What are your favorite side-hustle ideas?

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I spend a lot of time in waiting rooms, so I love all those games where they share ad revenue in hopes of driving up players. Right now I’m testing out all kinds of things with several different apps that pay pennies on the dollar. Although I did put $30 into one because I got $50 in rebate instantaneously. If I could remember which app that was, I would tell you; I have slept since then.

The point is that I do not make much, but I have bought myself a couple of things at 7-Eleven.

Next Big Gulp’s on you.

When I told her that, she said, “I accept tips.” I PayPal’ed her two dollars with a note that says “my car looks gorgeous.” All I got in response was, “dead.” The car wash metaphor continued for many years, and the quote above is the result. Aada’s next Big Gulp is always on me.

I get points. What about it?

One of my side hustles is collecting points at 7-Eleven because you get free stuff a lot. I’ve let them collect for years and yesterday I started redeeming things. First, it was $4.00 off my purchase, then the next time I bought soda on points instead of money. They are the gold standard for “put money in, get rewards out.” I go there nearly every morning because I need to get out of the house and talking to the clerks is cheap entertainment at four in the morning.

I started waking up at four about 12 years ago, when I moved to Silver Spring. My landlady lived on site, and her coffee grinder went off in what seemed like “the middle of the night” until my circadian rhythm adjusted. Getting up after four just feels abnormal, because that is when my energy is the absolute highest.

I’m not one of those people who judges. I am not here to rattle anyone else out of bed. I write till everyone is up. So, sleep until noon if you want, because that just helps me out. This web site is not a side hustle, it’s my main hustle in which money trickles in, but not enough to pay out every month. So, a free way to support me is by clicking on ads every once in a while. I am suggesting this because I don’t want there to be a fee to read me.

I use other platforms for that, like Medium and Substack. The difference is that they’re geared toward different writing than a scratch journal and I’m trying to figure out what actually needs to be said. I have tremendous power and I am not using it, because when I give an opinion, people listen. Now that my internal struggles have been worked out to the best of my ability, it’s time to start raging against the machine.

WTFWJD?

Everyone goes through that metamorphosis as a writer. You excavate your soul to understand it, then you can branch out. You don’t understand anything else without understanding your role in it first. Ending the repetitive loop over what to do about The Aada Situation came with resolution in myself. That the answer is a nonbinary. Don’t do anything. Just wait and see. Let life happen. Go to the river. Go to the beach. See if one day there are two sets of footprints in the sand, because for a while there was only one and it’s because she had dragged me behind her for a little bit.

That is not my favorite alternate ending to the “Footprints” poem; it is that the reason for there being only one set of footprints is because Sand People march in single file to hide their numbers. As an armchair theologian, I am highly influenced by G.K. Chesterton, who said something to the effect of “belonging to a religion you cannot laugh about means you don’t have a very good one.”

“Leftover Jesus sandwiches” is a good example…. my response to hearing that we were having lamb for Easter. My favorite Biblical joke is that Jesus’s actual last words were “hey, Peter! I can see your house from here.” And also that Jesus hates M&Ms because they fall through the holes in his hands.

That joke is only funny to me because crucifixion was at the wrist. The hand would have torn. It’s funny because it’s not true…. and like the military I use black humor to survive the horror from beginning to end. Jesus’s life was cold, brutish, and short because that’s the life the machine handed him. My experience of the United States has been largely the same. An outsider to the system has a different experience than someone who fits in.

For instance, I would bet (but don’t know) that Aada and I have very different experiences of the world based on who we are. She’s straight and cis plus married with 2.5 kids. I am not. The machine honors her in a way that it will never honor me. It’s the same with my sister, though she has the added benefit of being white. Aada is biracial, so she fits into the machine in some ways and rebels in others.

Being queer, nonbinary, and white means that people will always receive me one way and treat me another….. because sexual orientation is something you see on the second pass, not the first. Skin color is the once-over. My sister and Aada are both very aware of their privilege and use it to help others. I want to join them, but by staying outside the machine and commenting on it. It’s anathema to their careers because they both work for the machine in one capacity or another. But at the same time, criticism of institutions is valid.

I am looking forward to school starting because that will allow me to focus on the international machine, not just the domestic agenda. Human rights violations are everywhere, and right now the US is up there on the list. By talking about it here, I am preaching to the choir. Hardly any of you live here except for me. I am thinking that hearing “letters from the inside” is a good thing, because my recollection of this time in American history will be a dumpster fire gif and nothing else. There’s no point.

My life is beautiful because Brandon Scott (the mayor of Baltimore) and Wes Moore (the governor of Maryland) keep me insulated from most national bullshit. But they cannot save me from everything. I did not know that there were new work requirements for disabled people coming up in 2027 and my case manager was livid because as he says, “you cannot work.” I had to scrap the Royal Farms idea because working is not up to me. But then we looked through the rules, and I’d accidentally saved my own ass by registering for school. Even part-time school counts, but I’m full-time because I’m taking two eight-week intensive classes at a time.

So, a wild hair on my part paid off big.

It’s how I know that everything will be all right in the end. I have accidentally engineered success since I was a kid. The key has been failing up. Every mistake has made me stronger, so while I do not fit into the machine I have the communication skills to be the kind of author that people remember.

That’s not nothing, and it’s a far cry from the picture painted of me…. that I am lazy and lack drive. It’s not true- disability is a moral judgment in this country. Even autistic norms were originally set by Nazis, which is not ideal. The entire disability case for autism can be boiled down into the Asperger binary- “can work” and “can’t.”

I am “on the autism spectrum” because saying I have Asperger’s makes me feel like a deformity that Germany missed. It’s a worthlessness loop and I choose not to reinforce it, because other people do it for me all the time by equating my worth as a person to my ability to earn money.

My stepmother finally saw the truth at the very end when she said, “I can see that your life has been hard.” Just that simple recognition allowed me not to care about getting closure on anything. It was solved inside myself because I never wanted anything but her recognition that my life had been different than the other kids’ by a large margin. That they were supported by the machine because they could be.

A big for-instance is that there was no gay marriage in Texas when I met my first wife, so I have felt like a refugee since 2001. When I married Dana, it was a civil union only valid in Oregon. I have never had the same rights as my straight friends due to timing. When I wanted to get married, I couldn’t. In a perfect world, I would have married my high school sweetheart and lived happily ever after.

Now, my happily ever after is finding out I get to live with me.

Side hustles are time-wasters to turn off my brain. Sometimes the high octane needs to stop and slow TV (construction) while playing mobile games is the answer.

What are five simple exercises to do at home?

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I don’t exercise intentionally. I have a Planet Fitness membership and I only sort of use it. I realized that swimming was actually my favorite sport and PF doesn’t have a pool. So, it’s time to ditch them and get a membership to the Y. I used to be the right writer for this, because I walked and took the Metro everywhere I went. Exercise was simply built into my day. The idea that I would do it at home is just bizarre, because I don’t like being cut off from people while I exercise. It’s a communal activity in which you are not socializing, but you are enjoying the activity in the room.

I think swimmers are a little bit more social, because I’ve chatted several people up in the hot tub during the cooldown. While people are swimming laps is not the time to compare notes, but the hot tub afterward is where we all communally agree that exercise sucks and at least screaming hot water helps.

I am sorry I am not more helpful. That’s just not where my head is right now. I have a lot to do around the house and I’m going to hang with my friends in Richmond this weekend, so I need today and Thursday before I leave to go well. Because we got along so well last time, I am invited to stay with them and not “turn and burn” like I did last time. So, I want my house to feel welcoming when I come back.

My friends actually live in Lynchburg, not Richmond, but few people outside of the United States would know where that is…. even “Richmond” might be a bridge too far. It’s a world away from The District, that’s for damn sure. And in fact, even the drive is different. I’m used to Baltimore to Fredericksburg in one shot. Therefore, when I get to Fredericksburg, I am generally thinking “we’re almost there.”

No, the hell we are not.

Fredericksburg is just where NoVA runs out and as you go South, you get into the impolite parts of Virginia, the places they don’t want tourists to look.

I’m going to go poke it with a stick.

If you could start a new business right now, what would it be?

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Before I decided to file for disability and Disabled Adult Child benefits, I wanted to start a media group. Now, starting my own company would be a liability rather than a benefit. I need the safety and security of money coming in the door to keep doing what I am doing, which is creating a body of work that has traveled and will continue to do so. It is not stepping out of the workforce to be lazy, but to attend school and to get the letters that mean “respected author” after finding out the hard way that my body will not cooperate with capitalism…. and moreover, my body has always been “broken” and I never should have entered into the workforce at all.

But for me, starting a media group was about being able to hire all my friends in the arts who are talented beyond belief, giving them the money they need to produce. I started reading all kinds of books on nonprofits, but not having a team under me that could leave their own jobs to support this idea made it an impossibility quickly. It has been a conundrum of how to fit capitalism to me instead of the other way around, and the answer is just to accept that I can earn money as a writer that will trickle in, but the bulk of my support needs to come through the United States government as defined by “disabled child.” It’s a reality that my mother left me to face on my own, and she did it on purpose.

Being a real adult is saying, “I know you tried to cover up how disabled I was, and I forgive you.” It’s making my own decisions as to where to go from here because my dad and sister can only do so much- I am the driver of my own success. I have so many comorbidities that I’m not going to bother to file. I’m going to walk into a lawyer’s office and let them do it. I can prove disability starting in 1978, but how much support I get is based on what they find. Bipolar disorder is only one piece of the puzzle. Benefits go up based on my ADHD, Autism, and Cerebral Palsy. I was also diagnosed as Borderline when I was in the hospital the last time around, but I do not think that is accurate. I think that’s what happens when people meet an autistic woman for the first time. My last hospitalization was a total shitshow and a complete anomaly from who I usually am. There is a solid reason for this, and there’s only one person in the entire world who knows the truth, but she has stopped taking my calls, literally.

All I wanted was to leave a voicemail, Jesus Christ…… My mental health issues were all about me, clearly, but that does not mean that I was not affected by outside influences. Everything about my mental health emanates from me, but I don’t think that people often think of themselves as stimuli. It is a balance of things, and it is a process of learning what is mine to own. For instance, I do not attach and detach like a borderline personality. It probably seems like it to other people, especially when I detached from Tiina so fast. But that had more to do with how I was perceived than with me. I did not owe people who pathologized me more time and energy than I’d already given. There’s a solid reason for everything I do, but it is not always clear from reading my writing. It would help me a lot if people were more curious and less judgmental.

:::stares in Alice Chilton:::

In short, I am tired of people who are big on solutions and short on support. I don’t always need someone to figure things out for me. Sometimes, I just need to have my emotions out and for that to be okay. I do a lot of processing here because people do not want to listen to me in person. But here is what I am saying clearly:

My mental health status is enough to get me enough to live on, but it’s more than that. It’s about securing my father’s benefits after he passes, which I am entitled to under Disabled Adult Child benefits. I am not being morbid, just as realistic as he wants me to be about the situation. The take-home message in all of this is that I have never been lazy, I have been misinterpreted and it is truly not my fault. I was streamlined into regular education because I was thought of as brilliant for my age…. so as a result, I am one of those people who can handle high-octane academia but managing my life is too much.

Aada called it.

She said that I’d been given a brain that runs a million miles a minute and a body that won’t keep up. That line will live in my memory because she read me correctly in that instance. She saw the talent without pigeonholing me as a slacker. That writing the way I do was really hard work. But, you know, it’s not that hard in comparison to being a full-time social media manager for myself. That part of writing really sucks, and yet there is no way around it, either. I would be so happy if people discovered me and I went viral without ever knowing it…. and that seems to be happening in mainland China.

My archives are popular there more than my homepage, but it is clearly not bot behavior. It’s small numbers of hits all across the country, which indicate that lots of people are using Chrome to check me out, one of the few ways out from under The Great Firewall. I don’t think the browser does it by itself, but I’m sure there are location switching extensions and things like that. I am grateful. I love Chinese people, food, and culture….. but I hate the Chinese government and cannot visit. It is brilliant that the Chinese are visiting me instead.

So, the business is me and the product is me. I get so tired of myself, and that is the truth. All of my Aada entries took a toll on me that nothing ever will, because I never got tired of her. I got tired of lack of change and being miserable about it. I got tired of my entries being repetitive and so did she. But she thought that the answer was me writing about something different, not her doing something different so that the writing reflected it. I don’t just make shit up.

Except in one case, and that drove Aada away. But honestly, that’s okay. If you don’t want the story behind the story, I won’t give it. But if she is ever curious later in her life, I am an open book, one that wants to hug her. It’s not about chasing her, but remaining open so that the idea of running into me isn’t scary. It’s just life. Because at 12 years, we will never not know each other, and to pretend that we can cut the geometric chord between us is ridiculous. We may not ever create new memories, but deciding not to communicate in the future did not erase my memory, nor hers.

I feel like I should clarify like I do in every entry that Aada is not and has never been my girlfriend. But she has had that function in life in the way that straight women in the 1950s called each other their girlfriends. She has been my closest ally over the years, way over a decade. So now it’s really about feeling the loss….. that my long fuse finally lit because lack of scaffolding was unsustainable.

But by “lack of scaffolding,” I do not mean a radical change in our relationship. I do now, of course. It would be ridiculous to get back into the same dynamic I left. But what I mean is that Aada didn’t manage her emotions. I did that labor. I truly felt things for and with her that most people don’t, and there was no recognition of it. There was no recognition that “buckle up, Buttercup” was never going to work on me because I’m a highly sensitive person and I will just bleed out. I have shed more tears for Aada than I have over any romantic interest, and that will always be true- full stop. That’s because Aada’s training is highly specialized in a way that most people’s aren’t, and it led to high-octane emotions as well as re-focusing on academia for me.

Because of Aada, not only do I have a new outlook on relationships, but on what it will take to change USG from the inside. I want to look where Dr. Brown didn’t, which is shame and vulnerability in government organizations, particularly surrounding race. I will have a field day at FBI, I’m just sayin.’ We’ll trace the line from Harriet Tubman to J. Edgar Hoover, revealing all the systemic injustice that has harmed the Black community even when they have helped white people beyond measure. We’ll look at all the -isms eventually, but racism has to be at the top of the list because it’s baked into the Constitution. Homophobia and transphobia are just the shit that rolls downhill. Hoover could have helped the queer community because he certainly wasn’t ignorant to it…………….. but he didn’t.

I have two weeks before school starts, so I’ve been putting myself out there on Facebook Dating to see who is out there. I have met several people thus far, and that’s the reason I went to Richmond the other day. I met someone online and instead of continuing to chat, I wanted to meet them immediately. You cannot tell very much from chatting online, and that is a lesson HARD WON.

Anyway, the cat picture is her cat. We had a great time shopping together and hanging out with her adult daughter. It was nice to do nothing with people, just being relaxed and talking. We have definite plans coming up, so I feel good about the fact that we get along as people. I have no idea what kind of connection it is, and I am not bothered about it. All connections are good and I am allergic to drama.

For instance, realizing at 12:04 that if I didn’t write something by midnight, I was going to lose my WordPress streak. I panicked for a second, and then realized it doesn’t matter.

China likes going back through years.

What are some life hacks that you practice?

I will let you know when I find some. Exploring Richmond today and will be back tomorrow. Here is a cat for tax.

Do you believe in karma?

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I do not believe in karma because that suggests that force meets force no matter what we do as people. I take the historical Jesus’s version of reality- what you do matters. Karma says “you get what you deserve.” Jesus says, “you get grace- and that changes everything.” Anne Lamott provides the rug that really ties the room together…. “grace never leaves you where you were found.”

And of course, Sedaris over there with “Jesus Shaves.” Paraphrasing him, “we wouldn’t know how to do this any better if we did have the proper words for it.”

Karma is universal, and faith in Jesus is relational. How you treat people does come back to bite you, but it’s because you were not living your life in relation to others in some way. It is not simply a force that exists, but a force you are responsible for creating. You get to decide whether you are building something or tearing it down. And if you are building something, how you do it matters.

I have a new therapist. She’s younger than I am, Black, and cis. So we’re both coming at therapy with completely different outlooks on life that sing “inside rhyme.” As a queer/trans umbrella person, we are one in the struggle. That’s relational- I cannot walk a mile in a Black person’s shoes, but I can tell where they pinch. Empathy for each other’s situations goes a long way- not that a therapist is supposed to share their lives with you but ignoring that I’m white and she’s Black is also problematic.Boundaries matter, and so does respect.

But the point is that there is no such thing as competitive suffering. There are plenty of courts in the gymnasium of trauma. Black people have suffered more than I as a white person ever will, but that does not mean that I have never suffered at all.What I can do is use that empathy to fuel antiracism, because if you are a part of the struggle it is all for one and one for all. A Black person led the Civil Rights movement. A queer person ensured it would work.

Martin and Bayard were that era’s Shake……….. and Bake.

My readers will know (but my therapist might not) that I have studied The Struggle extensively because queer and feminist movements in the Bay Area were co-led by people like Sally Gearhart, whom I met when I lived in Portland. Now, there is no proof that Sally Gearhart knew Bayard Rustin, but everyone involved in the movement was under his marching orders. I wasn’t alive back then, so I never got to meet Bayard. I can only channel his energy back into the current movement as I learn more about him.

I am reminded of this every Thursday, when I have to take a left on Bayard St.

But here is the truth I live with. Because I am autistic and ADHD, I do not have Bayard’s skill set. I have Martin’s. I am the head in the clouds thinker, and Bayard is the one that will have a list organized of 30 places who’ll actually listen to my ideas once they get there.

I see incredible parallels between Martin and me because I do not think of him (or Jesus, for that matter) as an icon. Neither of us made our wives proud, that’s for damn sure. I mean, of course we did, but certainly not every day. Martin and I are both driven by the cause, hoping it does not negate the bad we’ve put out into the world.

Therefore, I have to believe that Martin Luther King, Jr. heard the same message I did…. and gave himself grace. It takes a lot out of you to put yourself out there, and though I haven’t done it to the level he did (and probably never will), I do understand pastor energy and what might be beyond the collar.

Giving him grace is knowing that he’s worthy of the glory of God without judging him for his humanity….. the human impulse to dig up dirt is relentless. Or not even to dig up dirt- to think that your message about that person is more important than the person’s message itself.

I have carved out a space for myself online that makes people think I’m a dictator when I am living my life in reflection. I am not dictating the future, I am commenting on what has already happened. That affects my future greatly, because people read my writing and don’t want to interact. They do, however, want to fangirl me for the rest of my life.

:::stares in Northern Virginia:::

The relational aspect is saying to my new Black therapist that my antiracism isn’t performative, and I am not writing about Black issues more now because she’s my therapist. My inspirations are James Cone, Howard Thurman, William Barber, Yvette Flunder, and the canon of Black theologians that shattered me with one idea best expressed by Cone:

The Cross and the Lynching Tree

Matthew Shepard’s murder quickly became “The Cross and the Split Rail” for me. Inspiration from liberation theology has beget queer theology, and the biggest sin we could commit is appropriating those ideas. Because white church gonna white church.

Not every white person, but always a white person.

Not every Christian, but always a Christian.

Being willing to say things like this ups the ante in terms of blowback. People saying I’m insane or calling me a retard is par for the course these days, because Trump’s AmeriKKKa is a school of hard knocks. People are not making fun of my official diagnoses. I’m officially crazy on paper and that doesn’t bother me because I take care of myself and the symptoms get better. What bothers me is thinking that I am crazy because the idea that there are more than two genders is a delusion. No, it’s not. You just haven’t passed third grade science in 30 years.

The Struggle is always discrimination against people for things that they cannot change, and that is true of my:

• gender
• sexual orientation
• disability status
• mental health status
• neurodivergence

The only part of the struggle that doesn’t touch me is skin color, and I am respectful of the fact that it’s a trauma I will never even conceive. My only point is to connect where we can. It’s a shitshow for anyone who isn’t white, cis, and heteronormative. There is a solid reason I live in a Black neighborhood where most of the white people are Jewish. It is far easier to live where white entitlement doesn’t touch you.

If you cannot survive the machine, you join the rebellion.

I want “winter is coming” to be replaced by something that would actually rattle people. If Jesus came back today, assuming that his metaphysical accomplishments are real, would he be proud of you?”

I know who I think he’d be proud of, and it’s not people like Joel Osteen.

It’s Macklemore.

It’s Ms. Rachel.

It’s anyone who wanted to try to save people from the same political machine that crushed him.

How do you write what people actually want to read?

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It’s not true. Mico has proved to me that almost a million of you have read me and that’s great. But having web stats that reach that high does not affect me in the slightest because I do not see it. There are no paparazzi waiting for me, no one comes up to me on the street, etc. I just exist to the tune of “everyone reads me at one point or another, but I am only moderately famous in China.”

  我在中国有点儿名气  

Microsoft Copilot translation for the inevitable joke t-shirt.

By not paying attention to what my readers want, I have pierced The Great Firewall. My Chinese hits are not bot behavior. I am being read in small college towns all over the mainland, and I am so grateful. The belief that no one is reading is what keeps people coming in the door, because a writer gains a different color to their voice if and when they know they’re being watched. Defending my right to observe has not come cheap, I will tell you that. Slings and arrows have been thrown at me because I’ve thrown them at others. What is different about being a writer is that people give your words authority that they do not have.

This is only the story according to me, and you always have your own. When you read, you are not required to agree with me that what I wrote is what you believe happened. You need to believe that I believe this is what happened, and that is the end of it. Someone else in these pages, whether it’s Dana, Aada, Counselor, or Tiina, is going to have their own take over what our relationship did and did not do. Listen to them. I am not an authority. I am one hue among hundreds. But my opinion is not seen that way because it is written down. The paper is the authority, not the author.

The reason I know this is that my opinion changes fast, but I am held to the past. If I wrote it two or three weeks ago and now have a different opinion, you cannot say that I was telling the truth then and lying now. I have evolved. Where were you? You were lost in thinking that the paper was the authority and not looking at the fact that the newest entry is the most important and the archives are birdcage liner…… writers do not make a habit of looking back. They are too busy creating the next thing.

That is why I disconnect and pretend that no one is reading. If I am completely unaware of the chaos I bring, I can continue to bring it. My ideas matter. My words matter.

The fallacy is thinking that my words mean more than yours.

Because I wrote them down.

 

What’s the most spontaneous thing you’ve ever done?

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My normal mode is autistic. But sometimes my personality flips into ADHD. Autism pulls you inward, ADHD pulls you outward. I have both, and it’s easy to see the distinction. When ADHD is in charge, I like a wide variety of things. When autism is driving the bus, I like six. ADHD makes me feel invincible in social situations, because I am. This is not bragging; this is the result of being the child of a pastor. 

I am not a pastor myself, but because I grew up in the church that energy exudes from me. People are naturally attracted to it, the way they were attracted to my dad’s energy when he was actually tasked to lead people. I’m also agnostic and do not believe in Jesus’s metaphysical accomplishments. I believe in literature, and that Jesus was a fantastic person and worthy of being emulated. I will fight Evangelicals to the death with the most powerful weapons that exist:

Keyboard & Mouse

For instance, Jesus motivates me the same way he motivates Ms. Rachel. If you are white and not ten toes down behind her, do not even talk to me. I do not want the word “Christian” associated with racism and bigotry, because it’s twisting Jesus’s message to fit yours.

God doesn’t hate Black people. You hate Black people. God doesn’t hate queer people. You hate queer people. God doesn’t hate trans people. You hate trans people. And it’s not just me saying it. Reza Aslan said it first in a great commercial and I’m plagiarizing him because good writers paraphrase. Great writers steal outright. 😉

We are to the point in the program where Evangelicals call me insane for believing that there are more than two genders because they do not believe in science. They are offended by me supporting the end to Palestinian genocide because they hate queer people (institutionally) so much. These people are blind, because Israel has shown the world that hurt people hurt people. It is short-sighted to think that eradication of a population is okay in any context.

I am nonbinary, which falls under the trans umbrella. You are fucking taking crazy pills if you do not believe they are coming for me next. It is legal for them to persecute me in Palestine, and short-sighted to think it could not happen here. In terms of me being AFAB (assigned female at birth), in the eyes of the United States government, I am barely above property because I do not have bodily autonomy. It is a short trip to overturning Obergefell and whatever comes next. Trans kids are currently being denied their medication by people who do not believe they have the right to exist.

That is because they do not understand and are reacting like bullies. Under the Constitution, that’s not allowed and that doesn’t stop anyone. Jeremiah Wright’s anger was justified because “God bless America? God damn America” is the first time anyone has told us the truth right to our faces, and we have a history of metaphorically crucifying those people. The difference between you and me is that I’m willing to be one of them.

The resurrection doesn’t happen at the cross; the resurrection happens in the Garden of Gethsemane, where you have the time alone to ask God, “how dare you?” And you just wrestle until you’re ready. That is the resurrection that matters. The one that says, “je suis prest.”

I would not have known that without Aada, because she got me into Outlander and is also one of the most impulsive things I’ve ever gotten myself into. That’s because she is everything. I believe that she hung the sun, moon, and all the stars and I am not alone in this observation. I have also said very impulsive things cursing her out in the opposite direction, because you don’t truly know you love someone until you’ve been angry enough to curse someone out and still know that you want to come home to them in every lifetime.

She’s a jack Mormon, so I mean it in literary terms there, too.

The impulsive part was not the slow accumulation of love. She’s straight, I’m queer. It became deep and companionate over time after turbulence because I’m in love with her and I know it. It shapes who I am as a person. But she cannot and should not respond on that level, because what makes me happy is that she responds to my love and care at all. She isn’t responsible for managing my feelings. I can do that quite successfully on my own. Being queer and in love with a straight person is loving their whole family as well- because what makes your emotional support partner happy should make you happy, too.

People say “best friend,” but they cannot quantify what that means. Ours is a very Oprah and Gayle kind of love, except they never struggled with a romantic dynamic in their relationship and we did. Except that romance is relative because only I felt those feelings and it was okay. It was just hard managing my physical reaction to her words. When you love someone, their words have a different kind of power over you than when you don’t. It is physically destabilizing, especially when they feel alone.

What is an emotional support partner besides hugs, cheek kisses, shopping, and eating great food? When Aada felt alone, all I wanted with her were these things….. to be able to show her that someone truly adores her in a tangible way. To share inside jokes in person that we’ve laughed about for 12 years.

Aaron still owes her a beer, and I’ve told her I’d make good on his promise because I live in the area and he doesn’t. We never made that happen, either. So it’s a process of letting go of lost dreams after rushing into something I truly didn’t know I wanted before it happened. Having an Internet relationship vs. one in which we had to meet up made us both closer and more distant at the same time. We were inhaling each other while we thought it was awkward to run into each other.

It’s a conundrum that still drives me crazy some days, because it’s so weird being loved as a product and not a person. She loved my writing, but she didn’t let that love and care translate to “let’s go for coffee.” It will always be a mystery as to why, but it is partially solved in my mind. She had puffed herself up, and didn’t want to show me the real her.

I had embarrassed myself on too many occasions to feel comfortable in person. It was a two-way street, and something I’ll always regret. I think she will, too, because she said that she will always regret not being more present when my mother died. I am choosing to let the anger lie because it is all on the page. I do not have to revisit it. What I choose to revisit are all the times I felt loved well.

As a result, my impulsive heart bleeds out for someone who won’t return that love, or at least not entertain the idea that it exists anymore. She told me that she notes the breadcrumbs of affection, but that the negative parts feel like the real story. That is not my work to do. That is hers. I have written a tapestry that when put together is an incredible love story that is underrepresented- one that is platonic and just as deep as romance because I felt it and she didn’t.

It was Tiina that read me correctly. When I wrote about life on the farm, she said, “if you were ‘on the prowl,’ you’d write about that.” To be honest, I hadn’t thought of it because as a preacher’s kid I’m designed to feel shame around romance. You have it, but you don’t talk about it until it’s real and deep.

I’m turning that on its head because Tiina is right. Dating is also creative inspiration and one of the things that drew Aada to me was writing about my then-wife and then my dating exploits….. I just wouldn’t write about them in my blog. Only she got the story behind the story. I fully believe that I wasn’t successful in dating until I started thinking of myself as poly. That anyone who has come into my life has been competing with Aada for my attention and it was just easier to say “I already have everything I need. You’re going to have to keep up.” That line will please her, I hope. 😉

Because anyone I date has to know that an emotional support partner is important, but not more important than a romantic partner. I don’t want to be the person that meets someone else and all of the sudden I forget I have friends who need me as well. The difference between Aada and everyone else is that she gets space on the Google Calendar when no one else does. She’s the one I’ll always respond to even when I cannot respond to anyone else.

Because she knows me on a level that no one else does, mostly because she took the time to listen to my life story when others wrote me off. I took the time to give her a space where she could really let her hair down, and she did it so much that she regretted it quickly and used it- not maliciously, she was afraid and trying to control the outcome of the situation, not me.

Because the situation stayed the same for 12 years without any forward motion as I got sicker and sicker, I was more open to other people. It was then that I learned how big the control could get and I rebelled. She told me it would end our relationship permanently and I said, “your offer is accepted.”

Because I do not have to tolerate fans who bully me into saying what they want and ignoring all of my emotional needs. She thought I said everything casually, as if I wasn’t crying and shaking while I wrote. She did not understand the physical toll that being a writer takes because her writing does not touch that level. In order to understand me, she would have to excavate her soul on paper, but the fact that she will not do it is not my problem.

She could write a bestseller on trauma tomorrow, and moreover, we could write a book that would sell even better. But her lack of willingness to collaborate has always fed mine. She treated me like I was actively trying to be a dictator instead of meeting me at altitude. She wanted a fight for power, and I wanted to love her beyond all measure.

This led to a series of incidents in which I was just jumping up and down for affection. Starving for it. Any words of reassurance that the relationship was stable would have been fine. But our communication sucked and we fed each other’s dysregulation instead.

The real problem is that we were alone all the time. It was a chat bubble, not seeing me in context. I chased her too hard for the relationship we had, and I’ll always be sorry for that part of it. But I was so confused and at a breaking point in my life. My ex-wife had recently gotten a DUI; I was exhausted when a fan adored me so hard that I reacted. It was a fantasy to help deal with the shit show.

I think that you always love people who love you, but I was interested in her, too. She’s fascinating, and someone I’d love to sit with all day and just hear stories………… outside. She was a fool not to get the story behind the story and an even bigger fool not to respond to it when I told it after the fact, because it proved to me that she was only capable of believing the story she was telling herself and mine didn’t matter. The link above, “Taco Bell Lettuce,” is indicative of just how close we became, two letters that will live in my memory forever and thank God I wrote them down.

What we could not do was go back and recapture that light and flirty era of our relationship. I tried, and it just came off wrong. I never meant anything by my flirts, but my ADHD made them hypersexual and I couldn’t apologize enough. Just because it’s a real symptom does not mean I am not responsible for making the decision to cause her emotional chaos, and for that I’ll never be able to apologize enough.

She will also never be able to apologize enough for emotionally destabilizing me in a completely different direction. I became obsessive about managing her emotions because she simply wouldn’t do it and I had the room. I couldn’t just let her feel sad, angry, lonely, whatever. I had to be the Lanagan Search & Rescue System because I am a preacher’s kid and that’s what I do.

She also has an “I want to save the world” complex, so we each tried to save each other and we each failed. It’s on both of our hearts and neither one of us know what to do with it. But I have a hunch that all could be solved if she would just stop the impulsive behavior of “sometimes we’re close, and sometimes we’re not” and just realize that love has been coming at her in a steady supply. It is not my issue that she cannot see it any longer.

Malcolm Gladwell posits that blink decisions are accurate.

Aaada, you are the best thing that has ever happened to me.

Peace out.

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Epilogue

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The way I’ve shown growth and strength in the aftermath of this relationship is not tolerating bullshit in others. I am ready to settle down, and to get rid of drama. For instance, they say that men are “unemotional.” I went on a date with a man the other night who was absolutely adorable and had all the right things- stable job, two dogs, and what I thought was a stable outlook on life as well.

I technically paid for the first date, because I brought food with me. Instead of thanking me and offering to do something for me next time, we didn’t talk for a couple of days and then he texted me that he had lost $40. I responded with empathy. “That sucks.” What I did not know is that he was judging me on whether I immediately sent money and got pissy when I didn’t. So, of course, I backed away. His next move was to send me a text message that said, “if I’m not speaking, then you’re definitely not lol, but anyway have a great day.” I said, “I don’t do passive aggressive very well. My life is busy and you just met me.” He said, “take care, lady” and blocked me on everything.

Thank the little baby Jesus.

I have a date with a woman coming up, which is unrelated but it’s also not.

If you had to switch lives with a fictional character for a week, who would you choose?

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I would want to switch lives with The Doctor, which means that I would not have the brain that they do and would need to lean on Kate and UNIT to get things done. That being said, I think I could improvise my way through a normal day at UNIT which is crazy by anyone else’s standards.

I wouldn’t be going in blind, because I’d have advice from Aada floating in my head. Mostly just to keep calm and think fast. Rule following gets you nowhere in The Doctor’s universe, or ours, really. I am more powerful than I’ve ever been simply because I see the machinery behind society and I want to change it. It’s time to burn down the entire system of governance because it was built on the labor of enslaved people.

It takes someone at The Doctor’s altitude to be able to change something this big. We need input from other nations, particularly Scandinavia and the Nordics, because their governance is built on equality, not whiteness. To be clear, racism does exist in those countries, but it is not institutionalized, and that makes all the difference.

You do not appear before a judge wondering which system of justice you got, and that is the reality in America whether Donald Trump is the president or not. There are still people serving long sentences for carrying what is now a perfectly legal amount of pot on them, and that is just one way in which Black people are disproportionately paying for the crimes of all. A white person and a Black person in the same situation will be treated differently, because white people carrying the same amount were described as boys being boys and now, they shop at a dispensary that looks like an Apple store instead of still feeling the wrath of Nancy Reagan.

Being able to look at systemic problems like this from the outside would be helpful. A week away with a UK home and planet hopping would do me good. The only thing I need to remember is that I am only in charge of so much. The TARDIS is the real boss, and she knows it.

The relief would be in thinking about different problems so that I have new energy to bring back. It’s not just drug laws, it’s inequality in health care, the aftereffects of redlining, the destruction of affirmative action and DEI initiatives. It’s all too much, because that is just the domestic layer. At the same time, we are fighting too many wars for absolutely no reason. 

On a fundamental level, not our circus, not our monkeys.

We as a country are not known for our good boundaries these days, and “these days” isn’t the whole story. We’ve intruded on other countries besides Iran, they’re just our current obsession. Isolationism and Imperialism are best served by a nonbinary and not absolute, but at the same time it’s different to send supplies and support than it is to put American boots on the ground.

Because from my perspective, why?

Why risk American lives in a conflict that wasn’t ours to begin with? No one is asking for our help except Netanyahu, and that is officially bad business. It is the same in Russia. Twisting Zelenskyy’s story so that he is the aggressor is just funneling a message from the Kremlin. It does not represent American values; it expresses the fact that Trump sold his soul to Putin a long time ago. That is not United States messaging.

We in the United States love the Russian people and hate President Putin, and I’m sure that is how the rest of the world views America- they love the relatives they have here and cannot stand our leader…. which is entirely fair. I did not vote for him; I am living out the nightmare that comes with being the losing party.

Because the party didn’t lose. The country did.

Trump was always going to be a Russian UI (Useful Idiot) if not a full-on asset. Hillary Clinton told us that from the beginning…. and even though she is making the best of it, I am sure that she, like me, is watching the world burn and……………. concerned.

The only way to survive is to rise above, and a week with The Doctor would be flying over the issues the United States has. It’s easier to see them all when you’re looking down.

Have you ever liked a villain more than the hero? Who and why?

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Elphaba is my Christ figure.

I trust the person who got crushed by the machine more than the machine’s version of the story.

I do not need to believe that she lived. I read the book. She was crushed by the political machine and she died. The stage play covers it all up, and I would argue that is what happened to Jesus. He was crushed by the political machine in Rome, and his followers couldn’t bear it, so the Gospels are a response to grief.

That makes the Bible more true, more human…. not less. Resurrection does not need to happen at the cross. It needs to happen in the garden of Gethsemane, where you are arguing whether or not you are ready to take on the gargantuan task of living out your political beliefs. Jesus was not a fool. He knew that his hour was coming, but I do not believe that it was a divine plan. I believe that like Martin Luther King, Jr. after him, he had a sense of where the crowd was going and internalized that he was doing something politically dangerous that could get him killed.

The historical Jesus is dead, but his ideas are very much alive. The political machinery that Donald Trump is presenting is very much like The Wizard in nature- “nothing to see here” and “everything is fabulous” while the world is clearly burning. In this day and age, Jesus is:

• Macklemore
• Ms. Rachel
• Dolly Parton
• Jimmy Carter

People who stand up for the right things even when it’s hard. 

Dolly comes from a very conservative Evangelical area of the country. It did not stop her from responding during the AIDS crisis, while AIDS never escaped the president’s lips (it’s true. Reagan never even said “AIDS” publicly during his presidency and between 1981 and 1989, more than 89,000 Americans died of AIDS.).

The same can be said of Jimmy Carter, who used his faith to be president for all the people, not just the ones he liked. God appears in the people you like the least, and his political opponents were fierce in standing up for everything he hated- the 1980s ushered in individualism and cruelty because of it. The social safety net started to crumble and we as a nation decided not to care.

Now we are reaping the benefits.

None of the political machinery that Elphaba and Jesus fought against is gone.

It’s all hidden in the fairy tale we made up.

What’s the longest book you’ve ever read?

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If my blog were printed, it would be roughly 350 encyclopedias long. But I haven’t just read it, I’ve created it, so I see it differently than you do- in some cases, I remember the exact place I wrote it. I always remember the story behind the story unless it has been many years, one of the reasons I’m so persnickety about making Aada vivid. I don’t remember my first wife at all anymore.

My first wife was not as worthy of remembrance as Aada is now and has been for the last 12 years. She says that she does not know how anyone could read about themselves without coming away with self-revulsion. That’s not how it feels to read, but that’s how it feels to write. I got tired of not liking myself. I got tired of Aada not liking me because she said my narrative was about her was repetitive without doing anything to change it. My writing reflects my thoughts. If we’re doing the same thing, I’m going to write down the same thing.

That’s how that works.

I would have loved to have written a story of a blogger and a fan with an explosive connection that turned into racing each other to Wawa to buy each other coffee and ice cream. But it didn’t. It sort of did. There were a lot of digital Starbucks cards passed between us. It just came with Xs and Os on the page, and not an arm around my shoulder. It was heavy with no foundation, like knowing that books were welcome but running into each other? Awkward.

I did not know how to navigate myself nor her, and I think you did get the best of what could be said. You also got the worst. Now things are different because it’s the first day of school- a new chapter…. hopefully without forgetting where I came from. She says that she’s probably too old to change. That’s where I kiss her head and say it’s okay. So am I.

I am being dragged into change, and in some sense, I regret every bit of it. But all change that is good is designed to make you stretch. Life was not happier when it was me and Aada through the computer in an isolated bubble. But it feels like it was when you’re not there yet. You’re in limbo. You can see the change, but you have not become it.

All I can do is dress for success, so here’s what that means in homeschool terms: I’m wearing jeans and a t-shirt with a line drawing of Galway Bay, the Irish pub I visited in Annapolis. I am comfortable and relaxed enough to focus on human rights.

I am getting a huge kick out of Macklemore’s success and the egg on both P!nk and Ed Sheeran’s faces. Neutrality favors the oppressor. Always. Even Ed’s own band has walked out on him now because not taking a stand is taking a stand.

I am going to the Thrift Shop to celebrate.

What’s the best advice you’d give to someone younger than you?

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Make the effort to know your own body so that you have an acute sense of what is wrong. Emotions do not start as thoughts, they start as sensory perception. Discomfort starts with you. There’s a reason I often say that Aada “got under my skin.” Because she was remote, I felt her energy in the room, or thought I did. A lot of the time, the energy I made up for her was wrong, and I wasn’t sure how to fix it. I should have communicated more. I should have studied boundaries more in-depth, because Aada and I each failed each other.

Learn that lesson early. Everything is all your fault, so nothing is. Do you see what I mean? There is no relationship in your life in which you are going to win one hundred percent of the time, and thinking that you should is just a recipe for sparkling narcissism.

Instead of trying to find blame in someone else, learn what you did that didn’t feel right in your own body. That will help you try to find the truth between “what’s mine to own” and “what’s not.” I am sure that a lot of you sit around and try to find ways to blame yourselves if Aada’s letters are any indication. I have never been saying to myself that Aada was at fault for anything, and the joy of my life is being able to go back to myself 12 years ago and re-live everything at any time. Aada may not ever want to reconnect, but she cannot take away that she and I are an internet institution. Even she agrees that it wasn’t all bad, and I truly wish good things for her in the future. 

I broke my vow of silence on September 11th because I had a panic attack, and I hope she will forgive an unwanted email if she even got one. I am sure that by now she’s blocked my email address, and that is okay by me. I apologized when I realized what I had done and thanked her for putting me on the path towards school. It will come across as manipulative, I am sure.

That’s because it was. Intention does not equal impact, and I was thinking of my feelings and not hers. It’s not like my birthday and the surrounding days afterward aren’t a dumpster fire for her, too, just not in the way I might have imagined. Whenever I feel like I really screwed the pooch with Aada, it’s always realizing that she didn’t give me any scaffolding to succeed. That I failed, but there is a damn good reason why.

She thought that I was just like her, that I manage my feelings like a boss. I don’t. I manage my feelings like a therapist, processing with the appropriate person. Aada slowly isolated me from everyone on earth except her and then got irritated at the result. I cannot help that, nor am I asking for an apology- though it has been given (received, heard, felt, understood, loved, kissed goodbye, etc.).

“What was Missing” is hearing from her that she understands me. Forgiveness is instant. Processing my emotions takes a long time, because I am a naturally curious person and want to understand. My curiosity with Aada was always taken as offensive and pathologized when I was just trying to get to know her. All connections are valid, so I wasn’t “only after one thing.” If that were true, our relationship would have lasted 12 minutes and not 12 years.

Repair would be hearing the result after processing her own emotions, in as secluded an environment as she needs it to be. I’m just intimidated at being alone with each other, but if she’s not, then I’ll manage. I would have compromised on so many things, and she says that there are things that could be clarified…. I just don’t deserve that.

She’s just in a pissy mood and needs to take it out on me because of the “479 blog entries that left nails in my palms.” OMG. You know your life has hit rock bottom when they use a crucifixion reference to describe your writing…… But it’s ok. My government teacher told me how to handle people like that. He said to tell her (meaning my mother) that she’d be fine ’cause I’d stop by to wipe the blood off her cross every day.

John Ben died recently, I heard through the grapevine. Farewell to a most excellent atheistic foil…..

A/Theism is the greatest love story ever told, and the truth is in the slash -Pete Rollins

There are so many people in your life who will make your personal choices about them. Some of it is valid. Some of it is not. You have to know when to be firm and when to…….. not. I have said so many things to Aada that I regret simply because if there are lines from her that live rent-free in my head there are certainly things I’ve said that have wrecked her.

For that I owe several thousand apologies, flowers (hopefully seeds we could plant together), and a six pack of the best local brew because a drink is best shared among friends. I waffle between thinking that my work to do is to forget that Aada existed and thinking that the best thing is to feel integrated about it. The relationship went wrong, but I am a better person for having known her.

I do not know whether she can say the same about me.

But what I do know is that I haven’t said that every day, or implied it, because it took being able to see our relationship from Such Great Heights to be able to let go of the emotions surrounding it. Not everything is heightened anymore. She feels soft in my memory, the face I look to for love even now, not knowing if that’s okay.

It has to be, she gave me a picture in which she knew she was “looking at me.”

Make your friends take those pictures. They are absolutely the ones worth treasuring. It is how I know she loves me, not in an “I’m hot for you” sort of way. In an “I enjoy you so much that I’m not quite sure what to do with it” kind of way. Admiration for a writer is a serious thing. I get it, because I’ve had those crushes before…. but I didn’t get one on me until I read me through my beautiful girl’s eyes and ignored my own.

She’s such a firecracker, and one day I hope that these pages will remind her of that. She says that she doesn’t like the portrayal she got, but the picture is skewed because she threw red paint in the center and asked me to pretend it wasn’t there on multiple levels.

She often accused me of painting my feelings as fact. I hear that criticism, but I cannot absorb it wholly because I do not know any storytellers who ask the opinion of everyone in the room and take a consensus on what the story is before they write. A better approach would have been a production meeting offline, and what can I say but that we are both chickenshit losers for not making it happen?

We both intimidated the everliving shit out of each other, and what I wish that she could have seen is a more polished version of what I wrote. She was getting the shitty first draft (SFD) phase every morning and not looking back over a year. It will look different when it is edited, bound, and if she wants it, signed.

But she’s already pre-empted herself by saying, “guess you won’t dedicate that first novel to me. I’ll never know.” Then 15 seconds later…. “for now, all I want is peace.” I believe that creatively we are both fed by the tension, but it gets to be too much emotional dysregulation and we shut each other down…. then time goes by and we miss each other because we don’t remember the dyregulation part of it.

Advice to younger people- this is called “creating your own drama.” Losing Aada was the worst thing that has ever happened to me in my entire life, and I will never truly get over it. I want her back in a way that is primal but directed into self-improvement and self-empowerment. I cannot control what Aada ever does in her life, but what I can do is take her criticisms to heart and decide which ones are truly valid.

Not to do so would be saying to myself (and the world) that she didn’t really matter to me…. that she doesn’t matter to me. In effect, Aada is giving me back my capacity to love the world, because she tilted my heart in that direction. I can love the shape of her for all time in memories and in the work I’ll do with other people. Some of our problems give me highly specialized empathy.

But what I won’t do is let her off the hook for isolating me and then lying to me in such a way that made her want to keep lying instead of coming clean on the first pass. The house in my head that I built for her was too large, because she had puffed herself up. What she does not see is that I roll with reality, and that is the disconnect. She does not want to tell me what reality is in the aftermath of her “one lie.”

We ended up abandoned each other to the wolves, and we should both be ashamed of our actions in those months. We were too harsh- expressing hugs and cheek kisses would have gone a long way. We both feared expressing affection. I felt like I couldn’t do it right and didn’t want to try. How do you put toothpaste back in a tube? I wish I had listened so much more than I talked, because she was telling me what I was trying to learn in ways that were upside down and backwards to the way I understood how the play was supposed to go.

I don’t pick up social cues well, especially over the internet. If you’re young, figure that out quick. It’s good knowing that I have a different cognitive style than most people, and that I probably read Aada wrong for a lot of our relationship as well. I could have had so much more empathy with more communication, like facial expressions, handshakes, hugs, etc.

When my temper got out of control, I was a little bastard internet troll and she didn’t deserve that shit, either. She was just very good at returning fire; it didn’t take much and we were both trying to cut each other off at the knees. We were both in trauma hell, but on way different playing fields.

Advice to my younger self is to cultivate long relationships, but I still cannot tell you how to do that because ADHD and autism do not bode well for them. I’m learning, though. I made a friend yesterday that actually invited me to go do something, and another today. I feel like I am re-grounding myself after a walk in the clouds.

It’s ancient wisdom to touch grass, and it’s coming in handy now.

My advice to anyone younger…. make sure that early on in a relationship, grass is included. There’s no substitute for sitting outside in the sunshine on a quilt with a basket, drinking in Vitamin D and pinot grigio.

What’s one thing that would instantly improve your city?

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The longer I live here the more the land is so beautiful it makes me weep. The people are the problem. It’s just hard to work together and hard to keep the astounding beauty in mind as the goal. Plus, we all have different ways we can and will contribute, so it’s a mess. Think “church committee from hell” because of the scale.

When I say “the people are the problem,” I am including myself. I am a Methodist preacher’s kid, so I have a shit ton of experience in “God is perfect…. us? Not so much.” Maryland is a variation on a theme, because I feel God everywhere I walk. 

You just feel the pull of the divine in everything, particularly swimming in the Bay at Sandy Point State Park. Where you absolutely do not feel the divine is being stuck in a long line at Giant Pharmacy. There’s a trick to Baltimore.

Slow your ass down.

It will be so much more enjoyable to you if you realize that the culture is asking everyone in line how they’re doing. Have a Coke and a smile and shut the fuck up, which was Richard Pryor’s advice to Bill Cosby when Cos complained to him that Ennis was a fan.

I like Richard Pryor a lot.

That quote also makes me wonder if Aada and Tiina’s kids are fans, or if Dana has remarried and she has kids that are fans. I doubt it, but the ecosystem of lives I’ve touched is interesting to me. My stats say that someone in Northern Virginia loves me, but I cannot assume it is the people I think. I can only think in universes, not specifics.

Because I can imagine that it would be fun to peek inside your mom or dad’s life, and I’m aware of it on a different scale because of 16yo & 10yo. At the same time, I cannot disappear into my friends’ lives, either. I cannot stop writing my thoughts because it is uncomfortable for them, because that is letting my friends run over me.

For instance, being aware that nothing I said is a reflection on Heytch, Mummo, Jonna, anyone. Reality is knowing that they’ll take it that way, anyway….. with the added bonus of not talking to me to get their story straight, just changing the ecosystem that reads on their own. I am not for everyone, so I have to be for myself.

The same struggle between individual and city that lives in me lives in Baltimore itself. I am an internet institution. It is an American institution. 

Baltimore knows who it is, which is older and more established than DC. It was founded by the English and is now culturally Jewish and Black in a way that no city can match. If you love DC but want to stay out of Congress’s way, come here. It makes the monuments and the pageantry something you choose instead of something you live.

Brandon Scott is like all mayors- incredible wins at some things, losses at others. But for the most part, Baltimoreans are content and I admire any mayor who can do that. I wish I could be as helpful to him as my sister is to the mayor of Houston, but that is not my gift. Best I can do is take your number and pass it along.

Lindsay is DC, I am Baltimore. In terms of political personalities, she is clearly the Michelle, and I am clearly the Barack. I can do all the speeches and stuff, but you have to point me in the right direction. I would rather be at the law library, and I am fully aware that Lindsay is in charge.

My job is to build a life in Maryland that fits, and Baltimore does. I just need to put more shoe leather into meeting up with people outside of group therapy and all that. What you are seeing now are the results of exhaustive work on myself and not being ashamed of the path it took to get me to stability. I feel comfortable in my skin here, because I don’t identify as Baltimore or DC or Annapolis. I treat it like a triangle and do things in all of them. This is not a slam against Baltimore. It is respecting a boundary.

You’ll never be from Baltimore if you didn’t grow up here, so stop trying. Recognize your otherness.

I think that one thing that could be improved is the welcoming committee. It is hard to know how to plug in when you move here. Maybe that’s an initiative I could take on. I’ll ask Brandon about it on Threads because that’s the least intrusive way to pitch an idea.

Yes, a welcoming committee is old fashioned.

They also work.