After Burn

Was thinking about my first job after high school writing for a small local bi-weekly newspaper. When I covered games for one of the local high school football teams on a way out of town game I’d have to find a pay phone (I didn’t have a cellphone yet) after the game and read my story the editor back in the office to transcribe it in order to make the deadline for the Saturday morning edition. That was only 18 years ago, but journalists were doing things that way before fax machines and email for decades prior. I’m technically considered a “millennial” but think people around my age have a very unique perspective on the shift of life from the 20th to 21st century. 

Missing my brother Travis today on what would’ve been his 35th Birthday.  If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts & feelings there are resources I would implore you to seek out.  Call 1-800-273-8255 (TALK) or  Text TALK to 741-741 to communicate with a crisis counselor 24/7.

Came home to find out that my grandmother had a stroke on Saturday. We are just finding out today from my step-grandfather per her wishes to not saying anything right away. Don’t have all the details yet  although it appears to have been just a minor episode and she is already home with just some slurred speech but no paralyzed limbs. I’m digging through layers family bullshit with my cousins, aunt, and uncle all fighting with each other and making it about themselves and my mother venting to me because she gets pulled in the middle of it and my dad doesn’t step in to handle anything even though it’s his mother. Gonna be a fun Thanksgiving now. Kind of strange that my grandfather had a stroke 6 years ago the week before Thanksgiving and died before Christmas that same year. My other grandmother also suffered a major stroke that she never recovered from, but it was almost six months later (and lots of rehab and hospital visits) before she died. And my other grandfather went into the...

8 Dead, Several Others Shot At Pittsburgh Synagogue In the past week a white supremacist tried to enter a church in Kentucky to kill it’s Black worshippers, but the doors were locked so he went into a grocery store to murder two Black grandparents, passing over a white man in the store telling him “Whites don’t kill Whites”; then a homegrown terrorist plotted and attempted (thankfully foiled) to pull off mass murder through bombings against political opponents of our current President; and now this. You can keep your head in the sand if you want. Pretend that there is some sort of equitable partisanship or division in this country and just hum “kumbaya” to yourself, or you can face the harsh reality of what is happening in this country.

Four of the Nine justices of the Supreme Court appointed by Presidents that did not win popular vote in elections that put them in the office, and that is supposed to be a democracy?! There is no such thing as a “greatest country in the world” and anyone in this country who claim such a thing doesn’t care about any other country anyway, nor do they care about the majority of the people in their own country. Vote. Please vote. They want you to be discouraged. But we still have to exercise the only thing we have left, no matter how much the subvert and manipulate the election process.

I should’ve been a basketball or tennis coach. Or became a theatre teacher. Never should’ve taken time off from school knowing I’d never go back and get my degree.  I wouldn’t have a big house or fancy car. I’d still be paying off student loans. Probably just getting by about the same as now. But I’d be happier, I know that.  I was a desperate and depressed 21 year old that took a job a close family friend offered out of kindness and it turned into a career path I never wanted. Fifteen years later I struggle to find stability and fulfillment in my work. And find it even harder to break away into something else.