I began writing this thing in February. Since beginning, but never quite finishing due to various obstacles including procrastination, the world is a markedly darker and stranger and more uncertain place. So before I dazzle you with my original bellyaching and navel gazing, I should probably say something a bit more timely so I don’t come off as the completely self-absorbed ass that I likely am deep down inside.
First - Covid-19, What in the actual fuck?!? I think I have a slightly different perspective than a lot of people because I’ve been living in New York City through this bullshit. The pictures of refrigerated corpse trailers outside of the hospital that I used to walk Ike past every day struck a strong chord. People kept asking me what it was like here in April. I didn’t really know what to tell them other than sort of scary and very quiet. But this wasn’t something like an earthquake or fire, I couldn’t look out my window and see devastation. There were pretty non-stop ambulance sirens and a sense of detached weirdness, like the longest, worst snow-day ever. I could go into how angry I am at people around the country bitching about the shut down and masks and refusing to give a shit about anyone but themselves but that’s wasted energy I guess. My friend said something along the lines of “man, Americans’ tolerance for even the slightest level of discomfort is really astounding.” I’d tend to agree. I don’t want to argue about “oh no the economy” versus actual human life needlessly sacrificed, and since this isn’t a discussion, I guess I don’t have to. I get it, my job evaporated and is unlikely to return until next year sometime, best case, and I’m worried too. But please, listen to doctors and scientists. I know, no one loves doctors, they’re a pain in the ass most times, but this is their moment to shine, so let’s help them. For god’s sake just listen to science and reason, just this once. Please.
The second elephant in the room - racism, both institutional and personal, all rolled up with our obviously dysfunctional and shockingly violent policing system. Jesus. Christ. What. The. Ever. Living. Fuck. Let me be super clear here - I’m white, I’m male, I’m well educated and I grew up in a supportive, loving, present, middle-class family. I have had a ton of fucking advantages. And still 80% of my interactions with cops have been somewhere between not great and outright terrible. I have also lived a pretty great life, and I can attribute a lot of that to the way our society is set up to protect, well, essentially me. I’m not even sure where to go here, there’s no clear path because this topic is so huge and deep and difficult. Most of what I think and feel about this is likely beside the point, this shit isn’t about me. I think that’s the only right thing I can say about it. I have a number of friends and loved ones that are people of color, and thus it infuriates me that they have a harder time getting through life because of this bullshit.
I have heard a seemingly endless string of stories about mistreatment at the hands of police from several Black friends. Not minor things, things that shocked me. Things that should be, but unfortunately just aren’t, unbelievable. For god’s sake I’ve heard horror stories about run-ins with terrible and abusive cops that were shocking from older, white women. I simply can not understand how some people don’t believe we need radical changes to policing in this country. But I digress. So really here’s the difficult and uncomfortable part. Have I done enough, or really much of anything, to fight against an oppressive, institutionally racist system? I’d say no, I’ve done very little. I’m a self-absorbed navel gazer by nature. Am I racist? Yeah, probably, at least to some extent. Gross, I know. I don’t like those answers either, but there it is. What’s to be done about that, since those are the things that I can directly control? I’m not sure. I can probably start by trying to really listen without knee-jerk reactions of defensiveness and justification. I try to do this as a rule, and have perhaps been marginally successful, but the urge to “no way not me” is always strong. I can continue the endless uphill battle of trying to explain to the people in my life that have a less modern and open world view why people are in the streets, and why everyone being treated equitably won’t hurt them. I’m likely far away from an anti-racist, white ally, which means I can do better. A lot better. A just, equitable society filled with well-educated, safe, food/health/housing secure citizens is good for everyone. I mean not for the super wealthy, but fuck those assholes.
Thirdly - Pride month and LGBTQ+ folks and how they’re treated by our society. It’s gotten markedly better in my lifetime really, which is good. Looking back I’ve come to realize that I grew up in a pretty socially conservative time in the US, and definitely a socially conservative part of the US (which hasn’t changed that much over time unfortunately). I was pleasantly surprised by this summer’s supreme court decision around the civil rights act, but on reflection, that’s fucking crazy and outrageous and terrible. A huge section of our society still, right now, thinks we should be able to treat LGBTQ+ folks like they’re not humans, or like lesser humans, and a lot of those people are in positions of power.
Honestly if you hate gay people or trans people, and especially if you’re hiding behind the bible or whatever religious dogma to do it, fuck you. You’re human garbage, and spoiler alert, there is no god so you’re just an asshole. Fuck you and your biblical cherry-picking. I don’t want to get into a whole thing about religion and god here so I’ll try to focus up, but really why do you care who other people are (or aren’t) having sex with? My assumption about anyone, especially in a position of power, that is actively anti-gay is always that they’ve got some level of self-hating repression going on and that’s why they spread so much hatred around. I’m looking at you mike pence, you ugly, evil, self-righteous, evil, terrible, evil, fascist sack of shit. Again I have a number of friends and loved ones that fall into one of these categories and it pisses me off that they get shit on because of who they are. Everybody just be cool. God dammit. Alright? Alright.
But for real, I want to be totally clear here, if you hate anyone in the alphabet soup of LGBTQAI fuck you, stop reading this, stop following me on social media, don’t ever talk to me, don’t ever buy any of my art, if you have any of my art, burn it, don’t email me to discuss this or anything else. I’m assuming that no one reading this does, but why not say it, right? Not a brave stance to take on my part I realize because I have nothing to lose, but it makes me feel good to write it anyway.
Fourth - Climate Change. Remember when cigarette companies spent all that money lying about cigarettes not being dangerous b/c the longer they could deny, the more money they would make in the short term? And even though they knew the truth was coming they were just concerned about a quick cash grab and then fuck the people it hurt? Yeah so climate change denial is like that. Only worse. Like way worse. If you don’t think that this is some shit that will, over the course of the next 20 years, require all of us, but especially systems of power to focus a tremendous effort into fixing it, then just go buy some smokes and enjoy. And really at this point there is no “fixing it.” We’re fucked now. Our lives will be more difficult, less secure, scarier and weirder (and not in like a fun, keep Austin weird kind of way) than previous generations. How many times in the last five years have you heard the term “once in a generation event” or “hundred year” or even “five hundred year” with regards to storms, flooding or fire? Yeah. That’s because it turns out it doesn’t take much more energy in the system for shit to get really chaotic and intense. With really concerted efforts we might be able to continue living an alright life, but without, I think you might as well buy two packs of smokes… and maybe just start that heroin habit you’ve been hearing so much about. Again, I don’t have any helpful info here, but please, for the love of god or whatever, just listen to scientists! Please, just this other one time. For once (ok twice counting the covid thing).
OK. Still with me? If so, good job. This has been a long one already I know, so without further ado, here’s my original bellyaching rant.
I'm in no danger of being accused of possessing a positive outlook. I used to spend a lot of time making lists in my head of everything that had gone wrong when I was having a bad day, or let's be honest, a week or a month. The worse the day, the longer the list, and the longer the list the more pleased I was. I don't know what it was meant to accomplish. That I was miserable maybe or that the world was out to get me, or that I could endure a bunch of bullshit. The lists were long, and filled with every tiny slight, because the longer the list the better the list. I would roll them over and over in my mind for days, wallowing in anger and frustration. A few years ago I finally came to the conclusion that this outlook wasn't accomplishing anything. It wasn't getting me anywhere, except maybe to high blood pressure and being that lunatic muttering to himself on the train. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I changed overnight. As a matter of fact, it's not like I’ve changed that much at all yet. It's a slow process letting go of anger. So let's just say I'm a work in progress. I like to think that I'm better than I used to be, for instance I don't really wallow around in the lists anymore. At least not on a regular basis.
That being said, the last 18 months of my life have been fucked up. So if you'll indulge me, I'm going to wade around in some misery and frustration, I'm going to make a list of all of the bullshit and nonsense from my past year and a half and share it with you here. But maybe this time it can be something constructive, maybe it can be a way for me to let go of it. Maybe, we’ll see.
So let's start at the beginning, way back in January 2019. That’s when I found out that my side job, or if I'm being really honest, my primary source of income, was going to begin paying me about 20% less. In addition I might be losing the job altogether in the summer. It's a long boring story, but the short version is less money for the same work and probably ending in six months. A real win/win scenario. A few weeks later I got food poisoning. It was shockingly bad. It was the sort of food poisoning where one sits on the toilet and throws up into the tub. It was the sort of food poisoning where one sleeps on the bathroom floor. It was the sort of food poisoning where one should go to the emergency room if one could have walked down some stairs. I have vague memories of sipping Pedialyte and puking in a mop bucket when the bathroom floor got boring. In short, good times. A few weeks after that I had a bad bout of vertigo which laid me out for about a week due to some sort of inner ear infection. A neurologist essentially shrugged and said “I dunno” and then scolded me for trying to self-diagnose, which is great because I love being condescended to. During this same time, my work environment became increasingly toxic and the threat of losing my job even earlier was a regular issue. It’s always fun working in a fearful rumor-mill where the boss is “making tapes of all of us.” During this psychologically healthy time I found out that my stepmother was battling cancer. Stage four cancer. Fuck. A few weeks after that, in June, my Mom tells me that she has a hairline fracture in her pelvis, and would be bedridden for several weeks or maybe even a few months. She got it while doing physical therapy for a different problem. Fuck. Thankfully I’d been planning to visit her in July and I was about to have my summer free anyway, because, well I was losing my job. So the silver lining, I guess, was that I could extend my trip to help take care of my mom while she recovered.
The beginning of my July consisted of working, drinking, moving into a new apartment with my girlfriend and then flying to the Midwest. Thankfully I was already packed from the move, so, easy-peasy. Nothing like a stress free week of hangovers, losing a job and moving to get me in a traveling mood. About a week into my Midwest adventure of caring for my mom, my aunt, who had been very sick for the last year, was moved into an assisted living rehab facility. It started to become clear that she probably wasn’t ever moving back home. Fuck. A week or so later she, my aunt, was hospitalized with a MRSA infection. For those unfamiliar, MRSA infections are terrifying, antibiotic resistant staph infections. We had to wear gowns and gloves just to be in the room with her to prevent it from potentially spreading to us or around the hospital further. It didn’t look good, but somehow she managed to recover and was moved back to the rehab place. We were all cautiously optimistic. My mom was on the mend and so I headed back to New York. I got back in the beginning of August and actually had time to unpack and set up my studio and spend some time with my girlfriend that I had, at least in theory up to this point, moved in with. About 10 days later my aunt died. I found out on the way to a birthday party. I got pretty drunk and tried not to make everyone around me feel awkward. I probably failed. I flew back to the Midwest two days later. On the walk to the train to the airport, at 5 in the morning, a local scumbag conned me out of $20 (I knew better which made it worse - but in my defense I had had 2 hours of sleep and was on my way to a funeral so I wasn’t exactly on top of my game) and an argument ensued. At any rate, After exchanging some profanities and feeling like a dummy, I missed my train, which was only running once every half an hour because of the painfully early time of day. Yeah, the good times kept on rolling.
A week and a half later I was finally back in New York, things had settled, the worst was behind me. I was finally going to sleep on our new mattress. I’d been looking forward to this for weeks. Take joy in the little things, right? But wait a minute, it turns out they’d sent us a damaged mattress with a giant dead spot running down one entire side. It wasn’t noticeable until we slept on it. We switched sides back and forth over the course of a couple of weeks in disbelief. Surely we couldn’t have gotten a lemon of a mattress. Yep, and don’t call me Shirley (this is an old Leslie Nielsen joke and it’s funny irrespective of what my girlfriend says). Ugh. It took roughly 5 months of active back and forths to get the company to admit it was a faulty mattress and send a new one. Yeah, 5 months. We’ve been sleeping on the new one for a while now and the consensus is that on top of the first one being sent damaged, the mattress - a Simmons Beautyrest Platinum Tillingham III for anyone keeping score - is a piece of shit no matter what, even when they’re not fucked up. Seriously, eat a dick beautyrest.
OK, but aside from the mattress fiasco, September seemed like it might be alright, finally. I was going to have a great deal of time to paint and deal with the business of an art career. So then three weeks in, I managed to aggravate an old injury and give myself tendinitis in both forearms (I’ve subsequently learned that it’s a complicated, layered problem, involving my median and ulnar nerves as well as muscle weakness and tendonitis. Fun, right?). Think sharp, stabbing pain in both elbows radiating down to the hands. Good times. Turns out it’s a bad idea to just work through pain. A lot of pain. This effectively made it impossible for me to produce any art, work on a computer in any way, type, or use my phone. Hell it made it almost impossible to do simple things like wash dishes. This is total disaster. This is worst case. What the fuck? This is when I injured my knee. I could still walk, but it was painful, slow and difficult. Turns out that my knee pronates when I walk, and especially when I run, and over the course of time all of the connective tissue had finally had enough and revolted. No big deal right, I mean who needs to walk anywhere in New York?
That’s probably enough, right? Nah, go ahead and drop another quick bout of vertigo into that mix. So after I was able to walk without falling over, it pretty quickly became evident that the forearms and knee were all going to require professional help. I ended up in rehab for all three of them. I’m not going to get into a whole thing here about how evil insurance companies are, or how deeply immoral and flawed our healthcare system is in the United States, because that would just add another five paragraphs of swearing and frustration. But I have not-bad health insurance, for which I pay a ton of money, and it doesn’t cover shit until I hit a really high deductible. This is because health insurance companies are evil fucking assholes. Also capitalism I guess. I mean if you’re not maximizing profit on the backs of sick people you’re probably an antifa terrorist or whatever. But see, I’m getting off track here. The short version is I got to pay for all of this physical therapy out of pocket, while unemployed (OK, technically barely employed, I had started working again a few days a month). Yep, pretty great. I guess if I'm looking for a silver lining from this, at least I've learned that talk to text has gotten quite a bit better over the last few years. I mean not perfect, but it won’t sub in “ducking” when we all know what I was trying to say. It turns out that not being able to produce art, type, look for a job, work, go for a run or ride my bike gets pretty boring pretty fast. Don’t get me wrong, I like watching movies and Netflix shows and all, but there’s only so much sitting still that I can do.
OK, so surely that was it with the bad news, right? Since I hit my deductible with my health insurance, I decided that I might as well get a physical. You know, squeeze in some basic health care before the end of year deductible reset. Almost like living in a first world country with universal healthcare. Pretty sweet. Well right before Christmas, I found out that I had some other mild health problems. Nothing life-threatening but definitely a kick in the ass. Come on, man. Really? Okay well surely that was it I thought. The year is over, I made it, I didn't die. Things are going to turn around now. I know that New Year’s is a totally arbitrary thing, but maybe that’s just what I needed for shit to stop piling up. Something symbolic like the changing of the year. My arms were finally starting to feel a little better, my knee was feeling a lot better, I might even be able to start running again soon. Much more importantly I might be able to start painting soon. While visiting the Midwest for Christmas, I managed to seriously re-aggravate my arms through a combination of baking and fucking around on my phone too much. This effectively put me back at square one. This was my own fault, I once again didn’t listen to my body and ignored early mild pain. Well done dummy, another fine mess you’ve gotten us into. This meant I had to bow out of a show that I was booked into for the end of January, and turn down a small painting residency that I was offered for the spring. It also meant that I was going to have to go back to physical therapy again, and pay for all of it, again. Perfect.
And then my stepmother died. I knew as soon as I saw my step brother calling. I missed the funeral as I only had 36 hours of notice, but had made plans to come to my step brother’s wedding which was Memorial Day weekend. I also found out on this call that he was engaged. We don’t talk that regularly I guess. Spoiler alert - that wedding (and my visit) was postponed shortly after… yeah, you know why.
As a fun little bonus, my incompetent doctor, who I was already planning to never see again, decided to try to double bill me for every appointment I had had during 2019. This took something like five phone calls to clear up. When I discuss him I try to work in the phrase “well, not everyone can graduate in the top 50% of their med school class.” It’s a little less funny every time I have to interact with him.
One day in late February or early March, while walking Ike the Studio Assistant, we saw a cardinal singing in a tree. “That's it” I thought, “that's really got to be the end, it's really over now.” And so that's what I was hoping. The last 14 months were a nonstop kick in the ass, shit show, but it's over now. For real this time. I had even spoken to my bosses and I was going to be working a bit more until the fall, like enough to get by, and then come September I’d be working my normal amount. Cool, money problems sorted, body problems working out slowly, I might be able to paint again soon, the sky’s the limit, right?
Oops, not so fast. Wait, what’s that? Global pandemic you say? Oh…. so like just stay inside and wait some more? I see. So that brought my physical therapy to a screeching fucking halt and now my job basically just doesn’t exist anymore. It’s possible that the company I work(ed) for still exists, as we got a couple of PPP checks in May, so that was nice, but really the disorganized disaster of incompetence and cronyism that employed me is unsurprisingly radio silent these days. It’s almost like they don’t give a shit about their employees, but what do I know?
At any rate, as of June things seem like they’ve finally settled. I mean sure, the world is on fire, both literally and figuratively, we can’t really see friends and loved ones in person (or stop seeing the ones we’re hiding in our homes with) or travel, or go to the bar, and the country appears to be on the verge of civil war or descending into fascism, but my life has gotten weirdly better. Maybe I just needed a backdrop of everyone else being terrified and angry constantly to feel better - I mean like, welcome to my world, right? At the very least I can run again (my knee is like 85% - that’s a solid B, and I’ll take it) and I’ve been able to paint the smallest amount again, an hour or two a day, which after something like 11 months I have to say is god damned amazing. Really just the bee’s knees… the cat’s pajamas. I got to spend July with my family, dog and girlfriend in the rural midwest, and that was great too. And somehow, by several different metrics, my art career is actually doing quite well. I know, what the fuck, right? Life is strange I guess. OK that was long, you’ve earned a treat. Go have that last beer in the fridge or that cookie you’ve been thinking about. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
