[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster and Athletics Nation.]
The renowned journalist Big Media Matt Yglesias once judiciously intoned that one should never get personal in published writing, for obviously very good reasons, but I’m not a journalist, and if y’all want to put an ironclad rule out there for me to break, why, thank you so much, I’ll smash that baby apart right now. The rules.
It’s not that I necessarily want to this time, but in my world I think there’s value for the reader to know some of the life story behind the author, in interpreting the truth I present, and why I do it. There are precise life story reasons I’m a little people liberal, I just didn’t come up with the philosophy for the hell of it.
Many of you know that I have been gravely ill with terrible 12-hour vomiting on a 25 day cycle for an interminable agony, it’s like Harrison Ford in Six Days and Seven Nights, right, when he tells Ann Heche how much time they’re going to be stranded: a long, long, long-long, long-long-long time. In started in 2002 and there has never been a time in the blog forms when I was not sick.
Why do y’all think I’m such a fierce proponent of cannabis legalization? To be a stoner? Shit. I’ve puked enough to fill a jacuzzi, I’m not kidding, and it would have taken me three times as long to recover without cannabis. A stoner possesses a legitimate life choice, it does have its appeal, but it has a way of interfering with my plans and duty.
The only answer I ever got from a cadre of MD’s was to wait it out, possibly it will fade and stop. That time has arrived, the fade started a year ago and the precise trigger to getting sick at last indentified. I have not been ill for 2.5 months and I can tell I’m all right with my stomach with this regimen.
It’s a tense spot, when the fade started last November I thought I was immediately better and was devastated when I got whapped back, 2012 was surely was one the lowest troughs of my life. For once I admitted to my people at Athletics Nation in the game threads that things were really fucked and that I was miserable. I hope they know how much it meant to be honest with somebody even though it sucked, how much it helped me to get some plain baby-step reassurance.
Even though this time is totally different technically I still do not know yet, the real answer can only come by waiting another 90 days. Jesus Christ, ask anything of me but waiting.
Ay curumba, my checking account isn’t in the mood for a wait, I’m in the process on trying to launch a new career after being totally out of it for 3 years. Re-building the personal website and resume, writing the story with professional messaging, checking in with Monster and LinkedIn with the new me, yes, this evolution fills me with inestimable joy, indeed.
I don’t need much, I could care less where I end up employed as long as they treat their people with dignity. After what’s happened in the labor market in the last 5 years my heart again sings with the delirious prospect of it all, yes.
You finally feel better and are positive you’re not helping the Republicans, so become an essayist again, it couldn’t hurt. Looking back over 75 days of work since November and what a shock, it’s angry, combative, goading, dismissive and sneering. I don’t regret doing it, there’s a lot of truth there that’s god damn necessary in our civic consciousness, but the observation shines through plain enough: son, you are out of balance.
Not surprising given your present circumstances, not necessarily a life error, but not the person you are or will be in the future. Right now just wait, get a tiny bit more excited each dawn of heavenly health and coffee, and wonder what the mental joy ride will be like when good news finally arrives in May.
I have no idea where it will take me, do I have to transform myself into some yogi of gratitude and gentleness just because I got better? Hell I don’t have to do anything, nope, I don’t. For whatever sins and hurts I have inflicted upon others, well, I have paid my dues and done my time, seriously. They know I’m sorry and there might be a time of freedom from serious burdens if I can only get better. We shall see.
So now you know some of the story. I will change, of course, science and history and hell, even some hope and optimism will be in my pocket soon. From the little I know what will happen, well, I won’t be fighting all the time with my writing, no.