It is common to look at art and, no matter how different it is from you, find something in common. It is rare to find art that is made for the very specific life that you’ve lived.
I do not need a new streaming service, but I’d been eyeing Apple TV+ for a minute. When I saw the trailer for CODA, that needless want became an immediate need.
CODA, if you’re unfamiliar with the term, stands for Child of Deaf Adult. It’s also, if you’re unfamiliar with me (how dare you), what I am.
CODAs make up less than 0.00125 percent of the global population. We are a very niche people. So when I saw there was a film that dared to speak of my experience, I was equal parts wary and excited. I needed only to be ready.
I don’t know if I’ve cried more during any film. To see such specific parts of my life reflected through this beautiful story felt like so many things cycling a million times per minute. Sometimes it felt like a relief. Sometimes it hurt. Sometimes it just felt like home.
One of the best parts of this film (which has a lot of best parts) is that they don’t have “deaf actors” playing “deaf characters.” These are deaf people. Living deaf lives.
Not only did I grow up with deaf parents, but I was a theater and choir kid, too. Which the protagonist, Ruby, also happens to be. Her journey almost felt like it was joyfully teasing mine; that someone found my journals and turned them out loud.
I don’t want to spoil anything — ever — and there are countless scenes that I could pause and tell you all about how THAT actually happened to me. But there was a particular moment between Ruby and her mom, when her mom discovered Ruby could hear, that taught me something I never could have known about my own mom.
Clearly, I recommend this. To everyone. Everywhere. It’s essential to see for the understanding it gives and compassion it shares.
It’s the closest thing I’ve felt to home in a long time.
ANNOUNCEMENT!! I’m going on tour! (Well, whatever it looks like when a writer/artist goes on tour.)
This fall, I’ll be doing the trifecta of St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Rochester over five dates. So let’s talk about it!
On SEPTEMBER 25th, I’ll be at the State Fair Grandstand for the long-awaited FALLCON XL. I love these conventions so much (referring, of course, to it and its twin, SpringCon) and this year’s should be a heartwarming homecoming and a terrific way to kick off the season.
On OCTOBER 2nd and 3rd, I’ll be at TWIN CITIES CON at the Minneapolis Convention Center. This is a new con for our area, but some of the guests already have my inner kid freaking out: Will Friedle (BOY MEETS WORLD, BATMAN BEYOND), Austin St. John (the original red POWER RANGER, Jason), Robin Lord Taylor (Penguin from GOTHAM) and more! Plus ME!
And then on OCTOBER 23rd and 24th, I’ll be ending my tour with my second year at NERDINOUT CON at the Rochester Mayo Civic Center. I had a blast last time around, and it’s great meeting people who don’t always get a chance to head upstate to the other major conventions. And check out that photo for all the guests: it’s going to be the biggest one yet!
To say I’m anticipating autumn is the biggest understatement I could make. (And I’m not just talking comfortable sweaters, pumpkin spice and apple cider.) I am so ready to get back to it, and so ready to chat with all of you about what I’ve been up to, my work, and all the nerd stuff in general.
“I like when you talk about this, but I do not like when you talk about that.”
This is probably the number one thing I hear when someone wants to talk about my output on the internet.
Which is a weird perspective. Because isn’t that just being human?
I think there’s beauty in the whiplash. Posting a photo of my dog taking a nap on Tuesday and then a monologue about conspiracy theories or the varieties of spirituality or death on Wednesday.
It’s not accidental. There’s a method behind the madness.
When you see anything anyone posts, you form an opinion on them. It can change, at least a little, daily. But over time, people become wavelengths in your mind.
When I write, I try to be as honest as possible with you. Well, first with me. That’s the hardest part. And then with you. Generally, when I write about something deeply personal that doesn’t approach “divisive” topics, they resonate greatly and I get great feedback — meaning, for the most part, it’s positive.
When I write about something that’s happening that’s not about me (and might be controversial or a hot button), that’s when things almost always take a turn. Lines are drawn. Clear sides form. Debates flicker in the comment section. People straight up get mad at me. Even though (again, in general) I try to present current events through either a logical or empathetic lens (or, at best, both).
The balance, or juxtaposition, between these two kinds of posts are what I believe lead to genuine connection and conversation.
Because I let you get to know me. And if on Tuesday you were like, “Aw, he’s just a dude who loves his dog and tries real hard to stay sober and misses his mom,” it’s going to be harder for you to completely disregard me when I tell you something that I feel is really important to hear.
Not that anything I say is important, or right, or what you believe. There’s also beauty in diversity. So when I see a person who is one-note — banging the same drum, post after post, their personality transforming into the message — I turn off. They don’t feel like a person anymore. So it’s harder for me to deeply care about what they say.
I never want you to forget I’m a person. No matter how much you hate me, love me, kind-of like me, couldn’t care less about me — I don’t want you forget all the facets of myself I’ve shared, how complex our relationship is, how much of a human I am.
Because, certainly, you’re a human, too. Complex, diverse, extraordinary. Don’t forget it. Don’t just think it. Be it.
There was this game we used to play with a plastic crocodile when I was a kid.
I’m not sure if our role was as dentist or some sadistic torturer (I mean, why would any animal need ALL its teeth removed?), but to take a turn would require you to choose and push down on one of its teeth, and hope for nothing to happen.
You would lose the game if the crocodile snapped your hand, which happened at random and without notice.
Over the past 10 months, I have done an exemplary job of keeping my shit together. Honestly, a previous version of me would have loved a traumatic event or two, as it would have given him a reason to embrace a dark whirlpool of self-pity and a license to be as self-destructive as he pleased. (Dude liked to drink and didn’t need a reason but would warmly welcome one if it presented itself.)
It’s because I’ve been able to keep myself together that I worry, without any logical reason or convincing evidence, that every time I visit home will be the time I snap.
I think about it every time, and I visit home often. Today, on my drive down, I imagined my fingers searching over the plastic teeth, hoping that this turn wouldn’t be the turn. And I started writing this post in my head, and when I walked into the living room the actual crocodile, the one in this photo, was sitting atop a bookshelf.
A cosmic reminder or an urgent warning, I don’t know.
But I know how it feels to come home. Like that first year after graduating high school. If you left your hometown, like I did, you know the feeling of coming home to visit, and knowing that you weren’t going to run into most, if any, of your favorite people.
They had moved on.
When I come home (and no offense to the rest of my family, who I adore), I know I’m not going to run into my favorite person there. It’s an empty, cold autumn day of a feeling.
And that feels, every single time, like I’m putting my hand into a crocodile’s mouth. I wish it was just home that made me feel like this. It can be hearing a song or seeing a bird or the wrong word on the wrong day.
Pushing down on plastic teeth, waiting for the end of the world.
In a weird way, the fact that you get to reset the crocodile makes me feel better.
He regrows all his teeth, ready for the next dentist (or sadist) to get all up in there. The circle of life via child’s play.
I might snap. Some day. But I also know I can reset. I can heal. I can grow.
I’ve been seeing a lot of people lately sharing insights about how we should be gentle with ourselves.
That the phrase “unprecedented times” has never applied to more unprecedented times. That the modern world has pushed, pulled, squished and smooshed us in every emotional and psychological way possible.
I couldn’t agree more.
I’ve been really enjoying The High Republic series of Star Wars books this year; it doesn’t matter what your level of nerd is, though, because what I’m about to talk about is relevant regardless of whether you know Yoda from Yaddle.
There’s a passage in one of the young adult books in which a character is worried that they’re a part of the Dark Side now, because they made a mistake. Another character reassures them:
Making mistakes does not make you a bad person. Even doing something bad doesn’t make you a bad person. Instead, the path to the Dark Side is deliberate.
Yes, that sounds dramatic. But how many times do you drop a tiny ball that feels like a massive weight?
Like when you forget to text your friend back. Or you say something you meant to be a joke that doesn’t land as a joke. Or you take out what’s going on the inside of you on an innocent person too close to the outside of you.
I drop a million tiny balls a day and each one, at least for a moment, makes me feel like a bad person. It’s when I remember that I can only juggle so many at a time that I feel relief from it.
So I hope all the reminders being shared about being gentle with yourself not only resonate with you, but remind you.
Being a bad person is a deliberate choice. You are just a beautifully human juggler doing the best they can.
I set the hot dog on the table between us, and I pull out a ruler. From one end to the other, the hot dog measures 6 inches long.
“As you can clearly see and I have accurately measured, this hot dog is 6 inches long,” I tell you.
“I believe it is 3 inches long,” you reply.
I look at you long and hard, because that particular phrase is really funny to me in this context.
“There is nothing you can say to convince me otherwise,” you add. “I know what I believe in my heart, and that hot dog is 3 inches long.”
I believe you. I truly believe that you believe that.
And at the same time, I will not have you gaslighting me about the size of the hot dog.
I “learned” a lot of “interesting” things after yesterday’s post. But mostly, that what I wrote caused people to behave exactly the way I described them as behaving.
Regardless of personal opinion, believing in God objectively puts you in the majority. Look at the numbers. You are not the persecuted. You are not the small, or the silenced, or the underdog.
But I repeat: if your thing doesn’t include every being in this universe, no strings attached, no judgement allowed, then I just can’t believe in it. It doesn’t feel right in my heart.
We can disagree on the size of the hot dog all day long. And I can accept you and what you believe.
But at the end of the day, if you can’t accept and love every person for who they are and what they believe, without trying to change them today or tomorrow, then how can you be sure in what you believe?
Is the world, as above, perfectly designed? Are its people? Because, if so, they need no intervention by you or me to remain as divine.
I get asked regularly about why I don’t believe in a capital-G God, mostly by people who are genuinely curious or just want a different point of view on things.
I realize that there may be value in putting these words out into the world, to validate them and maybe other people who are having trouble figuring out what it is they do or don’t believe.
I’d like to preface this by saying I am deeply envious of those who have strong beliefs, the kind that gives them strength and peace and relief, and inspires them to be a better person every day. I absolutely mean that.
Now, with that said.
As someone who works daily on myself and how I see others, I cannot subscribe to a judgmental God. That actually blows my mind. You’re telling me that God has had eternity to work on His character defects, and dude still judges? Additionally, I can’t abide by a God who has requirements to get into his version of everlasting life. There are beings on this planet — some of them human — who literally can’t comprehend and give themselves in a way that satisfies the rules for admission to Heaven. It turns me off imagining a God with a velvet rope and a V.I.P. section.
Man has had too much of a hand in all things allegedly of God, and we’ve made a mess of it. (The Bible reads like a soap opera brought to life on HBO.) The only thing I could fully commit myself to believing in is something that makes complete sense to me. The sheer amount of things in Christianity that simply defies logic, history, and science are too much for me to blissfully ignore.
Logical thoughts about time and eternity itself are also a deterrent for me. If the afterlife is truly eternal, then why would there be a timeline on Earth, including things that have been predicted but have yet to happen? Why would an everlasting being care about planning, or waiting for things to happen in a order that, in relation to His existence, would happen in the blink of an eye?
And to that point, of course all religious predictions point to our secular existence ending badly: any child who watches the news for more than five minutes could tell you that humans are going to screw all this up. That is not a good prediction. It is an easy and cynical one.
And then this, probably my biggest issue: there is a large population that talks about “thinking for yourself” and “doing your own research” and “freedom” who also believe that, out of thousands of religions and Gods, theirs is objectively the right one, and they will fight you about it. Actually fight you and tell you that you’re wrong. Even though there is literally no objective way to prove it, and their entire personality has been built on the idea that we are of free thought and of free will.
How so many people can’t recognize that absurd cognitive dissonance astounds me, and it is a heartbreaking revelation.
But.
But I love the ideas of community and compassion and prayer and the universe speaking through people and fate being bigger than coincidence and, of course, my favorite phrase: radical empathy.
I see all of that taught in religion, and I get it.
But I also see a thousand man-made sketches of flawed creators and rulers, and then I just don’t.
I believe the phrase I introduced in The Weirdos — “The universe is bigger than God” — does not discount God, nor rejects Him, but instead allows all religion and people to exist, and is the most inclusive sentiment I could imagine.
And that’s what I believe in.
I believe there is a place for every single being, a place that lacks judgment and is imbued with love, of pure acceptance.
And I believe we have to build it ourselves.
All are welcome. There are no invitations, initiations or secret handshakes. If you are a part of this life in any way, you’re a part of eternity, too. You helped build it, after all.
It’s a simple belief.
In no way do I find that discouraging. And I sure as hell can’t find any reason that tells me I’m wrong.
Today is Free Comic Book Day, often (accurately) referred to as “Geek Christmas,” and I can’t believe this tradition is celebrating 20 years already, kicking off in 2002. (Also, how can something that started this century already be celebrating a 20th anniversary?)
I’ve written at length, in past posts and essays, about how comic books have saved my life. It’s not hyperbole; I can remember particular lows in my life that a comic helped me pull myself out of (even when I didn’t know I was in a hole).
The community is a treasure trove of people who, at their best, represent the paragons of humanity: passion, intelligence, diversity, acceptance, and love. I’ve had some of the most deep, meaningful, funny conversations of my life with fellow nerds, and there is just an ineffable something about a person who reads comics that people who don’t read comics don’t have. Not better or worse; just different.
My comic, The Weirdos, started life because I had things that I needed to say that I couldn’t express in any other art form. (The same goes with my upcoming graphic novel, Brushfire.)
In honor of Free Comic Book Day, tell me why you deserve a free copy of my graphic novel, The Weirdos: Volume I. I’ll pick my favorite comment or message and send you a signed copy, absolutely free, on my dime. You have until the end of today, August 14th to participate.
Shout out to some of my favorite local shops today, Issues Needed Comics and Mind’s Eye Comics, for continuing to build and foster this community that I hold so dear in my heart. This art form is one of the cornerstones of my existence, and it’s been a crucial part of human existence, from cave paintings to creating and reading Spider-Man on your iPad. You should do yourself a favor and pick up a comic for yourself, or someone you love (but preferably both), today. This is what the nerds call “self care.”
This art form is one of the cornerstones of my existence, and it’s been a crucial part of human existence, from cave paintings to creating and reading Spider-Man on your iPad. You should do yourself a favor and pick up a comic for yourself, or someone you love (but preferably both), today. This is what the nerds call “self care.”
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.
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.
The Den 