Caterwauling

Martin, Walter, Ian and Toby are all bosses I’ve had.

If we are going with that theme, we need to name a storm Brad. He wouldn’t bother to show up and it would be a big, expensive letdown when he did.

I don’t think about getting older. But I do spend an insane amount of time thinking about what I wouldn’t be able to do without my (admittedly decreasingly optimal) health.

Rather, I spend an insane amount of time thinking about HOLY SHIT, WHAT IF I NEVER GET TO DO ANY OF THE THINGS I’VE DELAYED.

I was just looking at some artwork in a medical establishment, done by patients, children, spouses and supporters who were/are part of this important journey.

I used to think that if some horrible diagnosis or other misfortune would befall me, I’d beat the odds.

Fuck the odds. I would be the miracle. I’d make them RECALCULATE THE ODDS.

Now … enh.

I see average people doing just fine in this world. Average students who went on to average existences. They seem happier than us ex-overachievers who have the nice cars and nervous breakdowns and questionable health to show for it.

In the face of, let’s say, not the best news, you look at a median survival rate of, let’s say, five years. I imagine many would say, “I’ll make it 25!” And I’m over here like, I can’t commit to a diet for five minutes. Dealing with something you can’t quit for five months … that may not be overcome-able even after five years … sounds pretty goddamned exhausting to me.

In any event, when faced with insurmountable things, I know the moment I stopped being the exception.

I just wonder when I stopped assuming I’d be the exception. And how that could/have changed things.

When I was at the last job, I longed to be back at this one.

Now … I just want to retire.

Which, according to my target year fund on my 401(k), is 23 years from now.

Which makes me wonder … I already know I don’t have the energy I once did for this insanity. I will never work those 14-hour days with two-hour commutes again.

And I’m not real sure I can keep doing 8-10 hours anymore either. It’s too intense, man. And the only solution is to give up projects I want because the rest are quite consuming.

This makes me to examine the lives and livelihoods of my Silent Generation and Boomer-age extended family. Some will never die. Others are so tired of hurting that they would welcome it. Every damn one of them retired early or on time, either way.

Makes me wonder, does my evil ass live to 100 like the hypocritical religious ones who feel entitled to long life?

Or do I kick off by/at retirement age as a result of un-/under-treated illnesses and pain like the (other?) good ones?

Just look at the Van Zant family. Ronnie — the one with all the talent, the one who wrote songs about the environment and voted for Carter — died young. And his idiot brothers are now serenading Wrong DeathSantis in song.

(Also, fuck Johnny. Seriously. His “Brickyard Road” got me through a very frustrating time in high school. The only reason that song was a success was because it was ABOUT his brother, I see that now. Just go back to fronting a cover band, bud, and I’ll just be over here burning your cassette.)

I used to think of myself as supra-human. I felt like I could rise above any sort of genetics or other preordained fate.

There’s also beauty in not knowing half my family. My chances of mortal pain and suffering are instantly slashed.

Unfortunately, I kind of had that bubble popped when my half-sister’s mom died last year.

Not that there’s any blood relation there. But I’m guessing she must have been a good person and that the rest probably aren’t quite in that league.

Probably a good guess. Also, damn it.

In any event, I’m not going anywhere yet. (Sorry TuhNaKYiz.)

Staying alive and sane is my main goal right now. But if at some point, I can’t muster the energy to do it even out of spite, assume faulty genetics won.

Actually, don’t assume anything. I plan to outlive my superfans even if it’s only by 15 minutes.

Maybe I need to scale back on the stress sooner rather than later to do that.

Gotta love when people who don’t care about you send others to get information on your health. So they can tweet about that, probably.

And, after that fails because I am not stupid, bragging that they have good health and good insurance.

Good for you.

On this day in 1989, “Heathers” was released in cinemas.

“What Is Your Damage, Heather?”

I got to thinking as I was processing my Big Will Smith Energy yesterday.

Am I the asshole?

Yes.

Do I feel any particular way about that?

Not especially.

I was thinking about all the shit I wish I said over the years. Every time I smiled publicly and wept privately. Every time I walked away and the perfect zinger popped into my brain 10 seconds too late.

After you’ve been hurt enough, your filter disintegrates.

Not to say I haven’t said some mean and accurate shit over time. If there’s anything I miss Psycho for, it’s how we could sit and be bitches together. It was when we turned on each other that I felt the sting. Like, damn, we are evil when we feel wronged. Better to team up and be evil together, at least for my own sense of safety.

I remember the day I walked away for good. He called to tell me his dog had died. I loved that dog and wept more than I’d ever admit. But then more calls came. And I didn’t want to go back to that cycle of (co)dependence. I didn’t want to go pick up the ashes. I didn’t want to be there for the other favors that would follow.

I thought about the night we had to call the cops because a friend OD’d. How I had to beg the cops not to arrest these clearly troubled souls for the trace amount of pot they found and were marking as evidence. How we camped out in the OR at the expense of a major deadline I was on. How my heart was just wearing out from the velocity that came with “having friends.”

He always made fun of me that I wanted to be a homebody. It wasn’t that. Anyone who knows me, knows I can’t sit my pudgy pork roast ass at home. I just didn’t want the drama that sometimes came with going out and the substances we all consumed that amped it up to 11.

In any event, I know he holds that time against me. It was me choosing me. It was a rare occasion of me honoring my boundaries.

It also led to living in absolute fear of being stalked, attacked, having my identity compromised and losing my job. All of those fears were founded, BTW. All of them.

Again, enemies are often better closer.

Happy anniversary, “Beetlejuice”

What’s sad is the few thoughts I’ve had about this person, he would probably have appreciated. We always did love a good joke, even when we were the butt of it.

I think that’s why I don’t let much slide anymore. For all the years I shut my face so Beetlejuice wouldn’t reappear. It’s the reason comments are closed on the blog, after years of getting cute comments from cool bloggers with whom I am real-life friends now. It wasn’t worth it.

I’ve oft pulled the plug on my social media for the same reason. But determined people get around the blocks and bans. It’s really not worth it to exert effort for people you wouldn’t even hold a door open for if you saw them running toward you.

Read away. Thank you for finding me so wildly compelling.

In any event, I could very well admit to being wrong or at least being an asshole about some things. But when I dig deep in my black heart, I see nothing.

Heck, a part of me WANTS to find some ounce of compassion to prove that I have some for beings other than my mom and cats.

And if that makes me an asshole, well, as I told the original menace, I hope the next time you’re up someone’s ass, they get diarrhea.

I guess that makes me Team Chris Rock after all.

The new moon is coming up on the 31st. Meantime, I’ve got some energy to work out during this dark moon.

Dark moons are times when energy is low and the desire to toss a match to everything is high. Which makes it a good time to decide which of that is ours to carry and which needs be given back to the giver.

I’m working that out with Lilith Fair Radio on Sirius XM. I wish they’d keep this channel for longer than a month. Hard to believe it’s been 25 years since the first festival … since I graduated from college … since all of those mixed-up, dark-moon emotions that I didn’t know what to do with.

It’s been like hearing from old friends … the ones you actually like.

So much has happened since then. Lots of it good. Lots of it bewildering. I can’t imagine being stuck with the same dark energy (mine AND others’. Especially others’) from that time.

God bless people who have had dark energy attached to their light since then. I know some good banishing spells!

In any event, I’m also feeling some Big Will Smith Energy. Even though it was probably staged when he popped Chris Rock in the mouth at the Oscars.

Mmm meltaways …

Will popping Chris in the mouth shook something loose in me. It went beyond the delight with whom I trade insults.

While I have not uttered word one about their family (and I would dispute any so-called “proof” they would claim to offer, since they never provide such proof when I call their bluff), they don’t return the favor.

Next time (and there always is one), don’t be surprised if I end up pulling a Will.

But like I said, it went beyond that. An old memory flickered from a previous shitstain on the pantaloons of humanity, who said something about another relative, years ago.

Then, I chose to ignore it. Why give them any acknowledgement that their comment was seen, let alone processed?

I wish I could be like that again. Like, oh, look. You want me to acknowledge your pathetic existence? How adorable. Bye, now.

So I guess this is me acknowledging it. Maybe they’ll get a hard-on that they’ve been acknowledged after all these years. Maybe I’ll get over my anxiety that it will conjure up Beetlejuice by nodding in their general direction.

I wonder if all this (three years wasted) was really me just getting out of my system all the shit I should have said 15 years ago.

One thing I do know is that there is great wisdom to be found in anxiety and fear. And in utter and complete disgust, apparently.

The good news about this dark energy is that it will be gone on Thursday, with the reset button that the new black moon brings.

But I’m taking that Big Will Smith Energy with me just in case one of these Beetles still needs squashing.

My favorite finpub often ends with a page of random crap about the writer’s life. I used to hate it until I realized I’d rather read about his cats than his attempts at arbitrage.

SPEED ROUND

1. I’ve had “Hands Clean” on repeat on Apple Music. That song is 20 years old and it never stops being relevant.

2. One of my employees is having her cat put to sleep as I type this. Between that and all the recent hoomin deaths, I’m cried the fuck out.

3. Every time I ask my tarot deck about someone, I get The Emperor. See item No. 1.

4. One of my favorite employees resigned. I countered today. Been trying to make departmental changes for months, including giving her a promotion.

5. Corporations move so slow. Too slow.

6. I’m interviewing/testing four candidates for another role. Now I have this opening. And another opening. And I still haven’t made the structural changes that I’ve been proposing since November.

7. And we’re launching seven new products.

8. Tried a new doctor’s office. Only marginally less unhappy with it. Staying with the previous one with the state of the art facility and the doctor who keeps her hand on the door, the physician’s assistant who screams in my face and the medical assistant who couldn’t find a vein with a goddamned Hubble telescope. Maybe.

9. It’s rarely the friends I miss who call. My Japan team calls me more than anyone. Usually at 6:30 in the morning.

10. Writing one last performance review before I have to do 18 of them in May. Never thought this is where my journalistic/writing career would end up.

Just make sure you don’t tell on me, especially to members of your family
We best keep this to ourselves and not tell any members of our inner posse
I wish I could tell the world
‘Cause you’re such a pretty thing when you’re done up properly
I might want to marry you one day if you watch that weight and keep your firm body.

I found out Sia lay dying in a Canadian hospital via Faceypages.

Her mom, in B’more, was posting on her wall to hang in there till she got there.

Her mom didn’t really know we were friends and never responded to my calls to offer condolences and find out what happened.

I did find out what happened from a mutual friend who was in Vancouver and stayed at her bedside till the mom got there.

The mom and sister weren’t close to her, as far as I knew. Maybe something had changed. But it really seemed like they guarded Sia in death since they couldn’t contain her spirit in life.

In any event, this year I’ve had some flashbacks to that time.

I had a bunch of friends at my last job. They were there during the lowest point of my life last June. And boy were there a bunch of those. But without a reason to talk all the time, we mostly didn’t.

Not even in February, when one got married. Which I know because I read about it in the goddamn Palm Beach Post.

Not even last Friday, when another said on LinkedIn that her mom was in the hospital.

I texted the second one today to say I know I’m out of the loop/group and I have to find out about your big life events on social media now but I love you a whole bunch and I’m thinking about you.

My phone rang instantly.

Her mom died Monday.

Shit.

I didn’t say much other than I felt like I knew her mom. How much she looks like her mom. How awesome that she has a good guy to support her. How I’ll think of her mom loving her daughters and her cats … and their kids and their cats … and her perfectly manicured garden that she landscaped with her own two hands.

I said this is how I found out about Sia. Is this what we have to look forward to, a lifetime of getting heartbreaking news in between memes about overqualified SCOTUS nominees being cross-examined by hypocritical hicks and limp-wristed losers?

I remember the month my life went to absolute shit. How H. called Sue and they cried for me.

Sue’s obituary says she was everyone’s second mom, and her girls were lucky to have her as their mom.

As I read that during my next conference call, I wept for them the way they wept for me.

I don’t know how any of them are stringing sentences together right now.

And knowing that Sue died the same way Sia did, I don’t know how I’m doing the same.

I can now count four — four — young losses in my circle. All boys. Men. All sons of people close to me.

It is not lost on me that, if I’d bred, he or she would have turned 20 last month. It’s not that I think about it or celebrate it or rue it. It’s just how I measure time.

To have spent the last +/- 20 years investing everything you have into someone whose demons speak louder than love, I can’t even imagine what it’s like to be them today.

All of these events are unrelated. Only two of the families even know each other, but their kids would never have known of each other.

I don’t know all the methods. Whatever those were, are less relevant than the cause. And those, I do know.

And … I get it.

In a lot of ways, things do get better. But in a lot of other ways, they don’t.

I don’t know what the next life holds. Mom doesn’t believe there’s anything out there. I believe we go back to Source with our memories and the people and pets who were part of them.

I also believe we choose our next life based on what we didn’t get in this one. And that our memories get wiped clean so we can start anew and get the answers we so desperately sought in this life.

Jesse. Bryan. Jacob. Matt. May you find the peace that eluded you here. And may your parents figure out a way to go on in a world that was cruel while you were in it, and unspeakably brutal without you in it.

ETA: Five. Justin.