Blog: In All Honesty, I'm Terrified.

In all honesty I’m not really sure where to start with this. Initially my plan for this week was to do a New York City travel blog, but given the nature of & the events of the week doing so feels dismissive & entirely subversive of the way that so many, my self included feel. I then contemplated not doing a blog at all, but I’m sitting with this incredibly palpable bag of emotions & hurt & I felt the need to come on & express that here with you all. I don’t know what form that will take or what path this blog will end up going on, as at the moment the tangents in my brain are fighting for dominance. I guess my goal in all of this is to make those of you out there who, let’s face it, probably have checked out &/or aren’t going to read this at all, understand a little bit more of how a lot of us who find ourselves in communities deeply effected by the results of Tuesday’s election feel & on the other side of that coin, show those of you who find yourselves in a state of deep mourning & pain feel seen & heard. I am here to express my pain & my undeniable fear of what if probably to come. I’m going to start by relaying all of this to myself & my personal sphere, because let’s face it, that’s what I know best.

I am someone with a deep understanding of policy & politics. I typically know who is saying, doing, promoting, regressing, whatever in most of the chambers & branches of The US government. I got this way because at the turn of 2016 I found myself with limited knowledge of anything that had transpired or anything that was going to transpire around the election that had just occurred & I regretted that sorely. I then spent what has been the last eight years deeply engaged in the ongoings & inner workings of the government because I never again wanted to feel like I wasn’t in ‘the know.’ The frustration part of that is that I then had friends & family members come to me with political questions that were quickly dismissed when the answers didn’t fit their narrative for what their specific party or belief on an issue was or is. Additionally, my upset when damaging policy came down the pipeline was met with patronization & deemed too emotionally driven or “just what I believe” instead of being deeply rooted in fact & statistics. I was told I was over reacting, or the topic was changed to other unrelated policy altogether, or it devolved into outright gaslighting. So, following the results of 2020, I receded. My family, friends, & acquaintances seldom heard about my politics because it had become clear to me that despite knowing leagues more about them than others, my intelligence, interest, passion, & knowledge were an annoyance that did little, if anything, to move the needle of what had been deeply engrained in their belief system; no matter how bat shit or rooted in propaganda, wishful thinking, outright racist/heteronormative/unscientific/regressive/xenophobic/etc those beliefs were/are.

Turning the page to this year. I don’t think, compared to previous elections, I was as vocally outspoken on the interwebs as I have been in the past, & maybe that was my mistake. No politics were brought up to my family, unless they were brought up to me, because I knew it was wasted breath because as the post that’s going around this last week so lovingly says “I don’t know how to convince you care about other people.”

Election day was horrible for me, even before the results started rolling in I was anxious to the point of it making me sick. I think in total I slept around 2-3 hours that night, waking up as so many of us did around 4 AM with an ultimate sense of dread even before peaking at my phone. From there my anxiety grew & also gave way to severe hurt & depression because I knew what was coming down the pipeline. I knew where we were headed & I saw the cataclysm & damage like a tidal wave barring down on all of us, whether those who voted for this want to see & accept that or not.

I had at least hoped that if Trump was reelected, despite the myriad of reasons he is beyond unsuitable for the presidency a first, much less a second time, that the legislative branch of the government would at least remain as a safeguard to the atrocities to be passed down. My hope was & has been since extinguished & the reality of the collision course we’re on rushed over me & sunk me for days. I instantly started research into expatriating.

I’m sorry if I lost you on that last sentence, I’m sorry if, to you, that seems too extreme or like I’m being a ‘sore loser,’ but I’m going to walk you through my reasonings & try to make you see why that’s where I landed. Additionally, this is my blog, my feelings, my life. Yes? My feelings & motivations are my own. Please bear with me.

I’m going to start talking policy which is typically where I start losing people, especially if that policy does not align with your inherent understanding. Again, please bear with me & have an open mind, a little empathy, & try to understand. We’re going to start out talking about (hold! hold! hold!) Roe V Wade & Project 2025.

I’ve laid out my arguments in favor of Roe many a time. It is not just a case that allowed for abortion but also granted women the right to bodily autonomy. Its overturning has been detrimental to the health of women across the country & continues to escalate in that direction. I don’t think that states legalizing the right to abortion will end up mattering unfortunately & I think that the Trump era nationwide ban is on the horizon. BUT I’m not here to talk specifically about Roe, but am instead here to talk about the precedent that it set within the conservative majority Supreme Court.

Roe V Wade was a ruling brought about through right to privacy. It is the same avenue that cases like Obergefell V Hodges used to legalize same sex marriage, the same avenue that Griswold V Connecticut used to allow married couples rights to contraceptive & later Eisenstadt V Baird used to allow unmarried couples right to contraceptive. It is the same exact avenue that Lawrence V Texas used to make sodomy laws illegal & Loving V Virginia used to instate the legitimacy of interracial marriages. All of these items used the same path of ‘personal privacy’ as the vehicle for which to get each of these respective issues legalized or decriminalized. Then came the overturning of Roe, what the Supreme Court has hinted at & outright spoken about being the first of these rulings to fall.

If right to privacy falls, & many of those statues with it, same sex couples, interracial couples, non-married (or even married) couples engaging in protected sex, will all be considered criminal almost overnight. Sounds archaic, I know, because it is & that’s just the highly insinuated Supreme Court side of things. Let’s shift lenses to Project 2025.

Project 2025 is a plan for a conservative held federal government that has been laid down by the vast majority of the right wing conglomerates out there. The Heritage Foundation, the AFA, the Claremont Institute, Moms for Liberty, etc etc etc. It was disavowed by Donald Trump after his initial endorsement of the project because it polled as incredibly unpopular, even amongst conservatives. A lot of those on both sides of the aisle were not overly concerned about the instating of Project 2025 because there would of course be “checks & balances” within the government, which of course holding all branches of the government, there are none. His allies have since stated, post win, that Project 2025 is & was the plan all along. Shocker.

So what lives within the policies of Project 2025? Let’s list a few shall we? Dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency (bye bye safe guards on clean air & water), dismantling the Department of Education (deuces special education programs), end no fault divorce, ban contraceptives (see supreme court section), eliminate worker unions & OSHA regulations, end the Affordable Care Act (what allows millions of Americans to have healthcare), end climate protections & re-incentivize the fossil fuel industry, end marriage equality (see supreme court), defund the FBI & Homeland Security, end birthright citizenship, eliminate the FDA (cuz who needs their drugs tested & regulated?), eliminate NOAA (where 99% of our weather data comes from), end civil rights & DEI programs, ban books (anything ‘non-christian’ this also includes books about slavery), ban African American & gender studies at ALL levels of education (including colleges), cut Medicare, cut Social Security, raise the retirement age, provide additional tax breaks for the 1%, increase taxes for the working class, end school lunch programs, leaving NATO (say hello to the Russian invasion of Europe), the list goes on & on & on & now, there is nothing in the way to stop it.

I know that may sound extreme, it may sound a bit like fear mongering too, & I also understand that there will (hopefully) be people within the Republican party who stand up & prevent these things from happening, but if 2016-2020 were any indication, I don’t think I have much faith in that. I challenge you to think of the generational harm that all of this will do even if half of that list is accomplished. Even if a forth is accomplished. We have been steered into a maelstrom to which there is no course correction & those who were out here telling you all “I told you so” will be the one who pay the price the dearest for this folly.

I want to touch on a few more things before I leave you with my closing remarks. Those being what Trump has promised to make the incepting blow of his term; tariffs, immigrants, & trans individuals.

First tariffs. Trump plans to impose a 60% tariff on any goods coming from China & a 10% tariff on all other goods coming from other countries. Where do we get most of our tech from? China. Where do we get most of our steel from? China? Who pays for the tariff? ChiWRONG. You do. The consumer does. The price of most goods in the tech & metal work field are projected to go up around 40% minimum in cost. Nissan has already laid off 9,000 workers in anticipation of the tariffs. A steel company in Pennsylvania has reported that they are striking Christmas bonuses this year in order to stockpile resources before the tariffs take hold & their costs go up. Enjoy your grocery items & every other items you purchase going up in cost.

Now immigrants. Another of Trump’s day one agenda items is the deportation of around 20,000,000 immigrants from The US. A logistical nightmare to say the least, part of this deportation will also include the denaturalization of many immigrants whom the administration also plans to…somehow deport or place into camps. The horrors of that aside, immigrants make up around 50% of the food & manual labor workforce. Without them the literal bottom of the food supply chain barrel & infrastructure barrel falls right out & sweeps the rest of us off with it. The economy will crash & the dollar will be a wash.

Lastly, transgender individuals. The Trump administration wants to inshrine the existence of two genders into the constitution. They also want to force individual to be only able to go by the gender of the sex they were at birth & they want to penalize any & all healthcare workers providing gender affirming care to trans youth. This includes capital punishment for those caught performing gender affirming surgeries on individuals under the age of 18, a practice that isn’t happening anyway.

I’m going to be entirely frank with you all. I’m not very hopeful for the four years going forward. I know there’s another election in two with the midterms but I foresee a whole lot of damage being done before we ever even get the change to get there. I’ve seen a lot of sentiment of “well, you survived the first Trump presidency” going around & I want to remind you all that millions didn’t. Because of his policies, because of his COVID response, millions are now dead & that was with ‘checks & balances’ in place, of which there are now no guard rails for ‘King Trump.’ We have shown this man & his goonies that not only is he above the law as a treasonous, rapist crook, but that it is encouraged. The range & scope of what he will do will increase & things are going to get very bad for a lot of people very quickly.

I’d be lying if I told you all I wasn’t terrified. Not just for Evan & I but for the friends we have who fall into the crosshairs of the Trump administration. I am scared to the point that it sent me to urgent care where we speculate I may have developed an ulcer from stress. These are the policies so many of you voted in favor of. These are the policies that many who call yourselves ‘friend’ or ‘family’ have inflicted upon us & I’m having a really had time seeing how that can be loving in any way. How you can claim to love someone or want what’s best for them & then turn around & vote for someone who hates us. I don’t know how that’s loving, much less how you can classify yourself as someone who is Christian after doing that. Christ said embrace the immigrant, love your neighbor & your enemy, help the needy, feed the hungry, care for the sick, & so many of you who profess that as the anchor for your life went & besmirched that. Not only that, but then you turn around & try to gaslight us into still being connected with you. You claim it takes the bigger person to disagree & still be friends but we are not here disagreeing on how our taxes get spent, we are here disagreeing on who has the right to life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness all for a man who has made his life around swindling & conning his way to the top. I honestly don’t know how they can be justified.

I’m leaving you all here. I am sorry I don’t have a message of hope for you all, but at the moment I am far from hopeful, in fact I am feeling entirely lost. I hope to God I am wrong about all of this. I hope I am, truly, but for now Evan & I wait on bated breath to GTFO before it becomes too late for us to do so. & that is our reality. I’m sorry if this blog was too emotionally driven, I tried my best to keep it grounded but I am at a loss, I am heartbroken & scared & incredibly hurt by those around me who claim love for me but that I know voted against mine & Evan’s livelihood.

-C

Blog: Life Through An Ever Shrinking Lens

I know that title sounds daunting, maybe even fringing on the nihilistic, but I promise you, this blog will be quite the opposite. Over the years I’ve written many blogs with the title of “life through” or “life in” or something else along those lines, so that’s how the title came to me naturally in the midst of the brainstorm that was coming up with the topic for this blog. Life through an ever shrinking lens. Okay, so it’s not nihilism, it’s not deprecation, & I promise you it’s not claustrophobic as the imagery probably draws into your mind. So what is this blog about? This blog is about the shift in perspective that seems to be coming with age, or maybe it’s just a sign of the times.

A lot of the time when I sit down to write blogs at the end of my week they end up being about synchronicities, those moments in my day to day life that shared an over arching theme for the week, month, or however long the greater powers that be saw fit to hammer the lesson into my brain. This week was one such week. I had a friend send me a tweet on twitter (I shall never refer to it as X. it’s idiotic) that said the following:

“Me at 22: Wow, life really ends at 21.

Me at 25: Wow, life really ends at 24.

Me at 28: I’ve really been in the mood for an apple danish lately, I can’t wait to get to walk to the corner store & get myself an apple danish! :)”

— @LeftAtLondon On Twitter

To which he accompanied with the comment, “tea kinda” which then sparked a conversation which then led to the inception of this blog. & you know what? It is “tea, kinda!”

Again, I haven’t decided on whether to caulk all of this up to age, as both he & I are in our early thirties with a fully developed frontal lobe (in theory) or whether it’s an experience that those younger than us are also feeling of late, the data sample is far too small & limited for anything conclusive there. What I am noticing, however, specifically speaking for myself, my friend, & even Evan, whom I asked his thoughts on when the topic originally came up, is that we all are finding ourselves more & more in the mindset of enjoying the little things. Caring more about the “sweet treats” that make us smile, the company that we share a kindred soul with, & finding wonder at every turn.

I’m sure there is a term for all of this, I’m also certain that if I allowed myself to venture into the internet in search of it that this blog would end up being delayed another hour or two in its completion simply from the rabbit hole that I would no doubt stumble headlong into. What I do know if that the lens is shrinking. I no longer care so much what the broader collective thinks & feels about me, I no longer care what they want from me as an individual, & I no longer seek the approval of those who I know I would have to encase myself in some false presentation of who I am to be in the good graces of. I am, all in all, in search of simple, humble, minuscule happiness. I am looking for connection, not out of need for acceptance or desire to expand a social circle, but simply to share something human with another person on the same level. To laugh & collaborate, to create & feel & empathize with because I think we have lost a lot of that in the rat race of clout, fame, popularity, & ambition.

I live a lot of my days of late in more silence that I had allowed in before. I sit & ponder the thoughts that pass through my brain, I think of the daily cross sections of humanity & how beautiful a lot of what we encounter in our day to day lives actual is. I think about life & its cycles. I think about evolution, adaptation, passion, experience, & I marvel at how grandiose it all is. How precise, calculated, & yet utterly wild it all is. In a lot of ways, in shrinking the lens, in minimizing the focus away from things that really don’t matter, I am finding infinite streams of beauty & expression.

I know that last paragraph sounded pretty ‘woo woo.’ I hope that I didn’t lose you in it, but in all honesty that is what I feel, that is what is flowing through my mind. That is how I am living my life at the moment. & it’s simple & mundane at times but it is so refreshing to live in the quiet sometimes. To just be. To experience the marvel that it is to be human & the astonishing ways in which that manifests.

I’m going to leave you with one last anecdote before I sign off on this blog & let you all continue about your day. It’s a story that involves one of my favorite topics, Harvey. I’m going to keep this story light. I’m not going to delve into the pain of missing him or any of the grief there in, but I do want to tell you all a story that involves him in his later years.

Harvey on our daily walks was prone to literally stopping & smelling the roses. This was probably way less to do with the flowering fauna he frequented himself & more to do with the other dogs & animals who had done the same, marking as they went along. Either way the story rings true. Harvey, on our walks, would stop often to take deep long inspective sniffs at many of the plants along the path, most of whom flowered at one point or another. Often Evan & I would try to hurry him along to keep the walk moving, that was until we read something that mentioned that dogs stopping & investigating is ten times more stimulating for them & their brains than just the walk itself. Then we too slowed & allowed his reprieve from the walk.

When Harvey passed our vet sent us an ink print of his nose. Evan & I then went around to each of the spots that he would stop each day on our walks, collected & dried the flowers from the plants that he had spent so much time & waining energy interacting with. They now adorn his nose print in a wooden frame in our living room.

So what’s the lesson here? Why bring it up? How does it connect? Harvey saw the value in stopping the motion that often was difficult for him to stop & start & taking in these expression & signatures of life. It wasn’t til he was gone that I truly appreciated them for what they were, that I truly understood how important if is to cut it all out, stop, & experience something just for the beauty of what it is or the signature that it bares.

We live in such a grind culture. We live in a culture that idolizes, that rewards the image & not the individual. We project our most attractive aspects up onto social media or our blogs but seldom do we take the time to shut it all out & really experience what it is to be human. We don’t think about the years that pastry chef spent perfecting that danish that lives at the corner shop you love, down the street from where you build your life & the cross section that all of that is. We don’t allow ourselves to feel the embrace of our partner or our friends without the fear of judgement or the pretense that we feel is required because that is what media or life has taught us we must do. We don’t ask for the things we need simply because we don’t want to be a burden so we suffer in the discomfort. We don’t stop & ponder the rain or the birds or the plants & the cycles they exist in & perpetuate. We try to force our lives into an all encompassing, broad lens, but I think if you zoom in, shrink it down, you will find all of the magnanimous happenings that you have been searching for.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: Beauty & Grief

Hi friends.

I hope you have had a wonderful week, though I know for a lot of you that hasn’t been the case. For whatever reason there seems to have been an uptick in those passing this last week or so; dearest friends & loved ones, beloved furry companions, staples of communities, & sudden shifting tides that have led to difficult decisions & great heartache across the board. If you find yourself in any of those categories I first want to offer you me deepest, most sincere condolences. I also want to shed some light on what you can expect going & hopefully bring a little peace your way through shared experience & understanding.

If you weren’t aware, back in May I lost my almost decade & a half companion Harvey & while yes, he was “just a dog,” he was so much more than that to me & to most of the people that had the pleasure of knowing him. I have no children other than those who bare fur & walk on all fours. That’s not a dig at saying my (non-existent) human children are very bizarre, I’m simply saying that all I have, paternally, are the animals that I have adopted over the years. I’m not going to turn this blog into a statement about how people should or shouldn’t be able to grieve their pets, but a lot of recent research shows that those of us who have strong, almost familial connections to our pets, mourn them in an identical way to how you would mourn the loss of a family member. Harvey was my boy, he was with me for over thirteen years of my life & he was, for a long time, who I looked forward to coming home to at the end of the day. So his loss ripped me apart, it shattered me to the core, & forced me to rebuild a life without him in it.

I’m not going to sit here & lie to you or belittle you. It’s hard, it’s impossibly hard, the grief that lingers like fog & settles into your bones like lead. You will have days where it is debilitating, but you will also have days where the sun shines through the blinds & melancholy & hope replace the anguish & despair. But with all things challenging in life you must face it head on & take it one step at a time.

There will be a time, when the wound of loss is fresh, where you will seemingly forget a time when your eyes were not floodgates constantly on the verge of spilling over. Then too will come a day when you can’t remember the last time you felt that way, when you can’t remember the last time you cried. You will be visited in your dreams & reach for them in your sleep & wake up with a tear soaked pillow & a yearning that can never be satiated. There will be times when a certain song, sound, smell, phrasing, sight will hit you in just the right way & you’ll find yourself back in the thick of it all. Even I still find myself here once in a blue moon all of these months later, but it does get easier & the triggers get fewer & farther between & at some point melancholy takes over the bitter sadness & all you will find is sweet longing & remembrance.

There’s a quote that I use often because of just how perfectly stated it is. It can be found in the Disney+ Show “WandaVision” at a point where one character, Vision, finds another, Wanda, sitting in the room ruminating on the death of her brother. In my mind Wanda becomes apologetic for her expression of grief & Vision delivers the beautiful line "what is grief if not love persevering?” That’s a line I think about often & as someone who often deals in lyrics or creative writing, is ultimately one that I wish I had thought of. Though as of now it definitely would’ve reached a wider audience on Disney+ than me.

We seldom think of grief this way. My perception of it has always been a dark, navy/grayish cloud of despair that sticks to the skin & sinks into the marrow. Almost like some dark force whose job it is to chain you to the depths. I think recently that idea has changed for me. We like to quantify grief in stages. First you hit the one, then the other, then the other three. And while a part of me thinks to an extent that is true in terms of the overarching experience, I think we dip in & out of each of the five stages intermittently & at times randomly. You see, if we look at grief from the perspective of love’s perseverance it becomes something entirely different, it becomes an immensely beautiful, deeply human experience.

Those who do not grieve are whose who have not known love. They have not felt its entirely. individually unique hold on their heart to then know what it is to suddenly have to live without it. They do not see the way in which our memory replays each of the moments, begging us to find what is irreplaceably lost. They do not understand the vacuum of space that feels ripped from your chest because they have not felt that level of DNA melding, intertwining love. Be so glad for that. Know that your sadness can only come from one who has been loved.

My advise to you is to feel these moments. Live in these memories savoring the shimmeringly perfect details & embrace the pain & the detriment that comes with them because these moments will fade. The intensity at which you feel their loss will fade & so too will the sharp edges of those bold, flashing memories. Grieve as you are told to love, wholeheartedly & know that you don’t owe anyone your tears or your smiles. You are allowed to be as “put together” as you need to be, or to not be. Feel what you need to feel because that is the only way to experience grief for what it is, without allowing it to compress down & fester & become this thing that sours your soul or the memory of those who you have lost. Be vulnerable, be bold, claim time for yourself & feel. You will get through it & you will find that those memories that bring you pain will, over time, fill you to the core with that feeling of love that I know right now you feel you have lost. I would also advise you that those you have lost would want you to continue living your life & to not let the delicate balance between succumbing & healing shift too far into the former.

My thoughts & love go out to you all. I understand that no words that I say or no sentiments that I extend will be enough to repair what has been broken, that is entirely up to you.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: It Must Be Nice

Every two to four years the US likes to turn up the gas on the conversations that happen over family gatherings & across social media platforms. I’ll be the first to admit I kind of enjoy the biannual purge that cleans out my social media followers & friends. It can actually be refreshing from time to time to know where people actually stand. And look, I know a lot of you read that last bit of sentences & had the lovely sentiment of “just because we disagree in the voting booth, doesn’t mean we can’t still be friend” & unfortunately I think we’re way past that societally, morally, & “loving.” I’m sure, once again, me saying that has lost a few of you & some of you have already checked out or clicked out of this blog because you “won’t be a part of divisive politics” which in this day & age is, let’s face it, oxymoronic. If you’re still here & you have a little bit of time I’d love to fill you in on what I mean by all of this & show you why I, & so many who find ourselves living in marginalized groups, feel this way.

Let’s start at what prompted this blog with a little bit of back story. I was on the phone a few weeks ago with someone, whom I shan’t name here because they trusted me enough to speak about their political beliefs openly with me & inadvertently trigger the contents of this blog from the conversation that they & I had. In said conversation we were talking about the upcoming election in which I voiced my support for the Harris/Walz ticket & the general feeling of hope that came with it. We talked policy & things of that nature & the rebuttal of the person I was talking to was very economically driven, as most people are to do when they vote red. They are a well off individual & were upset over the amount of taxes they’d had to pay this year from the sales of an entity that they had worked their lifetime for & which had allow them to retire. I informed them that we hadn’t had a new tax bill since 2019, but their concern was that the incoming potential of a Democratic win would further reduce their earned pile & that which they had prepared to leave for their children once they passed. My response was, what a luxury, that must be nice.

You see while they’re dealing internally with issues like tax policy & inflation (which is mostly a global issue by the way, majority of the rest can be chalked up to corporate greed) I’ve just spent the last several months investigating the deep possibility & probability that had Biden not dropped out, Evan & I would most likely need to expat to another country.

I don’t think that’s over exaggerating either. In fact a lot of people that I know who are members of the LGBTQ+ community, individuals of color, or women, had been doing exactly the same thing to varying degrees. Evan & I had gotten to the point where we were narrowing down countries, looking into visa applications & price, & planning to start the processes for all of these things. Tax policy was honestly the farthest thing from our minds & that’s exactly what I mean when I say “it must be nice.”

It must be nice not to worry about your fundamental rights every election cycle. It must be nice not to fear that the only way that you & your significant other to be together would be by fleeing the country. It must be nice when the things on the ballot for you are not life altering, but instead whether or not you have access to a military grade machine gun. It must be nice not to be worried about whether or not you’re going to be able to afford or attain healthcare. It must be nice to know that certain aspects of who you are as human will not diminish you in society to any degree no matter the outcome. It must be nice not to worry about housing or food or whether or not we will even have a livable planet in 20-30 years. It must be nice to balance the fate of so many, whom you are supposed to love unconditionally as a so called christian, on a vote in favor of your wallet when the alternative could potentially ruin the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. It must be nice.

So no, I don’t mince words, because we are past the point of where an election is simply deciding where & when we spend our tax dollars. We are voting on whether or not those who are different than you; who look different, worship in a different way, love different, have a different tax bracket, have different core beliefs, are worthy of basic human liberties or not. And if you are not someone who can agree with that from a moral stand point, I have little to no interest in anything you say. Because at the end of the day if we can’t agree that all people, no matter their race, gender, background, sexuality, religion, etc. are worthy of life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness equally, without barriers or restrictions that keep them from living a life with no consequence of your own, then you have lost my respect & any integrity that I thought you might have.

This is not about tax policy. This is not about budgets. This is about the livelihood of millions of Americans who don’t fall under the christian, cis-gender, heterosexual, white blanket & I fear that should this election go the way it looked like it was headed just a month or so ago, then we will have lost any & all hope of regaining & rebuilding America as any form of a United States.

-C

Blog: Ponderance & Teacups

Lately I’ve found myself leaning more & more into ponderances & have caught myself marveling at the ‘through lines’ of it all. Yes, I know ponderances isn’t a word, but I enjoyed the cadence of it in my brain & the way it fits in form. To ponder is to think carefully or in detail about & adding the suffix “ance” insinuates a state of being, ponderances therefore being states of thoughtful thinking. There’s something shimmery & quant about that. Like nostalgia set to theory. I don’t know if it’s the years, the journey into mindfulness, the season of life, or what the cause of this often aloof status would be, but it’s brought about many connections in my head that warm the heart & bring me to marvel at the grand ‘happenstance’ of it all.

One such ponderance & the conclusion that it led to finds its way back to me almost on the daily in the form of teacups. I am a lover of beverages in most of their forms. Most dietitians I’m sure would scoff at the amount of “wasted calories” that I drink, but there’s something altogether entertaining about a drink that’s tastes invigorate the senses & occupy the mind. I am a tea drinker, of course, because of this love (in addition to coffee, cocktails, juices, craft sodas, tonics, etc. etc.). I find the combination of flavors, as well as their medicinal properties, to be fascinating & therefore I consume some form of tea almost each & every day. The existence of this love for beverages has also led me to the accumulation of many a drinking vessel, all of which sit in the same cupboard awaiting their specific & unique intended use.

My mugs, which are often the cup chosen for tea time, actually sit opposite all of the others in my kitchen. However, the tea strainers all sit with the other tea items; the teapot, the ceremonial tea cups, etc. & with the tea paraphernalia lives two very distinct tea cups that are actually one of the newer additions to the collection. Did I mention they also come with a story?

When I go to make my tea; when the water has been warmed, the mug & the leaves has been selected, & I go in search of a strainer they always catch my eye & I can’t help but smile as my fingertips drift over them to where the things I need are stored. They don’t look like much. They’re small, entirely porcelain white, except for the blue lined base & two little raised details that sit on either side of the cups; a soft greyed purple & a blush pink flower & a few cerulean & sage leaves. The tea cups are unassuming. They’re delicate & beautiful when taken in but when places in a collection I’m not sure they’re the first thing that most people would notice. That’s definitely not the case for me as they stand out like a spot in the night, anchoring me to lineage, fate, & a bond between peoples living on opposite ends of the earth.

I don’t know entirely where the teacups originated outside of knowing that they are Japanese in make & in origin. They were brought across the Pacific Ocean, packed carefully in with an assortment of other personal treasures & articles of a life being transplanted from one country to another. Through time & years they ended up in a home on a hilltop in Hillsboro, Oregon where a first generation Japanese family lived with their daughter next door to my parents & their daughter at the time. I’m not sure at what point the family moved away back across the sea, but I do know in the interim, in that time spent as neighbors, they & my parents became rather close. Just as my sister did to their daughter. I have no recollection of the bond or the family in my early years of life because I was a newly minted human being & I’m fairly certain they were gone before my time of memory, but when they departed this country they left behind certain items & gifts, two of which where these teacups.

Years went by & stories were told & the family became a staple of the history that is my immediate family though the years had drifted us apart. Technology had changed, each of us had moved ten times over, the children were grown & starting families & lives of their own, & the ties & bonds slipped nearly into fable. My mother would often sit & express how much she longed to reconnect with the friends whom they hadn’t been able to reach for the many years of separation they'd endured. That was until my love stepped in.

Evan is notoriously good for finding things & people lost to the internet, he should probably be a private investigator, & in the span of around thirty minutes to an hour, he was able to find the socials & email for the family now living in Japan. From there my mother began to reconnect which then led to her connecting me with the daughter of the family whom now I share an online connection with delighting in the photos she posts of her & her blossoming family. And then there are these teacups.

My mom isn’t a tea drinker, if she does, she’s a mug drinker for sure favoring something that comes in a bag over loose leaf. She has not the desire for the ceremonial, meditative aspects of tea brewing & drinking & in knowing that I do, she gifted me the teacups along with the story of their origin. It was a while later, after using them & having them as a staple of my cupboard of cups that I really realized the serendipity of what I had. The amount of life that these simple ceramic vessels had seen & endured all while intertwining two families from two entirely different cultural backgrounds & locations.

The cups were gifted or bought in Japan, where they were crafted. They were used by a family who crossed the largest ocean on the planet to start a new life in an entirely different country. They were passed, lovingly, to my family as their previous owners parted these lands where they sat, waiting the years for the one member of my family who would use them for their intended use to be gifted them. They would then reignite the stories & the desire of connection in which my chosen partner, someone from an entirely different family, from an entirely different part of the country, would reconnect the two separated families. And now they have a home in my house in Tennessee where they frequently spark my sense of wonder & amazement at the sheer tenacity of the invisible string that guides us along. Where they are an anchor point of admiration & love across time, space, generations, & peoples.

I know someday these cups may break. I’m sure out of clumsiness that some day I may accidentally knock them from their shelf & shatter them into a million pieces. And while the idea of losing these points of reference & reverence saddens me, I know that their meaning & their purpose will have been served & that their timing, their patience, & fortitude will have amounted to so much more than just a pair of teacups. Things are just things, stuff is just stuff, but meaning & love & companionship leave behind marks. We can never see them but they are very much felt & maybe, who knows, when the timing is right & if these cups have outlived a love I carry for their practical uses. Maybe they too will make another trip across the sea where they will be returned to a member of the bloodline that gifted them so lovingly to mine & the intersectionality will continue.

Blog: I've Got That Summertime, Summertime Sadness.

Typically this is the type of blog that you would find popping up on my page during the colder months of the year & while those depressive bouts definitely feel different from the place I currently find myself in, I feel that this is no less relevant a topic to so many of you who read my writings. Summer is usually the time of year where I am in my emotional & energetic highs. I love the heat, I love that everything is green & lush & all of the best foods are in season. Also, being a water baby, summer offers the most opportunity for me to be submerged…comfortably. I don’t think all of that is not entirely true currently, as I feel what I’m experiencing has nothing to do with the season itself. I suppose to a degree that the title of this blog is a misnomer, as I don’t have seasonal depression as some do with the warmer months, but instead I find myself in a slump triggered by something else…it just happens to be taking place in the heat of summer.

I’ve written many times about my experience with ADHD & I feel like this is more in line with that side of my psyche than the seasonally depressed one. If you’re unfamiliar with ADHD a lot of us get what is referred to as “executive disfunction.” This form of “ED” (lol) is typically entirely driven by one of two things; dopamine or anxiety. I think I’m dealing with the former, but I’m going to talk about the latter first.

Often times people with executive dysfunction that stems from anxiety get that way because they have too much on their plate. They’re looking around, seeing all of the things they feel they need to get accomplished, & they flounder because their brain can’t figure out where to start. A lot of the time when you’re neurodivergent everything comes across as having equal importance so when you’re weighing one thing against the other your scales can come out flush. This is where the ED sets in & you find yourself breaking down & doing nothing instead of getting the things done that you needed to get done which then results in feelings of low self esteem, self worth, etc.

On the other side of this dysfunctional coin lives the dopamine drive, which people who are neurodivergent are often driven by. You see, we crave novelty, we crave change & constant moments of “oo, look at that!” which is often why people with ADHD are impulsive spenders. Autism typically manifests in the opposite way. Those who are autistic often crave stability, comfort, & constants in their lives.

I’m coming off of almost two to three months of dopamine switch backs. I worked on a single, was writing for other people, did PR & asset work for said single, helped a friend move, worked on an acoustic version of said single, started & finished another single, shot assets for it, went to Colorado, played shows, etc., etc., etc. But the line of exhilaration & burn out it the edge of a knife & I think I found myself burning out which then caused me to falter & stop, as I should which then left my dopamine & novelty meter to run out which then causes me to go in search of quick dopamine fixes; food, social media, working out, etc. With those quick fixes in place my executive function sets in because the things that take longer than five seconds to an hour or so now seem not worth the energy & the cycle perpetuates itself over & over & thus, much like the anxious style, so too does the depression.

The problem is that executive dysfunction begets executive dysfunction & the depression definitely perpetuates it as all it makes me want to do is wallow. It is a battle to get up & do anything at all, truly. Even this blog has been a sloooooooog for me & my brain to get through today as the dopamine payoff is long & delayed. (Most blogs take me about an hour & a half to two.) But unfortunately, I have to re-regulate, I have to push through the slump & do the things that take time, avoiding the quick fixes as best I can in order to get back on track which is typically much easier for me to do in the summer months because there is more going on in the world & amongst my peer groups.

As with any blog regarding my struggles with depression or my ADHD symptoms, I don’t write them for your sympathies or to make excuses for myself. What I do is share all of this because I know there are those of you out there who feel the same way I do or are dealing with similar moments in your lives. Additionally some of you may be reading this to better understand the ebb & flow of mental states of someone in your life, & if that’s what has brought you here I applaud the hell out of you & your desire to engage from an empathetic stand point.

Living in a nuerotypical oriented, ‘go, go, go’ world can be incredibly difficult for some of us & often those who find themselves aligned, mentally, with the world that capitalism has built, don’t understand what it is to not have your brain fit in the box constructed around us. I write these blogs to help educate as much as I do to help those in the same boat find commonality with a stranger on the internet.

I’ll bounce out of this, I’m sure of it. I’m in a low tide moment where the sea has receded & I’m forced to bake in the sun for a while but I know the tide will shift & I will once again be rolling in the surf.

As always, much love to you all!!!

-C

Blog: Do We Still Need Pride- 2024 Edition

Every year I don’t think I’m going to redo this blog until I sit down in the month of June & find myself reentering the title into the title line above. I never planned for this to become a yearly installment, but alas it seems here we are once again. Each year that I do this blog I end up highlighting the reasons in which celebrating the month of June as LGBTQ Pride is still entirely important. I do so using current & pending Anti-LGBTQ laws, relevant stories, & shamelessly, a bit of my own personal opinion as someone who lives within the community & finds the vast majority of their friends falling under one of the letters covered in the month.

If I’m being frank, I don’t take much enjoyment in writing this blog year to year. A lot of the time the reason for that is because the resounding “yes” of an answer to the question presented in the title of this piece comes with heavy news & disheartening statistics. A lot of the time this blog also ends up taking the form of a research paper when majority of what I do is think pieces, travel blogs, personal stories, & the like. This blog often weighs heavily on me as it feels, in a lot of ways, that true equality & freedom get farther & farther our of reach.

I understand that in a lot of ways progress has marched on & made a lot of headway. There is more & more queer representation in media, more queer artists are receiving their much deserved flowers & not being maligned because of their gender identity or sexual orientation. But with the march of progress & the normalizing of things that the hateful deemed taboo for many many years comes those with loud voices who make massive waves in the public by having a platform that is divisive & fueled by scapegoating & misinformation.

I want to make a few things abundantly clear before I continue on. If you are someone reading this who finds themselves on the side of history where you’re saying things like “why don’t straight people have a month” or “I just don't understand why they have to rub their lifestyle in our faces” I want you to read the following paragraph very carefully. Okay? This is a safe space for you as much as it is for those of my fellow members of the alphabet mafia. This is a safe space for you to challenge & question if what you believe & feel is true or not or if it’s just talking points & frustration. Your emotions are valid & they exist for a reason, though I’m not sure entirely if they’re being pointed at the right folks. Are you ready?

The LGBTQ community does not endorse pedophilia. We do not & will not ever include pedophilia in the rainbow banner, nor will we ever praise the outward expression of such. If anyone has told you otherwise I would ask you to reexamine your sources & reexamine their sources. Along that same vein. No one is giving gender reassignment surgery to minors & if they are (big if there) the vast majority of us also agree that said doctor should lose their license. The last & final thing that I need you to be clear on before we go forward is whether or not any of this is natural. The science, the legitimate science, has proven same sex attraction, gender dysphoria, etc, etc, etc, to be a common & pervasive thing not only amongst human beings but also all over the animal kingdom. That is no longer up for debate despite that seeming to be a “discourse” I hear brought up time & time again. Being queer is not a choice. Having the courage & the privilege to live an openly queer lifestyle that honors who you are as a person inside & out is. It is something that needs to be normalized because it is normal. No one is trying to convert children into becoming LGBTQ, if anything people are, again, trying to normalize a scientifically normal occurrence so that those who fall under the blanket of being LGBTQ stop feeling & being ostracized, vilified, murdered, beaten, abused, driven to suicide, & misunderstood. We are talking about human beings here. We are talking about your sons, daughters, children. We are talking about your brothers, sisters, siblings, mothers, fathers, parents, guardians, aunts, uncles, relatives, best friends, significant others, we are talking about real people in your lives that you probably claim to love.

As I mentioned above the march has been discouraging over the last couple of years & June 2023-June 2024 is no different. States continue to propose & pass laws that limit the rights of those in the queer community & hate crimes, specifically against those who are trans, are reaching decades long record highs. We are currently staring down the barrel of Project 2025, a Republican plan to completely gut the rights of LGBTQ Americans on Day 1 of a conservative dominated Washington DC. That’s not hyperbolic, you can read about it on the RNC’s site, laid out in plain English, right here. We are at a pivotal point in our history where the casual hate & bigotry has reached a boiling point that threatens to boil over in November of this year.

Additionally, retailers like Target, Walmart, etc. have either scaled back their Pride collections of entirely dismissed them following the outcry of the vocal minority during June of 2023. While rainbow capitalism isn’t great, neither is erasing the visibility & presence it gave to the community on a national scale.

Pride is once again slipping back into the realms of its origin & becoming a protest. A protest for visibility, for public safety, for rights. It’s becoming a protest for freedom, not only of expression, but also of peace of mind & security. Pride is undoubtedly more important than ever. It is a demand to be seen, to be heard, to not go silently & turn over because it’s convenient or easier for those who live on the outside looking in. Pride is not only needed, it is essential. It is essential for those who someday dream of having a quiet, normal life with their partner & their children. It is essential to the person who one day dreams of looking in the mirror & seeing their body reflect the beautiful human underneath. It is essential to those who dream of living a life free of fear of persecution, of emotional & physical harm, of having to chose between who you are & who those with outdated mentalities think you need to be. Pride is essential. Pride is community building, fortifying, & solidifying. Pride is health care, preventative care, & suicide prevention. Pride is expression, & honesty, & loving. Pride is, & continues to be, needed.

If you are someone who is reading this who finds themselves within the community; whether that’s questioning or confirmed, you are loved & you are valid & there are people out there who are so beyond ready to embrace the real you & show you what real, true, unconditional love looks like. If you are someone who is not in the community but loves its members personally, on behalf of all of us, thank you. Your support, affirmation, & affection goes so much farther than you could ever know. If you are someone who is neither of these things I challenge you. I challenge you to make a queer friend, to reach out to that estranged loved one, to make a genuine human effort to see them as who they are because I promise you’ll find so much beauty & unfiltered love waiting there. Set your beliefs, your politics, your whatever aside for a while & meet someone where they are, just as two human beings trying to make their way through the world. And finally, if you are someone who claims to love a queer person but then votes against them every chance you get, I beg of you, listen to what those in marginalized groups are trying to tell you. Please. It is not a loving act to claim that you care for someone & then worsen their lives because you think they’re overreacting or being alarmist. The last couple of years have proven that none of us were or are being alarmist.

As always, much love to you all,

& of course, Happy Pride!

-C

Blog: Life In Repair

I’m not going to spend this blog talking about Harvey, though I could do so indefinitely. I’m not here to talk about my ear or anything regarding the anxiety I have/had around it. Though these things will feature in the blog only in their remnants, what I’d like to talk about today is more in line with what it means & what if feels like to be living life ‘in repair.’

In addition to the two aforementioned events, Evan & I had a tough May 2024. Everything seemed to be perpetually going wrong. Our month started off with me noticing a mealybug infestation on a whole room of my house plants. After failed treatment after failed treatment I finally took them outside, removed the dirt entirely, lightly pressure washed the plants, soaked them & their pots in a water & castile soap mixture for around thirty minutes, rinsed them again, sprayed them down with alcohol, rinsed them again, & repotted them in new soil that was treated with systemic to get rid of any possible eggs which all took about six hours total. (I found more mealybugs back on the same plants yesterday…) Then one of the more expensive pumps on my fish tank went out. Then our dishwasher broke & flooded our kitchen & the cabinets. Then we started to hear birds in our walls which then lead to an infestation of bird mites. Then Max scratched the screen of Evan’s brand new MacBook. Then Harvey passed. Then our AC went out. And while in the grand scheme of things a lot of these items are trivial, they still added up to be major stressors.

Additionally while all of this was happening Evan was departing his old job preparing to turn his other into a full time gig, I was wrapping recording & mixing of my next single, we were shooting & creating content for it, all while trying to maintain the every day day to day events & goings on around the house & within our social lives. We were both getting more & more stretched thin while fighting the anxieties of healing & later to currently the grief of losing a member of our immediate family. We truly began to wonder if were in fact cursed.

I’m not bringing any of this up to gain your pity, I’m not here to say “oh, poor us, look at the shit storm we’ve been navigating.” I understand life comes at you in waves & that sometimes the surf can be treacherous to even drowning. I just needed to outline those events for you so you understand where I’m coming from. I’d be lying to you all if I said I didn’t feel like I had a bit of stress fatigue, I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t still actively grieving though each day does get easier than the last. But what I want to illustrate to you all if what I am trying to extend to myself & what I recommended extending two weeks ago when I wrote “Healing Doesn’t Happen Overnight.” That it’s okay to give yourself grace & have a little patience as you do your best to reassemble a life.

I am living life in repair, as I know so many of us are right now. What does that look like? What does that mean? It means I’m chugging along but I’m being mindful. I’m keeping stock of the things that still require my attention both within my being as well as in my environment & doing my best to mend & set them properly so that they begin to heal or are easier to pick up & complete along the way. I’m extending the understanding that it’s a long month & that I’ve been through a lot. I’m also keeping vigilant & staying at the ready for the inevitability that more things will come.

I’m allowing myself to say no, I’m conquering projects that I put off, I’m prioritizing my health, my wellbeing, because I cannot properly help & assist anyone else while I am still fractured & neither can you & neither should you. You are worthy of health, you are worthy of peace & the feeling of safety. You are worthy of life as it exists to the fullest extend. And so am I!

I know fixing the problems & sitting off to the side while the world seems to go by can be disheartening, it can feel like you’re wasting away or like you’re being antisocial, a bad friend, a bad family member, but your health, in all aspects, is important. Repairs are worth the time that it takes for them to take hold & be functional again.

I also want you to realize that sometimes things don’t heal in the same way that they originated. Some things wither off & die, but it is only to make room for new growth & new life. In traditional tarot reading there is a card called ‘The Tower.’ The Tower to a lot of people signals doom, & to an extent that’s what the card stands for on the surface. In reality the story behind The Tower is a fire that destroys the building in its entirety. What happens next is a beautiful thing. You sift through the ashes & find what remains. You find the pieces that resisted the fire, the resilient, the gems that were tucked away in the walls, & from the ash & dismay, you build a better tower to stand in the place of that which you thought you wanted but was no longer serving you & was standing in the way of something better.

Be diligent in sifting through your ashes. Notice the messages, the lessons, & once you have everything you need to move forward, plant that first brick, then the next. Build your tower more magnificent & glistening than that which stood before. Repair, remake, & remain resilient.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: On Harvey

Introduction

I couldn’t decide if I wanted to skip this week’s blog or not simply out of bereavement, but the more I sat with the idea, the more I felt it was important to use this as an outlet & to show the world just how amazing a dog it just lost. I know for those of you who knew Harvey, even in the limited capacity, you understand. He was something truly & deeply special that extends well beyond being ‘just a dog.’ I know this blog will be hard to write, I’ve faced that & accepted it. I know for some of you it may also be hard to read as the hearts broken by this loss are not simply my own. I don’t, as of writing this introductory paragraph, know exactly what shape this blog will take but I know at the very least it will include a bit of an obituary, probably a reflection from yours truly, & maybe something else. I guess time will tell. If I seem to lose the plot or narrative from time to time, I apologize, as previously stated this blog is going to hard for me to write, I am sure I will break down a few times, as I already have just from writing of him briefly in the middle of this section.

History

Harvey was born on January 21st, 2011 at a puppy mill somewhere in Missouri. He was the last of his liter & at a certain point was either sold or given away to a dog seller in Bolivar. I found Harvey in mid-May of 2011 in an ad for the Kansas City Star after finishing my freshmen semester at Belmont University. I’d just moved off campus & was in desperate search for a dog as I missed having one around. We’d always had dogs growing up & I’d always wanted a golden retriever & Harvey seemed to be the purebred golden that nobody wanted as he had sat in a concrete kennel for the first four months of his life. Harvey & I first met on May 20th of 2011. I loved him instantly. My sister drove me to go get him where I payed $250 dollars cash for him & fell in love instantly. He was dirty, in desperate need of a bath & a name change. At the time he was going by “Rusty” which is ironically what my father was called as a child. After throwing up in my sister’s car & pooping in my parents carpeted bathroom, he was given a thorough bath & driven back to Nashville with me.

Harvey & I hit it off instantly, we were basically inseparable. Most anywhere I went, he joined. We slept in the same bed, ate at the same time, ran together, swam together, spent evenings on the couch together & were truly the closest & fastest of friends. Harvey was goofy, he had an infectious smile & energy & often got the zoomies, especially when take outside & let off the leash in the vacant field behind my apartment. He was impossible to potty train, as prior to our meeting he’d never been on grass & my first apartment was concrete slab flooring, but I did my best to have patience with him.

Harvey saw me through breakups, spiraling depression, days where I couldn’t get out of bed but knew I had to for his sake. He was always there to rest his head on my legs & look up at me with the kindest eyes & the warmest kisses, especially on the days I needed them the most.

He & I moved out of the city to the suburbs in December of 2012 where he now had a yard to play in & a river to swim in which he quickly adapted to & became obsessed with on our afternoon runs. And there we lived, all this time, seeing changes in seasons, roommates, relationships, & life.

Around 2019-2020 Harvey’s health started to decline. At the age of nine he really started not doing well; his joints were diminishing, he was having liver issues, he was barely eating & didn’t want to do majority of the activities he loved. The average lifespan of a golden retriever is around 10 years so I began to think maybe it was just approaching his time. Either way I switched up his diet & began to walk him a little more. The real turning point came in June of 2020 when Evan & I adopted Peter. Pete was meant to be a bit of a ‘bridging dog,’ planning for the inevitable & making the transition hypothetically easier. Pete gave Harvey new life & on he went kicking for another three years or so.

At a certain point we had to stop our hikes, our trips to the river, & way before any of those, our runs. His old body just couldn’t take it anymore but he never lost his heart, his smile, or the love that beamed from him at all times. He just slowed down.

In November of last year Harvey fell while on a walk. He was walking, faltered a little, & then fell over. From there he almost completely diminished. He wouldn’t eat or walk. He had no interest in treats of anything. So we took him to my family’s for Thanksgiving so that they could say their 'goodbyes’ to him fully anticipating that he wouldn’t make it through the following week. I wrote a blog around that time call “The Part Of Pet Ownership That No One Takes To Heart” you can read it by clicking the title if you’d like. Eventually though, Harvey bounced back. Apparently large retrieving dogs are prone to strokes in their old age, which they can heal from & get over.

Harvey continued chugging along until a few weeks ago when he started to become very picky about food. It wasn’t necessarily that he wasn’t eating, is was that he would take a whole day to finish a bowl he usually polished off in one setting. We chocked it up to the kibble hurting his gums & switched him entirely to wet food & rice, which he ate most of upon being served.

What Happened

Earlier this week he stopped taking much interest in the wet food. He would eat a bite or two, but would let it sit & would nibble throughout the day. He would still always finish the bowl until a few days ago when he cut his food intake down from two bowls a day to barely making it through one. I had the intent of taking him to the vet on Friday if nothing changed but he beat us to it.

Thursday Evan & I fed the dogs, Harvey ate a bit but not much, but he was still his normal energy level & self so we left to run a few errands, see a movie, & have dinner with a friend. We arrived home later in our evening to find our kitchen covered in blood. The blood ended up being Peter’s & was coming from the tip of his tail which we originally wrote off as “Happy Tail Syndrome” where a dog smacks its tail on a wall or something sharp & bleeds. After we got him mended, we turned back to the both of them to instigate a walk.

We’d noticed that Harvey seemed aloof when we got in the door, he didn’t greet us there like he typically does & was laying against the window with his tail tucked & his head hung. We checked him initially to see if he had any bites from Pete as they’ve been known to fight from time to time, but he was unscathed. We tried to get him up to go outside before his walk but he had to be helped, not uncommon. He went to get a drink & immediately fell back over. Evan managed to get him outside where he said he kind of just wobbled around & didn’t do anything before coming inside & laying down. I tried to rouse him for the walk of which he showed no interest & when I got him back up he simply sauntered into the laundry room & slumped against the wall. It was then that I noticed his breathing was heavy, he was having contractions of his lower abdomen, & he was salivating a ton, in addition to being hyper lethargic. We loaded him & Peter up in the car & took him off to the emergency vet.

When we got to the emergency vet I had to carry him in. With the weight he’d lost over the last couple of weeks & age he was fairly light, relatively speaking. The doctors put him on a gurney & rushed him to the back. We sat for about an hour with no word. Eventually the doctor came in & explained to us that they’d done an x-ray & it showed a mass effect where his liver & spleen sat. He gave us two options. We could either put him down or have him stabilized until the morning at which point they would do an ultrasound & a series of tests to determine the cause. We asked for a quote for the latter, just to make sure there was nothing that could be done to heal him. They came back a while later with a quote of around $3K just for the hospitalization & the tests. At this point it was round 3 AM & we asked if he was stable enough to take home so that we could take him to our normal vet at 7:30 when they opened to see their thoughts & recommendations. We didn’t get him back & out of the hospital til around 3:45 at which point we got help from the techs loading him into the car on a towel.

I carried Harvey into the house & laid him on the bathroom floor, his favorite sleeping spot, especially when he was hot. He was running a mild fever so it seemed fitting. I got out my sleeping bag & bed mat & set up a temporary arrangement by his side to spend the next couple of hours in case he needed anything. I laid there stroking his fur as he breathed heavily until he fell asleep & I did the same.

Around 6 AM Harvey attempted to get up, he didn’t make it very far off his side & proceeded to defecate on the floor of the bathroom. I only share this detail because it’s important for the coloration. Typically when dealing with liver diseases or cancer you see a build up of yellow bile in the system, this was entirely that. I hoisted him into the bath tub, got him all cleaned up, & prepared to depart for the vets office.

At this point I had no misconceptions. I knew I was about to lose him but I wanted a professional to tell me there was little to nothing that could be done. I told Evan that he needed to prepare for that, that I was 95% sure we would be returning home later in the morning without him. He agreed on the feeling.

We arrived at Belmont Animal Hospital right before they opened. I followed a receptionist in & explained what had happened & that even though I knew I didn’t have an appointment I was hoping they’d still be able to help. She got the nurses to gurney Harvey in where they initially took in the back to get a doctor’s opinion before bringing the three of us into an exam room. The doctor met us there where she instructed us that she thought there was likely nothing they could do. They were willing to run the tests if we wanted them & needed that closure, but she said that even if they had answers the likelihood of them being able to do anything to fix it at his age was slim to none. We agreed that it was time & began the process of saying goodbye.

Harvey was so tired at the end. He could barely keep his eyes open, he had no interest in the bit of bacon that the brought him, & you could just tell that he was ready to go. I know selfishly we all want our dogs to live forever. We all want them to recover indefinitely & be with us til we go, but that’s not the deal, & it hurts like hell to have to make that decision but I don’t regret it one bit. It was his time & anything past that would’ve just extended his suffering for my own selfish reasons.

The doctor gave us time to say our goodbyes, the doctor he’d had since he was a puppy came in to sit with him for a while, then we Evan & I sat on the floor with him as they administered the euthanasia.

I’m pretty sure Harvey was gone after the second dose of anesthetic they gave him. He let out one last big deep breath even before the euthanasia had been administered. Harvey passed away peacefully & surrounded by people that loved him to the ends of the earth around 8:30 AM on Friday May 24th, 2024 at the ripe age of 13 years & 4 months & 3 days. We sat with him for probably another thirty minutes to an hour before we left him in the car of the staff.

The Aftermath

I’m going to be real with you all. I miss my dog. I miss him so horribly that I can hardly stand it. It is grief like that which I have never known. Harvey was my best friend. He was one of my favorite things about my life. I would have done anything for that dog. He had this ability to bring out the best of us & his sweetness & kind heart knew no bounds right up until the very end. He was a better companion than I ever could have dreamed to asked for & is honestly one of the main reasons that I still make footprints on this planet. Our house feels like a vacant shell without him, like all that is good has been sapped from us & our hearts & we are left to deal with nothing but pain & emptiness. Harvey was by far the best of us. He inspired so many into not only adopting Goldens but adopting dogs in general in the sheer hope that they too would get to experience the level of love Harvey poured into all of us nonstop. He is irreplaceable & the greatest dog I think I will ever have the privilege of knowing, all biases aside.

There are things that no one tells you about losing your dog. They never tell you how you’ll relive lost echos in each room you pass through, that you’ll walk in the door still expecting to be greeted but that infectious, loving smile, & it’s just gone. They never warn you how empty your house feels. How you’ll cautiously turn every cornered, widening your birth because you expect to see them still lying there on the floor. They don’t warn you about the vacancy'; not just the physical but also the massive, bottomless hole that it leaves in your heart. The feeling that a piece of you is gone that you will never be able to retrieve or mend, but will instead just eventually get used to. They don’t warn you that your other dog will whine in their sleep, that he’ll search endlessly in the usual places around the yard & in the house for them. That they’ll begin each day by looking for their leash then laying to watch & see if they return through the front door. They never warn you that’ll you’ll make too much dinner. That you’ll repeat the practice that you’ve carried on for years not realizing you’ve made too much because there’s a bowl that will forever remain empty now. They never warn you about the favorite toys, the leashes, the bowls, the special treats that are scattered around the home waiting to flood you with grief. They never warn you about the smells that you’ll catch on an old blanket or hoodie that immediately take you back to them. They never warn you about that first walk without them, about how much ever single step hurts when they’re gone. They never warn you about the signatures they leave behind; the hair, the smudged on the window where they used to sit & wait for your return, the scratches on the floor where they used to roll & scratch after they finished their supper. They never warn you of how the pain sneaks up on you, of how something will pop up out of the blue & remind you of them & in an instant you’re back on the floor whispering your goodbyes to them. They never warn you about how hard it is to carry on after a great dog goes& they never warn you how much it rips you to shreds to not be able to call their name & watch their ears perk up.

Harvey, I will miss you forever. I am so grateful for all that you were not just to me, but to so many & the outpour of love in your name speaks volumes to just how amazingly bright a star you were. I love you to the deepest extent of my soul & your passing has demolished me. I will spend the rest of my days searching endlessly for a better dog than you, though I know that is a fruitless & hopeless endeavor. Rest easy Rooster, I will spend my lifetime counting down the days til I am reunited with the dog who was nothing short of an angel.

I miss my dog y’all, more than anything, I miss him so damn bad.

Please hug your pets for me tonight. They are more precious than you can possibly imagine.

With love always,

-C

Harvey May 2020

Photo Credit: Evan Michael

Blog: *Insert Title Here

To be honest, I’m here staring at my screen, watching the place indicator blink on what was a previously blank page with the word “blog:” typed in the title slot above. It’s been that way for about an hour now & while I don’t know if anything will come of it, I figured it was better for me to just start typing & figure the rest out along the way. I don’t know what this will be, if it will be anything at all. I can’t promise you that it will be worth your time to read or that it will change your mind about some goings on in the world at the moment, I’m just a guy sat at his computer, desperately trying to squeeze some creative juice onto a virtual page. At the end of the day is that enough? Is my lack of prophetic insight this week enough to classify it as content, is it enough to keep those who read this virtual collection of thoughts & experiences satiated for another week? I don’t know, but here I am, still typing away.

Maybe this will end up being more of a brain dump, at least that’s the direction it seems to be going following that previous paragraph. What meta commentary I have for you all this week. But I don’t outwardly know what I have that is exciting for me to talk about with you all, & maybe that’s okay too.

A part of me is sitting here saying “just delete the whole thing & go do something else, no one is going to want to read this nonsense, just call off the blog for this week until you have something interesting to say.” Then there’s another side of me telling me that that is a cop out. That I need to power through & put data to page simply for the act of doing so & to hell with the idea that having it be accepted by anyone as a genuine ‘blog entry.’ I can’t dictate how you feel about it any more than it seems I can come up for an idea for this week’s entry. But to some extent, isn’t this an idea?

Isn’t my rambling, my word vomit, some form of an idea? Because if I’m being frank, I want you to relate to me. Selfishly I want you to read this & understand & empathize with what it is to stare your weekly commitments in the face & come up dry with anything that you deem is of value. Which, let’s face it, we all can relate to.

If you’ve made it this far & haven’t snuck out on me, I applaud you & I guess I also thank you for your time & whatever persistence is driving you through this borderline nihilistic hogwash I am putting us all through. I can’t make promises that next week’s blog will be better or more interesting or that I’ll have a better grasp on a concept to present you all with because I don’t know those things & typically when I sit down to write with no knowing of where the blog will take my I eventually come up with something, but my inspiration is fleeting today it seems. Sorry for the run on sentence.

I don’t know if I can pull some profound meaning out of all of this for us to tie up in a neat little bow, nor am I sure that I want to, because in a lot of ways that would feel inauthentic & I fear would present me as a pontificating try hard. I truly don’t know where or when to wrap this or even why I continue typing as I am, but it is what it is I suppose.

I could, in theory, relate this all back to what it is to be a creative, to be expected to ‘turn on’ my creativity like a light switch, but that feels like playing the martyr, when in reality I’m so blessed to be able to do this. I’m blessed to have readers who return to this place like Nic Kidman in an AMC ad (at least that’s how I imagine it), I’m blessed to have the ability to afford a laptop, internet, a squarespace subscription, a domain, that allows me to have this public voice. I’m blessed to have a creative mind that I get to squeeze from time to time & I’m blessed with the aspects of myself that have drawn you all in to reading this, to listening to my songs, to liking my photos, etc. Again, no idea where I’m going with all of this.

I’m curious though. As I think this will be one of the last paragraphs of this open journey entry what this blog has left you with. What has it made you feel? What emotions has it brought up? Do you feel that I wasted your time or did you find some form of solace & comradery in my musings? Please let me know, if anything this blog has piqued my curiosity in the inner workings of you all & how you depart these brief sessions we share together each week.

As always,

Much love to you all,

…sorry I didn’t have something more interesting to say,

-C

Blog: What Am I Meant To Say?

I have been known from time to time to talk philosophically. The manner in which I speak & the way that I relay information often dips in & out of analogy & allegory especially where the advice column of my mind is concerned. I’m sure that a lot of people find this annoying, but it is my hope that those I call friend, whom I love, enjoy the manner in which I convey information, particularly when advice is asked or my input is given. For those that do enjoy the machinations of my mind, they often ask me how I go about formulating these imaginings into, hopefully, relatable assertions that leave the other person with a deeper understanding of the point I am trying to make. So I guess here is my answer to that question.

It is first worth noting that I do not view myself as some forward or crazy derivative thinker. There are a multitude of people more readily equipped with IQs that are beyond my deepest fathoming who I think could bury me under a mountain of logic & sheer might of brain if given the chance. I am not a prophet, nor am I a counselor, a teacher, a therapist, or a guru. I am simply a man who has put a lot of effort into educating himself & changing his mind when it so often proves to be wrong. So what is it that I think draws people to pick my brain & solicit my advice?

I am a storyteller. That is, after all, why you’re here no? I use my words both in lyric form & in the form of these assorted blogs to tell stories of my life & flood these virtual pages with the muck that spews from my brain. Commonality is my bread & butter & finding the through-line that many of us posses is an easy task for me. This, no doubt, is also partially to do with my neurodivergent brain which is highly tuned to recognize patterns. We all have this ingrained ability to an extent, but those of us who fall somewhere on the spectrum of neurodiversity often have an easy go at analyzing that data & forming a hypothesis that we either internalize or share with those around us. We as humans are constantly taking in new information, it’s just that some of us are more adept at filtering through it or at keeping multiple plates spinning at the same time.

So how do I know what to say? What is it that helps me convey my point outside of the aforementioned parts of my being? Well, I often tailor my response to the person whom I am speaking to. I know we all do that to a degree, & having written that out on here it just sounds like a “yeah, no duh” bit of advice, but it extends further than that. Remember in the last paragraph when I talked about how neurodivergent people are good at pattern recognition & application? You remember that? Just a few short sentences ago? Well, what if I told you that it goes farther than that. That a lot of times we can actively predict the way a conversation will go simply based on past experience & tend to drive conversations using said knowledge. Not going to lie, it sounds a bit manipulative, but think of it more in line of walking into a really, really nice hotel where they’ve called ahead to ask your preferences on music, temperature, scent, lighting, etc. etc. Truly I’ve never been in a hotel that does that, but I imagine it’s a thing. I tailor the experience to the person to help them see the point I am trying to get across.

The other thing that a lot of people seem to miss in all of this is the point of the interaction being a conversation. What does a conversation require to be more than just a lecture? More than one person speaking AS WELL AS listening to the others involved. You have to listen to what is being said, take in that information, & reconfigure your approach or even entirely reevaluate it. The saying “the customer is always right in matters of taste” applies to these scenarios as well. Just because you feel a certain way doesn’t mean the other person does as well. Each of us has our own lived experiences & our feelings are not invalid simply because they don’t align with someone else’s. You have to be willing to listen, adapt, & offer educated & thoughtful rebuttals based on what your understanding of what the other person is going through. Have a little empathy, imagine yourself in their shoes, & for the love of God, listen.

I hope you all have a fantastic weekend/week/whenever you find yourself reading this.

As always,

Much love to you all,

-C

Blog: I Guess I Need To Learn To Shut My Damn Mouth

I am someone who is often outwardly opposed to the cold. I have stated many times in person & probably on this blog as well that I would be fine going the remainder of my life without seeing another “winter.” Sometimes that sentiment also takes the shape of “going the rest of my life without seeing snow” but it feels like a similar concept either way. I live in the upper end of the American South, & while winters are slightly less harsh here than they were growing up in Kansas where there is nothing to block the wind sweeping from The Rockies across the plains, we still get our share of winter weather, especially with the recent surge of Arctic blasts that climate change has seen fit to give us annually. Part of the one-sided contract that I have with mother nature is that “if it’s going to be cold, there might as well be snow.” Well, I guess this week I got my wish & I fear I may have second feelings about the contract I, undoubtable, am responsible for securing us all in.

It snowed eight inches here in Nashville this week, an amount that I have not seen annually since I moved to Nashville in 2010. In fact, upon a minor bit of googling, I have discovered the annual average snowfall for Nashville typically sits around 4.7 inches, so we basically doubled that in one sitting.

Now, since Nashville typically is a snowless place, we lack the infrastructure required for maintaining our roads & clearing them effectively during our winter storms. Add to that the fact that my HOA, a mindless bureaucracy that oversees the neighborhood I live is, has seen fit to not contract a plow company simply because there is typically not a need for it, & you get me being mostly sequester to my home on the outskirts of Nashville for the last week. I am, for all intents & purposes, sick of the snow.

Was it fun & cheeky at the beginning? Yeah, sure. Did I enjoy a day or two of making soups & trying to make my furnace get my house above 65º? Sure. But I am over it & I feel like that is the sentiment for most of the people on my social feeds dealing with the same cabin fever from the storm, even those that I know live in walkable parts of town. I am humbling regretting the statement “well if it’s going to be cold, it might as well snow.”

So what’s my solution? What’s my ideal outcome? Well my ideal outcome is that all the snow melts today & the temperature returns to an area at the very least above the freezing line. What is the point of this blog? I guess in some way it’s me apologizing to you all if this is something that I, & I alone, manifested. I was unaware my skills of conjuring were so powerful. I shall do my best to be better next time & understand the consequences for the simple words I say out loud.

If you too are stuck in this frozen hellscape, wishing desperately for a beach & 80º weather, take solace in the fact that you are not alone in that desire. In the interim make all of the soups, take all of the baths or hot showers, pull out all the blankets, embrace the hibernation that we as a species are supposed to participate in, but somehow feel we are above even though every other bit of nature observes it.

Stay warm in there!

As always, much love,

-C