I Had to Choose to Accept It

January 9, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What is your mission?

Today has been a complete shit show from beginning to end, but now it’s over…. not the day, just the negative aspects. I should be getting dramatically better as my brain chemicals rebalance.

Yesterday, I realized that I was out of Lamictal, so I contacted CVS for a refill. They came back to me and said I needed to go to the doctor for a new set of prescriptions.

No problem.

The problem came in when the doctor’s office said they didnt’t have any appointments for the rest of the day, and I had to spend all night cradling my head between my knees…. until I finally realized I could take a metric fuck tonne of sleeping medication and the whole nightmare might be over……. or so I thought. I took three melatonin and some Zyrtec, which had me out like a light prety quickly. However, the migraine-like pain of having your brain chemicals whacked let me know that today was not going to be any better than yesterday, and I had to white knuckle my way through getting my own medication. By the time I got to the doctor’s office, I was in a right state and they knew it. There were lots of whispers that maybe they should have worked me in yesterday…….

I’m just not a complainer. Just like my mother when she was having me, she heard all the other women around her screaming bloody murder and she was not going to be that patient. So, she was basically biting her pillow until the OB/GYN nurses bothered to check whether she was in pain or not…… and it took a while, because my mother wouldn’t say anything.

What I know from this experience is that they weren’t paying any attention to her because she didn’t bring any attention to herself. I struggle with this often, as I do not want to be seen as a complainer, either. This doesn’t work in my favor, necessarily, but it does. If I had gotten any sicker, I would have gone to Urgent Care. I just thought I would be okay, and I was absolutely 100% wrong.

I wasn’t having trouble with my thought processes today. Psych meds aren’t known for giving up after only 24 hours…. except for benzos and methamphetamines. Those wear off as quickly as they kick in. But for maintenance medication, it takes about six weeks to build up in your system.

The antianxiolitic I take, Klonopin, kicked in immediately, so I’m not in as much pain as I was previously…. it still doesn’t take away the sting of the clusterfuck that happened after my appointment…. and the pain won’t truly be gone until my brain chemicals are right, which may take a few days. So, absolutely none of this is what I needed today, and could have been avoided if CVS hadn’t waited unti the last moment to tell me that I needed to see a doctor. Again, today has been a goat-roping clusterfuck. I’m glad that it can’t get any worse. Tomorrow is date night with Zac, and I can’t wait to give him a hug. It seems like a long time, but we’re both slammed, so it’s no issue. It’s a huge relief that we’re both doing our own thing. That being said, it’s going to be nice to have a place to decompress after :::gestures broadly at everything:::

First of all, we are going through a huge storm system- I know it’s huge because my dad and Lindsay are stuck in the same one (they’re in Houston). Therefore, taking the bus was not really an option because it’s not just normal rain. It’s supposed to flood. The bus would have been fine. Standing in water that’s over my ankles isn’t.

So, I ask the doctor’s office where they sent my prescriptions. They said, “CVS on East-West Hwy.” So, I head there and the doctor has actually sent my prescriptions to their in-house pharmacy. I know this because the doctor’s office did resend my medication, but then it was saying that they were too early to be refilled….. because they’d already been filled at the other place. So, I go back to the other place, the in-house pharmacy that only carries three of my medications, so I have to go to CVS, anyway. I’ll have to pick up the Adderrall tomorrow at some point, because it’s not the priorotity here. I have the three things I really need.

So, I get to my pharmacy and in the time it has taken to get from CVS back to the doctor’s office, that pharmacy has canceled my order so I can pick it up at CVS. My only saving grace is that the pharmacist called upstairs and got the three medications I needed rather than make me hoof it back to CVS, saving me a lot of money in that process…. again, Uber. I also managed to get some home COVID tests, the COVID vaccine, and a flu shot. I have a feeling none of that is making me feel any better, either, but here we are.

In the meantime, here is my protocol because I feel it’s important for my people to know how I handle all this. Bipolar is hard on all of us, and sharing information means more to talk to your doctor about, because I’m not it. This is, in the words of Paul Gilmartin, “a waiting room that doesn’t suck.”

If you’re thinking about doing psych meds, here’s what works for me, but there’s a caveat. Unipolar depression medication sometimes works with a mood stabilizer, somtimes it makes bipolar worse. So tread carefully. Again, this is only what works for me….. and since I’m a doctor’s kid, you’ll get it in pharmacy notation…… 😉

Lamictal 200mg i qD
Lexapro 20mg 1qD
Klonopin .5mg BID
Adderall XR 20mg 1qD

I don’t know what I’ll do with the Adderrall because I don’t know that I need it all the time. But I’m getting it anyway just in case, because I never know when my ADHD is going to eat my lunch…. because I won’t.

These drugs do not play around, and I’m in the shit with side effects. I was so upset that I had to fill my prescriptions at the pharmacy in the doctor’s office after I opened them, because there are two different Lamictal generics. Same ingredient, lamotrigine, but whatever is in the diamond-shaped one makes me so nauseous I will absolutely throw up anywhere and everywhere. I look like such a drunk sometimes, because I’m trying to find a trash can and that’s people’s first instinct. But, you can only control what you can control, so what people think of me does not matter.

As I have said before, I have to choose between physically ill or mental, and I choose physical because my interactions with other people are more important to me than nausea and vomiting. It’s never fun, but it beats the hell out of not regulating my emotions.

The weird thing is that I’ve had ringing in my ears since I haven’t had my medication, and now I’m just waiting to see when it will go away. I basically flooded myself with brain chemicals, so it’s happened before. They just need to get into balance, and if I’ve said this twice, I apologize. I am not a well woman. But I did have a “not a well woman” exam today. They ran all my bloods and I should get the results back. I wouldn’t be surprised if anything is wrong, but I would be surprised if it was anything more than “you need to do more of this at home.” I’ve thought I was getting an autoimmune disease for the last few years, and I’ve been tested for rheumatoid arthritis, but not gotten the results. So, I’m having my clinic run the test again because what happened last time was that I was on my cycle and they couldn’t do the test….. another thing that could have been brought to my attention because we could have rescheduled…. No one has ever told me they didn’t want a urine sample when I’m menustruating before, so it didn’t occur to me to tell them.

But the bloods aren’t just for that. They have to make sure that my liver is still functioning well because mood stabilizers have a tendency to beat up on them. With some mood stabilizers, you have to have a liver function test every month, not every six months or a year. It’s serious business, and all of it started with lithium as we learned more and more about it.

All of these drugs are murder on your body after a while, except Klonopin, and with it there’s the pull of addiction. I have not fallen into that trap with either Klonopin or Adderrall, because again, I’m choosing sick over crazy. There’s nothing that makes me want to take more medication because the side effects are toxic…. mostly in that they render me in a constant bad mood like I’m Ouiser Boudreaux on a mission from God.

I’ve been 46 since I was six, so I actually have been in a very bad mood for 40 years.

But right now I’m thinking about the fact that Zac hasn’t read my fiction blog entry yet, and the only reason I want him to is that he will absolutely pick it apart. “That would never happen…. or that…. or that…. or that…. or that….” I’m joking, and yet I’m not. Zac and I are in it to win it. We may not ever get paid for writing, but that doesn’t mean we don’t want it to be excellent.

I also know that I’d wait years to hear his impression, and I’m saying that out loud so that he doesn’t think, “oh shit! I have something to read right now!” It’s not a homework assignment, dear heart. It’s just fun working with him because even though he’s not a spy, he’s worked in military intelligence (not as much of an oxymoron as you might think) since he was 18. I think he signed up willing to do any job, but his test scores on the AFAB or whatever were so good they realized they could get anyone to weld ships or whatever.

So, entrusting Zac to be ruthless, kind, and accurate is a good thing. I know for sure that none of his criticism will be mean, because I’m not mean to him….. or if I am, he hasn’t mentioned it. 😉

Coming up with ideas for Zac’s fiction challenge was one of our best dates because we were both excited and happy about creativity- and he’s definitely more creative than I am on the fiction side of things. I can turn a phrase and make it funny, but he can build whole worlds. It’s the mountain I have to climb, and as I’ve said, I’m at the bottom. Yet, none of it bothers me because I know I’m becoming a stronger writer every day.

I am seeking out strong writers like Jonna Mendez, Tracy Walder, Vince Houghton, and John le Carré. I know that le Carré is dead, but “The Pigeon Tunnel” is a masterpiece and I’ve been learning from him through podcasts. His interviews on both Fresh Air and Writers & Company are among my favorite episodes of the entire show.

I don’t want to write exclusively about intelligence, which is why I’ll always be a blogger. It engages a different part of my brain. Intelligence is just what excites me about fiction, because I have read so many non-fiction books that I feel like I’ve taken a college class. Fiction is easier to write when you’ve done the research first. You’ll always have to research along the way, but knowing the broad strokes of a subject is key.

I can write about the kitchen because I know it.

I don’t know shit about spies, but it’s the same concept. I sought out Bourdain in order to develop that voice. I sought out Jonna and Tony for the same reason, because I loved the “Argo” script and wanted to do something like it eventually. I figured starting with their books was wise, but in reality the book about The Canadian Caper was written after the movie came out, because there were so many people who wanted the real story.

Reel is not real, and thank goodness the book came along. Argo is punched up for drama, but the story itself is no less great when you take away movie magic.

If they don’t make movies about “The Moscow Rules” and “In True Face,” it would be such a shame. I mean that sincerely. People need to know what happened during “The Cold War,” because it wasn’t any less devastating than our other conflicts. And honestly, they wouldn’t have to punch up “The Moscow Rules” much. It opens with a case officer having the shit beat out of him by FSB in front of the American embassy. I would like to believe we won The Cold War definitively, but the moment Trump took office, it ramped up again (in my educated guesses). That’s because the FSB beat up someone trying to get to American soil in…. wait for it…… 2016.

It startles me how the rest of the world does not see that Trump is an enemy both foreign and domestic. The Russians are in it to win it, and they have had/will have an asset planted at the top depending on whether Americans get it or not. The Founding Brothers are rolling over in their graves, because the last time high crimes and misdeameanors were on the table, both Republicans and Democrats believed it. This time, Putin has won. He has divided and conquered a nation by helping elect a president that was completely out of touch with reality and took notes from all the “benevolent dictators” out there. I’ll believe benevolence when I see it.

Most Americans are completely ignorant of the chessboard because they think we’re the best. All the time. Every day. In a way, I’m on a mission to dispel this notion, because it is simply not true. Other countries do things much better than we do, like having standardized drug prices across the country, whereas Medicare and Medicate pay different prices depending on where you are. Every drug costs a bit different depending on the pharmacy, not just the geographic location…. and that’s just one example. We could have better railroad infrastructure, both subways and cross-country. Lots of cities would benefit from it, because especially in the South, you get a car and won’t take the bus, anyway.

However, this leaves the least of us stranded because gas is expensive and people moving- not so much. I hope that more people than just me have a passion for taking care of poor people, because I feel that the United States is the country with the least viable support system because we have social services, but universal heatlh care takes so many problems off the the table. The US needs nationalized care badly, with doctors making real salaries, because since poor people can’t afford insurace, they end up in the emergency room never having had preventative care…. they can’t afford it. They also can’t afford hospital bills, and when you don’t pay, that’s keeping money out of the hospital system for salaries.

There won’t be any difference to you in terms of health care if we do it right, because the only thing that will change is who is writing the checks.

But drug companies and our current insurance policies don’t want that. They want to be able to charge whatever they want and get medicare to pay for it. It’s unsustainable. By not having universal health care, you are crippling people at jobs who don’t pay for benefits, or shackling someone to a job so that you have insurance in the first place. Nothing like the golden handcuffs.

But at the very least, I want everyone to be able to show up healthy to work because they didn’t wait to go to the ER until they were having a heart attack, or kidney failure, or any number of things. Stuff that could have been caught and wasn’t. So, instead of a $10 co-pay, the bill is $120,000 dollars….. but it’s $200,000 at a different hospital and a different part of the country. Prices vary everywhere. There is no standardization among even generic drugs.

Government-run pharmacies and clinics would allow us to buy all generics in bulk, same with medical equipment so that a cast in Oregon is the same price as a cast in Vermont. And we can get closer to home (for me). The highest Medicare costs in the nation right now are in El Paso, Texas. How does it have the ability to go up and down? Other countries don’t have this problem, and it’s a shame that we can’t have nice things when 99% of the world has figured it out.

We had a lot of hubris in the Revolutionary War, but it went overboard. We are so independent that we think saving money on health care is a bad idea. Meanwhile, if we’d lost, we’d have our own version of NHS because we’d be a Commonwealth country. So, in terms of progress, winning and losing that war are both a mixed bag.

I’m not on a mission to prove to you that we should have lost. I ultimately think it was better to win….. that doesn’t mean that we should stop taking lessons from other countries. They take lessons from us. I think we’d be a lot happier in the world without American imperialism….. or at least, so much of it.

If I have a mission on this blog, it’s saying random factoids that will stick in your brain along with all the crazy. 😉

I don’t know that it’s a Mission from God.™ But I do like jazz and blues, so it’s a start.

Human Long or Vampire Long?

January 8, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What are your thoughts on the concept of living a very long life?

Twice or three times I didn’t think I’d make it this far. Bipolar disorder is a bitch. But thankfully, all the med checks I’ve had over the years have gone very well. I’m more relaxed in my body…… I can also feel time starting to drain away. I am lost, confused, and afraid. But everything will work out in the end because it always does.

Up and to a point.

I cannot imagine my daily grind until I’m 92, the age at which my grandfather died. However, I have so much in my life that’s feeding me, I tend to tap into my own resources, which is a polite way of saying I’m my own best company. I want friendships/relationships/whatever, but I am not dependent on them to provide anything I lack.

I didn’t get here until I’d lived alone for quite a while. Yes, I have housemates, but I do not interact with them much. For the most part, I am locked up in my room, and there are lots of reasons why, absolutely none of them having to do with me.

Here’s the bottom line:

Guy goes to the doctor and the results are really bad. Doc says, “you have six months to live.” Patient says, “six months? What am I going to do?” Doc says, “buy a pig farm. Move to Oklahoma. Marry the meanest woman you can find. You won’t live longer, but it’ll be the longest six months of your life.”

If you’re not picking up what I’m putting down, it’s that a year can seem like 10 minutes, and one moment can last 10 years. Time is relative. I do not need to live a long time to live a lot. I keep this in mind every day because though my grandfather died at 92, my mother died at 65. I’m only 20 years younger than that, and I think I have more than 20 years left in me…. but I can’t be sure. Not only due to the nature of my mental and physical health, but also because if you learn anything from the sudden death of a parent (embolism- it blew, she was dead 30 minutes later from a broken foot), it’s that a long life isn’t guaranteed.

So, whether I get to finish out my life like my grandfather, or whether it’s going to be cut short by some unknown force, I will be ecstatic either way, because I’m not saving up writing my passions until I don’t have anything else to do. It’s what I do instead of going out, because I feel more driven to get all of this down than I do to interact.

That’s because when you’re not interacting with people, there’s less chance to make a mistake. That’s one of the reasons I don’t want to live a long time. I have communication issues and it is relentless. Because I’m neurodivergent, I process information differently than a good bit of the world. Therefore, I am the problem child, not of my parents, but of my employers. Neurotypical people cannot hear neurodivergent people without training, and vice versa. Even the way things are written, when they’re written, are sketchy because we don’t all have our neurotypical decoder rings on us.

A hundred percent of the time, it’s not that I’m not listening. It’s that I don’t understand…… but you do. “Everyone does.” I am not stupid or slow because I read the directions differently than you did. It’s because of the way the instructions were written, and again, no neurotypical in my pocket to check…… because you can go to a boss occasionally to manage priorities, but if they feel like they’re doing your work, then you’re out. And it takes surprisingly little to get you out if they’re convinced you don’t listen and can’t learn.

80% of autistic people are unemployed, and none of us have job security. I am trying not only to manage money well, but also to create something that will last long after I do. These are not just empty pages. This is not for me after I’m finished using it. People, again (from another entry, I can’t remember which), are going to want to know about the way we lived. I’m going to be a part of that, and so will my friends.

So, even though I wasn’t nice to Sam, I think I’ll still come out all right in the end……. because after I processed all the feelings from said breakup, I let go of the anger and was indeed nice to her.

I can quote the first line from memory….. “Wilhousky, you had me at hello.” The Wilhousky arrangement of the Battle Hymn of the Republic is one of the most glorious things I’ve ever done with a brass quintet. I’ve sung it a hundred times, too, but there’s big brass energy when you’re the lead trumpet player for the clarion calls. So, when Sam told me that she was a soprano in the Army choir, the first question I ever asked her was “how many times have you sung the Wilhousky arrangement?” A nanosecond later…. “a million, conservatively.”

Now, the first trumpet part is actually not that difficult, it’s just very, very exposed. You are hanging out on a ledge with barely any accompaniment, so any flaw is going to show. Any impurity in the sound. So, when I pulled it off, I was right proud of myself.

But I suppose if you’ve performed it a million times and not just a hundred, you might not feel so great about it. I hate “Amazing Grace” for the same reason Sam and Peter Wilhousky are never ever ever getting back together. Well, two reasons. The first is that I’ve sung it into the ground. It just feels like an old war horse to me. The second is that organists tend to drag……….. I don’t know what it is, but a good chunk of piano/organ accompanists slow down “Amazing Grace” and “Happy Birthday” to “funeral procession.” I’m not just picking on those two things. I already know that if I end up in hell, my penance will be singing the soprano part to the hallelujah Chorus on repeat. Hold it till you turn purple. In that instance, I would wish for a short life, but it’s hell. I could end up singing The Hallelujah Chorus, anyway, without Lucifer Morningstar on baritone. You know he knows it.

If I was going to live a long life, like, vampire long, I would have time to go back and get the training I need to actually do something with voice. It’s not that I’m so great, it’s that I love being in a group. I will do a solo if someone asks me to, but I will not offer.

I am not a stereotypical soprano. I only compete with myself over my last performance, not with everyone else in the room. Believe it or not, I’ve listened to myself enough that I knew it was a bad note before you called attention to it, but it was so sweet of you to point it out just in case I’m a little slow on the uptake. Voice is an instrument, just like brass. Not every note is going to be perfect because it depends on so much more than your throat.

Singing is a full-body workout, and after a choir rehearsal, my core feels like I’ve been tied as tightly as an old sea salt twists his rope. It’s always my diaphragm. The only good part about knowing how to work your diaphragm is that you can stop your own hiccups…….. most of the time. But, training takes money.

Once I got vampire money, I’d pick a university and just park it. I could stay there a hundred years and still not learn everything. I’d start by finishing the coursework I’ve already started, then branch out. Maybe a second bachelor’s in music, but I doubt it. That part of my life is so long over that I really would be starting at zero again in terms of a professional career.

I’d probably read law, eventually. Lindsay and I were talking about that the other day, that sometimes I still feel the fire in the belly….. but what I’ve figured out is that I thought I was a bubbly personality and I am……… but not long enough to last an entire day in court. Repeatedly.

No, if I read law I’d still be in academia. There’s a lot you can do with a JD that doesn’t require taking the bar….. and I’d need a vampire’s lifetime to figure out where I’d want to live/work. Because after 200 years, DC might not be home. Who knows? What I do know is that I have no plans to relocate, not even out of this house, for now. I just mean that eventually, I’d like to see more of the world and write about it.

Doctor Who focuses on chance meetings with interesting people from the past. My thought is, “why not go meet them now, before all you have left is their work?” I can tell you the exact day I realized it- January 19th, 2019. On the 18th, Tony Mendez found out from the Publications Review Board at CIA that “The Moscow Rules” was approved and would be on shelves. He died the next day, before I got to meet him and believe me that is not the important part in the grand scheme of things- it just makes me sad.

I did try, but by the time I got here, he had stopped doing public appearances due to the Parkinson’s Disease. But meeting would have been good for both of us, according to Jonna, his widow. We’re not really friends, but we’ve talked to each other at The International Spy Museum a couple times and she’s read at least one entry here with her name in it and I cried when I got the note back- that she loved it, and that I was very perceptive about everything that was going on in the room.

Tony didn’t live as long as anyone would have wanted, so I wrote about being sad. It was a celebration of his last book, the last one I’d ever get. And, of course, that’s what makes Jonna’s next book so exciting. Only in Spy Dust did they really alternate chapters so that you could distinguish Jonna and Tony separately. “In True Face” is probably going to be my favorite book of them all because I love women that write about intelligence. Not that I don’t think Tony didn’t hang the moon.

I just want to know the woman he sat with while he was up there. She’s just as funny as he was, but different, I believe. She, in an interview, said that “she was a real hard-ass,” which means two things. The first is that CIA is a boys’ club, or it used to be when Jonna started….. and I want the tea if there’s any to sip. The second is that CIA is overwhelmingly geared toward women now, and the next cup would be how they got there. They’ve embraced female leadership at C/DIA in a way the that FBI just can’t handle. Thoughts and prayers.

So, their library is going to be read and reread by me long into the future, because I need female heroes. I need to see women succeeding because if I can’t reach that level of discourse myself, I would at least like to read about it.

I don’t know what Jonna’s famous line is, but John Le Carré’s was “I’m the only friend you’ve got.” That seems like tradecraft 101, but just like in music, spies have no accompaniment, and are completely exposed. Any flaw will show, because they’re hanging out on a ledge….. generally during a time where if you lose your footing, you aren’t exactly sure whether the person who helped you up is friend or foe.

In thinking about Rebecca, which I often do because the character is actually from a novel I started a long time ago, actually called -frog.- Gregory and Leila are also from that story, but not “Robert.” Robert is the new man in my life, for all practical intents and purposes, because once a character gets in, it’s hard to get them back out. Rebecca and Robert have been talking in my head all day long, and they need to go to bed.

Just not together.

Robert is a mixed bag. He talks tough. He’s a little boy. He knows Rebecca could end him, and that’s why he likes her. But Rebecca and Gregory are a solid item, and Robert is actually ace….. you just don’t see it because of his tough guy exterior. What man would admit that to a beautiful woman on first meeting? It’s all about representation. I picked up ace representation from TJ Klune, who is one of my favorite novelists and lives out in Fredericksburg, VA. So, it’s possible that he’ll do a book signing in DC eventually. I’d love to get an autograph on “Under the Whispering Door,” because I liked “House in the Cerulean Sea,” but I thought it couldn’t be topped.

I was wrong.

Under the Whispering Door is about death. Long lives, short lives, somewhere in between? It explores the great mystery……..

Surrounded by tea.

Everything

January 7, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What could you do differently?

My life would be a lot easier if I became a novelist. That way, at least I can blame blowback on my editor…. “no, that’s not you. My editor added those details in post.” If you’re a novelist, you probably just laughed.

I am sure there are quite a few “fictional” characters out there, but to be honest, I’m not that good at writing “voice” yet, so most of my characters in fiction tend to be me. However, I am a 46-year-old with female parts who doesn’t necessarily think “girl” in reference to herself, but it doesn’t bother me either way. Like, I could see transitioning, but I don’t feel passionate about it. I figured if I had a real, burning desire I would know it. For instance, being queer kicked in immediately. I knew what I wanted, and liked what I got. I figure that if I was trans, I would know it in the same way. But nonbinary as a label isn’t threatening. I’m just too lazy to care about pronouns. I’ll take them all. The reason I’m too lazy to care about pronouns is that I’ve been saying “she” all my life. If I can’t remember my pronouns, why should I expect that of someone else? I like things geared at younger people because I feel that in order to explain an adult idea to a child, you are most probably a better writer than I am. This is a lot of words to say that even though my characters are all me, it’s not always a problem because I’m a lot of people already.

I am testing my mettle in fiction, but not every day. I am taking it slowly because I have a tremendous idea, but I’m at the bottom of a staircase. It is akin to hearing the third movement of the Hummel Concerto when you have just been given your first Arban book. It’s something you want to play, but you’re not there yet.

It’s the same way with my alternate history. It’s big in scope and has the potential to be very popular, because lit about the food industry sells, as well as lit about spies. These two things are inextricably interrelated, two men in a platonic love story as in “The Courier.” They’re from the same world, but different countries. Therefore, they have different governments.

This is why when you see waitstaff and cooks playing assets in movies, that’s real. You can take that to the bank and cash it. CIA (and all intelligence agencies) want “the little gray man,” someone who will not be noticed in any way. Is there anyone less noticed in society than waitstaff? The service industry loves books about cooks and waitstaff who become spies, serial killers, homicidal maniacs, etc. because we’re all just trying to hold down the madness. Art that can express it is rare, which is why Anthony Bourdain is my patron saint. I have two of his prayer candles, because one wasn’t enough.

In terms of what I could do differently, I could review TV shows about kitchens and tell you what’s good and what’s not. However, I will not be doing that until I can turn down my sensitivity to those sounds. I lasted 10 minutes into “The Bear,” and not because I wasn’t interested in the story. It was the ticket machine. Just trigger, trigger, trigger.

So, now I’m just trying to reflect everything I take in. I played the intro/tutorial to Fallout 4 the other day, and I did not realize that my Vault 111 jumpsuit was not equipped and ran out into the street in my underwear. Despite that wardrobe malfunction, I can say that the intro is great. Terrifyingly great.

War. War never changes.

People keep telling me I’d love Starfield, too, but I haven’t gotten it because the full install is over 100GB, and I just don’t have that kind of storage space right now with Fallout 4 and Skyrim on an SSD. I have a mechanical hard drive that’s 6 TB, but it doesn’t work with my current computer as a game drive because only a 2.5 in drive will fit in the bay. That 6TB will have to be media, because I don’t think running games off a USB drive is the best thing ever. I’ve ordered a small screwdriver set so that I can open the case and add another drive, but originally that drive was going to be Ubuntu. Now that I’ve learned Windows 11 isn’t obnoxious (but I’d still kill for a .bat file that turned off all the upsell), I’ve realized that I can use the other drive for games as well, but I just don’t game enough to justify it right now. It will take me five years to finish Fallout 4 at this rate.

For me, doing something differently is using Windows 11 at all. I cannot tell you how much I hate OneDrive popping up to ask me if I want storage space, how likely I am to recommend Windows to a friend, and asking me if I want to buy Office like a random dick pic.

Meanwhile, I have all the open source applications I could ever want or need. LibreOffice is the love of my life. Seriously, I love it a WordPerfect amount. Microsoft Word has blown except in one instance. I liked the version on my Mac SE, which was probably version one.

Then, I thought WordPerfect was where it was at, and then it got Linux’ed. Microsoft bought out the market share, so you had to have Word. Still mad about it, but mostly because Corel bought WordPerfect and they didn’t even get enough interest to keep the product going. So, basically, LibreOffice has become the jack of all trades. You can change the user interface to look like whatever word processor you came from previously.

I have a version of The GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program) called “GIMPshop,” which is basically just The GIMP with a .bat file for Windows that changes all the keyboard shortcuts to Adobe Photoshop. I could do things differently by becoming an expert on The GIMP instead, but I’ve slept since then and am taking the easy route.

If something you’d like to do differently is get good at editing photos, I highly recommend searching for “You Suck at Photoshop.” It’s a comedy tutorial where you learn layers, correction, etc. from a guy whose fiancée has just broken up with him and he’s a miserable train wreck. Very much “my kind of thing.”

In terms of doing audio differently, I really should think more about recording things, or just talking to the camera. I’ve done it before, but putting myself out there on video is sometimes difficult. My voice triggers me, and grief isn’t a straight line. However, over time it’s just become normal to be mute at home. It’s probably babying a wound, but at the same time, I talk plenty by writing. I’m not shutting anyone out. I am only asking them to switch to my preferred means of communication. I’m also not inflexible about that. “Preferred” doesn’t mean that I’m not capable of recognizing that I don’t always get what I want.

Speaking causes different kinds of grief. I don’t like grieving my mother when I am unprepared, and the fastest way is to hear her through talking. I don’t like grieving the woman who emotionally abused me when I’m unprepared for it, either, and the shortest way to get there is talking or singing. Especially in conversation with people I don’t know well, I fall back on tried and true stories. Some of them are her punchlines. I do it so naturally that I’ll get right up to the punchline before I realize what I’ve said and I have to keep going even though I have reached my breaking point….

So, what I could do differently is be more effusive about speaking. What I have noticed, though, is that in a digital society, we’re all moving in this direction. My sister and I both agree that the energy required for a phone call and the energy required for an e-mail are not the same. It does not diminish our want to connect, just the mode in which we do it.

Perhaps it’s generational, but not necessarily because the pandemic hit everyone in the same way. We all retreated to the quiet and safety of our homes and got used to writing a lot more than we did. Then, we found that we were just as productive at home as we were at the office, and isolated from each other even more. I know people who had coworkers they never met the entire pandemic- a couple that had never even heard the other’s voices and they’d been best friends for years.

I have said this before, but I’ll say it again. The pandemic silver lining was saving my ass. I didn’t have to prove to anyone anymore why I felt the way I felt about someone I’d never met in person, but had heard their voice and it charmed me even more.

But one thing I would have done differently is not made it a relationship where we’d never met in person. It was one of those things we were planning and then we both wigged each other out and it just didn’t happen. The best I got was “someday, perhaps.” If being busy is really all it is, she would have revisited the conversation. I didn’t, because her history is that when I bring up something more than once, I’m nagging her.

But, if I’d known then what I know now, I would have been on a plane the next day. I would have had that first conversation in person, because it was one that needed to be in person and we were stupid enough to believe that writing was enough. It is, if you already know the person. We only knew random factoids about each other and then both laid emotional guns on the table.

I would have gone to her long before that ever happened and said, “want to go for a walk?”

If I could do things differently, I would have said I was tired of feeling like she was wired in and I was somewhere off in the bathroom. She is the Chandler of my friends, but I needed to understand a little more nuance than that in order to be a good writer….. and I wouldn’t if I’d started in fiction. It’s only because we are real-life friends that it’s a problem.

If I could do things differently, I wish I could convince her that she doesn’t need to feel guilty about not replying. I’ve tried to convince her of that for years. I know that she will write back when she has time, and she doesn’t often have it. So, when I was angry about something, it actually worked in both of our favors to let it lie for a bit. Neither one of us are very good at that. Both adept writers, with epees for pens.

All of that being said, I couldn’t make a fictional character out of her, but someone else could. The way I write, she’s more beautiful just as she is.

Which is why I don’t do things differently.

You May Be Entitled to Compensation…. Probably

January 6, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

If you had a freeway billboard, what would it say?

Let’s be clear. I don’t have baggage or drama to heap on someone else because I deal with all that stuff here. I don’t have to rely on my friends to help me know how I feel about a situation and how I’m going to react. So, the reason I say that my billboard should be “you may be entitled to compensation” is that I am so independent that it’s hard to pin me down….. get your mind out of the gutter (I know you won’t, you’re Fanagans. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t swear like a sailor or wish you could).

OMG. OMG. I am so wrong. Why didn’t I think of this before?

My Blog Makes Me Sound Like a Dick…. theantileslie.com

I will never not keep repeating that phrase, because when my friend popped off and said it she had no idea what she was unleashing. I had already been mad at her for years because she was poly and I wasn’t the person(s) she was dating in addition to being married. However, we met on OK Cupid, when I saw her profile and just said, “I’m not sure that I even want a date, but I’m new to the area and would like more friends. Would you like to get together? Bring your wife if you want. It’s just easy.”

So, we did meet up and her wife did come. It was there that I made the mistake of a lifetime, because it made her wife not like me for the rest of our relationship. I hugged her. She’s really hardcore about consent and being a Texan, I walked right into that trap. Betcha Brené, Matt, Renee, and Beyoncé have done the same ass thing. We all grew up in the same state, the same areas, so I’m betting that piece of history/future is solid. It’s a mistake you don’t stop making, because Southern politeness sticks in your bones. Someone who doesn’t hug people politely is going to be creeped out, and in effect, that’s what happened.

I became a stand-in for all the other women she didn’t like, because my friend was dating and her wife wasn’t (not a thing, her own choice). That being said, even I raised my eyebrows at how much my friend was going out because I was like WTF? You just had twins? So, in any case, I was actually on her wife’s side the whole time, but she wouldn’t have taken the time to get to know me.

I told her that I was from Portland, she said it smelled like pee. So does every major city in America, fuck off. It was just a dig at me, and I knew it. But basically, my friend was getting around and leaving her wife on baby duty all the fucking time, so of course her wife resented her and everything that came with her. I saw it in 15 minutes, and I stayed, anyway, because the friend was actually cool……. right up until she told me that my blog made me sound like a dick and I should have been nicer to the woman that ripped my heart out and served it to me. Again, fuck off.

I never want to see her again if I can help it, because she became a train wreck in her own life and dared criticize me. This was not constructive. She has the right to think what she thinks and say what she says. She does not have the right to control my reaction, which was to say that she had no business being friends with a blogger and I was tired of her shit all the way around, anyway.

It was too much when I only wanted to be friends with both women and their twins. I noped out pretty fast when I saw I had an out. We could be done with each other, and I needed it.

If you want to criticize me, please do. I love criticism. However, if it is mean-spirited, I’ll shut down. There’s a way to say “I think you’re wrong about this” without emotionally destroying each other….. but make no mistake. I promise that you will never meet a writer who doesn’t love verbal combat, so take that warning seriously. I won’t start a fight, but I’ll end it. I know this about myself, and that I say things that can’t be taken back. So I would rather focus on not making myself angry. I did that by stopping caring about a lot of shit, like other people’s feelings about my writing that get frustrated and say something that I’ve remembered for YEARS.

It’s funny now…. but, “your blog makes you sound like a dick” when my girlfriend had just broken up with me a few days before was egregious. OF COURSE I WAS FUCKING FURIOUS. WHO DO YOU THINK I AM? I am not made of stone. I was lucky in that I had another beautiful woman to catch me, and I leaned into that, instead. So, for all practical intents and purposes, I broke up with my friend and my girlfriend simultaneously. The friend hurt worse because Sam and I had only been together for three weeks.

I deserved the right to have my own feelings about that relationship ending, and for someone to say that there should have been rhyme and reason to what I think about a breakup after what seemed like 15 minutes is insane. She wanted me to post more recipes and shit, as if that’s going to attract anyone.

If I started putting recipes at the bottom of my blog entries, that might be interesting. You wouldn’t have to read any less, it just wouldn’t be about Kayden, Kory, Kerry, and Kayleigh.

But the bottom line is that I had to make hard decisions in my life about what I will tolerate, because I am not a person that can click long-term with just anyone. I can talk to anyone in the world about anything for a few minutes, but it takes a miracle to spend time with me day in and day out without wanting to stab yourself with a fork. I know this because I drive me crazy all the time and I don’t want to be with me every single day, either, but here we are.

The piece de resistance was when I decided that Supergrover could either give up her “this is threatening” shit and work with me on what I could say and what I couldn’t, or she could get out of my way. I wasn’t going to tank my career for her, but I would have. What I did not know were ironclad boundaries to stick to before I started writing in the first place. I know a few things that would identify her to the public, but not enough.

I told her I would never give her editorial control, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t need to get our story straight. It’s not fun for me to think that she thinks I’m making things up as I go along. If there were plot points or character exploration that needed to be done, that’s on both of us, not just me. I am not blogging her story. If I did, she’d probably begrudgingly read it. It’s not that I want to write a story about her. I’m writing a story about me, and she happens to be involved through a strange set of circumstances, but not because she’s a hotshot. That part is the least impressive thing about her because it’s code for “I’m exhausted every minute of every fucking day.”

No, with Supergrover, who is my beautiful girl, there was only empathy for her struggles and an ache that I couldn’t fix it for her. We don’t do the same job, we aren’t even really in the same city anymore. That doesn’t mean my heart doesn’t go out to her.

I hope that when she’s screaming down 66 at some point, there will be a sign telling her all is well.

Because it would be a better sign to say “my blog makes me sound like a dick, and you may be entitled to compensation.”

SG, I love you out loud. I hope that covers punitive damages.

My Job is the Past

January 5, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Do you spend more time thinking about the future or the past? Why?

People have told me I live in the past. I believe this is incorrect. I experience life, and I reflect on it. As a blogger, I could write about a million different things, and yet none of them would be more interesting than the stream=of-consciousness ramble you’ve come to know and love….. if you don’t know me. If you do, an easy political point in an argument is to say that, but it doesn’t score anything with me. It makes them feel better about their own lives.

Because mine is on display. I don’t like it that way, but blogging grew into that because in order to dig deep, I have to write what I know. What I know is me. The interactions I’ve had have highlighted why I’ve been right and wrong over the last 20 years, because I don’t go back over my writing with confirmation bias. As time develops, I have different reading comprehension than I do in the moment, because the situations have evolved now. So, reminiscence is good and bad. I spend a lot of time writing about my past to provide for my future…. if not financially, certainly emotionally.

For instance, in 10 years the things I will most remember from this time in my life are Zac and Oliver. Who knows if we’ll still be together, but what I know is that “The Wood Song” was my favorite piece last year, because it showed just how much my life had changed from my marriage and divorce, to a one-sided emotional affair that made me look a lot crazier than I was…. as evidenced by the fact that said friend stuck with me until I realized that she was just being nice. Because I absolutely know that she thought I was an ungrateful little asshole, because she said “you have no idea what I’m dealing with” and our entire problem is that I can guess exactly what she’s dealing with and she can’t handle me bleeding out emotionally while she’s off doing her thing…… which looked a lot like I was pining after someone, when my attention was elsewhere because honestly, that’s what I wanted them to think because it was easier and more preferable to telling people what actually happened. Although, if I did, people wouldn’t believe me, anyway. To the rest of the world, I was catfished.

I, in fact, was not.

Maybe one day I’ll be able to tell that story, but it’s not today. Today is about how when she said I had no idea, it was she who’d made the mistake. She didn’t realize that my emotions were affected by hers to such a large degree, and there was nothing she could say that would undo it. I can stop interacting with her, but I cannot stop myself from loving her. It wouldn’t help me and it wouldn’t help her, either. That’s because I don’t want to put negative energy into the ether, so I’m just letting her go back to what she knows. I have room for all of her hatred and love of me just like she’s had room for mine. What she has not done is talked. So, she will tell me that she disagrees with me, but I don’t know how much fight there really is. Are our opinions 10% different or 90%? It was a hard situation, and I’m glad it’s over. But I don’t like thinking that I’ve hurt her…. and there are so goddamn many things I’ve written about her that I thought would have made her walk off long before she did. That’s how I know that she does value me and probably is sad that I don’t check in anymore. But trust me when I say that we fucked each other up, and there will never be a time she doesn’t know me. Her plan was to never talk again, and I could see 10 years into the future. She couldn’t.

She was never not going to be my Chandler. And by that I mean none of his friends can figure out what he does, and that’s the perfect description of my girl. Spreadsheets and e-mail are the only parts of the conversation I understand. But she fucks with the IT guys at work and I feel two kinds of ways about it. The first is that I feel their pain. The second part is that she’s given me shit before, so I know that if she’d told them to go to hell, they’d probably enjoyed the trip.

I miss her light and bubbly personality, but I know it’s just an act. It’s not because she’s a good actress, it’s that she has good armor. I can see right through it, and it makes her feel naked, I think. She doesn’t know that she makes me feel the same way, because her words are just as elegantly sharpened. I think that if we ever have a conversation, she would be surprised at how much I remember of what she’s written, but at the same time, she might not, because I don’t know if she’s retained all that information.

In person, I could prove to her that when she says “you’re not listening,” I can repeat back what I understand. Life on the ‘net moves too fast and furious to backtrack and I have made so many mistakes that way. Rushing into this relationship was one of them. I should have thought about consequences a lot quicker than I did, and it’s been devastating. On the other hand, I have to have something to write about, and relationships have traditionally been very good for me. That’s because I write about my own trials and tribulations, but it’s also mixed with observations of people I don’t know, but I’ve observed. For instance, I wouldn’t have been expected to take care of an adult in a pastoral way…. but I have so many times because that’s what was modeled for me growing up. I was social masking, and that was the script.

I deviated from the script, and it cost me my relationship with my beautiful girl, but it didn’t cost me all of it. It cost me getting to know her on any real level, but knowing that she’d keep me on a leash forever if I kept being a blogger. Her “being exhausted by everything” was her stopping being nice and starting being real. She just didn’t know it. That’s because what she’s going through now is probably a million times worse than what she’s been going through before now, and I couldn’t keep putting my life on hold for her, not to “live in the past,” but because the future was unclear. I figured it out through writing. What needed to happen is that she needed to let me be free to say whatever I wanted, and she couldn’t do it. Couldn’t come close. So, instead of being an adult and using her words, she tried to appease me. It didn’t work because of miscommunication. She thought what she was doing wasn’t good enough for me. She didn’t have to do anything. I love her to the core of her being no matter what she does. I don’t always like her…………

But even the days where I don’t like her are few and far between, because for the most part I feel like my laundry list is comparable to hers, and she could write a manifesto on why I’m so annoying. And the thing is, I’d love to read it.

In a lot of ways, I direct my future with my writing. That’s because when someone leaves my life, they become a fan. Then, this thing that was so annoying and threatening becomes very meaningful after five or 10 years. Trust me, once all the context is gone and people come back here to read about themselves, they are far more likely to appreciate that you’re a writer than they did in the heat of the moment. What I have learned from all of my friends over the last 20 years is that sometimes my web site makes people who have known me in the past want to catch up. I have to make my audience come to me, and that’s what I’m doing. I cannot care about another person’s feelings more than my own right now, because I will never have a time with less entanglements. Now is the time when it’s essential to make boundaries, because it will keep you from repeating the same patterns.

I learned how I function in relationships, which is why Supergrover indirectly taught me how to handle Sam. The first thing was that I knew I didn’t want to date someone emotionally unavailable, so I was glad she dumped me. I don’t know why. My mother is dead. I don’t care.

With any problem in my life, I follow it up with “and my mother is dead” to see just how important it is in comparison. As it turns out, I haven’t met a problem yet that compares.

So, when Supergrover’s mother dies, I hope we’ve worked it out by then. If we haven’t, she’s still going to kick herself for the things she said when she had no frame of reference for a parent dying and I’m going to let her. I really wish I’d had enough foresight to play this out, and at the very least, to have thrown a bomb over my shoulder and walked away and been able to stick to it. Neither one of us could stay out of each other’s lives no matter how mad we got, which is why I’m even willing to entertain that she’ll be back. I have no proof that I’ve said anything unforgivable, and she’s said that she wants to stop interacting at least 20 times by now. Maybe this is the one that will stick. I don’t know what to hope for, but I do know that I’ll know more as I go along. What I do know is that she feels guilty that she doesn’t have time for me. That is not unique to me. She doesn’t have time for anyone at any time. She makes it. So, when she’s wishy-washy about communication, it comes across as lack of interest. Maybe I’m paranoid, but I think if you can’t talk to me about how you feel about our relationship, maybe you’re not in it.

But I can only be certain that we were close and loving once. I cannot be sure about the future. What I can say is that I feel better about myself now, because waiting on an answer means you’ve already gotten one.

And the bottom line is that because I think about the past and read my own writing, what I know is that she didn’t really forgive me. She was threatened by my writing. It was a control method, and it worked. What I cannot get her to see is that I cannot be controlled, but I will work with her. I didn’t see the consequences then. Now I see them better than she does. She didn’t think 10 years ago that I’d be a guest on a podcast. I did.

I spend time thinking about the future, because I’ve built it one entry at a time

They’re Already Doing It

January 4, 2024January 4, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

What is the greatest gift someone could give you?

Because I’m a line cook and a writer, I know the value of a dollar. If you’re going to be a writer and do manual labor, the kitchen is a viable option. Bourdain was onto something, this writing about the kitchen.

It gave me a place to go after my shift that a drink never did. Because even if I switched to Diet Coke or N/A beer, cooking is hard fucking work. I don’t need to be up all night losing rest I’m going to need in the morning for something as trivial as having beers. It’s a great thing once in a while, but not every night. In order to sleep, I need to wind down. I cannot have the endless cycle of “go out at three, wake up at 10, go out to eat, then do it again.”

I’d come home between 9:00p and 12:00a, depending on whether I was closing or not (I usually was). I liked working lunch the most, because first of all, few people do. The restaurant is not as busy, therefore the cooks stand around more of the time and the waitstaff complains because the tips aren’t as good. But “standing around” does not mean “lazy.” No, what I mean by “standing around” is that there are no orders coming in. When no orders are coming in, that’s when we are actually able to get things done. For me, “slow” meant cleaning and organizing. Moving things out of the way to deep clean in places that don’t normally get touched, etc.

I could have phrased it better when I said “lazy,” because what I meant is that it’s akin to being a stay at home mom. Just because the kids are sleeping doesn’t mean that you can “sleep while the baby sleeps” all the time. Pretty sure that when the baby sleeps is the only time you have to clean the kitchen. And yes, I have just compared customers to babies, because sometimes, that’s what we do….. babysit.

In a restaurant, I have no problem with “I don’t like the food.” I will remake it a hundred times until you’re satisfied. What I will not do is have you treat my waitstaff like shit to make it happen. There’s an epidemic, and Karen and Chad are driving it. I know it makes you feel powerful to dress down a waiter, because they’re paid to be nice to you and it feels good to beat up on someone that probably won’t “hit back” when you’re rude to them.

That does not mean you were not rude. It means that no one called you on it because they were dependent on your tip. The customer is not always right. They’re always right when they don’t like the food. They’re always wrong when they think that ad hominem attacks are going to make it arrive faster or taste better.

Most of the ire you have is actually at the kitchen, and I know you’re not going to come argue with us. You’ve seen “The Bear.” Line cooks are a unique breed, both fiercely proud and protective of the food if they’re a “lifer.” By protective of the food, we know when something is right and when you missed something on the menu. A waiter will not tell you that if you looked at the menu, you would have seen it was topped with capers, or whatever the fuck it is that you don’t like. All it took was a little more reading, and you think the problem is your waitress.

And then there are the women that won’t tip you because you “flirted with their husbands.” That’s not happened to me, but it’s happened to my friends (I worked front of house in college). In fact, there are a thousand ways a customer will try to make you feel bad for not comping something, not giving them free something, not telling them there’s no free refills when it says it twice on the menu….. or worse, using your children.

If there are free refills on the kids’ drinks and not the adults, you can bet little Timmy is going to “drink nine Cokes.” If there is a corkage fee, some customers don’t know what that is. Fine. No problem. But if you bring your own wine and complain that we wanted three dollars for you to open it, that’s three dollars for the privilege of not buying wine from us. It is not worth destroying someone’s self esteem, and it generally happens to all waitstaff multiple times a day. Working with the public has become a nightmare because of the epidemic of entitlement.

The hard truth is that you don’t listen to waitstaff when they go on social media and tell people about the things others say to express all this, and it has spread. Do you think doctors and teachers like working with Chad and Karen, either?

Karen and Chad have seen all the drug commercials. Hire them at a clinic while they still know everything……… #eyeroll I dated a school counselor for a while, and she said that in the history of parents’ conferences (majority white school), she’d never had a kid who’d ever done anything wrong………

My mother, who worked in a majority black school, did not have this problem.

So, the biggest thing my friends do for me is twofold. The first is that they don’t treat me as lesser than because I want to focus on writing. And in fact, they take it seriously. They don’t see it as “just this little thing I do,” they’re seeing that I’m becoming more popular and they’re about to have to hang on for the ride. I am more than the sum of my parts, and I’m beginning to show it to myself by believing my friends when they say I’m an incredible writer. Until now, I haven’t even given them that. I did not have the confidence to believe that I could be a popular writer, so even when I became one with my last blog, I didn’t believe it.

My sister-in-law ripped me a new asshole for writing something in which I’d actually locked it down so that only seven people read it, and it felt just like being ripped a new one by a customer…. and I reacted the same way. I folded into myself and stopped writing for four years.

I kick myself every day that I stopped, but it turned out that I was in the wrong family, not that I was doing the wrong thing. I’d already chosen what I was going to do and they didn’t like it, with the exception of Dana, but that support waned as I actually became a writer instead of just saying I was going to do it.

I wasn’t posting every single day. I wasn’t marketing myself because I didn’t believe in it (if people are going to show up, it’s because you’re sharing, not because I’m so full of myself…..). But what I didn’t realize is that writing is a business. If I want to be successful, I have to market myself. I don’t know how to do that with a blog, but I know I made some headway on SoundCloud, so that’s a distinct possibility for the future.

I eventually want to start Lanagan Media Group, but that will come later, when I actually need content creators under me to support what I’m doing. For instance, I am glad that Bryn has offered to record my entries, but I don’t have server space for her to store the files. I also don’t really want her to work for free, as it will be taxing (I write long essays to be recording them with ease and speed).

But that’s not all- I’m into a million different things, but I’m not a subject matter expert on anything. I’m not even a subject matter expert in my special interest because ADHD makes it where I can only read for a certain amount of time when it’s dry and boring. I will get the information down, but I won’t do with with speed or ease. 😉

For instance, I love science fiction, but I wouldn’t be the one to write blog entries or do podcasts on it. I could be a guest and shoot the shit about Doctor Who, but I am not the stereotypical fan who can tell you what Rassilon was wearing in his first appearance, which was probably 30-40 years ago (I don’t remember, he’s just an example)…. and that’s the level of detail I’d want to have if I was tapping directly into the fandom.

I’m going to kick another fandom’s beehive with my first novel, so I’m saving up any credit I have as a writer for that. It’s real and it’s deep, but it’s not fan fiction. You’ll just have to wait and see. The clues are all here, but I’m betting that only Dana would be able to tell you the entire storyline blind. That’s because she told me a fact that laid out the entire story for me.

Believe it or not, being waitstaff and line cooks are a central part of the novel…. which is why this one fact really ties the book together, does it not? It would make more sense if I could tell you what that fact was, but it’s a central plot point, so I cannot give it away. I can just talk around it…. so, don’t push me. There’s a drink here, man.

The kind of company I want is kind of like Nerdist and kind of like Linus Media Group. Nerdist got into podcasts, LMG is YouTube.

There are so many things I could monetize with either of those things, particularly on YouTube, because the research on autistic women is so muddled. Right now, I can only talk about my own experience with self-diagnosis (which is seen as valid because even most doctors don’t know the intricacies of how female neurodivergence presents). Plus, one of my friends brought up a good point- we’ve never been diagnosed, we’ve just been dealing with it our whole lives. What’s a diagnosis going to change? With autism, this is a very valid point, because if you get an official diagnosis, your life may or may not change the direction of your life. It’s a hard row to hoe.

I just have too many symptoms to ignore it, and coupled with my ADHD, it has been debilitating. I do not have the logical kind of autism, and by that I mean those that understand programming and other kinds of STEM to a savant level. No, I’m one of those people who is always lost in their own little world.

What I mean by the people around me already doing the most important thing is by saying “it’s ok for you to be who you are. We like all of it.” Whether I’m cooking or writing or staring off into space, that love is secure. What I cannot do is convince people that I will always have disabilities, because they are not completely obvious. Even my CP isn’t that obvious unless you know me really well.

I am starting to feel that everything is connected now that I’ve met another autistic person who also has CP. He works in a day center as a counselor, and he pegged me down to the way I walk. It was scary, because my life changed in a nanosecond. Then, I looked up stereopsis, and that’s a symptom of CP, too.

It’s hard being a very specialized person in a world that wants you to be a worker bee. But I’m figuring out what I can do, and gravitating toward it.

I can cook.
I can write.
I can be nice to servers when they’re on someone else’s line.

That’s enough for me in this life, because the writing trumps everything else. I could not live life as fully as I can right now without being able to look back over the year and see what’s been good for me and what hasn’t.

I don’t know that you’re aware of it, but I had a 60 day streak, took off one day, and now I’m on a 70 day streak. I thought I’d take a day off today, but then I realized it was “Bloguary” and it can’t be this month. But we’ll see.

I’ll think about it while I’m cooking. The love coming at me flows into my food, because I feel secure in everything when I feel secure in love. It’s the greatest gift I’ve ever been given.

Again, I have been invited to be on “The Dark Room” podcast. However, we are still confirming everything. I will post as soon as I’m sure of the date so that you can look out for it as soon as it drops. It’s a pleasure just to be nominated. I have no idea what they want to talk to me about, but it doesn’t matter. I have an answer to every question. It may not be the question that you asked, however……….

I Love College

January 3, 2024January 3, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What colleges have you attended?

Don't even bounce...
Not in my house. 
Better hope you make it...
Otherwise you naked.
I am champion at beer pong.... 
Allen Iverson, Hakeem Olajuwon....

While this is my favorite verse of “I Love College” by Asher Roth (Houston represent), I cannot say that I’ve ever been to a wild party like that. I may have gone to some things that came close to frat-level foolishness, but we learned a lot while we were building communities.

The thing is, though, I became an adult before my time. I got married too young and didn’t handle it well. I shouldn’t have left University of Houston, and it’s been so long now that I just have to hope that now they don’t matter. Of course they do, but I’m a jack of all trades and most people who work with computers have a mixed bag of certifications, and a Bachelor’s may or may not be one of them. This is changing, perhaps, but I don’t think so. What I knew 10 years ago, people also knew 40 years ago. The information changes too fast for it to be published in books.

If you’re going to study computers in school, you need something like a language that doesn’t change. Object-oriented programming has the same concepts no matter the syntax. However, if you are the person in charge of taking care of every device in the department, you will not learn a single thing in school that you wouldn’t pick up in a week on the job. That’s because you’re dealing with problems with:

Apple MacOS
Windows
Ubuntu
Red Hat (sorry, Fedora….. old habits die hard…)
Android for phones
Android for tablets
Android for Galaxy Wear
Apple iOS for iPhone
Apple iOS for iPad
Apple iOS for Apple Watch

And if you’re a system administrator, you probably have to deal with even more operating systems than that. Maybe not now, but in 1999 I also had an account on our VMS/VAX machine, and flirted with Solaris (it doesn’t look much different from Red Hat or Debian back then).

Now, how likely are you to read about those things in a textbook when you need the information RIGHT THE FUCK NOW because Professor So and So is going to blow a gasket if she can’t receive e-mail on her phone for 30 seconds. Meanwhile, I’m Irish. I’ll deal with something being wrong the rest of my life. Probably why I have so many devices. I don’t put up with their crap. I have an extra to use when I have to blow away the whole thing and start over because such and such app has hosed such and such setting.

Knowing how to do all that is something I learned in college, but because I worked full time for the IT department while I was a student. It was a tremendous load for a person with AuDHD, and I did not last long in that position. When I got to DC in 2001, I collapsed for a few weeks while Kathleen got settled at the office and I took care of all the house stuff. Then, later, when I was supposed to start at George Mason, she told me that she couldn’t pay my tuition anymore. I understood, but it didn’t make me happy because I’d already paid her rent for a couple of years at that point…… because she was a student, and I had a job.

I never should have ended up with her to begin with, and the red flags that I should have seen were because I was her boss for three months. She was just a summer hire, so my boss didn’t worry that we were together. She wasn’t there all the time, I was.

Now, I’ve worked for my stepmother for an extended period of time, and then I wanted to be a line cook and my wife was the perfect teacher. Both of those experiences have told me that Kathleen’s behavior while I was her boss was just egregious and I should have fired her on the spot, because in that moment (not all the time, just when push came to shove IN MY OFFICE) I was the boss. Objectively. What I had that Kathleen did not was a willingness to recognize that she was not at the top of the food chain because she acted like she had my authority…. to me.

When most of my life, I’ve been calling my stepmother “Doctor” and my ex-wife “Chef.”

I didn’t have Kathleen fired, I was relieved when I found out we were moving and that would be the end of the line for me trying to manage the unmanageable. I know how to be on and off the clock. Most adults do……..

All of this being said, I did go to between four and six years of classes, because I went part time at one point. I really only have a few classes to finish up my junior year, and then I’m onto the last stretch. The problem with that is that I’ve already taken everything I liked.

I got an F in Intro to Poetry because I had a full-time job during summer school. So, I wrote two outstanding papers and had an A+ in the class, but my professor failed me anyway because I didn’t show up three times. I was at work- what could I say? If I had known you couldn’t miss three days in a semester if you had perfect grades, I wouldn’t have done it. It just never occurred to me that it was something that could happen, but I don’t do well with injustice and I think this is it. I know I’m not a poet, but I at least understand it well enough to write about it, even if I don’t use the form myself.

I’m starting to learn what I’m going to do in this one wild and precious life, and word is beginning to spread. I’ve been invited to be a guest on “The Dark Room Podcast,” and here’s the thing that really made me sit up a little straighter…… they don’t really know me. They know my work. Apparently, I am interesting enough to be a podcast guest now…. or maybe I always have been, I just didn’t realize it.

Maybe I should have gone to Georgetown.

Bethesda-ing Up a Mountain

January 2, 2024January 2, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Do you play in your daily life? What says “playtime” to you?

I do not like the WordPress editor and how it handles images, but I thought that since I’ve written about Skyrim before (recently- the blog prompts tend to repeat), then I’d add screenshots to this one. Some of them are just pretty; some are intended to be dark enough to use as a desktop background (like the entrance to the Thieves Guild). Skyrim is a wonderful place for walking around and “taking pictures,” especially with a mod called “immersive HUD,” so you can turn off your heads up display if you want an uninterrupted screenshot of something. But let’s start with something simple…… a picture of me. 😉

“I’m” wearing what’s called “Stahlrim” armor, and in Skyrim, Stahlrim is an ancient enchanted ice that’s harder than steel. My arrows are made of dragon bone, and coupled with a dragon bone bow, I’m fairly unstoppable. Shortly after “this picture was taken,” though, I started playing a mage-type character, because honestly the relighting mod I used makes it where when it gets dark, it is piss your pants dark…. not Bethesda dark.

I also took off my ranger hood for the photo, but it’s got an enchantment on it that gives me a circle of light. It’s nice because I don’t have to keep casting a candlelight or mage light spell (candlelight puts a ball of light over your shoulder that travels with you, magelight you point the spell and a ball of light sticks where you put it). Both of my hands are free for destruction or conjuration spells. I prefer conjuration because it’s more fun to watch other people fight than it is to fight myself, and casting Dremora Lords or Storm Atronachs will clear out a tomb in a hurry….. and that’s all Skyrim really is….. cleaning out tombs and Bethesda-ing up a mountain.

That term comes from a redditor whose name I now forget, but it’s basically a universal idea among Elder Scrolls/Fallout fans. Basically, if you just work the controller enough, you’ll be able to climb mountains you aren’t actually supposed to be able to climb. Failing that, you can buy a horse that somehow defies the laws of physics (at least in Fallout: New Vegas, anyway). They can Bethesda up a mountain faster than you can. My horse in Skyrim, Shadowmere (yes, I am leader of The Dark Brotherhood), is my traveling house just like I used to keep everything in my car. But that’s what your horse is for- carrying all the crap you just don’t want to manage. But truly, where a horse comes in handy is when “you can’t get there from here.”

Oh, my sweet summer child.

Very few places in Skyrim is this true if you have a horse or a wooden plate. I can’t explain the wooden plate glitch because I’ve never used it, but It is a Thing. Apparently if you hold it, you can glitch through textures. Now that I have discovered sprinting and destruction/conjuration magic, I’m ditching my gear and the horse at home. I can even leave all my weapons now, if I didn’t want to carry them. I’ve found that conjuration plus a bound bow or sword is sufficient. Especially if you enchant your armor and jewelry to make you better at archery, “bound bow” is one of the most powerful spells in the game. You can also equip any arrow that you want, so I generally use frost or shock, because I can’t enchant a bow that comes from Oblivion and goes back there when I’m not using it.

There’s only two things to remember with “bound bow.” The first is that when you cast it, you’ll lose whatever is in your opposite hand, whether it’s a spell or an item, because of course a bow and arrows are a two handed weapon. However, if you just retract the weapon, you’ll go back to having what was in your hands before. This is good to know when your bow is still going strong, but you need to cast more destruction/conjuration.

I’m late enough in the game that I can take down a Frost Troll all by myself with just this one spell, because the base damage on all my spells is high before the archery enchantments on my armor.

But if I have a favorite weapon in terms of looks, it’s the Nordic series. I love the Nordic Carved Armor, and all the weapons that come with it. In fact, nearly every display in my player homes that has two swords and a shield end up being Nordic because I can’t think of anything prettier to do with them. 😛

I’ve played this game so many times that I’ve memorized most of the quest lines, and it’s still fun because maybe you’re not playing the way you normally do. For me, playing against type would be being armed to the teeth with either an enchanted greatsword or warhammer, because I don’t like two-handed weapons except for the bow. I’ve gotten more handy with a sword over the years, but most of the reason I carry one is that there are a few dungeons where you have to cut down boards to get through and I’ve been there. I’ve been the one standing in front of a nest of frostbite spiders or whatever and no sword to cut through the webbing, or three loosely placed pieces of wood that are supposed to indicate “maybe we shouldn’t go this way.”

I don’t know whether a bound sword would do it or not- probably would, but I haven’t had time to try it. If it does, I’m not carrying swords anymore, either, because with melee attacks I tend to switch to two daggers/war axes than a sword and shield. That’s because I can craft legendary daggers that will have twice the stopping power of a sword alone. And now, that would be true with or without enchantments, because the base damage on a legendary weapon is going to be a lot whether you enchant it or not.

Here’s the thing we don’t talk about when we talk about enchanting……… you can make better weapons than any of the ones you find in the game, which means that you’ll love collecting them; you won’t ever use them. Chillrend has been in my basement for months. So has Bloodskaal Blade (my favorite when I do have to use a two-handed weapon). But when you compare that to having the two enchantments per item perk, the most iconic weapons in the game cannot stand up to them. Last night I one-shot killed a Draugr Death Lord, which will not be impressive to anyone who hasn’t played the game, but it illustrates my point. I created a weapon so powerful that it downed one of the toughest villains in the game with haste. I like it that way, many people don’t.

I don’t play Skyrim for the combat, and a lot of people do. I like to be so overpowered that I don’t have to focus on it- every fight is done quickly and I can move on to picking flowers or whatever the shit the kids and Serana have me doing. 😉 I have Silverstead Mine and Hearthfire adoptions, so with the Serana Dialogue Overhaul, she becomes marriageable. With Hearthfire adoptions, we have four kids, not two. There may be room for more- I think there are six kids’ beds at Silverstead, the only problem being that unless you obtain an equally large player home, no one is moving. Good luck. God bless.

I also love Haafinger Hall, and use it when I want to avoid the kids (I’m not an avoidant person when it comes to children- you just haven’t met the kids in Skyrim………) You really have to have the kids for a while before they become interesting. Like, at first they don’t say much. Yesterday, Sophie told me she’d adopted a fox. Can we keep him? Of course. When they’re tamed, they look like chihuahuas.

It hasn’t happened in this playthrough, but when we lived at Haafinger Hall, we had a fish hatchery off the back deck. I come home one night and there is a slaughterfish flapping around on the steps and my son asking if we can keep it. I thought, “son…. I’m not sure you know how keeping fish as pets works.” Trust me, of all the pets your Skyrim kids can bring home, the fox is the least annoying.

I know there are stray dogs all over Skyrim, but I’ve never adopted one. Therefore, my Bethesda connection in all of this is that I named the fox “Dogmeat.” (For non-Bethesda people, Dogmeat is the name of your companion if you adopt him in the Scrapyard in Fallout 3. Pro tip: get the Puppies! Perk as soon as you can, because I have never seen a grown woman cry harder than watching me see my dog die during combat. The Puppies! Perk will ensure that if Dogmeat dies, there will be another dog waiting for you at Vault 101). ALSO, UNLIKE LYDIA, DOGMEAT HAS NEVER GOTTEN ME KILLED.

Lydia.

One of the most storied characters in video games because absolutely no one knows what to do with her. She can’t sneak for shit, so if there are any enemies around, they’re going to know we’re there immediately…. because she’ll run out into the middle of the room and announce our presence like fuckin’ “LLEEEEEEEERRRRRRROOOOOYYYYYYY JENNNNKKKKINNS!!!” She’s also terribly helpful. If you need to go through a door, she’s blocking it. If she’s having trouble fighting a villain, good luck getting a clear shot. In the Skyrim early game, you only have one challenge…… getting Lydia to move out of the way.

But now that Serana and I are companions, I don’t use Lydia that much. Serana uses magic, but I also give her a legendary enchanted dagger for melee. Lydia will probably become my housecarl in either Morthal or Falkreath, because I think those are the two homes where you can dismiss followers to be stewards. In my case, this means “watch my kids while I go off and save the world……. again.” I hate the thought of adventuring with Serana and leaving Lydia at home, but I can think of 50 followers I’d like to have in Skyrim and Lydia is simply not on the list.

I have Amazing Follower Tweaks installed, so I could have 30 followers if I wanted. Therefore, this time, it’s really not me. It’s Lydia.

It’s what I’m thinking about as I’m Bethesda-ing up the mountain.

The Devil is in the Details

January 1, 2024January 2, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

What are your biggest challenges?

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Being autistic makes me naturally come across as demanding, when I am not demanding anything but the truth all the time; it is how I take in the world. If you bullshit me, it takes me a long time to regain trust. Therefore, I spend a lot of time being in anxiety about the situation, and it’s something I just don’t want to do anymore.

My biggest weakness in life is Supergrover, and it sounds romantic and yet it’s not. When she refused me as a partner, it didn’t mean that she refused me or cared about me any less. The feeling is mutual, most definitely. I don’t know how to turn it off after 10 years, and the only reason I bothered chasing her down (virtually), is because I wanted whatever our relationship grew into, not what it was in the moment.

In the moment, we were always hotheaded and angry, without exception, because that’s what an anxious/avoidant attachment does. It is not personal, ever. If someone is being avoidant and you need information to function in the relationship (and you do, always), then the relationship cannot proceed because it can’t. The tautology is real. True intimacy is by sharing information, not by hiding it. Saying we were fine was okay with me, but not after years and years. Something about it didn’t feel authentic, and I couldn’t fix it. But there were genuine moments, clearly, or she would be off my radar.

I’ll always keep the promises I made to the best of my ability, which is why it’s so hard for us both to make room for each other. My blog is a threat, objectively, and I understand that. But in order to describe what is happening with me, some information is necessary. I can use little things to talk about big things….. because the little things are the things that mean the most, not what is impressive.

In the future, for the readers I haven’t met yet, if you can’t understand that I’m a writer and try constantly to take it away from me because you think it’s a threat, then I don’t have time for you- not that you aren’t valuable and special, but it takes a lot out of me to write and this is what I do. If you don’t like this, you don’t like me on a very fundamental level. And I don’t need those friends.

I’m not going to stand for anyone having a problem with my writing, because I’m going to do it whether you’re in my life or not. It’s what I have when I feel the most unwanted- I can entertain myself by putting myself out there to strangers when you don’t want to talk. If you won’t listen, someone else will. And that’s all I’m asking. That this blog is my way of coping with life, and I learn more about myself than when I am in conversation, and it drove me to write six books’ worth of my journey as it was happening, not reviewing everything when it’s long in the past. Here’s the thing that’s most important about being a writer: you learn intimately that patterns repeat and there are no real surprises in life if you take that attitude.

If people are avoidant about bad things, they’ll be avoidant about good things, too. The person that won’t open up at work probably has trouble opening up to people they like as well. It’s never personal, it’s how they operate. A person like that in a relationship where the other person spills their guts is going to irritate the fuck out them, no matter whether it’s me or anyone else……

because patterns repeat and if you don’t change the dynamic, you’ll get stuck. It’s how the most people connect instantly and come off the rails over time. If you have trouble believing this is true, think about how many women leave their husbands because they work all the time, never share anything, and shut down when there’s a problem. It’s not anything personal to them, it’s how they operate. If they’ve caused damage to other people in their lives, they are 100% going to cause damage to you. I don’t look at it like “everyone is out to get you.” I look at it like “everyone has their own issues and how they respond is none of my business.”

For all people, the way they respond to my writing is important. What I have found over time is that everyone loves my writing as long as it’s about people they don’t know. For 99.9% of the world, this is true. But if you stop liking the mirror I hold up once I’m writing about you, then it was never about supporting me. It was always about adoring me and then discarding because they just can’t handle it. I didn’t leave those people behind, I grew past them.

I don’t go around picking people to write about because I don’t have to. All my friends are interesting enough to be characters in fiction. I don’t even make them a real person unless they’re close enough to me to warrant writing about them in the first place.

If you love the good and praise it often, and don’t like the bad and kick me in the nuts over it, then it shows that you’re not in it for the long haul. It’s really that simple. I will never kick anyone, because I am doing two things that they’re ignoring.

I have never found all the bad in someone without finding the good, but it may not be in the same entry. I am only talking about a snapshot of my day, and I change my mind frequently. Therefore, it might be a hit piece one day because I think your actions are fucking me up, and it might be that you are the best person in the world for me because we’ve just had a breakthrough and I want to celebrate it. I do not go after people, I reflect them as they are in my perception. As my perception changes, so do the characters they represent. I am laying out my thoughts this way so that they’ll change, not because I am trying to direct ire at them. I have the right to say I went through something bad and it hurt, without bugging you to read about it. If you want to know what I think, you’ll read. If you don’t, you won’t. But at no time should you take it personally. I write about everyone in the same way.

If I didn’t, then you would see that I’m only mining my friends for the gossip and not what is really happening in real time. It wouldn’t change me, because I’d just be a vicious, vindictive person and not trying to do therapy on my own. You are reading my most intimate thoughts regarding the people surrounding me, not the happenings around town like I’m the local Gladys Kravitz.

I try to be non-specific about people that matter. But if I start out with your real name, I won’t change it unless there’s a solid reason, and I have them. If you’re not named, you’re not that important, and I want the people around me to know that. I also know that it’s better to write about people than it is to not, because when I stop writing about them because they hate the negative things, they rail that I’m not only writing the positive. No, if you insist that you like an international audience thinking the sun shines out of your ass, then you don’t make a good character. Flat out.

It’s why I’m having so much trouble believing that any of my friends don’t see themselves as a 3D character, because I’ve even been nice to exes that have slashed my heart in two- less so with Kathleen, mostly because I don’t remember our day to day life together, but I definitely remember how she left. But again, emotionally unavailable so she wouldn’t talk about underlying issues, but would beat the hell out of me emotionally if I didn’t clean something to her standards, recognizing that not everyone grew up the same way. I fold the towels the way my mother did, and so does everyone else. It’s not worth relationship crisis, but she did it often enough that I knew she’d never open up. But I couldn’t leave, and I don’t think she could either- which is why she pulled such an egregious trump card.

And the thing is, if our relationship had been set up with poly in the first place, that she couldn’t commit to monogamy, so we’d make other things our touchstones, I don’t think I would have handled it as well then as I would now, but it would have been better than ambushing me with so many lies, and waiting until I was out of town to cheat.

Due to that experience, and having my own new relationship experience while I was still married, I can’t commit to it, either. It’s not because I’m incapable, it’s because I never want to be accused of cheating ever again. It’s not cheating if you’re not breaking an agreement…. so I just won’t make it.

I’m not going to trade new relationship energy (no matter what kind- platonic relationships are just as fulfilling) for my entire life falling apart. I cannot put all my eggs in one basket anymore, and part of it is that my heart is already gone. I don’t have a choice about that, and yet, I do. I want a scenario where when I have to make Supergrover a big deal in my own life that it doesn’t affect any of the others, and if Supergrover is in any way picking up what I’m putting down, she knows to the very depth of her being that I made the right decision by putting her first, even in my marriage.

I will never apologize, ever, for that stone cold fact, because I cannot do anything about it. She should have realized that when we don’t interact, it almost affects me more than when she is. We have a hard out, not subjective like with my other friends, and she has taken no responsibility for that fact. What she has taken responsibility for is changing my life and she wishes she’d never told me anything at all, when it’s the best gift I’ve ever been given. But gifts don’t come without potential problems when the wrapping is fallible- and I mean human, not that anyone has to be perfect; they can’t.

So, when I talk about biggest challenges, they’re always emotional because that’s the wavelength I’m riding and not many people are. Most people don’t know themselves as well as I do, so I seem threatening when I’m just certain. I can also listen to someone else without agreeing with them; then, they become threatened that it’s going to take different words to convince me they’re right, because I’m not trying to find a situation I can “win,” but a situation in which we both get what we want. It takes time and effort to do that, but it’s not impossible. People just cut out long before the discussion is over, and if you’re supposedly in it for the long haul, then you’ll meet me halfway.

Because I see their biggest challenges, too.

What She Did

December 31, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

What makes you feel nostalgic?

View all responses

The thing that makes me feel the most nostalgic is when I open my inbox and see all the e-mail I’ve received over the years. I never delete anything (in case that is a thing you’d like to know). I also don’t archive anything. I take the good with the bad, the chateaubriand with the Spam (“I’ll have your Spam. I love it.”).

WordPress tells me that I wrote 614,000 words this year, and I feel like every single one of them was dragged out of me to varying degrees. I wrote when I was elated or devastated. I wrote whether I felt physically well or that day was a disaster. I don’t know that I turned pain to beauty in all cases, but I do know that I wrote it down. It doesn’t matter whether it’s recognized or not; it matters in how much all my writing changes me.

Over the last 10 years, I have become more introverted and keep to myself. I think it’s always been that way, but at the same time, I needed to learn self-reliance as well. The last decade can only be described as “hard as shit,” but I’m looking forward to that getting better. It has to, because I swear to Christ it can’t get worse. When I think of everything that has made me who I am, the last 10 years have contained everything I needed to know to be successful by breaking me into a million pieces first. I hope that you never learn what it feels like to be hit by a partner. I wish for you even less that when it happens, people assume you did something to deserve it.

Some people think that about everyone no matter what, but I feel that when it’s just two girls fighting, who cares? Neither Dana nor I were in a good place, and we chose to handle it with avoidance and rage. At times, it was unbearable because I could feel her being nice to me because she knew I was ill, while taking no responsibility for being a factor in my downward spiral. If she’s not an alcoholic, I can at least say with certainty that at the time, she had a problem with drinking. She was not drinking the night she hit me, but she got a DUI and spiraled out afterwards. I did not handle it well, and I’ll never forget the people who stepped in for me when I couldn’t step in for myself.

Nostalgia arrives in the most powerful of ways from reading Supergrover’s old e-mails. It’s not because I need to live in the past, it’s that in a lot of ways, she helped me create a new future. But now it’s my work to do, and I’m on my own. I will never give up hope that the matter is not closed, but I feel it should be- at least for the foreseeable future. I am thinking that she has left the building, but I have no proof of that. All I know is that she’s hiding something, and she won’t tell me what it is. I would rather live the rest of my life without her than continue to tiptoe around her trying not to upset her…… and failing miserably.

There were two gut punches that I’ll never forget, and in order to erase them, it would take a lot.

She has said that she’s exhausted by everything and she wants to throw all my e-mails away.
She has said that I do not write her as a 3D character, that she’s always the same.

That first thing is easier to forgive than the second, believe me. I do not believe the latter is true, because I have talked about all the times she’s been avoidant and all the times in which I was absolutely ecstatic to even be on her radar.

I have written this before, but it is apt here….. “She walks in beauty, and I do because of it.”

I would not be the person that I am today had we not met, because she thinks so much differently than I do that it opened up new neural pathways in my brain. The logical jumps she was making were not the messages I would have gotten, and she doesn’t miss a trick (even with nachos). So, over time, I began to pick up her patois and my writing voice is totally different than it was in 2013. I’m more strident, and I take a lot less crap. But sometimes I go overboard, even with her, and that’s definitely what happened in this case. She made me strong enough to stand there and fight with her, but didn’t like her tone being parroted back to her, either. I’m guessing that’s because she’s a terse writer, anyway, and if you irk her, she’ll make sure you know it. But, then you push back, and she will fucking destroy the land where you live.

She also gives in to the other extreme, loving with wild abandon when she feels safe. I broke her trust, and we could not get back to “safe.” I don’t blame her- it’s a sad situation, not “Supergrover is a bad friend.” But as I’ve said before, I created the original break, and I felt that absolutely never opening up again was not the answer. We had to resolve our conflict, because otherwise, we’d keep being pissed off under the surface and people please until the end of time.

We are both guilty of this; neither one of us wanted to rock the boat.

So, in a lot of ways, when I’m writing here, I am only talking about the character, not the person. She has made it so unpleasant to talk about conflict and resolve it that I just don’t want to try until I have some buy-in. Actually, a lot of buy-in. None of this is fair- not the mistake I made, not the pattern we set up to deal with it yet not, not our treatment of each other when people-pleasing failed. I am sure I have been a frequent topic of conversation because everyone knows what I think, every day….. and not because I am trying to speak to anyone. The people involved read my writing, so they think I’m speaking to them. The reality is, though, that I am just as happy with using them as an illustration for people who don’t know me at all. There are patterns in everyone’s behavior, and I can see my own in stark relief.

Whether I’m bathed in light or shadow depends on where you’re standing.

So, in terms of nostalgia, the last 10 years are going to be monumental in my memory, because some of it is universal and some of it is alarmingly specific. In all cases, I loved hard….. but not often well. Sometimes it’s because I’m mired in my own crap, sometimes it’s because you can’t have a great relationship all the time and conflict is going to arise. If someone else is avoidant, there’s nothing I can do about that. I don’t have authority over anyone, but by the same token, they don’t have authority over me, either.

Adults don’t have authority over other adults except for asking them about things you’re making up right now, because they’ve probably made it up before. It doesn’t matter what the advice is about, we’re all making up everything as we go along. Life takes on a heightened definition when you realize everything begins and ends with you. It’s not how others behaved, it’s what you allowed. Trust your intuition, because no one else has your best interests at heart, even if they say they do- this is not always for malice. Sometimes it’s just that someone else’s idea of what’s good for you is, in fact, really shitty advice.

So, when she says “who cares what I think,” the deepest parts of my heart only have two words:

I do.

The One About Which I’m Thinking

December 30, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What relationships have a positive impact on you?

No one has ever had a completely negative impact on me, because I see the good in everything and everyone. That doesn’t mean good people don’t do bad things. It means that I see both ends of the spectrum of human behavior and I don’t meet anyone that hasn’t proved it all to be true. Every human on earth is a glorious mess. We’re all a bunch of red flags, and we don’t work nearly hard enough to stay together. Not as couples, not as friends, and certainly not as states and nations. You just have to remember to live for the highs.

I won’t let anyone into my life without understanding it may not be forever- people come and go, so let them. I have had many people in my life for which I would go through hell and back before I’d admit it was a bad relationship. It’s hard when people screw you over. It’s worse when you’re at fault. People can and do resolve monster conflicts, but both parties have to buy in. You will never get anywhere if one person wants to resolve conflict and the other doesn’t.

However, “doesn’t” is relative. Sometimes, it looks like ghosting. Sometimes it looks like saying everything is fine, but it doesn’t feel right. If it doesn’t feel right, it isn’t. When you have no idea what’s wrong, do not guess. You’re wrong. Or, more accurately, the less you know about how someone feels, the more apt you are to make things worse.

I am a craftsman.

I am not good at talking about relationships because mine all go so well. I am good at talking about relationships because I’ve been through the ringer. I have made every mistake a person can make in a relationship, a lot of them way more expensive than I could afford.

I can describe the mistakes I’ve made, and also write what I wish I’d done in retrospect. I cannot breathe life into a dead relationship, but I can talk about it while it lived.

Right this very moment, the relationship that I have with myself is having a positive impact on me. I have a lot of things to think about, deeply, because I need to direct my energy and resources where it will do the most good. I don’t know what that means for me, but I do know that my life looks different than it did a few years ago, and I’m adrift…. but not in a bad way. In a way that I need to be self-sufficient for now (while also dearly wishing I wasn’t… I’m not the “adultier adult” type).

I have made so many mistakes, but somehow they have a positive impact. I think it’s because I’m driven to lead from the back. I have found over and over that people will not be vulnerable with me if I am not willing to lay all my cards on the table first. What is true of blogging is true of conversation; I just do not opine like this in person. It seems rude, because it is. If you wanted to read this, you typed in the URL or clicked the link. In short, when I’m in a crowd, I generally think “no one asked you.” I keep to myself, because I like hearing other people talk to each other. I like being around conversation more than I like being in one.

There are also many things I’ve said out loud that probably sounded better in my head…….. and stretching the definition of “several” things I’ve said that shouldn’t even have made it past my brain. The vetting process is getting better, but it’s not absolute. However, I think of those times and there’s not a one I don’t regret….. but you don’t get to be 46 without regrets.

However, I think I’ve spent long enough talking about regrets and am really starting to embrace the writer’s life…. ecstatic to be alone and also together with Zac (and Oliver, who is a dog). As a writer, I need more alone time than most. I also love dating an extrovert because he’ll drag me out of the house….. and even if we just end up watching a movie, I still got out of MY house. 😛

I’m looking forward to two dates in the future, because I’ll get to introduce him to Jason Moran (jazz pianist) and Jonna Mendez (former Chief of Disguise at CIA and my favorite living writer). We’ve got plans sooner than that, but those are important because both Jason and Jonna are important to me, and so is Zac in a completely different orbit.

Jonna, I believe, will find him completely charming because I’m going to bet she didn’t have “meet Leslie’s BOYfriend” on her bingo card.

Don’t ruin this for me. Shhhhh.

The Short of Sport

December 29, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

If you started a sports team, what would the colors and mascot be?

Let me start off by saying that I am not a sports person. I love stories about athletes, and feel it is akin to watching superhero origin stories that are within the realm of possibility. For instance, I could imitate Abby Wambach’s career, even though I’m not athletic, better than I could imitate Wonder Woman’s….. unless I turned out to be the guy who gives polygraphs at CIA. The man who created Wonder Woman also created the precursor to the polygraphs used today. That being said, if I had any kind of team sport, the colors would be red, navy, and white. That’s because I like National Team jerseys best. 😉

I would say “let’s make American football a national sport,” except that few countries have adopted it enough that we could make a decent number of teams in a world cup or Olympics. So that’s probably out. I would say “quadball,” but I don’t know how many teams outside of colleges exist (JK Rowling has burned down her career so bad that even “quidditch” is a dead name). I will say that a national quadball team would look smart, even if they cannot actually fly.

In fact, let’s go with that. Quadball isn’t a real sport outside of colleges, but I like the idea of a national team, anyway. I don’t know how the game is played on land in terms of that whole “not flying on a broomstick” thing, but I think that the teams should have cloaks, anyway. They’re reversible, navy and red. Depending on whether we’re home or away, the uniforms are either white with red and blue accents, or blue with white and red accents.

If, for some reason, we do get the ability to fly during quadball games, I’d also figure out a way to rig up the brooms with LEDs or something to make them show up better at night games.

But again, I’m not a sports person. I know how to make it sound like I know something about sports by nodding and sounding empathetic. I don’t know the rules of anything, really. Even the sports I’m most rabid about (futbol/baseball), I cannot tell you the finer points. But I can tell you all about Beckham and Messi and Chastain and Hamm. That’s a t-shirt.

Again, superhero origin stories. People think they’re on Disney+, but I’ve found them on ESPN. Not only do I feel like I can obtain life lessons, you cannot convince me that Abby Wambach and I would not be best friends from day one. We wouldn’t be able to shut up. First of all, because I’ve been around soccer players my whole adult life, I can’t tell you every fact about the game, but I can definitely empathize with life on and off the pitch. The second is that as an INFJ, I’m very much like her wife, Glennon Doyle. So, she’d remind me of my first girlfriend, I’d remind her of her current wife…. hilarity ensues.

The best thing about ESPN origin stories is that athletes are so…. well…. human.

I’d like my own team of ’em, in smart red and navy reversible cloaks.

I Have No Heart or Brain

December 28, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 3 Comments

How have your political views changed over time?

They say that if you are a conservative when you are young, you have no heart. They say that if you are liberal when you’re old, you have no brain. They do not suggest the unexplored third option, the permanently exhausted political science student who really doesn’t like any of you. 😉 Actually, I think it’s also due to age. Gen X (technically, I’m a Xennial) is now the adult in the room, because people older than us don’t understand technology, people younger don’t know how to function without it. We are the hybrids that remember what it was like to function on paper, the glue holding pre- and post- internet together.

If there’s anything I credit with my political views changing, it’s being in college before the Internet was really a thing. I was still fascinated by T1 connections at that point- you mean it’s always on? I don’t have to dial into anything? Plus, when I got to university, I was studying poli sci in school and my boss in IT was also a lawyer.

A lawyer who had a t-shirt that said, “Charter Member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.” Today, this would be ominous. It was 2000, so I still laughed. I’m not sure anyone knew back then how this whole thing would turn out, but I didn’t have Donald Trump on my Bingo card, I’ll tell you that much.

I will say that I think younger people than me are coming up with the best ideas on the liberal end of the spectrum, and I think what being conservative in your elder years means to me is deciding which of these ideas are too wild to fund and which ones are worth pursuing. At its heart, universal basic income is a good idea. Other countries have implemented it and it works. But how do we scale up something like that without breaking the funds available for such a thing?

When it comes to money, I want everyone at the table in terms of ideology. I want James Baldwin and William F. Buckley on every single issue, not what passes for dialogue now. It’s not a good idea if you can’t explain a liberal idea to a conservative or vice versa. That’s because 99% of the time people don’t get what they want because they don”t actually know the question.

The liberals don’t have worse ideas, they just can’t sell them. I think it was Aaron Sorkin who wrote that originally, but it has stuck with me. The Republicans demand complete buy-in and loyalty, the Democrats don’t because we like free thinkers. While not a bad thing, this has cost Democrats DEARLY and they have no idea how to fix it.

I’m including me in that statement, because I’d like to see the party embrace bigger and better ideas, but also to have a concrete idea of how to fund them. There is no sense of polity in the Democratic Party, because both Bill Clinton and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez are Democrats, but their platforms were/are worlds apart. Hillary Clinton’s is closer, but that’s only because she stayed in presidential politics longer.

I am definitely a Clinton Democrat, because it’s the lens through which I take in information. I voted for Bill in 1996, my first election….. although I also went to the Republican convention in 1992 and was thrilled about it, because back then it was just a chance to go to a major convention, because first of all I was a child and couldn’t vote. Second of all, George H.W. Bush grew to love both Clintons, so I think he’d forgive me for voting for them.

In terms of the way I was raised, I didn’t really know anything about my parents or grandparents’ political leanings until I was older, because they didn’t wear hats like they were pitching for either party. The only thing I remember from being a young kid is that my grandfather did not like LBJ, because of the Viet Nam war.

Fair.

But if you do a little digging, you find that it’s not the whole story. The thing that people are most known for isn’t necessarily what is going to do the most good or the most damage from a historical perspective. I agree with my grandfather that LBJ made some terrible calls during Viet Nam, but we also wouldn’t have gotten Great Society passed without him.

It is controversial to the general public, but not in political science circles to say that Lyndon Johnson was objectively a better president than John Kennedy. That when you take away the mythology of Camelot, Kennedy was wonderful for the American image and Johnson was more effective legislatively because he knew how to whip. I do think that John Kennedy deserved to be president, and that he was good at it- most political science students agree that it would be easier and more fair to compare both of them at full term, but we’ll never get that chance.

What I do not think is that we’ve managed to capture the fever behind one idea like “Great Society” that will get us elected….. and The New Deal before it. We need people on the extreme fringe of the party to come up with the new and better ideas, so that the more conservative members of the party can red team them. It’s not “shooting everything down,” but it seems that way because a red team’s job is to take you to the mat before you’re in front of the Republicans.

When I think about red teaming now, I think about Molly Ivins, who was not afraid to call out hypocrisy or bullshit on either side of the aisle, and was in fact more mystified by Texas politics than anything else. She thought it was wilder and weirder, and proved it every day in her columns.

I am not standing outside looking in, I am definitely a Democrat. But at the same time, I do not discount conservative ideas. I discount bigotry, and that has become 99% of the Republican platform. How we got here is not really a mystery. If you’ve studied the rise of Hitler, you know that what is happening now is what happened in Germany- the people were starving for a leader, and they chose the most racist asshole they could find because he parroted all their shitty beliefs.

Trump is not Hitler in his later years, but we’re ignoring the signs of fascism nonetheless. Here are two things that you really need to take in about this, and they’re important:

Trump discredited CIA on day one. He went into their house and told them point blank that he trusted the Russians more than them. So, the message from day one was “don’t believe the intelligence experts that have historically been the best in the world, and only pay attention to me.”
Trump discredited the journalists. So, not only should you not believe the raw data coming out of CIA (filtered for publication through State and the committees on intelligence in Congress), you should not believe any stories written about it.

Trump has the same outlook on domestic policy. Don’t read any stories about me, only look at me. Meanwhile, he’s not really running the country because he doesn’t know fuck all. Getting his whole family security clearances was downright offensive to the spies I’ve met, because that is not a community you join easily or lightly. You have to be trusted beyond a reasonable doubt to carry that kind of information, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Jared Kushner is not one of those people, and neither is Donald Trump.

The president of the United States WAS NOT QUALIFIED to see the documents he saw, and managed to show other world leaders things that he should have had in his possession because he’s the president and should have had enough sense he was actively harming American interests.

But that doesn’t matter, because he’s a Russian UI.

Putin’s revenge for Khrushchev’s treatment by Kennedy was to make us implode, and I believe it worked. There are people who still believe with a passion that the election was stolen due to Russian interference that Trump welcomed. Trump didn’t want to be president. He wanted to have been president. I believe that he sincerely thought he was going to lose, and 2016 was a bid to get more people into his DC hotel, not a legitimate presidential campaign. Hillary and Donald have known each other too damn long for either one of them not to see through the other’s bullshit, and I don’t think that Trump really thought he had a chance, which is why he was such a total asshole the entire campaign. I honestly think he was wondering “what do I have to do to lose?” By the end.

But we elected him anyway, and the rank and file judges and State employee jobs stayed open for months because there was no one to direct presidential appointments.

People, the damn president of the United States didn’t know he was president of Puerto Rico, and that’s just okay because people in the US don’t know that, either. Do you think that the president is less the president to our territories?

The president also commands lots of people overseas being Commander in Chief and American representative in global affairs. Honestly, the fact that Trump got to be that for us is alarming, and other heads of state noticed. Do you really think that Justin Trudeau, Angela Merkel, Jacinda Barrett, and especially Sauli Niinistö (president of Finland- rake the forests? Get out of here with that bullshit.) and Kim Kielsen (premier of Greenland- I’m sorry. You want to buy WHAT now?) were in any way impressed with us at all? The only reason we didn’t lose the plot with the UK is that they’re experiencing the same wave of conservatism that we are.

If there’s any way in which my political views have changed, it’s by leaving the Democratic and Republican parties alone and just doing my own thing by studying world systems. I’m looking at the forest, not the trees. I love dating someone who works in intelligence, because I am with someone who also has the ability to look at global systems and not get stuck in the minutiae of daily life. The world looks different when you’re talking about countries at war and humanitarian aid and everything that comes with it, vs. the fact that Chuy’s is too far away for my liking and Whole Foods continues to be out of the veggie dogs I like.

Perspective.

Years ago, I was on IM with Supergrover and I was telling her that I was having a really crappy day….. and that one of my cases to call back didn’t have a name at the top, so I dialed the number and the woman answered “Doctors Without Borders.” I died for a second because absolutely anything I was thinking about that day melted away with perspective. There’s never going to be a day in my life more stressful than being a doctor in a war torn country.

It’s like working for NASA and actually being an astronaut. Not the person on the ground that has every resource available to them at a moment’s notice. No, the guy who’s stuck in a tin can having only what they brought with them. IF MSF doesn’t bring a medication with them, it may be unlikely to get a local supply. We’re not talking total health here- we’re talking HIV vaccinations and TB tests.

So, again, if we’re talking about politics, then I’m probably not the person to ask how to fix the party.

But I think the first step is leaving your heart and mind out of it, and committing not to elect someone who tells you that what you’re seeing and hearing is the truth, when he’s just the mouthpiece.

In this case, you should absolutely pay attention to the people behind the curtain. They’ll be the ones trying to save us from ourselves.

The Writer’s Room

December 27, 2023December 27, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

You get to build your perfect space for reading and writing. What’s it like?

I will do this writing prompt as an exercise, but know that readers and writers don’t stop. There is no perfect place to read and write, because what makes someone good at either is being able to do it anywhere…. thus the reason I use a tablet and keyboard for everything rather than my desktop. I want to be able to get better whether I’m in my living room or in a restaurant… but I’ve watched a lot of YouTube videos on construction, so here’s what I’d do if I bothered to stay in one place.

The perfect reading/writing space for me is a cabin, and I’d like to build it myself (with a group of friends if they’re into that kind of thing). I wouldn’t like it to be very large, but I do want it to be made of the best materials, like rock wool insulation (my house burned down when I was in sixth grade, and it’s almost fireproof). Depending on how long the build I could create and still have people show up, I’d like to do two stories, but a root cellar and a first floor, not a full two-story house.

Where me being a writer comes in is that my desk would probably end up in the root cellar, even if I built myself a whole ass office. I want the place that has the least amount of sensory input, which is why a root cellar would be preferable to an office on the main floor.

The fictional character that’s been with me so long we’re roommates is Carol, and because of our past conversations, she would like a word. Carol works for NSA, so basically her perfect office is mine. When I’ve written about her before (“A Christmas Carol”), I’ve talked about how her husband, Roger, is a contractor and asked Carol where she wanted to live. They built their house into the side of a mountain, so Carol’s office is in a basement….. but only technically. She’s got a basement office in the Blue Ridge range, therefore also equipped with a stunning view. It is not lost on her that whether she is bathed in light or shadow is dependent on where she’s standing, which she feels is an accurate metaphor for her work.

I do not know that I could afford a piece of land like Carol and Roger’s, but the idea is cool. But let’s just pretend that I only have grass and trees. A regular cabin is fine to start.

So, we’ve got the resources we need except the things we need to buy. Instead of buying the lumber, I go ahead and buy all the tools to process cutting down my own trees. Everyone within a 10 mile radius will come to me for milling the trees they’ve cut down in their own yards, so I’ll make it back, or I can just sell all the equipment when I’m finished…. but I doubt I would do that because eventually I would see outbuilding opportunities….. 😉

I also want a stone floor, but in this weather I’d like a heating system for it. So, we’ll put one of those underfloor doohickeys in that connects to the hot water and keeps it running so the stones don’t cool down. But in terms of “stone,” I think I actually want polished concrete. I’ve seen so much of it done that there’s a wide range on what it would look like completed.

But for now, we’ve got the materials for framing, insulation, and the floor. Let’s make sure to add some drywall and fancy hardware for the inevitable doors. I’m not sure what I would like in terms of hardware, and Carol shops online all day. She’ll handle it.

(Because that’s what they do at NSA, right? Sometimes I even eyeroll at myself.)

My office tends to be very plain. I would like a desk and chair that are both too comfortable to leave, and outside of that, I don’t have expensive tastes. I don’t even really have expensive tastes in furniture, I’ve just had a $50 “gaming chair” and an Aeron and I’m going to tell you there’s quite a bit of difference after having sat in each of them for years.

So, I’d want to get an Aeron from a used furniture dealer because they’ll last a hundred years. I don’t need new….. and a big ass desk, because an Aeron won’t fit under anything small. If the room is large enough, I’d like to have the Aeron ottoman and another small chair behind me so that I can use my ottoman when I’m not using my desk and I also have room for another person to sit (but that chair cannot be comfortable enough to invite people to stay long term….)

If I did not put my desk in the root cellar and made the whole first floor my office, I’d like a wood-burning stove. That way, I could make coffee quickly in addition to staying warm. 🙂

The only thing I would take time to do on paper that I won’t here is mark where all the outlets go. As a tech person, I have to have a lot of them….. but what I’ve noticed is that I don’t necessarily need a lot of power. I mostly just need a lot of places to charge small things.

It would be nice to have electricity, even to be on the grid. However, I know that realistically I could get by on a jackery and a cell phone connection if that’s what was available.

I just don’t know that I’d ever bring these plans to fruition, because it’s unlikely that I’d find land like this near the Metro. That’s okay, though. Maybe someday I’ll get lucky like Carol and my husband will be a contractor, too. I could even say that. “Are you a contractor? My fictional character is married to a contractor and I’m jealous of her, soooo…..” Because that would make me sound completely stable.

But here’s what I know to be true. In order for Carol to live in that house with Roger, I had to think of it first. So, is Roger really that important in the whole scheme of things?

Yes, you’re right. He does fix everything.

Hmmmmmmmm.

I obviously need more than one thinking chair, here.

Saturn SL 2

December 26, 2023December 26, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 7 Comments

What is your all time favorite automobile?

I don’t have expensive tastes, because I like the clutch on an SL 2 better than anything I’ve driven. Roomy enough not to be a short stick, but compact enough that it was very different from driving a pickup. You felt like you were in more of a sports car than you were, because basically the engine on the SL 2 was equivalent to a base mustang.

I will say for the record that I’m not a very good driver, which is why I take the bus and train everywhere. It’s not that I am intentionally bad and need more training. It’s that I don’t have 3D vision, so sometimes things come out of nowhere. It’s so much easier to drive when someone else is with me, but that doesn’t happen often. But it could. Like, if Zac didn’t want to drive, he could ask me and I wouldn’t panic because he’d be in the car and I just need an extra set of eyes. I don’t have my own car because that second set of eyes can’t be with me on every trip. Not Zac’s. I mean that most people spend so much time driving when they’re alone that it’s actually more difficult to get someone to ride with you than you might think.

Everyone likes to be alone in their cars, including me. It’s just that being alone in my car is also not good for me, because I cannot ensure I won’t run a red light because I didn’t see it, or have an accident because I was following too close. If I got a car, I would be constantly worried about driving alone and also I hate traffic. For me, cars in DC are for weekends, because I’ve never gotten anywhere faster in rush hour traffic than taking the Metro. People think it’s easier to drive, and it’s really not. The only time driving comes in handy is when you need the cargo area. The other thing is that time spent driving in traffic is malleable to a large degree. With the Metro, you can predict when you’ll get somewhere almost perfectly because there are going to be fewer delays on the train than the stop and go in traffic. It makes me feel better just to sit back and relax, because if we have an accident, which is unlikely, I’m not the guy they’re going to find at fault. It’s not about eschewing responsibility, it’s that I believe my doctors when they say driving without 3D vision is an issue.

It’s still fun to drive an SL 2, though. Just the greatest, most comfortable shifter and a bangin’ stereo. I bought mine new and even the factory was perfect. The night I got it I ran it into a pole at The Mucky Duck. I had it fixed immediately, but it was just the first indicator that Houston isn’t my thing. I need to be in a city built for public transportation, and Houston is a lot of things, but that’s not one of them.

I also get the pleasure of not having to be attached to one car, because since I take Uber I’ve ridden in just about all makes and models. I honestly haven’t picked a favorite because after a while they all run together. The times I’ve been picked up in a Tesla are always memorable, but not because I’d like to drive one. I just think that the glass roofs are cool.

If I bought a brand new car, and I could if I wanted to pay the ongoing cost (I don’t), I would want a Tesla with all the bells and whistles because their technology would enable me to drive as well as someone with 3-D vision. However, I do not want to give Tesla my money because first of all, I don’t like Elon Musk. Second of all, even with technology I would still be responsible, and the whole point of taking public transportation is to be able to zone out and do my own thing in traffic. Having to stand on the platforms in cold weather has never taken away from the fact that once I get on the train, I can read all the way to my destination, or watch movies I’ve downloaded. Completely different vibe, and with Uber/the bus, I can get anywhere from the train stations, even if a bus isn’t available.

If you’re not going to have a car in a city, you can’t get your friends to cart you around, but good luck getting them to believe that you mean it. All of my friends are very protective of me, and I’m lucky that they think of things like picking me up at the Metro. But that’s because I have amazing friends and they want to do it for me, not that I require it. I appreciate that they’re willing to work with my comfort level with driving and not make me fit into theirs, because for the most part, Maryland is a train culture and Virginia is a car culture, because there’s quite a big space difference in the two states.

When you cross the Potomac, things get more condensed. Virginia looks very much like Texas until you get to the immediate DC area. When you cross from Arlington into The District, space is at a minimum and everything begins to look more like New England. I prefer that kind of architecture, but I also love that Zac’s house backs up to a nature preserve.

It is just unlikely that I would drive there………..

Without my Saturn SL-2.