My 35-year high school class reunion is taking place in two weeks. Amusingly, I’ve been to more of my wife’s reunions than my own. In fact, I’ve only been to one of mine, the 10-year. As you may surmise, that one provided zero motivation for me to attend future ones. To starkly illustrate, that reunion provided a wonderful anecdote I’ve loved sharing over the years. My previous wife went with me to that one, and I informed her in advance that I hadn’t seen or talked to anyone from my graduating class in the interim. As we walked back to my car at the end of the night, she said, “I can see why you haven’t talked to any of those assholes since high school.”

Before I go further, I first need to share a little something about my high school experience. While I understand that most people, at a minimum, do not look back fondly on that time of their life, my teen years were kind of brutal. I was basically an outcast, and while I got along well enough with the others who were also in all the advanced and college prep classes, I also didn’t have any real friends amongst them. In fact, my best and only real friend at the time, Dave, was an anti-authoritarian metalhead who was constantly getting in trouble with the school administration. He was dyslexic, likely ADHD, and almost certainly high functioning autistic (things that schools in the late ’80s just were not looking for nor equipped to handle.) In fact, the administration basically badgered him into dropping out. In addition, he was actually a year behind me — I only got to know him because he lived a block away.

(There’s a great story about how we met, but that would be digressing far too much.)

Anyway, for all practical purposes, I felt like an outcast in high school. It didn’t help that my signature blend of neurospiciness made me a target of ridicule for some of the jocks at the school. Nothing intense — I wasn’t bullied (that only happened in elementary and middle school) — but it was enough to make me dread interacting with those mouthbreathers when at gym class or the other times we crossed paths. Frankly, high school felt like something I needed to endure and survive. The biggest positive that happened during that time was that the isolation I felt allowed me to fully embrace my weirdness during my senior year. I grew a mullet tail, created my first decorated denim jacket, and using the money I made at my part-time job, bought enough different pairs of Converse Chuck Taylors to do the Punky Brewster thing with them.

So, in an incredibly demented and sad way, not social, I at least got to be my authentic self in all its glory that year.

It’s in that spirit I’m going this year’s reunion.

Yes, I’m going with the dial turned, with extreme prejudice, all the way to 11. Weird nerdy t-shirt with an esoteric reference to a movie or TV show. Check. Glitter-covered Chuck Taylors? Absolutely. Gothic velvet rainbow pride kilt? Fuck, yeah! The only question is whether I wear my silver sequin-covered jacket or one of my brightly colored and decorated denim jackets. I’m going to arrive in full fabulousity, the way Romy and Michele should have when they first arrived at their 10-year reunion.

I’m going to fucking enjoy myself, arriving like a conquering visigoth, and not just because in the interim I’ve married the valedictorian. Okay, she went to a different high school, but humor me here… I’m rolling. (Besides, do you understand how hard it is for a neurospicy cis hetero male to find and marry one. There are *far* fewer of them than cheerleaders.) I’m living my best life at the age of 53, and I want to show it off.

So, for those of you reading this who are also going to be at the reunion, consider this both a promise and an advance warning. In fact, I would love it if you showed up flying your own freak flag as well. It would be legend… wait for it…

So, here’s the thing about this particular cis, hetero male: throughout my life I’ve felt like an alien walking amongst my own kind. I am absolutely male, and I am absolutely attracted to woman. But, far too much of what defines traditional masculinity in this country has appalled and disgusted me.

I learned at an early age to repress many natural-to-me behaviors in order to deflect attention from bullying, toxic, alpha male assholes. Furthermore, I learned as a self-defense mechanism to ape certain attitudes so as to better fit in and gain acceptance. These were done even though many of those traits made me horribly uncomfortable. However, my experiences throughout my formative years clearly made this totally necessary.

Then, much of what I learned in my youth continued to inform my behavior as an adult. Dressing my age, having white collar business-environment appropriate hair, and, yes, engaging in certain kinds of toxic masculinity so as to better fit in with certain environments — all these things continued well into my 30s simply because it seemed necessary. (Note: my early 20s included an earnest, heartfelt best effort at trying to be an evangelical, right-wing Christian. This was the easily the peak of trying to be something I really wasn’t – especially in regards to beliefs about gays and lesbians. It failed miserably.)

Thankfully, a couple important events during my 30s pushed me towards reclaiming my true self: Brandon’s birth and the collapse of my first marriage. Both of these things increased my resolve to simply be myself. However, it was slow going, thanks to working for a major defense contractor – a stronghold of traditional toxic masculinity. Working from home full-time did temper this. It made it easier for me to dress and behave in a manner I felt far more comfortable with.

The pandemic’s arrival quickly overcame any remaining hesitance to fully reclaiming who I am. The behaviors, attitudes, and the beliefs adopted in my youth as a form of self-defense were already gone, but the period following the initial lockdowns provided the opportunity fully adopt my own style and project the appearance I wanted. It cannot be overstated just how important it was that my current wife wholeheartedly supported, humored, and encouraged me every step of the way.

Being cis and hetero does not mean embracing traditional American masculinity — which is absolutely toxic. In fact, in many areas of this country openly rejecting it is still one of the bravest things a cis, hetero male can do. I call myself non-normative because I now openly express the emotions that got me bullied and beat up in elementary school. I call myself nonnormative because I absolutely reject all alpha male behaviors and attitudes. I call myself nonnormative because, quite literally, through the use of my decorated denim jackets I wear what I feel on my sleeve.

So, though I’m not a member of the LGBTQIA+ community or any of the other historically repressed and/or persecuted communities in this country, I feel a kind of tangential kinship with them. Admittedly, I can never truly understand what any of their experiences are like. After all, in addition to being cis and hetero, I’m also white, male, and maintain the ability (though absolutely not the desire) to convincingly adopt camouflage and blend in.

But, years of not being able to be my true self makes that thoroughly distasteful – to the degree of making it unthinkable. In fact, a recent realization gave me pause. Some of the style I embraced as uniquely me is more than a fashion choice. It’s a very deliberately the opposite of blending in. I am almost making myself stand out more in an effort to accentuate my refusal to conform to traditional gender norms. The fact that I live in an area of the country where I can do this without fear seems to demand an effort to take advantage of this privilege as much as possible.

While wrapping this up, I am fully aware that I am in some ways inappropriately making pride month a little bit about myself. The thing is that while being non-normative isn’t queer, it is nonetheless outside the mainstream. I enjoy and love seeing all LGTBQIA+ individuals express themselves and adamantly standing up against the institutionalized forces of repression in this country. Those feelings are just as strong when feminists, minorities (in particular, the Black community), and those of non-Christian religious faiths do the same.

We are stronger when we embrace that our differences and are accepting and tolerant of those who are not a part of the tribe(s) we identify with. Events by GOP legislatures in Texas, Florida and in other areas of the country sicken me – so much so that I don’t simply feel like an alien amongst cis hetero males. I feel like an alien amongst humankind as a whole.

I’m thrilled to be a non-normative cis, hetero, misanthropic secular humanist, feminist white male. The world needs more of us supporting all those whom white America has traditionally repressed and persecuted all across the world. But, this month doesn’t belong to me.

It belongs to all those who identify as and fought (in many cases, quite literally) for LGTBQIA+ rights and acceptance. I wholeheartedly support and applaud them for everything that they’ve done and continue to do.

I actually have two different, completely unrelated, longer pieces I’m currently working on for the blog. Ideally, I would spend this time working on either of them, and I will do so later this evening. However, there are also a few odds and ends I would like to post about. So, without further ado:

• I still cannot overstate in any fashion how “meh” I feel about my choices of hangout for the times I want to have a drink or two outside the house, reading a book and/or pounding away on my laptop for blogging purposes. I’m currently giving another chance to The Ashburn Bungalow Alehouse, which was the runner-up when I made my decision about where I should spend these interludes, and it is actually making me wish I was currently at my first choice, Finnegan’s, which is actually damning with faint praise.
• One of the two posts currently underway involves my collection of denim jackets. I bring this only because I am in the process of adding another and decorating yet another one. This one is purple, and the array of pins and patches I’ve ordered from Etsy and other online vendors have already started arriving. It’s yet another reason I wish I could go back in time and simply tell my teenage self that all the angst, anxiety, and depression will be far more than amply compensated for in the middle-aged years.
• While pounding this all out on the keyboard, I’m actively restraining myself from closing up the laptop, asking for the check, and returning home as quickly as possible. Shortly after arriving here, I received an email stating that my other new clothing purchase has been delivered at the house. I’m never worn this article of clothing before, but now that it’s been quite some time since I reached that stage of my life when there are less than zero fucks left to give, I’m absolutely ready to try it now. More on this soon.
• Yesterday, I shared this particular Twitter thread to Facebook. I had actually shared it previously, but someone else that I follow on Facebook had reshared it and brought it back to my attention. It’s frequently been rolling around in my head since seeing it again, and it’s made me even happier that I decided to try out a piece of clothing I’ve never worn before. It’s also made me think again about the fact that as a non-normative but otherwise absolutely hetero cis male I absolutely feel a kind of kinship with the LGTBQ+ community.

I think I’ll wrap it up there for now. The last song I selected for to the jukebox is playing now, and I really want to get home to try out my new piece of clothing.

Another odds and ends post tonight, but something far more substantive should be online this weekend:

• Because I’m getting my second Shingrix shot tomorrow at lunchtime, I’m sorta-kinda treating tonight as my Friday night. I’m having a couple adult beverages and chips from the comfort of the couch later tonight, seeing as it wouldn’t be a good idea to do so after getting the vaccination. I’m also preparing for the possibility that I’ll feel like crap on Saturday as my body deals with the wonders of modern science.
• When talking about Staunton in my last post, I neglected to mention that while visiting our favorite antique mall, I stumbled upon other item I can use to decorate my denim jackets: tie clips. Obviously, I’m not using them in the manner that they were designed for, but that’s part of the fun. They also serve another purpose: they serve as a little reminder of Pops, my grandfather, who always used them when wearing a tie. Although, I’m reasonably certain that he wouldn’t use any of the ones I would select. Actually, that’s not 100% true – I actually have one of his old clips, and it will be used one of my jackets.
• Random thought that occurred to me earlier today: there is a non-trivial chance that the Sixers could make it to the NBA finals this year, which would make them the third Philly team in less than a year to make it to the championship game/series. If they do in fact make it there, I might actually finally jump on the bandwagon and pay proper attention to them. It would be the first time I actually did so since I swore the team off after they traded Charles Barkley over 30 years ago.
• Thanks to one awesome online friend, we now have all dressed chips in the house again. She IMed me (or, is that “DMed” now? – I’m getting too old to keep up with the hip tech lingo) and let me know that Aldi was carrying an in-house brand of them. Between Sally and myself, we picked up eight bags in order to ensure a stockpile in the almost certain eventuality that they stop stocking them in the not-too-distant future. I’m not exaggerating either – eight bags.
• Ghost continues to pay dividends as my midlife musical obsession. I’m absolutely loving their cover of “Jesus He Knows Me,” which they awesomely released on Easter.
• As typical, I don’t have anything decent to end this post with.

Sally is working today, and I’m left to my own devices until 2:00, when I’m going to meet on old friend. So, until then, I’m hanging out in downtown Frederick (where I’m meeting said friend) and finding myself feeling ridiculously nostalgic for my teen years – which is rather amusing given how eager I was to flee this town upon graduation from high school.

Reminiscing about my youth, however, is not what I really wanted to do before opening up my laptop. Maybe I’ll do some of that once I’ve finished with some other ruminations currently bouncing around in my head:

• I’ve started selling off pieces from my baseball card collection again. It’s now been eight years since I left the hobby, and that amount of time has made deciding what to keep and what to sell remarkably painless. Unfortunately, this process will likely take years. The easiest thing to do would be to simply select what I want to keep, and then accept the offer from the dealer who would give me the most money for the remainder. However, I just can’t bring myself to do that, knowing how much the collection’s actual value and what the likely range of offers would be. I figure that will be a point in the future where selling it piecemeal just isn’t worth the effort to me anymore. Until then, the money is going to shore up the back account (a necessity following the purchase of a new water heater back in March and some other looming, necessary home maintenance) and towards the purchasing of some of the newer Lego sets that have caught my eye.
• In addition to the baseball cards, I’m also eventually going to post some other items of value to eBay – in particular Lego sets I no longer want or need. The fact is that my Lego collection now takes up a frightening amount of space. If I want to keep buying interesting new sets, I’m going to need to start making the space for them
• Sally and I spent this past Sunday-Tuesday in Staunton. Originally, our trip there included seeing Nickel Creek in concert in Charlottesville on Monday night, but a few days before the weekend started, Nickel Creek announced that a postponement due to illness. In place of the concert, we instead saw Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret in a downtown movie theater. I didn’t do this simply to make Sally happy – she had been looking forward to its release since first hearing that it was in production – I genuinely wanted to see it as well, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The number of attempts by misogynistic Bible-thumpers over the past five years speaks volumes about how bugfuck insane, closed-minded, and authoritarian they are. (I didn’t actually need to see the movie to know this, but Sally says the movie was a faithful adaptation of the book, and that’s all the additional information I needed.)
• While in Staunton, an individual approached me with questions about the decorated denim jacket I chose to wear that day and then proceed to ask if I was interested in selling it. I immediately and emphatically stated that I wasn’t interested in doing so, and then left it at that. In retrospect, it might have been interesting to have stated what I would’ve felt was a fair price. The actual cost of one of my jackets, once all pins and patches are purchased and applied, is around $300-$325. Add what seems to be a fair markup for my time and effort acquiring those materials and then properly putting it all together, it seems to me that $450 would have been a fair starting point for negotiation. (Though, there wouldn’t be much wiggle room below that price.)
• One of the long-term, seemingly never-ending, projects in our home is getting the entirety of our music collection imported onto the Apple Mini that is wired into our home entertainment system and creating a large variety of playlists to suit either or both of our various musical moods. One of the more recent playlist creations, and a current favorite, is one I titled “This Dance Mix Is a Little Bit Off.” The list is so-named because the majority of the music contains some element of darkness (musically and/or lyrically.) As a result, there’s a lot of Depeche Mode and ‘80s New Wave and alternative. In addition, there are “Weird” Al parodies of songs you might hear on a dance floor – such as “Word Crimes,” his take on Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” – and other interesting little tidbits like Cookie Monster’s “Me Lost Me Cookie at the Disco” and the disco cover mashup of music from the original Star Wars. I make no apologies for anything in it.

It’s actually getting rather close to 2:00 now. If there is any musings about my nostalgia regarding late ‘80s Frederick, it’s going to have to be in a future post.

Ever since moving away from regularly journaling/blogging and instead actively posting in smaller posts on sites such as Facebook and Twitter, I’ve occasionally started a blog post only to leave it in my computer or iPhone notepad in partially finished form. Tonight, it seemed like this might be a good time to revisit one of those incomplete blog fragments and finally post them online. The following was an originally a series of brief thoughts that occurred to me while Sally and I were in New York back for a few days during the second week of November.

This is my second trip to New York City in two years. Before these two trips, I was last here in the spring of 2007. Both of these visits have been heavily laden with nostalgia for the two years I lived here after graduating from Rutgers — as well as some wonderful memories from the few trips back up here after moving back to the DC area in 1998. Ideally, it seems clear that making regular visits is a moral imperative. However, the cost of these trips mean that we simply can’t do this every year. Train fare (the only civilized way of traveling from DC to NYC,) staying multiple nights in a hotel in Manhattan, and the other necessary expenses incurred in a multi-day stay here make this a rather expensive proposition. So, while three trips in three years appears unlikely, maybe we can be back here again in 2024…

One of the things I miss most from my time living in New York is The Strand. It remains a wonder of a bookshop, but it has undergone one significant change in the nearly 25 years since I lived here: the “review copy” section of the basement is no more. One of my favorite things to do when living here was going through those shelves and coming home with a number of recently published hardcovers for far less than cover price. Given the changes in the book industry in the interim, it’s disappearance comes as no surprise. It’s still fun to come in and browse the shelves, but the absence of the review copy section means that coming here just isn’t the same for me. Alas, that’s just something time does to all things…

This trip included an afternoon where Sally and I are off doing separate things. She planned well in advance to join a gathering of women who love Gudrun clothing. I, however, didn’t plan anything on anything in particular while on my own, and started by simply wandering around the area and seeing what I might find. Eventually, I decided that I should go to McSorely’s — an option I considered in advance but hadn’t made any previous decisions about. I suppose I get why people still go there — I mean, where else can you go that both John Lennon and Abraham Lincoln both drank at? — but I wonder if it’s now something where you’re primarily paying for an experience more than anything else. If I lived here still, I wouldn’t feel the need to return. Oh, thank goodness I actually did have cash on me — it’s hard to believe that there are cash-only establishments in this day and age…

One thing we generally didn’t plan in advance for either of our visits was where we were going to eat. When the time to do so came, Sally and I did a lot of just walking around and checking the menus of restaurants as we passed by. Inevitably we would find a place that looked like a great place to try — though on a couple occasions this took longer than we liked. It was kind of surprising how large a percentage of the restaurant didn’t provide vegetarian fare. It was certainly larger than the percentage of restaurants in our section of Northern Virginia not providing meatless meals. Not willing to make any kind of conjectures as to why the weird dichotomy exists. To me, a city as diverse as New York would mean that more restaurants made an effort at accommodating both vegetarians and omnivores…

One of the exceptions to meal planning was a visit to The Cauldron. During our visit list year, we had such a wonderful time doing the potions making class that we made another visit to simply enjoy the atmosphere and the fantasy themed cocktails. Alas, this year’s visit was somewhat disappointing. The place was more plainly decorated, the waitstaff less personable, and the vibe very much subdued. We still enjoyed ourselves, as well as had a great time with an old of mine, Erica, I hadn’t seen in over 10 years, but some of the magic (pun fully intended) we encountered last year vanished…

One return to a favorite from the time I lived in NYC that didn’t disappoint was The Cloisters. It was on our list of places to see last year, but we just weren’t able to get up there. This time, we purposefully set aside a specific date and time to go up. It was everything I remembered. It helped immensely that it was a gorgeous day outside, which made the gardens and balcony overlooking the river…

On our visit last year, we went to the observations decks on both the Empire State Building and One Vanderbilt. This year, we thought that checking out the 30 Rockefeller observation deck would provide an interesting change of perspective. It absolutely exceeded any expectations. Although we visited the top of Empire State at nearly the exact same date and time, the colors from just after sunset were absolutely breathtaking. I don’t think I’ve ever taken as many pictures in as short a time period as I did that night. I don’t recall the exact verbiage from the moment, but while pausing between photos, I said to Sally that the impending environmental collapse and global warming crisis make it hard to be excited about the future, but at least the view before the shit hits the fan is amazing…

If there is one part of this trip I wish for a second stab it, it’s visiting Oscar Wilde. It would have been smart to get there earlier in the day than during the after work rush. It was just one of those places where the combination of decor and drink menu was just awesome. If there was a downside, it’s that it was clearly a trendy place for the 20-something crowd. I think that I single-handedly lowered the coolness quotient of the establishment while Sally and I wear at the bar.

Finally — though by no means the last thing about the trip worth noting — R.I.P. The Slaughtered Lamb and Jeckyll & Hyde. Both of these establishments were casualties of the pandemic during the (relatively) short time between Sally’s and my two trips to NYC. We made to it the Slaughtered Lamb during our first trip, but it was clear at the time that the bar was a shell of its former glory. Despite the fact that both locales were kitschy destinations designed with tourists in mind, I nonetheless had fond memories of both places both from my time living in New York and during a couple of my subsequent visits before meeting Sally. It’s always sad to see a notable physical part of your past disappear, and these two spots were certainly no exception.

The original plan this morning was to post about returning to eating and exercising properly after my three-month, end-of-year attempt at simply maintaining my weight in an effort to enjoy the holiday season and a few other important occasions scattered throughout. I will simply state for now that it was essentially an abject failure and that I will return to this subject when my next regular weigh-in date arrives. However, the partially composed, original post for today got trashed when I was thrown into Facebook jail for 24 hours.

Aside from the utterly ridiculous reasons for this happening (more on that in a bit,) it’s probably for the better as this day is a particularly good one to be staying as far away from Facebook as possible. I was already riled up earlier in the morning after looking through my Facebook memories from a year ago today, and I’m certain that doom scrolling, as I far too frequently do, would have only served to further intensify those feelings. Thankfully (?), that very behavior — which Facebook utterly encourages due to its design — provided the impetus to getting thrown into Facebook Jail

See, what brought this 24-hour sentence upon me was a simple response to a troll whose comment was highlighted in a response to Washington Post article in my feed. My comment: “Bitch, please. 😂” Apparently, by responding to a troll (which I never should have done in the first place — I really do know better) I “didn’t follow [their] Community Standards on harassment and bullying.” This was a second strike against my account, thus the ban. My first? A comment I made early last year — “Speaking as one, straight white males are the worst” — for that, Facebook’s impeccably context-sensitive, thoughtfully programmed bots and AIs decided that I had engaged in hate speech.

🙄

After quickly getting over my initial reaction of disbelief (and more than just a little bit of  anger,) I started taking some actions that I have actually considering for a number of months now. See, I am fully aware of just how fucking evil Facebook Meta is, and I have already spent lots of time thinking about what to do about that given that the overwhelming majority of my social interaction takes place online, and Facebook is the primary facilitator of it. So, as much as I really wish I could simply delete my account there and never return, I don’t believe it’s 100% feasible, at least not at this time. The fact is that there are a number of friends and family who only/predominantly use Facebook, and don’t really one of the other social platforms. Hell, I barely use any of the others.

Well, that’s changing now.

I’m not giving up the Facebook account, but I’ve started taking steps to transition away from it as much as possible. I’ve decided to make Twitter my new primary site for the kind of short posts that they and Facebook encourage, and anything longer than that is absolutely going over on this blog from now on. I’ll then link to anything I post here to those sites. Once Facebook allows me to make changes to the account again, it’ll be time to aggressively trim my Facebook friends list down to the people that I really wish to follow and then unfollow The Washington Post, New York Times, et al. I already have subscriptions to the news sites that overwhelmingly appear in my feed, and I can manage my own news consumption without Meta’s help. As for the doom scrolling… Well, I’m sure that the Twitter feed will likely provide enough angst on that front. Finally, I’ve already removed the Facebook app from my digital devices and will only visit the site through a web browser. This way, I can more easily control what information Facebook gathers about it.

Frankly, this was a step I should’ve taken a long time ago. I joke frequently about the fact I work for Satan, but holy shit… If I’m working for Satan, Meta is Cthulu. I know my change in usage will in no way effect their bottom line — especially since I’m not actually leaving and they will still monetize me in anyway they can. However, I can rest a little better in knowing that I’m not continuing to play the game the way they would prefer. Maybe a little further down the road, I will take the final step: download all my content and then close the account. However, the desire to socialize as easily as possible those I care about is a hard one to overcome, and I’m certain that even the changes I’m now implementing will take some getting used to.

Speaking as someone who wasn’t a member of the Cult of Trump and was emotionally unsettled (if not outright traumatized) by the entirety of his presidency, every single year since 2016 has seemed like yet another year in which we as a species are slowly shambling zombie-like to our demise. Runaway climate change, environmental collapse, the rapid conversion of the GOP into a quasi-fascist political party that actively undermining our democracy, the rise of fascism around the world, a nearly two-year long pandemic showing no current signs of ending soon, the ever increasing wealth inequality, an accelarating, already out-of-control plastic pollution crisis… It’s damn near impossible to believe that we’re not in some kind of slowly unfolding, inexcorable collapse of human society as we know it.

I wish I could be optimistic about the coming year — I truly do. Instead, I’m feeling rather nihilistic about not just about 2022, but for pretty much the entire future. As bad as all all current problems are, so long as climate change continues to be inadequately addressed, solutions to the other issues simply don’t matter. Even if all of humankind collectively decided to immediately do everything possible to combat climate change, it will still take decades before CO₂ levels start dropping. Even more daunting: we actually don’t have a solution yet for all the methane (a far more potent greenhouse gas) being released into the atmosphere as all the permafrost in Russia and North America defrosts.

I think back to my teenage years, and the fact that I was convinced that the world was likely going to end in nuclear war. During that time, I frequently had nightmares about it happening, and the nightmares all evolved out of the fact that I somehow survived the initial exchange — because that was a fate far worse than being incinerated instantaneously in a nuclear explosion. The morbid relief at the notion that it would all end in an instant made that apocalyptic scenario oddly more acceptable than the one currently unfolding. The individual and institutional forces that have created this mess have become so powerful that I don’t see how any of those who are profiting from this slow-motion disaster will accept any changes that will actually address these problems. That kind of leap would involves sacrificing far too much of their own power and wealth. The selfish, short-sighted, tribalistic tendencies of our species are just that unyielding.

I truly wish I had a way of properly coping with this. Instead, my solution to maintaining at least a semblance of sanity is to simply keep finding joy, comfort, and happiness where I can with those I love and in the immediate world around me. Do that, and try my best to be kind and courteous to everyone (something that’s becoming progressively harder in a world where so many proudly don’t give a fuck about the feeling of anyone whom them deem as “other” and deliberately go out of their way to antagonize them.)

In other words, make the best that you can of the world you’re in. The airplane is going absolutely down. So after you don your own oxygen mask, do your best to help your fellow passengers put theirs on before impact. Then, simply hope for the best.