I read a Wirecutter article about journaling yesterday and it made me feel guilty (so many triggers for self-attack; let’s stay on topic, Chris). A woman diagnosed with leukemia decides to begin journaling as a way to unspool her journey. She eventually turns her journal into a well-received book and has since published another. What hit me was this woman’s advice: journal with pen (specifically, a Lamy Safari fountain pen, which wouldn't be my choice – the pocket clip loosens over time) and paper to avoid self-editing. It’s something I’ve long thought about. Unless I print out all my digital journals it could all go away with a few keystrokes. If I’d been keeping paper journals all these years there’d be something tangible, something for someone to pore over after I’m gone (Who? Sweet T.? My family? Like I'm so fascinating...). There are downsides to paper/pen journaling. I’ve raided my journals frequently, as starter dough for pieces that ended up in my newsletter and the NIHILISTIC book. Cutting and pasting digitally is a cinch. From pen on paper it’s certainly more involved. You’re either scanning and hoping optical character recognition works or laboriously typing what you wrote into a text file. Speaking of typing, allow me to make a recommendation: I stumbled onto a Qwerkywriter years ago, after that disastrous detour into Freewrite “Smart Typewriter” territory (ugh, what a nightmare that thing was!). The Qwerkywriter and my iPad Pro is a killer combo. I get the feel of a mechanical keyboard that looks like the old Royal typewriter I started out on and I don't get neck strain from looking down at the poorly-placed E-ink screen on the Freewrite.
Journaling... I used to do much more of it, especially when I lived in Hoboken in my squalid little four-room railroad apartment. I’d come home from a shitty day, surreptitiously smoke some weed sequestered in the bathroom so the smell couldn’t be sniffed out by the building super, the landlord’s sister, and sit at my desk outlining that day’s triumphs and tragedies. It’s been awhile since I went back into those Hoboken journals but any time I do I’m astounded by how fucking miserable I was. Maybe I didn’t include enough triumphs, maybe it was too tragedy-tilted, but life seemed so much harder. I was forever broke and behind on my bills, lonely and unable to sustain a relationship, filled with self-loathing and doubt. The few bright spots included my WFMU show Aerial View and time spent with friends. It wasn’t until I started getting paid to do radio in the mid-'90's that things took an upswing. Ten years later – 2005 – Jeremy Tepper (RIP) contacted me about doing talk radio on Sirius Satellite Radio and I met Sweet T. at the Weird NJ Halloween Party at the Stone Pony. By 2006 I was co-hosting Freewheelin’ and dating the woman who’d marry me in August 2007.
It’s all there, in those journals. I'd delve into them more often but the incidents and episodes I’ve forgotten are wince-inducing. Too often I wonder Who the fuck WAS that guy?! But even all these years later I’m still not sure I know who I am. I often feel alienated from myself, unable to decide if I’m a good person or bad, productive or lazy, happy or sad. A day like today, with nothing scheduled, nowhere to be, fills me with a sort of Choose Your Own Adventure dread. Do I indulge my creativity by sitting down to work on the NIHILISTIC book? Or do I tick something off my endless to-do list (clean the upstairs bathroom, straighten up the bedroom, declutter the office, empty the filing cabinet, contact home remodelers about renovations, contact more solar panel installers, clear off the workbench, solder up a new mic cable for that Electrovoice mic, delete 23andme data, digitally detox my devices, dub more Aerial View shows off DAT and MiniDisc – I could go on for another solid paragraph). I’m not sure how people who are creative for a living do it. How do they balance all the real life shit they need to get to and the work that pays the bills? Maybe I’m just not good (another self-attack, see?) at blocking all else out to sit and write. Or, worse, I don’t believe I’m capable of writing anything anyone will want to read. Something is keeping me from completing this project I’ve been talking up for years.
I blame Donald Trump.
That could be a joke but it’s not. For the past ten years he’s taken up too much room in our brains and I often find it hard to concentrate on something without thinking WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE DOING HERE?! Last week the Good Trouble protests took place and I told myself I’d join one (either Jersey City or Manhattan) but stayed home. I’d blame the weather (102º heat index, possible rain, thunderstorms) but the real reasons are more insidious: all the aforementioned tasks, trite in the face of creeping dictatorship and authoritarianism, and a bigger, more existential one: do protests in every state have any discernible effect? In our area alone there were a half dozen, from Newark to Jersey City to lower Manhattan to upper, and they became too easy to dismiss, dissipating the impact. Yes, it’s easier to attend a march in your local area but what’s needed is a massive march on Washington, millions of us congregating in the nation’s capital, a show of such magnitude it will grab everyone's attention.
Maybe my cynicism runs even deeper than “Small marches bad, Big marches good.” Since Donald Trump was reinstalled to the presidency I’ve been sick at heart about the roughly 77 million Americans who thought it’d be fine to once again hand him the reins to the world’s greatest superpower and democracy. To see the damage he’s wrought in six months is to be in awe of just how ignorant and misguided my fellow Americans can be. Seeing the trail of devastation from his first term wasn’t enough? We needed another bite of this shit sandwich? The news comes over the transom so quickly I can barely process one outrage – THE SUPREME COURT SAYS IT’S OKAY TO DISMANTLE THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION – before the next one hits – THE SUPREME COURT SAYS IT’S OKAY TO CLAW BACK $9 BILLION IN FUNDING FROM INTERNATIONAL AID AND PUBLIC BROADCASTING (that shadow docket is sure doing a lot of heavy lifting). But like my Hoboken journals, the ratio of triumph to tragedy is slim. Democracy just keeps losing while we’re frozen in despair and distracted beyond response. I’ve become more cynical than ever, convinced something truly horrific is headed our way – economic collapse, societal upheaval, another far more deadly pandemic, Russian or Chinese hacking that takes down the grid – up to and including war. I can’t see how we escape Trump 2.0 without real, lasting damage. Sometimes, in my darker moments, I don’t know how we’ll survive it. I worry about what the stress is doing to our mental and physical health and what else Trump will do to distract us from the Epstein Files.
Like I said previously, I thought I knew what the word "nihilistic" meant but was woefully unaware. We're in the Era of Burn It All Down & Who Cares If It Gets Rebuilt. IT’S NO WONDER I CAN’T GET ANYTHING DONE!
In other words, Enjoy Yourself, It's Later Than You Think.