The Advocate

Today was a frenetic flood of so many things to do, to say, to write, to read, and to hold that I literally dozed off in my chair with my laptop, cell, and headphones all right in the middle of listening to an important meeting. Today was a reminder that I only have so much time in a day and so many priorities I can tackle in it. Above all of those are my wife, my daughters, and our family together. Which is why it will be hard to step back, to take on less, to have to say no when I want to yell yes and jump right in. But when that happens, I have faith that there are so many other people in this community who have been and will continue to be there for justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. I take comfort in knowing that we all cycle through different periods of life, from the vanguard to rearguard. For me, this is a period of quiet growth, of foundation building, and of preparation for the work still to come. I am taking my next steps to reach those next levels in my life. I can...

(Credit) This is a prose poem. Please do not confuse the art with the artist by projecting the contents of the character into the creator. Begin rant/ I'm no longer on my antidepressant. I still take the Xanax though. My therapist, who I was finally starting to get comfortable with after months, has moved away for a new job. So I've stopped therapy completely. I treat my psychiatrist like a mushroom because he doesn't seem interested in me. I feel like my treatment has helped me as much by not helping me as it has by helping me. I still have intrusive thoughts about terrible things. I still exhibit hyper-vigilance. I still worry excessively about my shit and piss and bathrooms and wearing protective garments. Yet now I have stopped putting myself down for past my behavior when I was a child. I give myself space to try and openly be sad, to feel things, to not be perfect. Some days I even feel truly, unconditionally, and briefly happy. Especially with my infant. Still, I al...

Been a minute since my last post. Got caught up in the grind, as we all do from time to time. Forgot about the take back, clap back, but it's a long weekend and some things have not yet arrived, so here we find ourselves. There are times when I've got that itch, that restlessness, that skin-crawling tingle. The feeling that keeps me up at night doing chores no one has any business doing at 4 AM. The feeling that keeps me up listening to another Bon Iver album, sweating in my boxer-briefs, typing into the cyber-ether. My proverbial shout from the mountaintops to the bottom of the sea. I hope you don't mind this divergence into something a little more personal. There are times when my fingers must. When they have to. Have to type. Have to spin words like spiders must spin webs, like electronic daemons must crawl the interweb, trawling cyberspace until the end of time. Soon, I'm going to be a father. I am going to have a little girl. It could happen at any time. She...