Phoenix Down

I’ve been avoiding coming here. I’ve been avoiding coming to this page, writing this blog, saying… anything about anything the last eight months. Sometime it would squeeze out in a pointed social media post, sometimes someone walked in my job and just asked “How ya been?” and I had to fight back tears just to answer, “ya know, living the dream”.

I still don’t know if people hear the sarcasm.

What my life is right now is no dream. It is very real.

I did attempt to do a post - maybe like two months ago - I outlined my perspective on what the hell happened, who was to blame, who wasn’t, and why I thought no one cared. That post won’t be shared, probably ever. It will probably just sit in my drafts to remind me, and I think that is a safe place for it to live.

So. Where are we now.

Let’s get the hard details out the way. I work at your favorite place, ran by your favorite local celebrity, doing two things I love - and I hate it.

It’s not enough money, it makes me HATE those two things I love, and it doesn’t make me feel great about me. It actually is the opposite of what would help me right now. I feel stuck, unable to really speak my truths, like my experience means nothing, and just overall like a fucking fail. I got other things to say about the overall experience but I’m just going to keep it there for now. I’m not living in my purpose.

I feel very disconnected from art as a whole. That’s probably cause I feel very disconnected from people. My project that I sought out to do on masculinity… I don’t know how equipped I feel to take this on, both right now, and in general. I have a jaded view of community work right now, informed by nothing else by social media and self-hate reading without the healing behind it.

I miss community and need to be wanted in community - I haven’t had a lot of good experiences in communities in which I haven’t felt like that. I didn’t feel like that before this year. The last six months make me feel very far from being able to get back there as well.

I don’t know where I was going with all this, but I wanted to say that today, I got up, and I decided to come back, and write something and tell you that I consciously am looking for a way out of this place I’m in. If you made it this far, I appreciate you, and I believe in some semblance that you want to see me get back on my feet. That makes all the difference.