for whom the baja blasts

Take a good look at this obnoxious picture. These are the #schoolbusfires in a nutshell (although missing many members due to distance). Some may remember the namesake from the pandemic-era twitch stream days , but this is a group of friends that came together because of the Monolith all those years ago, primarily playing GTA Online and various Halos, but have since become a critical part of each other's lives. Sometimes I will share the ongoing bits or memes of the week with my girlfriend or the gang and they'll be astounded at the absurdity. I love them for it.  I suppose this is just another one of those bits. 

On April 20th, I hit a decade without drinking. I've said in the past, I feel great about managing this, but there will always be a part of me that simply considers this as getting back to square one. Even more so, considering the years of mental health issues that I had ignored as real and trying to get right on that path. I like to think that I'm managing that as well, but the landmarks involved are of course less tangible and progress isn't nearly as linear.

As part of my daily reading, I have a grounding morning of quotes and introspections I go through. This recently leapt out at me: "Whenever someone has done wrong by you, immediately consider what notion of good or evil they had in doing it. For when you see that, you'll feel compassion, instead of astonishment or rage. For you may yourself have the same notions of good and evil, or similar ones, in which case you'll make an allowance for what they've done. But if you no longer hold the same notions, you'll be more readily gracious for their error." - Marcus Aurelius, MEDITATIONS

Time will never cease bringing on even more somber occasions for memorializing loved ones. When I last wrote about the loss of someone, I had never considered I would have to retread that ground so soon. That was naive. It's been a really weird place to sit with emotions, having recently wanted to firmly bar myself from living too closely with nostalgia, but then being met with devastating news about someone who made those good old days so good. My buddy Marvin has left the world too soon.

Years ago, in the early days of our work on the Monolith, I had begun extensively researching ARGs, having only vaguely heard the term when I was younger. I've talked about it before, but there was a sort of chicken and the egg situation when we really started to get the project rolling. I knew "what" an ARG was, but never had the words. Growing up, I participated in I Love Bees and thought the concept was incredible, but didn't have the terminology for it. Obviously, the allure of making media that felt "real" was always there from the beginning of the project, but a few deep-dives around 2010 brought everything into a new perspective.  Especially when I realized that the godfather of all alternate reality games was set in our own New Jersey.

Something really amusing and heartwarming happened to me recently. 

In some of my writing, especially recently, I've remarked that it feels as if I have gone to too many funerals for peers and have read far too many obituaries about old classmates. Terribly, this has not stopped, and I have sadly had to pay my respects to a former employee of mine who was only a few years my junior.  

You know I am a fan of synchronicities and yet another struck me recently. I had it in mind to write down something similar this morning, and when I opened my daily reading, this was the quote that I was met with: "That's why the philosophers warn us not to be satisfied with mere learning, but to add practice and then training. For as time passes we forget what we learned and end up doing the opposite, and hold opinions the opposite of what we should." -  Epictetus, DISCOURSES

In the spirit of posting more "bloggy" things, I thought about my lists of favorite or important songs that I've accumulated over the years. Will do more of these in the future and try to cover different topics of thought as they arrive. For now, here's a grab-bag of picks. 

On this page, I do think there was a sense of finality in that last post in December. It was not designed to go dormant or anything like that, but I had set out to do a year of monthly posts focusing on my experiences with therapy, my past, recovery, and learning through a diagnosis. I think I let some of the technical matters fall to the wayside a bit but do think the meat of it was there. It was odd balancing learning and therapy and deciding what I wanted to actually share. The process, obviously, is just for me. It was not an experience to be entirely broadcasted. But I felt the need to throw some words out there, in case anyone could relate or learn something or avoid the same mistakes I have made. Safeguard against the same pain I had self-inflicted, created, and caused for others. I do think there's a utility there. But I kept (and will always keep) some things for myself.  So where does that leave us now? 

For better or worse, I know that I can truly commit to something, at least on a small scale. There are things I know about myself and habits that I form that become just another part of my daily life. For instance, I know that Duolingo will be completed (day 2500-something currently) and I know that I will start every day with my daily wisdom and spiritual readings, and then my financial newsletter. These things will not change. But it's unfortunately taken me way too long in life to commit myself to things that are better for myself and those around me, on a larger scale. In this whole process, I've been focusing on creating those habits and making those thoughts and feelings becoming second nature - becoming real and a part of me - throughout it all. I’m going to recap this last year of thought and versions of trust that I’ve found and will continue to work towards protecting.

Since writing about my experiences with our creative work , I've been thinking about a lot of the people we interacted with over the years. As always, this doesn't apply to the friendships we've made that will last a lifetime, but rather that vague, nebulous, and anonymous world out there, that is always trying to get in. 

This has been a topic on my mind for almost as long as I've been maintaining this blog, but I hadn't dedicated as much concentrated thought on it. Having had the time and discussing it a bit in therapy, I think I have some slightly better words for how I am feeling on it. This goes for any endeavor you are undertaking, but I have been thinking about the expectations you should set for yourself, and healing and doing the work at your own pace. 

These posts aren't meant to be bulletproof pieces of advice, merely explanations of how I've come to conclusions about certain things and why  I'd might give certain advice. Sometimes the stories that led up to certain outlooks can appear as a series of setbacks culminating in giving up, but I'm not sure that's always accurate. I see it more as protecting one's peace and oneself. The easy way shouldn't be the default, but sometimes avoiding unnecessary suffering is the best option. Especially when you've had your share of needless suffering, both brought on by others and dealt to others by your own actions. At its core, this text involves struggling under the weight of others' own ruminations and simply choosing not to engage with it. It involves the mixed feelings and the hurt in realising that people that you thought knew you and how you operate have an entirely different image of how you think and feel. And act.  Generally, I write these thoughts ...

Considering that this month is my birthday, I've decided to take a step back and assess my daily activities as sort of a midyear check-in. A halfway New Year Resolutions review, I guess. Highlight some things that have brought me joy. Spread out the things that I know I still recognize as difficult. Think about things that are good and how I'm working to mitigate the bad. 

This is going to be a bit rambling, but I promise the thoughts eventually come around. I feel that they occurred around the same time and are staying together for a reason. I believe that they do have the same DNA. Let's see. 

Every so often, I think about friends and relatives going through their own education. Not that hard to when you see loved ones celebrating a graduation. Whether its for professional ambitions or following up on programs that they had to abandon earlier on in life, I empathise with their journey and generally think to myself: I couldn't imagine doing that now. There were so many courses that made the whole experience worthwhile, but after going through the public school system, college, and then graduate school, I couldn't fathom doing it "all" again. So many dreaded courses in weaker subjects. So much time spent on the building blocks of things I may not have been interested in. It was a long, long process and I'm glad I finished. I'm glad it's done. But I don't think that should mean we ever stop learning.  Accountants and doctors are both required to keep up with contemporary advancements to be able to keep doing their work. Teachers regularly have ...

In late March I was fortunate enough to attend a rare speaking event featuring the author of House of Leaves , Mark Z. Danielewski. Anyone familiar with my work and interests knows how significant this was to me. The event was hosted at Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia and an online friend of many years sent the announcement to me in passing. It wasn't highly advertised. I never would have known about it for this message and I'm eternally grateful for their thinking of me.  The host of the event, a professor, had an idea for a project (of which I'm curious to see how it turns out) by providing a litany of secondhand books to attendees of the events. We were to jot down notes and thoughts in the books as we listened to Z. speak, and then the books would be turned into a massive, physical piece of art. At a certain point though, I stopped taking notes that would contribute to this interesting piece and took out my phone to write down things I found significant for myself t...

This was always an odd topic. It was hard to discuss in passing conversations or posts online, because it invariably left out literal years of context and would absolutely, without fail, create more issues than it was worth due to people latching onto things that they perceived as slights and offensives towards them. The greatest and worst comedy was that the most vocal and upset responses to any such commentary were generally never even a component of that initial conversation. People would see commentary from those with online audiences and would immediately get upset, since they were a part of an online audience. Well, that's a part of why I am writing this now. I don't need to go punch for punch with someone already incensed on something that they misinterpreted. Even with this attempt, this text won't be comprehensive and will likely yield further, similar posts in the future as I recall more experiences.  But this is important to me as it has absolutely affected every...

For a long time, being asked about what I wanted in a relationship was something that only ever came up in a moment of tension. It tended to be on the tail-end of a relationship, where we were realizing that things were not working out for whatever reason, with it usually being (but not always) my fault. When these moments happened later in my life, they tended to be less dramatic. There was a level of maturity there, an understanding that this was not working out and that separating was likely the most straightforward solution. When it's mutual, it seems that it's a lot easier, but I'm not sure that's the proper word. A lot more frictionless, maybe. Smoother. Some people are just not compatible, and they go their separate ways. Some of these former relationships go on to become friends, some even "lifetime" friends. But it's always an odd situation to find oneself in where the amicable, obvious solution is separation, but one or both of the couple are rel...