Five Facts.

[HowDidIGetHere]

1. I want to write a story called "The Accidental Antichrist," but I can't tell whether it should be a dark comic novel—or my autobiography.

2. The company I was interviewing with told me I didn't make it past the second interview. I'm not surprised, given that there were nine other people up for it. I wasn't even sure I wanted the job if they offered. Yet I still manage to be downcast about it.

3. I keep thinking about my next tattoo. I'm very slow about getting them because my ideas are usually pretty deep. Like, the last idea I had was to use the image of the words nobiscum deus ('god with us' in Latin) from The Book of Kells (because I'm of Irish heritage). Since then, though, I've learned about the the pig, the snake, and the rooster as the Buddhist symbols for greed, hatred, and delusion. So I'm torn now.

4. It's really scary just how quickly the motivation to write can be sucked out of me. Like, from one day to the next. Fuck you, rapid cycling. Fuck. You.

5. It's my birthday on Monday and I'm still homeless. In fact, it's gotten to the point where I don't think twice about picking food up off the ground anymore, because part of me thinks I might not get the chance to eat again.

[oak]

Happy birthday!

Thanks for sharing.

Also #1 is a exquisitely well written.

[HowDidIGetHere]

1. Today is my 45th birthday. Please don't wish me a happy birthday. I cannot think of anything as pointless as celebrating such a thing.

2. There's a guitar store down the street from where I'm sitting right now. I've been dying to try playing the dobro (or lap steel, if you prefer), so I may treat myself to a visit there after work today.

3. I've had an increasing level of difficulty understanding things in the last few years. Especially spoken words. I'm afraid I'm either making it up to get out of hard conversations or that I'm actually facing early onset Alzheimer's. My aunt has late-stage dementia, so it's not completely certain that I'm just making shit up.

4. I've been trying to write an introductory post for my "Coming out as mentally ill" blog, but I can't get there. Mostly because I'm not in treatment, not housed, and in all other ways not a happy ending to a story. Not even a story, really.

5. I remember back in 2008, when I was skidding to a halt at my first bottom, one of the things that helped was writing about my sex addiction on a swinger's site that was populated mostly by sex addicts.

[oak]

While I will honor your wish and not wish you a happy birthday, I do hope your next year is better than your previous year.

As always, great stuff.

[HowDidIGetHere]

Thanks, oak.

Amazingly enough, I have another job interview tomorrow as a technical editor for a cloud-based development hosting company. They want someone to do what I'm doing now, only with people writing Python tutorials. I don't know much about Python, but everything else they had in the job listing was me all over. So why not, right? I sure would like to get it, though. It's a remote job for a company based in NYC with all kinds of tech company perks and what not. And I would totally love to learn Python really well. Maybe get out of this publishing rat race altogether.

And because this is how my life works, I got into a fight with my partner over something I'd say was triggered by her PTSD and diabetes, and she asked me not to come back to the place we're staying tonight. (According to her, she said "don't come back if you can't behave better" but the text in front of my face says "don't come home tonight" and I can't stand the idea of trying to track back through the dozens of texts leading up to that to try to figure out who's right. So fuck it.) I know there's food in the dumpster behind the Subway, I have a fleece jacket that will keep me from freezing, and I'm pretty sure I can dissociate from reality enough to really kill that job interview no matter where I sleep tonight. Fucked up gift of a dysfunctional childhood, I guess, but it sure does come in handy sometimes.

I am honestly stunned by the shitshow that I call life.


PS -- good luck with your own ongoing professional travails, oak. If nothing else, the fact that a trainwreck like me can keep getting interviews should be some kind of inspiration.

PPS -- Oh, and I made it to Starbucks in time to get my free birthday something to eat, so that made me feel a little better. Can't imagine why, but humans are weird.

[brownblob]

good luck with your interview

[HowDidIGetHere]

Don't have five. Just this one.

1. Sometimes I have to remind myself that before I was the bipolar guy who destroyed the world, I was the guy that gave the money back without thinking when they cashier at the quick stop accidentally gave him $10 too much change. I'm also the guy who can be moved almost to tears by music. Like this https://open.spotify.com/track/0S0YKiEdR9cT9pYgEaTevF and this https://open.spotify.com/track/6q8qAas9OvWfOgML2UEm9G

[HowDidIGetHere]

1. While fighting with people all day over text, I managed to finally write an introductory post for my new Medium account. That gives me one place to write about cheerful work things and another to write about the real things we talk about here.

2. I wonder if I won't be able to draw together these two disparate threads of my life and allow myself to be one single person.

3. I had a brief Twitter interaction with Monica Coleman, author of a book called "Bipolar Faith," a memoir about being black, female, religious, and bipolar II. That last bit is especially important to me because just about every single bipolar memoir has been written by someone with the far-more-flashy Bipolar I diagnosis.

4. I have another job interview on Tuesday morning. Stupid. Totally stupid.

5. I am so tired of being treated like nothing but a diagnosis. Especially by people who really should know better.

[HowDidIGetHere]

1. I think I've been off medication for about six weeks now. I just couldn't figure out how to get into care in a place I don't live and the social services here couldn't do more than give me a few more weeks worth of what I was already on, which I knew wasn't working anymore.

2. I'm trying to get in to see someone this week, but I'm afraid that I'm going to have to spend so much time convincing them that I actually have the conditions I think I have that I won't get any medication for weeks, if not months.

3. The person in South Carolina I left holding my crap when I ran away from treatment last year messaged my gf and said we have to come pick it up now.

4. I also recently learned that my gf, who's had a habit of masterminding plans that she doesn't tell me about, actually doesn't have a plan and that we really are stuck in fucking Arizona.

5. I know it's mostly the depression talking, but I'm completely convinced that there is no safe place in the world and that "home" is just the next place you're going to get thrown out of.

[oak]

Thanks for sharing!

#5 has a gritty beauty to it.