Hi. I’m Chip.
I’m a writer, a stubborn idealist, and a dreamer of Big Ideas.
I’m an openly crazy person, in a world where trying to make things better is too often seen as insane.
My Story
For the past two-and-a-half years, I have been living with what I believe to be an incorrect diagnosis of delusionality, as a direct consequence of a deeply foolhardy and naive stunt I undertook in early 2024, in an attempt to investigate the mental health system and certain aspects of the patient experience. Admittedly, I've always been pretty weird, and I had plenty of longstanding psych issues prior to this whole saga. But, to be clear, I knew what I was doing. This plan was mine from the beginning, and I saw what I was risking. I was both self-aware and a willing participant to the scheme, when I first walked into a hospital and told them a story that I knew perfectly well would sound pretty crazy. That was the whole point, as you'll soon see. To find out what would happen.
The story I am going to tell on this website (and which I have attempted to tell in my book) is extremely complicated and equally unlikely; however, it is internally consistent, and it is perfectly possible under the rules of our shared reality. So, although I must (in the interest of intellectual honesty), allow for the possibility that I really am delusional, I truly do not think that is the case, and I am going to set that possibility aside for the most part (except for where directly necessary for the purposes of self-reflection and inquiry), for the sake of being able to tell you a coherent story as I have experienced it.
I'm going to tell you the story directly, as I remember it, in the affirmative, so as to illustrate my current conundrum, and to outline the manner of assistance that I am ultimately still hoping to find someday.
We were trying to help people. To find out what happens to the Disbelieved.
Explore more of the story below:
Film Study
Medical Records
(Note: I am in the midst of a very long process of transferring my story from a single book-length account to a navigable web story. Please bear with me and check back for updates.)
My Memoir
Parasocial Activity: A Memoir in the Key of Science Fiction
My first book-length project is a memoir, focusing largely on the experience of getting labeled delusional, which is what happened to me in early 2024, when I walked into a hospital and told the doctors I was receiving secret messages from Jon Stewart and John Oliver. This is a story of being disbelieved by everyone in your life, of getting locked up in a psych ward for a little bit, and of trying to come to terms with memories that simply refuse to align with the view of reality shared by everyone else.
Parasocial Activity is also a heavily political book, and it contains a lot of musings and pontifications about the present crisis in our national politics—and on my hopes for a better future. As I’ve been saying at open mic nights recently, this is a story about trying to change the world and flying a little too close to the sun.
To be clear: the book is not perfect. It’s not completely accurate, and it needs a good bit of editing and revision in a future edition. But it’s the best I could do in the mental state I was living through at the time (seven months ago), and it’s an inside-look from within the whole wild experience.
Download Parasocial Activity for free(!), or get it on Amazon ($0.99 for Kindle, or $19.99 in paperback).
See the project page for more information.
