part one, probably. My therapist suggested that I try to write down all the things that are troubling me or that I can’t seem to get out of my mind. This was a while ago, but I’m feeling overwhelmed enough to give it a shot now.

• Like a month ago, I saw some post where Trent Reznor was talking about current hard times, and one of the things he said was that everyone should listen to David Bowie and “don’t be too hard on yourself.” Which, for whatever reason, was somehow the most unexpected thing of this year, for me. Trent Reznor encouraging me to give myself a break.
• It’s been less than a year since G**** died, and L**** is so sick. I don’t know how long she has left, and we’re getting to the time when I’m going to start wondering if taking her to the vet constantly and trying to keep her going is really what’s best for her.
• in any practical sense, I think we’ve already forgotten that Joe Biden very well might have sexually assaulted someone, and at the very least he has some troubling attitudes (if not behaviors) about that stuff. It popped into my mind this afternoon, and I realized that I hadn’t thought about it in weeks. Not that there isn’t anything else important going on, but I don’t know what to do with that. It’s probably going to be enough, for most people (probably including me), that he’s better than Donald Trump. Which is bleak, bleak stuff.
• i am reaching the end of my graduate program, and I’m kind of wondering why I bothered with it. I’m more in debt, I passed up the chance for an ongoing lecturer position (though who knows if that would be stable now), and, for the most part, I gained very few new experiences from the program. I’m not going to be a writer, and I never thought I was, but it feels like even my modest expectations will be left unmet.
• I wouldn’t say that I romanticize upheaval and unrest, but I’ve long believed that change, through the system itself, is impossible. So it’s disheartening, maybe, to know that all the protests and uncertainty is, to a significant degree, making me really uncomfortable, and I have to admit that a not-insignificant part of me just wants things to go back to ‘normal.’ But, in this case, I will take Trent Reznor’s advice, and try to not be too hard on myself. I still, more than anything else, think that all this stuff is good, that it’s necessary. ‘Normal’ is deeply, thoroughly fucked up, and it’s depressing that we’re so desperate to back to it. People like me deserve to feel uncomfortable, and it’s an eminently worthy trade if it means that things can get better for more vulnerable people, because ‘normal’ for them doesn’t mean ‘safe,’ like it does for me. In this sense, 2020 could be a great year.
• But it won’t be. 2020 will just be another lost opportunity to take care of each other and make the world better.
• I hate this dog we live with so, so much. It challenges my whole idea of myself, and I feel terribly guilty about it, but it’s true. It’s not her fault, but she’s  despicable. I’m not cruel to her or anything, but I’m also afraid that she knows how much I can’t stand her, which she doesn’t deserve.
• Worse, though, is L****. She’s been staying at the vet for the last two nights (because she stopped eating and they’re trying to figure that out), and it’s been so quiet. I adore her, and I hate how relieved I am with her gone.
• I have a friend who is, by her own admission, a lot. She’s just constant drama and feelings, spraying all over the place like a firehose that someone lost their grip on. I’m not like that, to a fault. I hold all of my feelings in, to the extent that I don’t even recognize that I’m having them a lot of times. But, when they do come, it’s kind of a lot. I don’t know what to do, and it seems like no one else does, either. When I share with people, I get the impression that it’s like they don’t know what to say, like my stuff is radioactive. Maybe it’s because I can’t name or experience my feelings properly, because if I can’t feel my feelings in a healthy way, how can anyone else help me with them? It’s like I’m alone. I’m with my feelings, but I’m not really with them, because I can’t understand them. Like we’re living in different apartments, right next to each other, and the assholes are blasting music at all hours of the day. And the walls are thin. But I still can’t make out any of the words.
• When people read my writing about the alt-right, incels, white nationalists, etc., the question keeps coming up: why are you interested in these people? Sometimes the other question comes up: why do you choose not to condemn them? They’re fair questions, and I have some regular answers: I’m interested in subcultures and masculinity; I think it’s important to try to understand these groups and to interrogate ourselves in terms of how we might be like them, rather than condemning them and feeling secure in the knowledge that we’re not them, so we’re good; I think it’s uninteresting to condemn them, rather than trying to look at something new; and so on. These answers are true, but I’m wondering lately, if they are a deflection. Am I interested in these groups simply because they’re objectionable, broken people who are so misshapen that they are (rightly) cast out of and reviled by mainstream, properly functioning people? And is the root of my interest, the real thing that I have in common with them, that I am similarly not fit to be near real people? Do I refuse to condemn them because it would feel like condemning myself? Am I actually sympathetic to them? Am I trying to find their, like, humanity, because  if they’re not worthy of sympathy, them neither am I? Whatever is wrong with me, am I afraid that I’m as unlikable as some nazis? If so, then what the hell am I supposed to do with that?
• I found myself wishing that the world was less complicated this afternoon. Usually, I positively revel in the complexity and ambiguity, because I find it comforting and exciting. But I just wanted things to be easy. I don’t know what that’s about, either. I’m not sleeping well.
• I wish I knew what Trent Reznor would say about all this.
• To be continued, probably~