there isn’t a deadline, as I still have lots of work to do myself, so this should give you time to work on something amazing! The wildlife in Brushfire love going on adventures and helping people, if that gives you an idea of where to start.

There will be a section for kid’s art and another for 18-and-over artists, if I get submissions from adults, too.

You can send the art as a direct message or to my email, thenextstepislast@yahoo.com.

Happy drawing, and I can’t wait to see your work!

A Query of Relativity

July 29th, 2021

To most people, a floor is a floor.

It’s the bottom, the thing we stand on relative to the rest of the world, which rises above us.

When we open our social media apps or just contemplate our place in the universe, we generally enter on the floor. We look up and we see the lives we wish we had, the houses we’d die to live in, the jobs we’d kill to perform, the unconditional love and support of family or friends or a spouse we long to be connected to.

Everything becomes relative to where you are, and where you think you are is the floor.

I remember the first time I went to the Mall of America. We were on an upper level, and I was scurrying around curiously. Without warning, I was suddenly levitating in mid-air, the ground beneath my feet seemingly dissolved.

Some of the floors had been made with small glass panes, which you could see straight through, down to the levels below.

And just like that, the floor wasn’t a floor anymore.

And I had to make everything relative.

You are not on the bottom of anything. You just think you’re on the floor. The truth is, there is an infinite amount of levels below you, and it might make you feel a little better to remember that.

You don’t have to feel like a relative aspect to the rest of the world. You get the enchanting and remarkable chance every day to make the world relative to you.

You get to decide if you’re in the basement or on the roof. But you will rarely, if ever, be either. You could rest easier in the truth that you’re probably always somewhere right in-between. And, relatively, that is never a bad place to be.

The Paperback Paradox

July 28th, 2021

“I don’t get it. Why do you have a book and I don’t?”

That is a question I receive in infinite configurations and with consistent frequency. I’m going to share a secret with you and it isn’t a pretty one, and it comes in the form of a story that I’m kind of pathethic in.

It’s gonna be super fun, I swear. Put on a pair of comfy pajama pants and come laugh at me — er, with me.

I lost someone’s credit card the other night.

I have never done that in my entire restaurant career, at least not permanently. I’ve dropped them or misplaced them, but this one flew straight into the Bermuda Triangle.

Initially, there was fair concern. The disappearance happened within a traceable ten-foot radius. At an early point, the people around me genuinely cared, and I had at least half a dozen staff helping me to locate the card. No one did. Then, like normal people do, they moved on. In fact, the person whose credit card I lost moved on, couldn’t have been kinder about it, and said they would just cancel it, no problem.

Everyone moved on.

Everyone but me.

For the rest of my shift, I had one eye on my tasks, and one eye searching for what I had lost. After we locked the doors, I did a full sweep under every location in the bar, confirming it never fell to the floor. I rubbed my hands against every elevated surface and — improbably, impossibly — a wall in the bottle well moved. The card had lodged itself in a crack between the metal pieces. The card was — improbably, impossibly — found.

And this is why I have a book and why some people, who have better ideas and better words than I do, do not.

I have an aptitude for obsession. And when that defect of mine finds a character or a story, I can’t let it go. Long after everyone has stopped caring and gone home, I’m still here, doors locked, working at it. Improbably. Impossibly.

I find the card.

I make the story real.

The first thing I tell someone who wants to write a book is that they have to write. The second thing, the thing I just described, I can’t teach — and wouldn’t wish upon any other human being in the world.