On Unbreaking the Glass
In my book, I used a metaphor of shattered glass to discuss the challenges of reconstructing the story as it actually unfolded. Human memory is fragile and imperfect, and after an experience like mine it can be hard to put things back together, especially years later. Here’s how I described it:
Imagine that there is a story told in a series of stained-glass windows. Beautiful, ornate, and vibrant. Then a hurricane comes through, and destroys it all. Months later, after the emergency-cleanup is over, and the rebuilding of homes is finished, and the hospitals are back open, and the roads are resurfaced, and the church roof is repaired, and most of the town is up and running, it is finally time to turn toward the stained-glass windows. Your task is to gather up all the shards of broken glass, and reassemble them the best you can, from memory, into the coherent story that they once were. Or, perhaps, more accurately, into a coherent story. It’s an impossible task, really. You remember, generally, that the windows depicted a beautiful tale, and you may even remember the broad outline of its contents—perhaps they were the Stations of the Cross. But the shards are hopelessly jumbled, and many of them are shattered further than the original panels. Nevertheless, the piles of glass are all you have to work from, so you start to plug them back into place, building, piece-by-piece, a narrative picture.
You know a red shard went here, and a blue there. But there are twelve red triangles, and a lot of tinted glass dust, and it’s quite difficult to know whether the one you’re holding was really the one that went in that particular spot. The longer you work at it, the more the puzzle begins to come together. You try a certain arrangement out, and then you find a piece that doesn’t fit. No, that green piece can’t have gone here, because it doesn’t quite match with the color of the rest of the trees that you’re sure fit into that particular window—ah, yes, it must go in the fourth window, instead. Obvious in hindsight, but only once you’ve found the clues.
As you work, over many weeks, the story begins to emerge, but you are drawn to an inescapable conclusion: you will never piece it all back together—at least not in its original form. Too many of the shards are lost forever, and too many of them look the same. Nevertheless, the story you construct has many elements of the truth of the original, and it might be beautiful in its own way. Your congregation must learn to see these windows in their own beauty now, and to find joy as you sing and walk in the colored light that these new windows cast around your sanctuary. They are the windows you have, even if they are not the exact same windows that once adorned your church. You must move on; you must move forward.
This is what it has been like to try to rebuild my memories of the period of my life that began that day, in January of 2024. That sense is particularly true to the conversation on that very strange train—into which we are about to dive in Part II of this book. I can tell certain places that aren’t quite right. Things don’t fit the way they ought, and the timeline jumps around. The conversational fragments come back to me in associative ways, but not in linear sequence, and there are inevitable gaps. There are pieces that I can tell are missing, and there are others that I can’t figure out how to place—even though I know for certain that they were said. I will never be able to rebuild the interview in its whole.
The same was (is) true of the conversation(s) that morning at CBS. I remember saying a great many things at CBS that day, but I don’t truly know the exact order in which I said things. In the account I have been telling, which I reconstructed in my book, I am making a somewhat-artistic approximation of the things I remember saying that morning, rebuilt long after the fact. Importantly, as I have acknowledged, transitions and prompting questions are often guessed at, logically-reasoned, or just invented for the sake of being able to narratively connect different shattered shards of conversation that I really do remember saying. Perhaps most challenging: I do not necessarily clearly remember which things I said to which of the various people who interviewed me that morning. Even when I correctly remember a certain sentence…did I say it to security? To the sleepy-looking staffer? To the police? To the Blurry Man? To Mr. Smoke-Break? Or even later that day to “Josh” and “Tamara” on the train? It’s not always easy to say for certain. I have had to guess, and to do my best to reconstruct a path that includes the important things I remember saying that morning, and which might reasonably explain how we got to where we did. I’m reassembling shattered windows from memory.
However…
I have just received something unexpected and transformative, which will require a serious revision and re-evaluation of the account I’ve been trying to reconstruct of that morning.
You see…someone went digging through a box in the attic, and they found an old photo, from a wedding years ago, with a clear capture in the background, vital to my project: an image of the third stained-glass window.
By which I mean: I just got the NYPD bodycam footage.
I am going to post it publicly soon, and I will have a lot to write about the footage, and to adjust in my written accounts of what happened (or what must-have-happened, or may-have-happened) that morning. It shows me how I got things wrong in my first attempt. It helps me see what I got right, or approximately anyway. It helps me see how all the remaining pieces probably fit together, in a way that makes a lot more sense.
Unsurprisingly, I got some things out-of-order in my initial accounts. Certain things I included in the police conversation must have been said to Security, or to the sleepy staffer. And I clearly misremembered or swung-and-missed at a few things from my interaction with the cops.
But you know what else?
I really was acting reasonably and coherently that morning (albeit oddly).
And I really was articulate and sometimes even funny in my conversation with the cops.
And they really did find me so nonthreatening that they sent me on my way with well-wishes and directions toward NBC.
Oh…
And CBS really did instruct me to wait where I was, rather than telling me to leave…specifically so that they could call the cops on me.
Which, I maintain, was some bullshit.
Transitions Are Hard
It’s hard to get in the headspace to sleep tonight. I have an early-morning bus to New York tomorrow, to see another show. Jordan Klepper new-material standup tonight!
It’s also hard to feel tired when my brain is going in circles over certain transitions in my life. Things that are changing in ways that I don’t wholly know what to do with.
First, I just found out I didn’t make the roster for my frisbee team this year. I still might end up practicing with the team this summer, which would be nice in terms of getting in some physical activity and socializing. I hope that gets to happen. I’m friends with most of those guys, but it’s really hard to get to see everyone without the organized occasion of regular frisbee. Still, it’s pretty damn hard to know what to make of the fact that I’m so clearly into the tail-end of my frisbee career. I kind of figured there would always be frisbee to come back to, and that, even if my role got smaller and smaller over time, I’d always have a team, and there’d always be games to go to. That appears not to be the case anymore. Not that I can really blame the captains; I’m older and slower and squishier than I used to be. I am, like the wily Jigglypuff, a bit round and floofy. But still; it’s a weird transition. At least I’ll still have summer-league, which will be nice to help ease that particular change.
Second, I’m feeling a little down about my whole endeavor to try to get a mental health professional to help me check my story. After a lot of meetings, I had found two people who were willing, in theory, to give it a shot. One of them has now gone silent, which isn’t a great sign. And the other, after meeting with my existing therapist, went on to check with her supervisor and after that discussion declined the request. So, yeah. That doesn’t put me in a great space mentally, and I may have to get used to the idea that I’ll never, in the end, find anyone who’s willing (or permitted) to help me actually check.
Third, a month has gone by now since the deadline I thought we’d set, and still nothing has happened. I dropped off my book with Daily Show security a few weeks ago now, and I’ve received no response. So. It might be time to start changing my mind about the whole damned thing. Not sure what to make of that. Disconfirmed expectancy and failed prophecy. You know how it goes, at this point.
Fourth, I got the bodycam footage from my interaction with the cops outside CBS a couple years ago. The footage doesn’t show everything I remember saying at CBS that morning, so either: a) I invented some of the most important things after-the-fact, or b) I said some of those things to one of the CBS employees who spoke with me that morning (whether to security or to the media-side staffer whom they sent out to talk with me). I’m not sure how to adjust to this revelation emotionally, or how I should change the story that I tell of that day (if at all), to be respectful both of the honest record that shows up in the video and of the memory/story I’ve been telling over time. There are certain aspects of the conversation that morning that I vividly remember saying or doing, which my medical records indicate I was quite sure of a few weeks later. And yet they don’t appear in the video. So, what do I make of that? I don’t know. I’m pretty sure that I’m going to need to see CBS’ security tapes at some point, if I want to know the full story.
On the bright side, the video shows that I was indeed behaving reasonably, rather than dangerously, and that I was not being threatening or unruly (at least not when the cops showed up). I was coherent, rational, and articulate. And the cops really, truly did find me funny at multiple moments in our conversation, and they sent me on my way with directions toward NBC. So that’s reassuring, at least.
(Note: I was definitely an idiot in pulling out my phone, and I didn’t move slowly and deliberately in the way that I initially recounted when trying to tell the story in my book…still, they laughed at my joke and clearly didn’t find me threatening.)
I don’t know that I have any sort of clear landing point for this post. Not that I usually do with my blog. But I’m looking forward to another fun night tomorrow.
Today Was a Good Day
Holy cow.
Today was a long day.
But it was a good one. Really good.
I had sessions with five different therapists, and I’m completely drained from talking so much and explaining myself and my story repeatedly. Frankly, it was a mixed bag, and they weren’t all good matches. I don’t know for sure if I’ll find the exact help I’m looking for, but it felt good to be able to explain myself and my objectives repeatedly with mental health providers, and to commit to doing so with minimal caveats and qualifications and self-doubt. To just…talk in the affirmative about my experiences and my needs.
After today, I have new reason to hope on a couple of fronts. I’m honestly a little afraid to publicly share the details of what I’m hopeful for, lest I somehow end up undermining the effort by doing so. And in part, I don’t want to let myself get too excited before things actually coalesce.
But today was a good day.
A really fucking good day.
The Rule of Threes
Something I Should Have Seen Before
Basically, not sure what I’m doing with this, but in my previous story on the Curious Incident involving Jon Stewart’s allegedly dead dog, allegedly named Dipper, I included a section called “The Art of the Callback.” It was all about how they ran the dog joke back for a second round, with John Oliver’s alleged dead dog named Hoagie.
But honestly, they did it a third time. I’m still rewatching videos to get the details here, but this one involved Seth Meyers. Several months after John Oliver’s farewell to Hoagie, Seth Meyers announced that he, too had recently lost a dog, this one named Frisbee.
So really, in the timeline in which that whole thing really was a satirical dig at the lack of fact-checking (a supposition on which we should remain highly skeptical, given the lack of concrete evidence), then it might be the case that they were following a longstanding tradition in comedy: The Rule of Threes.
Yeah, I don’t know what to do with that, and I’ll be back to edit this post, once I get some more thoughts together. But I just wanted to put it out into the ether.
(Also worth noting: when I went down to see the shows, both Oliver and Meyers made references to, including jokes about, their dead dogs. And Kosta made a joke about his dog being terminally ill. Idk what to make of that either. Still treating the dog story as a thought-exercise for now.)
Today is Not A Good Day
Waiting is really not my strong suit.
Nor is shutting up when I’m excited about something.
Nor is letting things go.
All of those get me into trouble sometimes.
I’m not at all violent, but I’m emotionally intense, and I know I can scare people.
I find it very hard not express or share thoughts that I feel are important or pressing.
Today…
I hate myself for those flaws.
I know, I know. I’m not supposed to hate myself.
I try not to.
I really try.
Like I said in my book, it’s a long-term project.
There are good days and bad days.
Today is not a good day.
Stupid Chip. Fucking idiot.
Shut the fuck up. Nobody wants to hear it.
Come the fuck on. How is this going to sound?
Even this internal monologue is some stupid shit to say to myself, let alone post publicly.
I know how it could sound.
And yet.
It’s honest. And isn’t that what I’ve been going for this whole time?
So, here we are.
Even though posting this is going to make certain people think I’m crazy.
Fuck. Don’t they already think that?
And aren’t they right?
Yeah. Probably.
Not that I’ll ever know for sure.
Which makes this whole thing even worse.
Today fucking sucks.
You know what’s really crazy?
I’m not at all religious, but today…today I still feel like praying.
Desperation? Role-playing? Envy? Loneliness? I don’t know.
I mean, it’s not like I think there’s actually a God listening.
(Then again, this isn’t for Him anyway. So, fuck it, I suppose.)
Well, whoever is listening (probably nobody), here it is anyway,
A one-line plea, into the void of apparent madness:
Please…don’t leave me like this forever.
Today is not a good day.
Some Corrections and Additions
Hey, readers! I still need to go back and update/supplement my recent extensive post about Jon Stewart’s dogs. That will be long and ongoing process for a while still, and I may ultimately make a standalone page on my site for that particular project. But for today, this post is going to take a look back at my own story—the adventure I covered at length in my book, Parasocial Activity: A Memoir in the Key of Science Fiction—to try to address a few items that don’t quite fit anymore. In short: I think I got a few things wrong. Or at least…I missed a few things that I could have seen pretty early on, during this whole process of trying to reconstruct what happened to me.
Recap: The Long, Strange Train Ride, and the Crazy Plan
For those who haven’t read my book, here’s a quick recap of some key points relevant to this post: On January 14th, 2024, I walked into the lobby of CBS in New York, and I asked to talk to a writer for a show made there. The studio unjustly called the cops on me. I was not amused. Later that day, I drunkenly emptied my soul to a couple of complete strangers on the train, who identified themselves as Josh and Tamara. I told Josh and Tamara everything about myself that day—the good, the bad, the hilarious, the depressing, the traumatic, the hopeful—in what amounted to a public therapy session of the highest order. Along the way, we talked at length about late-night television, and I told Josh and Tamara a great many of my thoughts on the assorted shows, including:
Offering a new format for The Daily Show (reactivating Jon Stewart as a Monday host, with the Correspondents rotating for the other days);
Suggesting that John Oliver could use Last Week Tonight for a particular legal stunt (openly bribing Clarence Thomas a million dollars a year to retire from the Supreme Court),
Proposing that John Oliver and Jon Stewart could investigate the mental health system by embedding secret messages for me into their shows and online videos. If those messages were sent, I suggested, I could then honestly walk into a hospital and tell the doctors an extremely strange, but true, story—so we could all find out what happened, in all likelihood, to a patient wrongly disbelieved.
In any event, in the days and weeks after that long, strange conversation, everything I said on the train began to come true. Jon Stewart returned, but only for Mondays. John Oliver made my offer to Clarence Thomas. And, unlikely as it seemed, I started to see secret messages for me in videos released by both shows. Soon, I ended up in the hospital, and my book, Parasocial Activity, was my attempt to make sense of that experience and to put back together what exactly had happened.
I did my best in the book, but I now think I missed a few things—as I acknowledged at the time of writing was likely to be the case. Each of these topics might well merit a standalone post or even separate page on my site, as I come back to elaborate in the future.
Josh and Tamara: Their True Identities
As I’ve said, on that very strange train, I spoke for several hours with two complete strangers, who gave their names as “Josh” and “Tamara.” Gradually, over the course of that train ride, I realized that those were fake names, and that they very likely worked in television in some capacity (probably for CBS-Paramount). I determined that they had come to follow up on that morning’s incident at CBS headquarters. That day, and in my book, I landed on the understanding that Josh and Tamara were most likely to be CBS News reporters (given that CBS News would have been taping a show that very morning, just a few yards away from the incident as it unfolded—and given that I’d left a rather distressed voicemail on the CBS News tipline shortly after the incident). I now believe I was wrong in that conclusion—but only just. At present, I believe that Josh and Tamara were employees of The Daily Show, specifically: Matt O’Brien and Jen Flanz.
I base that conclusion in part on a fairly thorough (though obviously not exhaustive) review of available video and photo evidence, looking through the roster employees of CBS News, The Daily Show, and Last Week Tonight. O’Brien and Flanz visually match my memories of the physical appearances of Josh and Tamara. Now, admittedly, my memories of that day are more than two years old at this point, and I was drunk the day in question, so we should be somewhat suspicious of my ability to make a positive ID (and I’d not at present be willing to testify to their identities in a criminal trial or something). And I went through a pretty drastic mental health crisis that further destabilized my memories shortly after the incident, so there’s another reason to be skeptical. It’s certainly possible that my memories have shifted over time (though I remember seeing clips of Flanz shortly after the incident and noting the striking similarities). However, it’s still possible that, as I have searched through video and photographic records of employees of the various shows and of CBS news, I have seen enough of O’Brien and Flanz to build up an inaccurate affiliation for them. To be clear: I’ve assembled a list of a few other possible candidates, who also generally match the physical profile. But O’Brien and Flanz seem to fit the best based on my memories.
In addition, beyond appearance, O’Brien and Flanz would both seem plausible candidates based on their professional capacities. If my memory of that police interview outside CBS is anything approaching accurate, then I was hilarious, intelligent, insightful, and clearly deeply versed in the intricacies of their genre and of The Daily Show’s strengths and creative needs. So, it would certainly make sense for someone at CBS to have alerted Daily Show staff to the incident, especially after my voicemail. The whole thing would have been recorded on CBS security tapes, and they could easily have cross-checked the video to see if I was being truthful in my voicemail. If all that indeed happened…well then O’Brien (a writer and now producer) and Flanz (the longtime showrunner) would be two people who could plausibly have been sent to follow up with me.
I have other reasons to suspect these two, based on certain statements in videos in which they’ve featured over the past two years, which I’ll spell out at some point in the future.
Again, to be clear, I might well be wrong here. But that’s what I presently think.
Additional Early Clues: Trevor Noah.
I also think I missed several early messages from the shows, including via interviews, public statements, official videos, and podcast appearances by various staffers. It appears to have started almost instantly, with Trevor Noah himself, at the 75th Primetime Emmys, the day after my long conversation with “Josh” and “Tamara.” Examples:
At the ceremony, The Daily Show won the Emmy for its category, and Trevor Noah accepted the award (remember, this ceremony had been delayed several months due to the writers’ strike, so even though Noah was no longer the host, the time-frame covered by the ceremony was his last season). In his acceptance speech, Noah used the word crazy four times, including referring to Jon Stewart as a crazy genius(a term I had actually applied to myself in the conversation with Josh and Tamara the previous day). Noah thanked Stewart for calling him up and asking him to join the whole crazy journey. Noah also called specific attention to Jen Flanz, referring to her as the woman who “rode with him through the trenches” (which is an odd phrase, but could have been a reference to our long, emotionally trying ride the day before).
During his post-Emmys interview: Trevor said: “There’s no denying the genius of Jon Stewart, that basically laid the foundation for every single Emmy winner in this category for decades…” That specific phrase, “laid the foundation,” is of particular significance to my story, given that I used it during my interview with the police, and that it later appeared in another video that seemed to target me directly. In fact, I used it as the dedication for Part III of my book, in which I explain the secret video messages I found: “For those who laid the foundation.”
Later in that same interview, Noah describes his proudest episode of The Daily Show in terms that felt relevant to what I had proposed the previous day (likely to the showrunner standing next to him): “it was pretty wild putting that together and seeing a team of people who didn’t even know me that well rally behind me and say ‘yeah, we’ll help make this vision come to life; we’ll help figure out how we canhelp you tell this story that seemed crazy at the time…”.
In another video of a post-ceremony interview that night, Noah looks into the camera and thanks “those who watched from the beginning…those who didn’t believe, but watched anyway…the people who came on, the people who stayed on”. That described me, as I told to Josh and Tamara on the train the day before: I watched every episode of Trevor Noah’s run at the Daily Show, even though I was never a true believer of his, the way I was for Stewart.
There’s plenty more I’ve found in interviews and podcasts with Daily Show cast and staff in those first few weeks. This section, too, will probably merit its own post in the future, but that’s enough to show you the kind of thing I’m talking about here. I have a lot more writing to do on this subject, it would seem.
Insider Journalists:
I also now believe that, even if I missed it at first, The Daily Show and Last Week Tonight appear to have made sure to loop in at least a few different journalists before undertaking this whole crazy scheme, so that there would be people who could confirm the whole thing, once it all started to come out, or in case I got into too much trouble. In fact, I think I can point to at least three specific journalists who were informed, fairly early on, of the crazy scheme, possibly in its entirety. Specifically:
Peter White, Executive Editor for Television at Deadline. I was not familiar with White or his work prior to this whole thing, but they seem to have improbably excellent sourcing. White appears to have been an insider from the very beginning. For instance, on January 17th, three days after my adventure in New York, Peter White revealed the general outline of the new Daily Show format, before any other outlet had it. Now, admittedly, I’m not sure what all White knew and when he knew it, but I very much suspect that White and his staff speak regularly to showrunner Jen Flanz behind-the-scenes, given how frequently Deadline has had exclusive scoops on The Daily Show over the past two years. Seriously, there’s a bunch of them. I’ll make a list at some point, but a quick search will turn up quite a few. (Also worth noting, Flanz and White follow each other on Instagram.)
Gayle King, at CBS News/CBS Mornings. King, too, seems to have been looped in pretty early on. I suspect that it happened on January 31st, the day she interviewed Trevor Noah for CBS Mornings about his upcoming Grammys-hosting gig. In the interview, Noah looks directly at the camera and very slowly, deliberately says: “Gayle King has an ability to pop up everywhere in the world where a thing is happening, interview the people that it is happening with, have a full understanding of what’s going on, and then somehow still be back here at this show the next morning…”. That seems rather pointed, given what all I believe was going on. There are other explanations, sure…but I read that as Noah’s attempt to make clear to suspicious viewers (including me) that Gayle King is aware of the whole wild scheme involving secret messages for me (and potentially more). Worth noting: in that interview, King also excitedly reminds Trevor that she’ll be there at the Grammys, too (which she apparently was, based on press coverage, as a central figure in CBS’ planned coverage of the event)—which is odd…given that just two days prior to this interview with Trevor Noah, King did another Grammys-related interview, during which she clearly stated that she’d be watching from home. What changed? (Again, yes, there are reasonable explanations. Still, I wonder.)
Willie Geist, at TODAY/NBC. Willie Geist at NBC also seems to have been an insider from the early days. I sort of suspected this last year, after a particular video aired, but I didn’t realize quite how early he’d apparently been looped in. My suspicion here emerged initially from the interview he did with John Oliver, which aired February 18th, for the Sunday Sitdown, a segment of the TODAY show. In my book, I go into detail about that eight-minute interview video, covering a whole slew of elements from this video that seemed to track with my adventures. However, I didn’t really realize at the time that the interview had been recorded weeks prior, on January 24th, which gives us an approximate timeline for Geist’s inclusion. We can make that guess because a clip was immediately circulated on the 24th, of John Oliver apparently finding out the news about Stewart’s return during the taping. Worth noting, there’s also an extended fifty-five minute version of the interview that aired as Willie Geist’s Sunday Morning Sitdown podcast, which was actually plugged at the end of the main video I linked above, but which (for some reason) I didn’t follow up on and listen to at the time. However, having listened to it, there were a few additional elements that seemed applicable to my adventure. For instance:
Oliver explains that it’s usually a six-week process to produce an episode, including legal review. Oliver also says that he knows what they’re doing for most of the first few episodes, but wasn’t quite sure at that point what they were doing for the season premiere. That’s a little odd, and it would fit with a production timeline that involves checking with lawyers to make sure that the Clarence Thomas offer was, in fact, legal.
Oliver makes a reference to potentially not being able to “give the precious up,” which is a concept/reference I made multiple times during my conversation with Josh and Tamara.
Quite late in the episode, there’s a strange exchange that involves John Oliver apparently having prophetic powers while watching a Liverpool match. They use phrases like “unless you had a premonition…” and “you saw that coming!” and the whole thing seems implausible for a real conversation, if they were indeed watching a live match. This part of the conversation would track with my extensive discussions on the train of the nature of prophecy, and of the feeling of being able to see the future. Even though, to be clear, I don’t have supernatural powers, that was a topic of conversation, including as a literary metaphor for understanding the feeling of inspiration, as my book covers at length.
Anyway, I’m sure there’s a lot more that I got wrong, or simply missed at the time, and no doubt I’ll come back to these topics and make more extensive stand-alone posts. I just wanted to get these out there into the world, since they’re on my mind. Before I expand too much on these, however, I probably need to go back in and flesh out my whole story about Jon Stewart’s dog.
Peacefully,
Chip.
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.