#i’m also going to have this blog be exclusively art i think. going to relocate all reblogs to side blogs!

[circadianaa]

hi guys . using this post to simultaneously announce that i am pretty much divorced from star wars and that my new baldurs gate side blog is @dzhaire . star wars will always be near and dear to my heart and i will NEVER move on from cadaver and co as little facets of myself but im very excited for my new ocs and muses and to get back into the swing of community and fandom and creativity 🧙‍♂️💥

[pleasuringmyprincess]

Love Letter

I wrote the following In July, but decided not to share it at that time. it's now October.  Circumstances change.

________________________________________________________________

I know this isn’t going to be easy for me, so please bear with me.

I’m looking for a new dom for my sub.

I’ve know Ren for six months or so, in a long distance relationship through circumstance rather than design. Circumstance being that I live in California, while she lives in England. This is not a full time LDR, work and family (I’m also from England) bring me to the UK regularly. So in the time we’ve known each other, I’ve travelled to England every 10-12 weeks, staying for 4-5 weeks each time, and I have two more trips scheduled for between now and the end of the year.

When I met Ren it was supposed to be just for play, but we found we had so much in common, so many shared interests outside in the real world, so much chemistry that a serious relationship quickly developed. 

Ren isn’t just a delightful sub, she’s a wonderful mother to two lovely children, she’s fantastic company, intelligent, fun loving, really smart, caring, upbeat all the time, but... there’s always a but, and for Ren it’s a big one.

Let’s start by saying if there was ever someone who didn’t deserve the deck she was dealt it’s Ren. Over the last 6 years her self-esteem has been shattered by her prior partners, (I’ll say no more than that they have one way or another treated her badly) and as a consequence she has suffered from severe depression, has Generalized Anxiety Disorder, has self-harmed, and most recently has been diagnosed and is now being successfully treated for severe Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD).

Pause a moment there - this is the same woman, the woman who has been shit on by the world is also the wonderful mother, the delightful, intelligent, fun loving, smart, caring woman. My unicorn.

Ren’s seen a few big changes recently, most significantly she finally was able to divorce her husband and move to a new home. Two big steps forward, but at a cost of greatly increased anxiety. Just after this she heard that she was losing her job - she’s highly skilled but works in a poorly paid profession and because of the need to care for her kids, can only work part time. And she’s just lost her dom. We’ll come back to that in a minute.

In a scene, Ren is delightful, absolutely exquisite. I couldn’t ask for more, it breaks my heart to think of letting her go. Outside of a scene though, she can be very hard work. It’s more a question of providing support and encouragement over discipline. I have lost count of the number of hours I’ve spent helping her through the pain she feels. When she’s particularly low, it can be 3-4 hours a day. That’s not a complaint, I’d do it all again in a heartbeat even now while I’m writing this. It’s just a sign of the level of commitment you need to make. And just so it’s clear, Ren knows she has these problems and spends a lot of time in self-care activities and while it helps, it’s not enough.

Ren’s a working single mum, on a budget, she’s already very disciplined, very ordered, but she still struggles with some things and I have not been as successful as I would have liked in helping her address these issues (although today she has just proved to me that she can do this unbidden when motivated). I’ve not got to the bottom of why this is, and frankly it’s not been a high priority for me. I’ve been focused on helping her improve her self-esteem, manage her anxiety and encourage her to seek treatment for her PMDD (yay me!). This has really been my primary goal. And while it’s too soon to be sure, it really looks like we have succeeded, her anxiety and PMDD are both under control now. She is far far stronger today than she was three months ago.

Unfortunately, helping her get treatment for PMDD may have been my downfall.

After six years in the wilderness Ren is becoming whole again, free from her past, independent, far stronger than she has been for many years. Strong enough to tell me that she wants to move on. Ren needs someone full time, I know this, we’ve discussed it at length, and I had already put plans in motion to return to live in England to be with her. Now Ren has told me that while I am returning to England, it's not soon enough for her - she doesn’t want to wait. She also has concerns about my marriage. I am divorcing, she knows this, but right now I am married, and my divorce is something that Ren does not want to feel responsible for - she’s not responsible, that ship sailed long ago, but she says she will still feel responsible, and that’s enough. And my age, I’m 14 years older than her, too old in her eyes for a long term commitment.

Now obviously I’m not too happy about this, we are/were amazingly good together and had I not worked so hard to help her through her problems I might not be in this position today. I do feel significantly responsible for Ren’s recent improvement. For giving her the support she needed; for helping her apply for jobs; for showing her that there was a man who would fight for her, accept her for who she is, respect her for it; for being the consistent and reliable dom she needed; and most significantly for getting her back to the doc and having her PMDD addressed. 

This is where I get a little twisted - one of the side effects of the medication Ren is taking for PMDD is possible impaired judgement. And there's part of me that thinks, dumping your dom like this wasn't the wisest thing to do right now. So the treatment for PMDD that I helped her get, might possibly be responsible for Ren taking what I think is an ill-judged decision in deciding that she’d rather seek out her perfect Dom than accept this one with all his flaws. I’m not blind to the fact that there’s part of me that thinks ‘Hey, I did the hard work in putting her back together and it would be nice to enjoy some of the benefits’, OK, I fully realize that’s selfish of me, but it’s understandable, I’m a dom, not a saint. To be clear though, it's not the decision I have a problem with, it's the hurried way she approached it.  But we serve at our sub’s pleasure, and so here we are.

As it is, and I’ve never shared this with anyone, not even Ren, until now. I made a promise to myself that I’d help her come what may. And if that means 'setting her free' and helping her find a dom who’s worthy of her, that’s what I’ll do.

And so I’m looking for a new dom for my sub.

If you think that you might possibly be able to be the dom Ren needs, I’d like to hear from you. Before you all shout, as you might have gathered, I hold Ren in very high regard, and I will not let her settle for anyone who isn’t good enough. And just to be clear, I’m not going away. Ren and I have every intention of remaining friends.

So can this be you?

Let’s see shall we.

You’ve got to accept that Ren is a rich multi-faceted human being. If you are looking for a fuck toy, stop here.

She’s looking for more than just a play partner. Listen to Lou Reid singing Perfect Day, if you can’t offer that, you can stop reading here. Married guys (like me), guys in poly, or any form of relationship with someone else, you can stop here, she wants exclusivity. Btw, if you’re separated, divorcing, or whatever, you’re still married, so you stop here too. You don’t drink sangria in the park with Ren, and then later when it gets dark go home to your wife (read the lyrics, it will make sense).

Age 40-50, no exceptions. You will be fit and healthy, height/weight proportional.

No diseases, you will provide current STI test results, and you will always use a condom.

It will help if you a pro-Remain, if not, you need to be able to offer a coherent argument against. Intelligence matters. 

As a submissive, Ren has specific needs, and specific limits. She needs pain, she needs to be spanked, mild to moderate use of a riding crop and paddle is OK, but not severe caning. She needs bondage both for the restraint and the art. Obviously there are other things as well, but she can share that if you meet, and I’m sure there are things that we’ve not tried that she will enjoy. She has limits and you will respect them. You will not humiliate her in any way, not even name calling. Not in play, not as punishment. There are other things you will not do, obviously, and again she can share them if you meet.

You must be an experienced Dom, having a fetlife account or a tumblr blog doesn’t count. You will meet me first. You will provide government photo ID, and references, and I will follow up on references in person.

Ren needs a Dom who is close by, someone who can see her 2-3 times a week without fail and who will remain in close contact when apart. Long distance relationships don’t work for her (ask me how I know), she needs to know you are close by, which means you must be within daily driving distance. No, she will not relocate. She has joint custody of her kids with her ex and that’s not going to change.

You’ve got to accept that she is not at your beck and call. She’s a mother, her kids come first and always will. You don’t even rate second place; like I said, she has a very demanding self-care program that takes a lot of her time, that comes next. She also has a cat. You might aspire to a position above the cat in her hierarchy, but I wouldn’t count on it.

________________________________________________________________

Don't take this as anything other than a mile marker down a road already travelled.

Applications are not currently being accepted. 

[duckbeater]

Duck Beater at Ten; or, The Orphans

[Editor’s Note: I started this blog a decade ago—occasion enough, I thought, for me to reflect on what it’s meant to contribute (in my extraordinarily untimely and narrow way) to a log that has tried (and more often failed) at recording where I’m at and how I’m doing and what I’m thinking and where I’m going. Having this space has not unreasonably kept me in it—I mean, its persistence has kept me reflecting more or less on the period of its inception. I think a lot about who I was at 23, which is idiotic and costly. I read more books back then. I had no money. My best friend was my brother. I thought I would write a novel.] 

Years ago, my brother’s friend offended him when she asked me why I didn’t prefer one brand of paint over another. I was probably in my apartment's kitchen, working on a canvas, and they were probably behind me, eating my boyfriend's food.

I painted then because I was very poor. One way of thinking through your poverty—if you haven't drugs or sex or a brain injury—is to create pointless tasks for yourself, which is what art-making very often is. It's like Vicodin. It's very lovely, costly, addicting, transporting and makes your stomach hurt if you're not full-up already on something else (say, mashed potatoes). I was painting a truly hideous “family portrait”—globs of white and green paint shaped like cast-off “Sesame Street” creatures—and I was painting, besides, for myself. To hold the brush and to fold the colors and to smell the Turpenoid. A.J. had the money for food (our dying grandfather had cosigned on a student loan) and yet there he was with Victoria, in my apartment, peeling back the silvery foil of a Pop-Tart, making crinkling sounds.

I shouldn't say “my apartment” because it was really Cole’s: I had decamped there when we fell hard in love. This was on the corner of Union and Greenwich, across from an intramural field, and beyond that the law school. It was low-income housing: most has been destroyed; and now that I'm on Google I find the places I walked by, the porch I painted bright blue, the rooms I cherished (orange, annoyingly), they've all disappeared. There's odd grassy lots where there were once old, three-apartment houses, their interiors mangled to accommodate the crying fits of off-campus seniors. In the decade since their vanishment, even the indentations of walkways, of their foundations are invisible, and the lawns are as serene and flat and verdant as well-maintained graves. I recall coming off work one night that October, and finding Cole in the stairwell to the second-floor flat. He was crumpled in a ball, on the phone, arguing with his father: I should visit for Thanksgiving; I should be considered family. He was so angry he was bawling, and he hated me to touch him, and I left him in a daze which is also how I finally left him—in a daze, hating me to touch him. (But on better terms with his father.) Well, that stairwell is gone.

A.J. and Victoria, and in fact many of A.J.’s other law school friends, they regularly came into this apartment. (I have written about them before and realized only in editing this piece that the following brief description is a paraphrase of that missive.) They played Mario Kart on the GameCube, recited Moot Court speeches and ate take-out on the sofas. They gossiped incessantly because a small law school is a high school (it even had lockers), and the attendees are as reckless and dispirited and status-hungry as freshmen in a high school. He was a first year then and I was a fifth year finishing my undergrad, and so I saw all of A.J.'s new friends more than I ever saw my old ones because my old friends had moved on. (They went to Austin, Texas. They stayed at most three years and then relocated to either Los Angeles or the Pacific Northwest.)

I want to try to remember Victoria without resorting to her Instagram account. Back then, she took great pains to distinguish herself as a sophisticated New Englander. I see: high socks, long “piecey” hair, a face white-powdered to pore-less perfection. Perhaps because she was changing her life at twenty-eight and not at twenty-three, as other law students were, her look inclined toward the transformative, toward the gothic and the chic-severe. (Why am I describing her as a later-day Wednesday Addams? She was not a Wednesday Addams. She wore colors. She drank Pimm’s with grape fruit slices and soda water. We took day trips to places like Gary, Indiana, listening to Sam Amidon on the Camry’s stereo.) What I think is, she was alarmed and depressed to be at a “fourth-tier law school in the middle of an ugly corner in uglier Indiana,” and so rebelled against the smallness of her new life by having outsized opinions on luxury goods and fine foods and exotic locales. The worst was that no one knew what she was talking about. She felt this and compensated by hosting foreign film nights. She preferred “the scene,” knew of a scene (there was a music one close by, apparently, in Chicago), and she called herself, sometimes guffawing, a “scenester,” but also wanted us to know she was down with whatever. Just, whatever. She nettled everyone but mostly everyone pitied her, so on balance, her gloom and her snobbery were tolerated.

Victoria made mysterious, indelible gestures. Their performances were somehow less memorable than their obscure resonances, and those resonances affected us obscurely, too. An example. She once loaned A.J. a copy of A Wild Sheep Chase, wanting to hook him on Murakami. When he gave it back unread at the end of term, she insisted it was a replacement copy, that he had lost her original. “If I lost your book,” he told her flatly (and not at all to his credit), “I would not have bothered replacing it.” She said, “No, no—you would. And this is proof.” She told exasperated classmates that A.J. had lost her beloved Murakami paperback and tried to replace it with an exact copy, a conviction seemingly borrowed from the phantasmagorical worlds of Murakami. She used this as a wedge issue about trust, about fidelity. “You’re a coward who couldn’t tell me the truth,” she said, slipping comfortably into a Whit Stillman role. “You’re a deceiver.” To this day, A.J. accepts loaned books graciously while maintaining (not, I think, aloud), “If I lose this, I won’t replace it.” He has never replaced a book I loaned and then he re-loaned again, and there have been more than a dozen. Victoria gave him that.

Another example. When A.J. proposed to his wife, Victoria emailed soon after, advising against the marriage. Incredibly, she sent an email to A.J.’s fiancée too, her reasons for either party diametrically proposed. She was not certain A.J. harbored a strong enough attachment to commit to what she thought would be a lifelong and life-destroying folly. And to Tayler, she said that the two did not know each other enough; that, although they met and dated in high school, and all through college, had not found themselves as adults and might try living longer, in other relationships, before settling down. The emails were cruel, stupid, and strange. Their audience did the generous thing: blamed them on the performer's romantic illusions and then dismissed them as curiosities. Yet sometimes A.J. wishes he had kept his “receipts”—that he’d printed out Victoria’s appeals to him and Tayler, to have at hand such shining examples of sincerity. I’ve heard him rueful about it. “I’m not trying to be an asshole,” he’s said, “but I wish I had these things to point to and say, ‘Here is someone who believes she is doing the right thing.’” But all those emails are gone. The law school closed last year—rather spectacularly, given the coverage in the Times. He doesn’t even have an alumni vanity mailing address.

Victoria adopted this business about oil paints from someone else, her “friend who shows in Chelsea,” a factor that compounded  A.J.'s ire. “He uses exclusively, I think, Windsor and Newton,” she said. “Mixing from other labels creates inconsistencies, sometimes chemical clashes?” She opened the fridge and A.J., after scrubbing it with a towel, sat atop the counter. Bluish light came in through bay windows. The law students appeared not only chronically under-slept (they were) but also ethereal, and perhaps very ill. Victoria helped herself to milk. The cords in A.J.'s neck strained as he gazed at the ceiling, lips pursed, white-knuckling the countertop. Some of this was histrionics and some of this was my brother holding onto his sanity.

I said I didn’t I have a preference—or rather, I just didn’t think about it. I had inherited some desiccated oils from my grandma, raided other buttery leftovers from the art building, had bought cheap, thin student sets in the last full years of school—and I got by on what I had. I got by beautifully, actually, elbow-deep in half-tubes and tubes splayed open at the ends, and tubes coaxed open with needle-nose pliers. The mineral reek and vegetal reek from these paints necessitated full days of airing out the apartment. The solvents and extenders smelled of clove cigarettes smoked indoors. I left canvases to dry outside, where they collected tree fluff and tiny, delicate dead bugs. My images were neither hurt nor helped by these environmental additions. I said I was paying down student loan debt, and would practice brand loyalty when I was solvent again. Victoria said, “Oh, but you really should.” I thought to myself, perhaps for the first time, Why did my brother befriend this orphan?

“I really should,” I say to myself, most days on my drive. Wasn't there a performance art piece—a woman, saying 1,000 things she should do, into a tape-recorder? “I really should recycle. I really should call my mother. I really should pay my parking tickets.” I really should honor ritual and superstition, and my gut instincts. I really should read what I buy or at least attend more assiduously to reviews, so as to refrain from buying disappointments. I really should do my part to cut back on carbon emissions, clean the seas, and vote. Everything is in reach. The way Victoria said it—breezy, condescending, hopeful—is the way I hear most advice, particularly the advice I give myself: spoken in the tones of unconvincing conviction. I drank much less then (somehow), still I had a bottle of Bombay Sapphire at hand (somehow), and peered at Victoria and A.J. through its blue glass, tripling their blue-hued bodies. 

Much later I wrote a play where a character unhappy in love does the same thing. In the stage directions, the young man “goes to the wine cooler, pulls out a beautiful champagne magnum, studies it, puts it back and takes out another. Every bottle dazzles his countenance with jewel-like light—emerald and sapphire; amethyst and ruby; garnet and topaz lights, they sparkle across his bare chest and face as he inspects the bottles. He decides on a blue bottle of Prosecco, lavishly foiled, and brings it to his eyes like binoculars and for a moment considers his open hand, his surroundings, even his audience through the dark blue glass, and the stage glows beautifully blue, too. With great delicacy he unwraps and unwires the Prosecco, and uncorks it in a kitchen towel, and pours himself a glass. He drinks alone, picking at his phone, while the stage goes dark.” It was well past midnight in the second act. The kitchen was empty.

[helloworlddemo1122-yahoopar-blog]

Bryce Dallas Howard on Fertility Struggles and How a New Zealand Healer Helped Her Conceive (Exclusive)

Bryce Dallas Howard was just 5 when she awoke in Queenstown, New Zealand, and gazed out enormous windows into a stunning, awe-inspiring vista. Accompanying her father, director Ron Howard, while he filmed Willow, she was wowed by her first glimpse into a world outside her American homeland, and the powerful moment would stay with her for years to come. But little did the wide-eyed youngster realize that the nation would one day have a profound impact on her journey into motherhood.

In a revealing new interview with ET, the Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom star is opening up about the health struggles she faced in her 20s and how the country helped her start a family, find solace and make a life-changing decision to leave Hollywood.

Born in Los Angeles to director Ron Howard and writer Cheryl Alley, Howard was educated on the East Coast, going to school in Connecticut and New York and later attending New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. She eventually returned to Los Angeles after her film career took off following her debut in 2004’s The Village.

It was at New York University where she met actor Seth Gabel, whom she would date for five years before the two got married in 2006. Soon after getting engaged, the couple found themselves facing major hurdles with their family dreams. “I was really struggling and having some challenges,” Howard says. “I learned that I was going to need minor surgery in order to conceive. Then my friend had an appointment with a New Zealand man, Papa Joe, who would come over once a year and stay in this incredible house in Topanga Canyon, where he and his folks would heal people. I was sharing my woes with my friend and she said, ‘They’re leaving tomorrow, you should take my appointment!’”

The late Maori elder was a well-respected healer who traveled throughout the U.S. and Europe helping people and released a book in 2006 about his spiritual methods. Howard took the opportunity, but walked in with doubts about how much his practices could help her. Yet, within seconds of arriving, she recalls feeling the “powerful” nature of his practice.

“Instantly, without me saying anything, he saw what was going on and explained the situation,” Howard recalls. “He did very physical, rigorous body work, and there was a midwife there who helped me breathe through the experience.”

Howard and Gabel married on June 17, and seven days later, Howard learned she was pregnant. “We weren’t even trying! His session healed me completely,” she says.

Shortly afterward, Howard attended her first midwife appointment and noticed a photo of Papa Joe on the wall, only to find out that he had died six months earlier. “I was so grateful that I got to be a part of that last group of people who were treated by him. I’ve always felt a great amount of indebtedness and thankfulness,” Howard says, revealing that when she returned to New Zealand 30 years after her first visit to film Pete’s Dragon, “I kept thinking, ‘I would love to visit the group to say thank you, even though Papa Joe is gone.’”

While staying at the Treetops Lodge in Rotorua for her 34th birthday, Howard, now a mother of two, signed up to get a Romiromi massage, a holistic Maori body treatment. “I was telling the Maori gentleman my story, and as soon as I said, ‘Papa Joe,’ he just lit up and went, ‘My teacher!’” she recalls. It turned out that Papa Joe had trained him. “It’s funny how I was 24 when he treated me and this encounter was on my 34th birthday, 10 years later.”

While Howard is eternally grateful for the healing rituals of the country’s native Maori people, her joy was temporarily jolted to a halt with the unexpected turbulence that swept through her life after welcoming her son, Theo, in 2007. The Black Mirror star has openly discussed her battle with severe post-natal depression and, in a blog written for Goop  in 2010, she shared how she “heaved uncontrollable sobs,” referred to her newborn as “it,” greeted Gabel with expletive-filled outbursts and frequently broke down in the shower during her first 18 months of motherhood.

Reflecting on the emotional roller coaster and irony of having struggled on her path to having a baby, only to plunge into depression once she did, Howard says she frequently felt like her mind was playing tricks on her. “It was the worst! You think the one thing you’re going to be able to control in life, to a certain extent, is your own feelings, especially when it’s so obvious what you should feel. But all of a sudden, I went through this experience, which was truly chemical. It absolutely changed everything, and it’s just horrifying. It’s like your heart, your body and your mind are ripped apart and it takes a while to piece it back together.”

Eventually, a homeopathic treatment plan, a mothers’ group and Brooke Shields’ memoir Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression helped her recover. “It’s been a journey, but I’m really lucky because I had a second pregnancy [with daughter, Beatrice] where I didn’t experience that, so that was also very healing for me,” Howard says.

The biggest lesson from the ordeal has been to give herself timeouts. “When I think back about what I would have done differently [while suffering with PND], I would have given myself time and space to be alone and process and have some perspective, whether that’s 10 minutes in the bathroom -- well, it shouldn’t just be 10 minutes in the bathroom, but that’s what it ends up being!” Howard says.

Bryce Dallas Howard seen in front of the Tāne Mahuta, a giant kauri tree in the Waipoua Forest of New Zealand.

Julian Apse

“In a way, that’s what New Zealand has felt like for me and for a lot of people I talk to,” continues the actress, who was named New Zealand Tourism Ambassador to the United States and Canada in 2017. “You get that moment to step out of the fray, good or bad, and be in a place where you’re nurtured, replenished and brought back to your center. Every single time I’ve gone there, I’ve felt totally restored. It’s a very healing part of the world and there’s just a lot of people who live there who are very happy -- and that’s infectious!”

It was while living in dreamy spots like Mount Maunganui, during filming of Pete’s Dragon, that Howard started noticing a shift in her children, which instigated her and Gabel’s recent decision to leave Hollywood. Theo was almost 7 and Beatrice was 3 when the family left behind a Californian winter to wake up to summer in the South Pacific. “Right off the bat, the kids were like, ‘What kind of magic is happening here?’”

Quickly becoming immersed in Kiwi life, the impact of their new environment became evident as the family settled into their new seaside home, where the children soaked up “tropical summer living,” and attended a local school. The family relocated to a farm in the South Island town of Tapanui, near Dunedin, where they reveled in country life and relished every inch of expansive open spaces.

Having spent her childhood running around the woods of Connecticut, Howard was frequently sentimental about her own youth. “Both environments we lived in were very different, yet the similarity was that connection to nature and that sense of being in a sanctuary. They just became wild, happy, fulfilled kids, who were tired and dirty at the end of the day. It sounds overly simplistic, but I felt that they were safe -- so then they felt safe. And that feeling really empowered them as young people to explore, have adventures, walk a little further out of the yard than they normally would, climb a tree and follow through with curiosity.”

With her kids being closer to nature than they had ever been before, Howard encouraged them to be free. “It woke them up and made them excited to go outside,” she says. “That’s something they haven’t let go of, and seeing them in that environment hugely inspired us to move out into the country, because I saw how much they blossomed.” Now back in the United States, the family left Los Angeles for upstate New York, where they’re now living in the countryside.

Of course, it’s the dinosaurs stomping into theaters in June that many fans are most excited about, and having reprised her role as Claire in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Howard promises the film will wow in a way the franchise never has before. “There’s something happening on Isla Nublar putting all the dinosaurs’ lives in jeopardy and Claire and Owen go to save them. The story really goes in a direction where the franchise has never gone before -- ultimately, taking these dinosaurs off the island.”

While she's tight-lipped about plot details, Howard did admit that Claire is sporting more appropriate footwear in the new installment, which is even better for outrunning dinosaurs. But what really prepared the actress for all that intense filming and dino-chasing were extensive hikes in New Zealand. “My favorite active thing to do is to hike. It’s not just about keeping fit and preparing for the film; for me, it’s also about de-stressing. When I’m hiking, it gets me back to a very grounded, healthy, centered place,” Howard says.

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[theblognoonewillread-blog1]

Preface

It’s been a hard year for a lot of people. The current administration has been full of fraud, ill will, open bigotry, and more. That has weighed down on my mind, as it has with many others. But in my case, I already had a fairly full dance card in terms of personal issues that can exarcebate the clinical depression I was diagnosed with decades ago.

I do not fit the profile of the average American today, at least according to social media. I’m in my 50’s, I am a man of color, I’m gay, and I’m single. I am also currently unemployed and do not have a permanent dwelling thanks to Hurricane Harvey, which has complicated the matter – no job, no proof of income, how does one get a place without having to turn to horror-style properties on Craigslist?

I am also not “hot”, not “uneducated” (a four-year degree seems to be of little use to all but the most business-driven in America now), not carrying rippling abs or sporting a huge member, the lack of reputation meaning getting it on with anyone is practically impossible.

For some time I have had a hard time finding my “tribe” - that group of people, that community, with which one should be practically inseparable because they’re so alike, so together, so similar in energy. I’m a Midwesterner who relocated to the Gulf Coast over 30 years ago – for work, of course. For maybe 6 or 7 years I had a sort of built-in community but it was never a completely square fit. Then I found a gay-friendly community in town but ran into a variety of issues there also. Gay America has many of the same problems straight America has – just a matter of degrees.

So, the complicated nature of my things not working out left me, this holiday, with no invites to dinner, no home to go to, and – even more annoying – no permanent place to call home. For over four months now, an extended-stay hotel has been my “apartment.” The morning light comes in too early, and I often hear the roar of a highway nearby. It is a utilitarian place, not a personal one.

As an alternative to sleeping in the entire day – a depressing prospect unto itself – I decided to drive to a casino one state over and enjoy their sumptuous buffet. The annoying thing was, thousands of other people had the exact same idea. It made the casino aisles crowded with people aimlessly drifiting about, walll-eyed and (in some cases) predictably tipsy. It occurred to me that casinos have become a sort of adult day-care center. A younger adult child can drop his aging mother or father at the door, then drive off while the parent drifts around, entertaining himself/herself with the prospect of getting rich, or at least the occasion thrill of hitting a win on the slots.

So here I was, sitting among them, practically speaking with nothing in common with them except our need to distract ourselves. My distraction had a purpose – to get through the day, to survive it. When contacts on social media said they hoped I was having a great day I left it open, silence. I didn’t want to risk disapproval by telling them the truth. Miss Manners might say that not “dumping” on friends is good social policy for holidays, but I have to wonder if she’s ever had bouts of depression or loneliness.

Coincidence and, perhaps, universal cruelty – as I was typing this I heard Gloria Lynne singing a song I’d not heard. I used SoundHound to identify it - “All Alone.” Thanks, universe.

There is a fine line in America between letting others know what downers are going on in your life and being labeled a “drama queen.” I feel perpetually like I have to do a Herculean editing act on what I say to (as I thought earlier today) present my situation in a palatable fashion so as not to send others running. The problem is that in doing that, I don’t get the benefit of just dumping it all out there, of letting raw emotion drive how I communicate. I resent having to edit what I say. And it’s worse on social media like Facebook – when I admit I’m not having a good time I get crickets. One guy who asked about my job situation today, when I looked at our message feed, I realized we hadn’t spoken in two months. I sent a quick holiday greeting and got one back. I can only imagine he’s tired of bad news so maybe I’ll do what I’ve done with so many others in recent years – add him to my Restricted List: we have a connection in form only, but little else. On such a list, no one sees my warts – they see the edited “media feed” to entertain.

It has been said that depression is the fastest growing disease in America today. I can absolutely see why – no one feels like they’re being heard. No one feels anyone gets them in the workplace, in dating, in their communities, in their families, anything. And the authority and moral leaders we used to have, they’re all on the take in various ways so no one is there to do anything for us when we hurt.

This situation, of course, is worse for folks like me – older, black and middle-aged are three whammies today’s society can’t relate to. It’s never happened that anyone has ever asked me point-blank, “Why don’t you go to a coffee house with people your own age?” That’s because no one has opened such a place. Not many businesses market to the middle-aged, it’s assumed we’re washed up, don’t spend any money and are set in our ways. And we’re not sexy – so no one presumably wants to look at us. I think a coffee place where anyone over 35 was made not just to feel tolerated, but appreciated. Right now, the closest we have to that is either Starbucks or the bars – nothing in between.

I’d love a middle-aged friendly place. I wouldn’t want it to be exclusively that age group, I like diversity, just be interesting is all I ask. Boring people come in all ages, classes, education levels.

I am a bit of a complicated person. Those complications are part of why I think I have largely been a social misfit. I don’t act like anyone else (less superficial). I don’t carry myself the same way as others. The whole migration to typing messages rather than actually talking is part of my depression – a female friend of mine I’ve known for years, we don’t even really talk on the phone! I don’t like this! Years ago a guy I worked with, he and I used to talk on the phone and get together once a week to watch TV at his apartment. We did that for YEARS. He was the first guy I came out to.

Since then I have had “relationship” (I guess you could call it) fall apart for a variety of reasons. One guy is a bad listener. Another has no time (too “busy”) - that is almost always the kiss-off. It gets worse when it comes to business or getting a job hookup – I know NOBODY. Guys I worked with at previous jobs? No support. Not the way it happens for others. It has occurred to me that for the 30-plus years I spent in my last city, only TWICE did anyone else ever offer to walk a resume in. The results both cases were nil, but at least I had that. The irony of that is that I work in the information technology industry – I’m supposed to be connected to other smart people. Sadly, the industry has become commoditized so everyone’s disposable. Even my colleagues at a consulting place I used to work for, I have nearly zero contact with – that should have been gold.

About the name of this blog: I chose it because I have the idea that the average American right now, and the younger, the more pertinent this is, feels entitled to be happy. They don’t want to hear about anyone else’s issues, they don’t want to learn to be a part of a larger whole like a multi-aged community or coalition – they want their gaming systems, their movie and TV services, and they want their social media. And that is ALL. I really wish I could be around in 30 years to see where many of these folks are at – whether the depression we have now is worse then because that generation never bothered to learn from others, because they chose to separate themselves.

I met a guy at an art show several months ago. Showed him my business card and he made some comment about how millennials are supposed to be more open-minded and carefree. Then he did a sprint away from me, figuratively, that would have made Carl Lewis jealous. Tried to contact him on social media and got partially blocked. That was enough for me to drop it at that point.

The people I wish would read this blog almost certainly won’t. They’re too “busy”, too “distracted”, too “happy.” Perhaps some of my resentment is little other than envy. Maybe I’m seeing something that isn’t real, that isn’t there. But it’s so … uneven. So that is why, in my tag line, I say that if you’re already happy, this blog is not for you. This is for the rest of us who you studiously avoid being involved with because you feel our adversity would contaminate your life and lifestyle.

I may not post here often, and I actually tried doing a blog like this years ago. Maybe someone out there will see himself in this blog. I wish I had a positive message to share but right now, I don’t.

One of my big resentments right now is with the so-called universe. I jokingly have said that because there’s only one universe, it doesn’t have any competition and – like any monopoly – can afford to be sloppy. That is not a completely original idea; I actually stole it from a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon when he was telling his father about Santa Claus – not entirely unrelated.

I have found myself in recent years railing against the universe, feeling that it is – intentionally (it seems) – withholding good things from me. Why, for example, am I in one of the ten largest cities in the U.S. but not getting “run into” smart people, connected people, whatever? I would be disgusted to find out IT thinks the problem is entirely mine. Really? A group of people take a 400-year headstart and you can’t make any corrections for that down the line? We have to wait centuries for social justice to come? How powerful are you?

And then – as we’re repeatedly told ad nauseam – we’re not the center of the universe, so much so that the message is almost, “Don’t want anything, ever.” Were human nature based exclusively on Buddhism with its concept of detachment it might have something there. But right now? Not so much.

I am not asking to be the “center” of the universe. I am just wanting to be the center of a tribe – to be  connected, celebrated, loved. It is sorely lacking and between my emotional depression and my inability to earn money, it is costing me a FORTUNE.

By the way – if you’re a fundamentalist or an evangelical, TUNE OUT. Way too many of you folks could have changed the result of the last election but you didn’t. You harp on the same issues over and over – sexual minorities, racial minorities, all you’re about is separatism and punishment. I daresay if Christ returned to earth you’d run him in as a Middle-Easternerner and bitch about him on AM talk radio.

That is it for the moment. This is an experiment. If it doesn’t work I could wind up living on the streets – that is, if I can’t get all my ducks in a row and the universe doesn’t give a shit.

Stay tuned.