I no longer have a sense of time.

For years I haven’t known what day it is, aided by the fact that as a freelance writer my work is largely unrelated to the day of the week*. But I think the pandemic really kicked that into overdrive, and that combined with the natural acceleration of time due to aging**, means that I often not only don’t know what year it is, but certainly don’t know how long ago things were.

This is not an uncommon experience; many people my age feel like the 90s were just one or two decades ago, and can simultaneously feel that 2015 was so long ago that it feels like a whole other lifetime.

Regardless, one of the things about getting to this age is that many things actually were 20 years ago, as I mentioned about starting my relationship 20 years ago last month, and as I now reflect that 20 years ago this month marked the release of my first published**** book. It was, of course, a great pleasure and thrill for me to finally feel like I had a book out in the real world, published by a company (Barnes&Noble) people had even heard of, no less.

But also, the book was a collection of weird groups and the intro was all about how weird isn’t bad, you just have to find your people. The good news is, finding your people has become a lot easier these days, thanks to the Internet and whatnot*****. The bad news is, an increasingly-large swath of the country seems to believe that not only is being different bad, but that it needs to be attacked/destroyed/outlawed/erased to the point where even learning that other people exist and lead different lives and have their own joys and struggles is now controversial.

This is a damn shame, and is also largely opposed to what I’ve come to realize is my primary moral principle: “People are people.”****** Not terribly complex, but surprisingly unpopular. Still, if you’re going to live by a moral code, you could do worse. Of course, there are those who hold themselves above other people, like some kind of superman, and that reminds me that my latest column is a little Superman parody that is my favorite thing I’ve written in a while:

The Adventures of GovernMan

I know, that bird joke in the opening is ridiculous. But what can I say; bad puns are my kryptonite.

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* Notwithstanding my column deadline, natch.

** I have often thought that our experience of time accelerates at a steady rate as we age, and that there must be some analog to the calculable acceleration of gravity (9.8 meters per second, per second) to account for how time seems faster every year. Maybe years go by 9.8% faster every year? I don’t know, I’m no Einstein.***

*** Although on occasion people have remarked upon the similarity of our hairstyles.

**** Technically I think I wrote my first book in 3rd grade for a Young Authors contest, I believe it was about dinosaurs and preceded the book of birthday poems I also wrote in elementary school as a project. But I certainly wouldn’t call either published.

***** The glorious powers of whatnot are truly unmatched.

****** Consider it a condensed paraphrase of a Terry Pratchett quote I can’t seem to find about how most problems start when someone decides a certain group of people are lesser and shouldn’t really be treated like people with full rights.

A classic quote (and scene) from the original Batman movie.*

Today, I find myself needing to figure out what to do with a lot of random thoughts. They are too many and too disorganized to put in my column regularly, although irregularly this week I have put them all in my annual Thanksgiving leftovers column that uses all of my disorganized random ideas. But generally, I have slightly higher standards for my column, and those random thoughts need to go somewhere else.

I had been putting them in a semi-monthly newsletter, because I believe a torrent of my random thoughts should always be opt-in, and for the past nearly two years, had been sending it out via a service named TinyLetter. Well, I was notified today that TinyLetter will cease to exist as of February, because the company that owns it (MailChimp) wants to focus purely on monetizing newsletters, and writing-focused newsletters have gone to SubStack, so most newsletters should fall in one category or the other and the midpoint of TinyLetter will no longer be supported.

My newsletter was never intended to be monetized; quite the opposite, it was intended to give me a space away from all my paid freelance writing to rant and ramble without worrying about writing how anyone else wanted me to. So MailChimp seems like a bad fit. But while my newsletter is writing-focused, my newsletter is also pro-equality, pro-trans-rights, pro-humanity, etc., thus making it a potentially bad fit for Substack, which as reported has a bit of a Nazi problem.

So I’m not exactly sure where my newsletter will end up***, but I will certainly be posting about it when I come to a decision — which I guess will happen no later than February. Meanwhilst, this is the lull month between Thanksgiving and Christmas that always feels like not real time****, so I bid you all a happy holiday season, a reason to finds things pleasin’, and not too much freezin’ and sneezin’.

* I love Michael Keaton as much as the next person**, but no, I mean the ORIGINAL Batman movie.

** I mean, obviously depending on who the next person is.

*** Or if it will end. Ulp!

**** Certainly, my clients rarely seem to book real time during this span.

I bet some of you are thinking, “Doesn’t he know it’s actually all hAllow’s eve, hence hAllow e’en?”*

But frankly when it comes to this particular evening, pumpkins are a lot more likely to be hollowed than hallowed, unless your name is Linus Van Pelt. And most spooky stuff is more often associated with hollow than hallow. Hallow always sounds like a British chap greeting someone, whereas the dark empty void of the hollowness brings spooky things. The headless horseman wasn’t in Sleepy Hallow. It’s Hollow.** The horror movie is Hollow Man, my favorite metroidvania is Hollow Knight. etc.

Speaking of Halloween, my latest column has some unexpected costume ideas, so although it’s probably too late for tonight, you can get a head start on next year’s planning if you are a ridiculous person.***

Of course, probably more important is my previous column about the meaning of life, but then again, is anything important? Maybe not, maybe it’s all empty, and there’s something sacred about that. Hollow, Hallow, Goodbye.

* Okay, technically I suspect very few of you think using words like “hence” and “e’en”, but a) I do, and b) even if you don’t, you may have had a differently-phrased but similar thought.

** “It’s -Hedley-.”

*** Ridiculous people are my target audience anyway.

I’m trying to soak in and enjoy the weekend, made much easier by two factors: The pleasantly cool weather we’ve had (compared to previous weeks), and the fact that my weekend has a lot of free time since I have no big freelance projects at the moment. (Obviously, enjoying my life does require money, so it’s good that I have had some smaller freelance projects in the previous weeks and most recently have been doing some interesting ghostwriting work for a long-term client, but this weekend landed empty which is fine by me.)

My intentionally uncut yard has continued being visited by various wildlife, so this weekend has also seen visitations from a cardinal, a butterfly, and a bunny rabbit, all of which I have spent some time just staring out the window at from a few feet away. It’s nice to just soak in the majesty of the natural world every once in a while.

This is ever more important for me to keep in mind since I’m the type of person who could easily assemble a big list of complaints. I’m also the type of person who could make them all rhyme and put them into a song, so if you’d like to sing along, here are My Least Favorite Things.

As I was just saying in my most recent newsletter, we all have the urge to complain from time to time, but it’s really much better for everyone if you can at least make your complaints entertaining. Admittedly, I’m probably biased as a humor columnist. But can you imagine if every town meeting had all complaints presented with some entertainment value, humor and/or rhyme? That could be amazing. I’d be tempted to wish for it if I weren’t distracted by this ancient monkey’s paw I just found…

I guess an actual to don’t list would be a list of things not to do, like “To Don’t Today: Gamble, Get Drunk, Die of Heat Exhaustion”. Apparently I should just avoid going to Vegas.

But what I was thinking about was not things that I mean to not do, but things that I mean to do and then don’t, which is how my to do list ends up functioning. Basically, anything due for a client gets added to my calendar and is always completed on time because I am a professional, so that takes priority. Then I have various other time-sensitive commitments or plans which I also add to my calendar, and those tend to get done as well.

And then there’s the third category of things, which are things I sort of mean to get around to eventually but there’s not really a hard deadline on them, nor is there any external party* awaiting progress reports. And at the end of a day where I’ve been working on the first two categories of thing, I don’t really want to do more work, I want to just sit back and enjoy some leisure-time reading.

Currently I’m on book 62 of Bleach, because I read the first few and I’m a completionist. And I dunno, there’s something nice about finally reading all these big popular manga serieseseses.*** But also, it means that “find person who will fix roof siding” is pushed back another week.

In my defense, that’s an item I’ve actually tried repeatedly to address, the fact that a single piece of siding just under the roof has fallen off, but the roofers say it’s a siding problem, and the siding people won’t take jobs unless they’re re-siding a whole house, and the general contractors only get back to me when the 95 moons of Jupiter are all in perfect alignment. And the ones who have gotten back to me won’t fix that anyway.

So at some point I should probably call another dozen places, but it’s not going to happen today, and tomorrow’s not looking too good either****.

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*The only parties I throw are internal parties.**

**Sadly, sometimes my stomach throws an internal party and I’m not invited but things get a bit too raucous. Then I yell at my stomach, “Keep it down!” That’s my acidic wit. I can’t help it, it’s just a reflux.

***I believe the correct plural is “seriespodes”.

****In terms of calling people, that is. In terms of enjoying a long weekend, tomorrow is looking great.

It’s me! I’m the March Fool! It’s sort of like the March Hare, only with less hare*, and more foolishness. While April Fools is all about lying to fool people, the March Fool is instead all about telling the truth, which is often even more foolish for a person trying to run a business. (Which is also me; I’m accepting clients for my freelance writing, specializing in humor or rhyme, covering everything from speechwriting to children’s books.)

But as a professional Fool**, one of the most foolish things I can do is to share too much about my thoughts. For example, today is the Trans Day of Visibility, and I noticed that while I saw a lot of posts about it on Facebook and Twitter, I saw very few posts about it on LinkedIn, and pretty much exclusively from people working in the DEI field. Which I’d guess is because there it’s on-brand, but otherwise bringing up politics outside of your field might alienate some potential clients for no gain.

For me though, one of the advantages of being my own boss is that I don’t have to hide my core beliefs. Which goes beyond politics. Politics are things like do I like Biden or Trump (neither), should UBI exist (yes), how should taxes work (better). Those are just opinions I have, but one of my guiding principles and beliefs for life is this:

People are people.

Pretty simple, really, but no less important for that fact. People are people, regardless of their race, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, nationality, favorite music, or weird hobby that you think is a waste of time. Generally, people are just trying to live their best lives, and as long as they’re not hurting anyone else***, there’s no reason they shouldn’t be allowed to do so. You don’t have to be a fan. You can even think, “This makes no sense to me and I’d never live like that.” Nobody’s asking you to.

But most of the problems and unhappiness in the world are a direct result of someone deciding that a certain category of people aren’t really people, or don’t really count because they’re somehow lesser and therefore don’t deserve to be treated like fellow people. This is wrong. People are people. And again, that doesn’t mean that you have to like or believe whatever they do. I might think some of your beliefs are unsupported superstition and some of your hobbies are a waste of time. And you might think similarly about the fact that I’ve now spent over 100 hours playing Dragon Age: Inquisition, and refuse to put my winter coat away yet, lest it anger the snow gods. You can even think literally everything I do is dumb, from writing humor columns about Pokemon, to making cranberry chicken salad and liverwurst sandwiches****. But as long as I’m not harming anyone, I deserve the right to live my dumb life in the way that makes me happiest. As do you. As does everyone.

Because ultimately, that’s what we’re all doing – just trying to live our dumb little lives, avoid unpleasant annoyances, and be happy. If we can improve other people’s lives along the way, better yet. But at bare minimum, we should try to avoid making other people’s lives worse. Yes, even if you don’t agree with all their choices. Because other people deserve the chance to live their best lives and pursue happiness too. Other people are people.

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*a bald-faced truth

**an occupation I’m sure I identify with thanks to a childhood spent listening to George Carlin’s “Occupation: Foole” many dozens of times

***Karl Popper says, “Nazi Punks Fuck Off!”

****I know it sounds dodgy, but it’s surprisingly good. I recommend it with Russian dressing on rye.

My winter vacation ended, and so I’ve been back to work writing speeches, children’s books, and whatever else clients hire me to write. I like being on vacation and playing games. But it turns out, I also like writing things for clients, especially these past few years.

Since I’m still being more covid-cautious than your average bear* and not doing performances at packed little indoor comedy/poetry shows, I’ve been missing the stage time. I did do a couple Zoom comedy shows the other year, but the demand for that has all but vanished, so I was feeling a severe deficit of I come up with something clever to say to an audience, and then I get positive feedback.

Conveniently, speechwriting ends up fitting that need for me to some degree. Sure, having a client give me positive feedback instead of an entire audience isn’t quite the same**, but it does fulfill much of the same craving, and I find that being paid more helps bridge the gap, as it so often does.

Still, I’ve certainly had clients who hire me and say, “Make this funnier,” and then come back after my first draft to say, “Okay, less funny than that, actually.” Which is one of those revision requests I can’t help but smile at. But it’s also why in spite of enjoying ghostwriting for clients, I also quite enjoy writing things like my column where I can be silly about serious topics like Antisocial Media and how Vince Is Gonna Get You.

And then of course there’s my newsletter, where I am not only unreasonably silly, but also have so many asides and arcane references that it would be unsuitable for a mainstream newspaper. But it’s free and so am I****, and I find that all in all having the page as a stage works out okay for me. Especially since I don’t have to wear pants.

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*Which says a lot, really, since most bears already spend all their social time outdoors and avoid people. And hibernating is a great response to almost any virus.

**Although I do always love hearing reports of success like “it brought the house down!”***

***This was a great review for a wedding speech I wrote last year, but would be a bad review for an architect. Context!

****I was going to say this is a difference between free as in speech and free as in beer, but I’m more often free for tacos.

It may seem silly to write this post two days before New Years and have to write Eve twice. But just think, if I’d waited three days, I’d have to write Eve over 360 times*. That’s a lot of times to write Eve, even** for someone who has written their own rhyming version of the Bible. I’ve also now put myself on the clock for this post to finish writing it and post it before midnight, so hurry up, me.

2022 was not my favorite year. The past few months have been okay, but otherwise it was mostly sub-optimal and I will not be sad that it is over. I have leaned slightly more towards an epicurean hedonism in recent months, which I think is a sensible thing to do given the world. Indeed, as my most recent column explains, it’s a fine thing to comfort yourself.

And while my boardgaming has largely fallen by the wayside in recent months, videogame-wise I’ve been enjoying Genshin Impact and Fallout 4, and not enjoying but still playing Final Fantasy XIII because I liked most of the rest of the series and I kept wanting it to be good. Arguably only a foolish person partakes of leisure activities they don’t enjoy, but if you’ve spent half as much time doomscrolling this year as I have****, you still don’t have any stones to throw.

Still, I — or more accurately the skilled WordPress guy I hired — got my site back up and running properly, and I’ve got tasty food to eat in my house living with my favorite person, so all in all as the header message on this website suggests, some things are definitely going right. Maybe next year even more things will improve? Well, I’m not laying any bets. But let’s do the best we can for the coming year. Me, I’ll be kicking it off the way I’ve done every year since 2010 — listening to Keep All Your Promises (on which I have the final verse).

Stay comfortable.

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*Obviously, at that point I’d just copy and paste. Probably in 5s until I got to 20, and then paste 20 at a time until I got to 360 and type the last few manually. If you’re going to do stupid things, it’s good to have a smart plan for how to do them.

**”Whatcha doin’?” “Just Eve’n.” “Ell, even Eve’n at eleven on Eve? Eve-idently, Eve event!”***

***It’s possible I could have written Eve over 360 times in this post by the time I finished Eves-dropping in these footnotes, but I decided not to. Adamantly.

****“Then I’ve spent twice as much time doomscrolling as you,” he recited, in accordance with the guidelines of the order of ancient comedians.

With Bolsonaro now having been defeated at the polls in Brazil – if not yet on the ground where his troops blocked roads in attempts to prevent people from voting – it’s nice to have a tiny bit of hope that fascism can still be pushed out. I guess we’ll see if that holds true for the US midterm elections, which I encourage all of my US readers to vote in, presuming you are pro-democracy and anti-fascism. (If you are pro-fascism and anti-democracy, voting isn’t really part of your ideal worldview anyway.)

My latest column, Troubled People, reminds you why you might want to vote. It also rhymes, which admittedly was totally unnecessary, but what is life about if not having fun by going beyond what is necessary? I guess that’s what Halloween is about*, in a way.

I started playing Fallout 4, which takes place in Boston, so it’s a little strange to be roaming around in Massachusetts amidst the aftermath of a nuclear war, and then glancing nervously at the latest international news. Still, with the ABC now long gone, and Covid still very much not gone, my recreation has returned from mostly boardgames to mostly videogames.

I would like to write for more videogames in the future; I’ve had a few gigs putting together ads for games, or in some cases even doing a bit of plot or quest descriptions for some small indie games, and would love to do more game writing. Still, nothing’s more appropriate for Halloween than Ghost writing, and I’m still doing plenty of that. One day I should probably make this site more professional so people can more easily hire me for it, but in the words of St. Augustine, not yet.

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* Also free candy, but admittedly the allure of free candy diminishes rapidly once you’re old enough that you can just buy candy whenever you like. Not that I don’t appreciate free candy conceptually – indeed, I’m known as someone who happily partakes of free snacks at all functions – but the effort of taking an hour knocking on doors for a sack of candy that’s probably only 25% candy you were actually excited about means that you’re just working a very labor-intensive** job for a low wage.

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** The most labor-intensive job is obstetrician.

I have been enjoying myself lately, but also my outlook on the future has become extremely bleak. This may seem like an odd pairing, but I think it makes perfect sense as a natural extension of my philosophy of Existential Bliss: There’s no point to anything, so why not enjoy yourself? Now it’s just augmented by a bit of there might be no future, so why not enjoy yourself?

I was recently reading a sci-fi novel (whose title I’ll avoid spoiling to avoid this being a spoiler) where apocalypse was imminent, and half the planet was in turmoil and angrily rioting, and half was just pursuing hedonism, whether by peacefully enjoying quiet afternoons with their family, or by joining a massive orgy.

My own hedonism is certainly more along the lines of the former; I’ve bought myself a few video games* and am eating tasty food**, am trying to peacefully enjoy my days and write things, even while my ambition for fame has also dissipated. As if that weren’t contradictory enough, I may no longer desire fame, but I still want people to read and appreciate my writing. So if you’d like read about my thoughts on ghosting or the sinister plot of certain learning, that would be nice.

But either way, I hope you’re enjoying a pleasant apocalypse.

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*Final Fantasy XIII, Ni No Kuni, Monster Hunter World. They’re admittedly not new video games, but I used to have a 10+ year lag, and now I’m closer to 5 years. Well … actually I just looked it up and Monster Hunter World is 5 years, but the other two are 10 years. I’d defend myself, but this footnote is already too long.

**I was going to list foods here, but is that all footnotes are for, listing examples of things? Nay, the footnotes deserve better! To me, footnotes, let us rebel for justice!***

***Rebelling for justice is much easier in footnotes than in real life, but that’s probably a different blogpost.