Two Years Later
It has been two years (and two days) since this whole grand adventure began. Two years since I just jumped on a bus to New York, hoping to talk with someone who worked for John Oliver. Two years since the wildest conversation of my life, on that very strange train with Josh and Tamara. Two years since I spoke the future.
At present, I inhabit a disconcerting limbo of radio silence. I finished and published Parasocial Activity a couple of months ago, but I’ve still heard nothing back from Stewart or Oliver, and I’ve had absolutely no luck getting the attention of any reviewers, podcasters, journalists, or book-bloggers. Not even my friends and family are reading the finished book—though some of them did read earlier drafts or excerpts. The irony is not lost on me: I finally finished something big, for once in my life, and now I have nobody to talk to about the project in full. I still hold out hope that I’ll find a breakthrough online somewhere, or at least land a single committed reader to talk with in-depth, but for the time being it’s a lonely feeling.
Which is not to say that I’m despondent about the book. Far from it; I remain quite proud of the text and hopeful about the project in the long run. I’ve read the book over several times in the intervening months, and I stand by it as an art object and a creative endeavor—to say nothing of its qualities as an investigative document. I just wish I knew how to get eyes on it.
Of course, I remain convinced of the story I tell in the book. Not that doubts never enter my mind, but they are fleeting, and they often relate more to doubting how I can effectively present my beliefs to others, rather than disbelief in the story itself. I really do think that Stewart and Oliver will—eventually—come clean and go public with the entire saga from their perspective. If that indeed occurs, the book will doubtless absolutely explode, and I will not then lack for discussion partners. I’m still unsure when, or under what conditions, they’ll go public, but I think the last major hurdle left for me to clear is attaining a year’s sobriety, which I will reach on April 28th. Until then, I wait. And I write.
This is going to be a long four months.
I need to make sure I don’t waste the time.
Winter is traditionally a very difficult season for me, and depression usually sets in with the cold. Each of the past three winters has brought its own form of crisis. In 2023, I was wrongly Section 12’d by a case-management agency (as a result of their seeing me extremely distressed after a fight with friends). Then, in 2024…well…you know what happened in 2024: I started seeing secret messages in the TV and I ended up getting hospitalized. In 2025, I fell into an alcohol-abuse spiral, which included blacking out one night and breaking my nose, only to wake up on the living room floor covered in blood and vomit. This year, I’m trying to get through the winter without any type of catastrophe, despite the predictable depression that I’ve been feeling lately. In some ways, I’m better off than I was in those recent years, both because I’ve been working on emotion-management techniques throughout this past year, and because the process of writing Parasocial Activity has itself been deeply healing for my psyche—even if it was tremendously difficult and challenging in-progress.
To keep myself centered going forward this winter, I’m trying to attend to three key dimensions of my life: fitness, writing, and social engagement. I’m in a difficult spot physically at the moment; I’m dramatically overweight (in part due to the meds I’m on, and in part due to a year’s worth of focusing on writing over all other concerns), and I find it difficult presently to engage in the types of exercise that I most enjoy. So, losing weight is a priority for me, for mental and physical health. I’m also trying to establish a healthy and regular rhythm of writing, and I’m considering signing up for a creative writing class to help provide me with structure and peer-consultation. Lastly, I’m trying to build a regular schedule of game-nights and open-mic nights around the city, to make sure that I’m broadening my social circle, rather than retreating into the winter darkness.
This blog is one attempt to habituate myself to regular public-facing writing. I’m not sure how often I’ll update, but I think it’ll be good for my mental health to keep an ongoing public journal of thoughts about writing, book promotion, and other aspects of my all-too-wintery life.