Rust Belt Ramblings

I haven’t wanted to burden anyone with the following thoughts, so instead I will indirectly throw them at a wide array of someones. It’s much like shotgunning my melancholy into the void, hoping to minimize its impact on the world around me. You see, these thoughts shouldn’t really carry any impact. It’s the same old feeling around my birthday. One of a lack of importance or visibility. This feeling isn’t one I like to feed. It’s a huge underlying part of my worst qualities, and it drives me to be everything I desire to not be. But around August 11, it gets harder to shoo away. We equate the anniversary of our birth with a sense of meaning, and it lends itself to selfish thoughts. And oh, my sweet Ora, I am a sucker for those. I struggle to accept my place in the stories I get to share in this journey. The truth is always that I am just happy to have a place in the tales others tell, but I desire more than I let on, almost always. It’s simple, but it’s deceptively tricky. I de...

“The only thing that’s ever stopping me is me” -Fall Out Boy, Stay Frosty Royal Milk Tea Well, proved that yesterday with the one-shot. It felt natural… but I gave myself a day to process it before searching for conclusions to draw. I have not lost any of the joy I felt at the immediate conclusion. It felt like something I could flow and roll with, and I felt like i could do it “my way,” but still effectively. Its the joy of the “what do you think?” and the pleasure of the “yes, and?” I was in control of the moment but I was not in charge. I am less a dungeon master, and more a self-aware narrator. And I think it suits me to pursue my “style” as such. I’m lucky. I know about the “Mercer Effect” and how a lot of DMs get down on themselves for not being that guy. Listen, he’s wonderful, and I love what he does. But I’m more trying to be Sam Elliott in “The Big Lebowski,” so I get to dodge that pressure. The DM Abides, man.

It’s been a really really long year, and it’s only January. There’s a ton of reasons for this, but right now I’m focusing on one. This is America. It’s got me so fucked up lately. And I’m not your standard, garden variety panicked yankee over here. I’m not making preparations to leave, I fucking can’t. Ain’t just that easy, I’m not marketable and my wife’s got Multiple Sclerosis, we’re not providing value, we’d be refugees not emigrants. But I’m already digressing. I think the best way to put this is that I’m not afraid. I’m concerned. Fear implies a feeling of danger. I’m a straight-passing cis white man with some beautiful baby blues, my bleeding heart is the only thing that makes me distinguishable from the alpha male misogynist and gigachad MAGA maniac. I don’t fear for myself. But i have strong concerns for people I hold dear to me. I’m also pissed off. Pissed off that my Canadians won’t be coming here because of the bullshit of our leader here and the legitimate danger he puts f...

So, I’ve begun reading one of my gifts from a friend. The book “Daring Greatly” by Brene Brown. It may or may not have been suggested to me that I record my observations and reflections on it, and I take it to heart when these things are suggested. This will be me trying my best, chapter by chapter, to reflect, and ponder, and maybe be able to draw some useful conclusions. Tonight, I read the foreword and the introduction. I don’t know much about the author, or rather I didn’t, beside what I have been told by my friends who have read her work and listened to her TED talks and such. I knew she was very knowledgeable on things that are very relevant to my personal journey, shame, emotion, vulnerability. This was enough, but upon reading the introduction and learning a bit about Brown, I find myself feeling quite seen and understood. She’s not just a researcher of these things, she’s a sufferer of them, in many ways that feel very close to my own experiences. Let me explain… Im reading ...

I’m a new person. Well, it feels like it at the moment. This year has been me blowing up a lot of things in my mind and my being, and the spaces keep getting filled with revelations and realizations. It’s been awful and awe-inspiring, the worst year of many but so much better than the past. It hurts my brain to process it but I’m nothing if not a masochist so I’m living on the high of self-discovery right now. It’s not going to last forever. I think that’s why I was encouraged to write about it. It was a good suggestion, recording for posterity, and I’ve learned to steal those good suggestions and outside observations. One of the things that has really kicked in for me is a desire to hear the outside view, it’s taught me to listen to myself more as I apply the principles of giving others my ear and taking their words to heart. Yesterday, a friend bought tickets to a concert for himself, and also me and Chelsea. It was impulsive and I sorta advised against including me but he would not ...

Lately, I’ve been contemplating time. Not so much the whole concept, my mind would implode and I’d be fetal sitting in the shower muttering about futility and all that jazz. No, I've been thinking about time as it relates to me and the way I’ve conducted myself. Let me explain. I was the kid that at five years old would sit in the bathtub and contemplate my own mortality. Bear with me, this isn’t all so depressing, I promise it takes a turn. The point I’m establishing is that I’ve always worried about the limited amount of time I’ve had. Maybe I was burdened with glorious purpose or something, I didn’t know why, but it always felt so fleeting, even when it was supposed to feel infinite. As I got older, I was always preparing for the future, and I did all the things I was expected to societally to do so. Kept up my studies and all that fun shit. Then I failed out of university in my first year. I didn’t want to be an engineer, I didn’t know what I wanted but it wasn’t that. Honestly...

 I HATE Neapolitan ice cream.  Whoever decided to put my chocolate between vanilla and of all things, STRAWBERRY, you suck. But it works better for culture.  I've often tried to figure out what part of America I'm in, with very mixed results.  I realized this while describing myself and my area to someone who is most decidedly not "from here," by pointing out that "us Midwesterners" are the Canadians of America, and I enjoyed that.  But I got to thinking about it.  Pittsburgh, sure it's got some Midwest in it, similar basis in industry and manufacturing, with a smattering of agriculture and such. We're in the "rust belt," running up through Ohio on its way toward Detroit, and that's a pretty midwestern situation right there, mentioning those two places alongside us here.  We share a certain begrudging camaraderie with our neighbors. There's always room at our table, even if we may grumble a bit about the extra "comp'ny....