Sometimes people can be right without being helpful.

When I was younger, people told me that I should appreciate what I have and be more positive, and I’d probably be happier. Well, decades on, an older me very much appreciates what I have and is generally positive, and indeed I am much happier. But it didn’t help when people told me that because a) my childhood was not nearly as pleasant as my life now, and b) gratitude isn’t something you can bully people into.

You can force kids to say thank you, but that’s not gratitude. That’s ritual. Truly appreciating what you have has to come from within, and the more you try to push people into it, the less they are likely to appreciate it. Someone having a tough time does not want to hear “you should appreciate what you have!”. Even if it’s true, saying it is most likely to raise their hackles, when what we all want is lowered hackles*. There are some realizations or mindsets you just have to come to yourself. When everyone told me how to feel, all I felt was annoyed at them and resolved not to do what they want. But eventually life came around, I got older and wiser, and in my own time, began to very much appreciate my life.

So even though I could offer good advice and tell you that appreciation extends to individual relationships, and that appreciating your relationships for what they are rather than being mad at what they’re not will make you a happier and better person**, you have to decide for yourself to appreciate things. Admittedly I have the advantage of not working full-time, and a personal philosophy that combines existentialism with epicureanism. But as the pandemic has served as a mass memento mori, I think it’s a fine time for people to re-evaluate how happy they are with their lives, and if you’re very unhappy, something should change. Maybe it’s your circumstances, maybe it’s you!

I realize this post is light on jokes, so click the linked columns for some funny.

*I’m imagining protest signs reading “Lower Hackles Now!”

**Whereas the inverse oft leads to complaints about friend-zoning and can make you a huffier and bitter person.

Did some writing for a freelance client who said he’s been a creative director hiring writers for 20 years, and I’m the best writer he has ever worked with. So that was a pretty nice compliment to hear. It occurs to me that I could re-do my whole website to be more business focused, but so far I don’t wanna. Still, probably worth mentioning that I am for hire as a high-end freelance writer if you need any content made more appealing to an audience.

It also occurred to me last week that it was 20 years ago that I got my first joke printed in the Washington Post’s Style Invitational. The contest was to write a joke that telegraphed the punchline. My entry was something along the lines of:

Samuel Morse’s wife Dorothy asks him, “Do you have any advice for my upcoming 200-meter sprint?” And he replies

I think that joke still holds up, 20 years later. Meanwhile, if you’d like some newer jokes from me, my latest column is about the encroachment of advertisements, and will especially appeal to older folks* who remember the comedy of Bob&Ray, or folks of any age who listen to podcasts.

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* I suppose it’s possible some younger people than me enjoy the comedy of Bob&Ray, but I am unaware of any. If you are one though, kudos on your excellent taste that transcends your chronological limitations!

I realized this evening as I was submitting my column for Monday that my newspaper column tells people to visit my website, and my website mainly has links to my columns. This may or may not be ridiculous, but there’s not a ton else to share. I haven’t really been doing much out in the world since the pandemic hit, and although my Zoom comedy shows went surprisingly well, I don’t have any more booked at current. I’ve been writing a daily poem for National Poetry Month, but not publishing them publicly because I hope to one day place some of them in literary magazines.*

I have been doing a lot of writing, but most of it’s ghostwriting that I’m not allowed to reveal my connection to. I can reveal that yesterday morning I got to experience a chainsaw serenade just a few hours after I got to sleep, a live concert that lasted for hours that I simply couldn’t miss.** But in terms of cool things to link you to… well, some of you might still not have seen one of the coolest projects I was ever hired to write for, so just in case, here’s the Bitcoin Rap Battle in all its glory.

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* I mean, I guess I could just print them all out, grab a literary magazine I have lying around, and jam them in between the pages, but it’s not quite the same.

** I really wanted to go back to sleep and miss it, but I simply couldn’t.

I don’t necessarily know a lot, but I know myself. Which is how I knew even though I was hyped for a Better New Year in 2021, and told myself I’d get out and walk every day, it turns out I was just celebrating Internal Halloween. The proof is now in the pudding, which I am eating inside instead of walking about in weather with a windchill below zero. Fahrenheit*.

In spite of a busy month, I’ve found time for the occasional game**, but between not getting out to see friends or attend poetry/comedy mics, the past year basically felt like a tread water where I didn’t accomplish much. Then again, as I recently told a friend, I did accomplish neither catching nor spreading COVID-19 so far, which had been my main goal for at least the back half of the year. So I’ll claim victory in that, and bid you all continued good luck in same.

*But Unfairintemp.

**Genshin, Ascension, One more I shouldn’t mention ***

***Ok, it’s Food Or Not.

A phrase I often say after a string of non-successes, and pretty much how I’m feeling heading into 2021. It has certainly not been the best of years. Global pandemic health crisis, personal stomach health crisis, national political crisis… at least I’ve already taken care of my existential crisis long ago, and I won*.

I haven’t even been playing any boardgames of late to share here. I can share a couple recent columns about trying to find a job during the apocalypse, or how I spent 2020 Being a Homebody, but most of my writing these days is ghostwriting.

But in the spirit of the new year, I once again want to share my favorite New Year’s song from 11 years ago**, on which I have the final verse: Keep All Your Promises.

Bidding us all a better 2021 – stay healthy and try not to be a virus vector!

* Turns out the secret was just accepting existentialism as a positive instead of a negative, that if there’s no purpose to life I don’t owe the world achievement, only kindness. So, enjoy yourself, be kind. A reasonable bar for life, and not a bad resolution for 2021.

**By which I mean, my favorite new years song bar none, which also happens to be from 11 years ago. Although it is a fortiori*** my favorite song from 11 years ago that is a new years song.

***Definitely my favorite. Maybe even a fiftiori****

****I’m pretty sure that joke doesn’t work and is disappointing, but as my last joke of 2020, it seems appropriate. Maybe it’ll be funnier in hindsight. (insert your own last 2020 joke here.)

Traditionally a time where people are up to no good, and sure enough, there’s an election around the corner. I can’t imagine anyone reading this hasn’t already decided* their presidential vote, but since there is a downballot, I encourage everyone to vote for candidates who you believe have the best interests of every member of your community/state/country in mind (as mentioned last month).

Meanwhile, I think many of us are likely to need some comfort media to weather the inevitable storm of the coming weeks. I’ve been watching Netflix’s Street Food: Asia, a superbly charming documentary series where it’s easy to fall in love with its subjects and celebrate their successes. IMPORTANT: Be sure to order takeout from a local Asian restaurant to eat while watching this, or you will be sad.

On the video game front, I’ve been playing Genshin Impact, the free-to-play** gaming sensation sweeping the nation/world. It helps that the incredible musical score is performed by the London Philharmonic and Shanghai Symphony, making it a lovely escapist pleasure to listen to. But beware, for as I mention in my recent humor column, there’s also a Loot Box Impact.

Halloween is also the time for ghosts! So I’ve been doing some ghostwriting. I can’t share any details***, but I can say that after a string of happy high-profile clients, I can confidently say that if you know someone who needs to hire a ghostwriter, I should be the person you call.****

*Or cast. A good year for early voting, to be sure. And for spells, if you can cast any of those early.

**Albeit a very expensive free. My linked column explains in more detail.

***Okay, here’s some details: People paid me money to write things for them and not tell anyone about it.

**** When there’s somethin’ tough… that you need to say…
Who you gonna call?   GHOSTWRITER!
When there’s complex stuff… that you must convey…
Who you gonna call?  GHOSTWRITER!*****

*****Don’t actually call though. Send an email or something.

Usually around April I make a joke about how T.S. Eliot was wrong, but I think this year amidst all the Coronavirus shutdown, it is actually the cruelest month for once. It’s hard to not be constantly worrying about it, and I’m certainly not immune (ha) having written up both a Coronavirus FAQ and Coronavirus and Chill humor column. Most recently, I got a little personal with a column on Following your dreams.

My dream*, of course, was to be a writer. And with April being National Poetry Month, I’ve been writing. Perhaps more relevantly to you, I took the first few months of the year to submit a lot of poetry, and so April saw a few of my poems appearing in Verse Virtual, Sparks of Calliope, Reapparition Journal, and Ponder Savant. It has been nice to see some of my poetry elsewhere, although I still miss reading for the small crowd at my local poetry mic every month before the pandemic hit.

So, monthly poetry and comedy nights on hold, and weekly boardgame nights on hold. But I’ve been playing lots of boardgames with my partner, which I recommend for those of you self-isolating with someone you like. For those of you who are not so fortunate, videogames are also a tremendous balm in these troubled times, and I will say that my two absolute favorites, Warframe and Path of Exile, are both 100% free** to download and play on PC. And if you do end up playing one of those on my recommendation, feel free to drop me a line and I’ll hook you up with some free stuff from my stash in-game.

After all, the month could use a little less cruelty.

*Well, my metaphorical dream. Literally, my recent dream involved me visiting the “Museum of Haste”, where a moving walkway zipped me past the exhibits at 20 mph before slamming me into a wall. But I don’t think that’s anyone’s lifelong goal.

**And like, actually free for all content, not like mobile game 5 minutes free and pay to keep playing or MMO first dungeon free pay for access to the good stuff.

Usually, Daylight Savings Time spurs me to complain about time. But not today, Satan.* Today I’m feeling like I’ve pretty much mastered time.

Daylight Savings? I never changed my clocks since six months ago, so suddenly all of my clocks are correct again, with no effort on my part.

Leap Year? No problem. I’ve actually managed to acquire a transcript of the meeting that took place at the Time Institute, so my latest column explains why we have Leap Year. There may even be an Easter Egg in the column, if you’re a particularly detail-oriented Lord of Time.

And most excitingly, my poem “Chronomancy” is the featured piece in the latest issue of Red Planet Magazine — the feature rotates every issue, so go read my poem while it’s still available online!

Meanwhile, I hope you all stay healthy, wash your hands, and don’t lick too many doorknobs.

*Why complain about time to Satan? Well, he rules hell, and after Zeus killed the time god Khronos (who was also his dad! but to be fair, if you don’t want your kids to murder you, don’t eat them), he dragged Khronos’s remains to Tartarus, aka the underworld, so technically the remains of the time god are now under Satan’s dominion.

I have always had a love of portmeanteaux. Some might even call it an addiction.* I create new portmanteaux frequently, often to the chagrin of those around me. For nearly two decades now, I have been using “Probportunity”, which I would love to catch on in the common parlance. It has what are, to me, the two essential traits of a good portmanteau:

1) You know immediately upon reading or hearing it what two words it is combining, and why

2) The resultant portmanteau is useful in a situation which many people frequently encounter

Today I ended an email with the valediction “Thankspologies”, which I think is even more useful, because often I find myself in the situation of needing to express my appreciation for someone taking action that is only required due to an oversight I may have made. So feel free to start using that; I’d love for that one to catch on too.

Also, I should mention that last weekend I was awarded 2nd place Best Humor Columnist 2019 by the New England Newspaper and Press Association. A little over a decade ago, writing this same “The Pun Also Rises” column for a different newspaper, I also won 2nd place Best Humor Columnist from NENPA. So it’s possible I’ll have to accept that I’m just second-best.**

But that was last year. Maybe my latest column about romantic failure will be the best thing you read all day.

*I know, I should join a supportmanteau group.

**This may undercut my description of my writing as “second-to-none”. I wonder if potential freelance clients will be impressed if I say my writing is “third-to-none”?

I realize that doing anagrams is precisely the kind of thing that makes people say, “Seth, you have too much time on your hands*”, but in this case it actually paid off for me, since my efforts were recognized by the incomparable Eric Idle. For a kid who grew up watching a lot of Monty Python, that was a pretty great day. The Bitcoin Rap in my previous post also topped 1 million views, making it by far the most popular rap song I’ve ever worked on. I’m currently** working on another rap song on my own time, albeit one which will likely have an audience many orders of magnitude smaller, but I’m still happy with how it’s turning out.

My latest columns are about the Land of the Free, and how Absence Makes the Heart Go Launder.***  And on the boardgaming front, it’s time once again for our annual Alphabetic Boardgaming Challenge, currently in its 12th year. All in all, quite enjoying a lovely fall in the Berkshires, trying to create as much happiness as possible within this tiny bubble to counter the awful world-on-fire-ness writ large about which I can’t do much.

*Technically, as I wear no watch and carry no cellphone, I very rarely have time on my hands.

**Technically, currently I’m blogging, having finally dispatched all freelance work on deadline. But after this, I plan to record some verses before I sleep. In the unlikely event my producer/beatsmith Don Vito is reading this, hey Don, vox coming soon!

***Technically, it’s not actually about absence, just laundry. But I’m a sucker for a pun title. My document default names should be “Pun-titled Document”.