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After I read this beautiful post by Chris Grant about his cat and his new son, I had a realization about my own recent dealings with new sons and, to put it bluntly, dead cats.

After my mom got sick, she was unable to work at her job. A job she loved and worked hard to educate herself to make sure she did it well. So she was stuck at home, and most of the sadness from not being able to work was offset rather quickly by the attention of our two cats.

We had already had Harry and Mariah for a few years at the point, but when my mom was forced to stay home, the three of them became inseparable. They would follow her into the bathroom, they would sleep next to her in bed, and they would even politely sit on the bathroom sink while my mom took a bath. So when my mom had a stroke and we weren't able to take care of her at home any more, the cats sort of became overlooked.

Of course we still fed them and cleaned their litter box, but they no longer had the near 24/7 attention that my mom provided them. They both began to lose weight and become increasingly lethargic.

It stayed that way for a few years until my wife and I got our place and we took the cats in. My wifes job provided her a lot of time at home, where she gave the cats at least a portion of the attention they so desperately missed.

We were our own little crew for a few years. They even seemed to take the move and subsequent introduction of a new kitten in stride. Harry passed just a few years later but Mariah stuck around a bit longer.

When my son was born, Mariah was still around. She was curious, but she kept her distance. She didn't seem to mind the new guy as long we gave her food, and made a point of giving her snuggles. She was sweet, if only for my wife, my brother and I. Her deterioration came fast, it was only a few weeks between the signs that she might not be well and the decision to put her down.

It was a difficult decision to make. One that oddly mirrored our decision just 7 years prior to put my mom in hospice. The thing about Chris' post that struck me, was the photo of the cat and his son. They were only around each other for a few weeks.

Even though Mariah has been gone now for over a year, I still think about her a lot. I realized some time ago that the thought of Mariah was inextricably linked to the thought of my mom. Thats how close their bond was. And it wasn't until I read Chris' post that I realized: My mom never got to meet her grandson, but the small part of her that lived on in the form of Mariah did. And that made me happy that in some small, cosmic way, my mom got to meet him.

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We spent most of Sunday at my Brother and Sister-in-laws house hanging out with their new daughter. This was maybe the 4th or 5th time my son has been in the presence of his cousin, and each time he warms up just a bit more to her.

My son is generally very concerned with how things are going. His most recent turn of phrase is, "Hey Daddy, how you doing?". Yesterday while my sister-in-law was holding her daughter, she was being a bit fussy. So my son decided she must be thirsty and offered her some of his water. My sister-in-law replied, "Oh thank you honey, but she doesn't drink water, she only drinks milk."

This is when my son had the gumption to put down his water bottle, walk over to the fridge, and in his toddler speak start to blurt out: "Open open milk milk, get milk. open. milk. Mia (*his shorthand for my niece's name)" He stood in front of the fridge asking one of us to get milk, so that he could give it to his cousin.

I'm having trouble ranking where on the spectrum this places in regard to adorablness but it has to be pretty high up there right?

These little moment of sweetness are the ones I'd like to remember, and not the waking up three times in the middle of the night and having to lay down in his room next to his crib. Those times are dumb.

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Fabulous Muscles

I've loved the song "Fabulous Muscles" by Xiu Xiu for a long time. But I never really knew why. I couldn't ever parse exactly what the words meant.

This weekend, while waiting in the car to pick up my wife I wanted to listen to some music. Having recently been laid off, I cancelled my Spotify Premium account, I had to resort to listening to non-streaming music, which seemed foreign enough to be damn right alien to me. One of the 10 songs I had with me at the time was Fabulous Muscles.

So I that there. Alone in a car, in the middle of the Chicago. Just a mile or two down the road from where I worked up until last friday.

As the song filtered through my ears and into my noggin, a new light was shed on the lyrics I hadn't ever noticed before. The intent of the song became clear: love can be self destructive. But not just any kind of love. A specific kind of love. Love that isn't mutual. This is not the love that I share with my wife or my family. This is that rare love that probably happens more than it should, the kind of love that was de rigeur in high school (and most of college, for me at least.)

What is love like when its not equal on both sides? Its fucking awful. I spent a lot of my younger days torturing myself, wondering why the girl I "loved" didn't love me back. But at least in that case it was just me being a dumb baby. It wasn't as destructive as it is in Fabulous Muscles. The person whose point of view is represented by this song isn't just fawning from a distance, they are being manipulated and used by their object of affection.

Why did this interpretation suddenly dawn on me? Because I spent the better part of the last 5 years convincing myself that my job was what I was destined to do. Despite the million or so reasons that specific place gave me to not love it. I still did. So as sad as it is to not have a job, a steady income, or health insurance. I at least feel pretty good that I'm not in a self-destructive relationship anymore.

This doesn't even necessarily mean its any one persons fault but my own. I couldn't point to one person at my previous place of employment and say "It was them, they ruined it for me." Its a lot more nuanced than that. My personal outlook didn't fit with the outlook of the company. It was just the right time for me to move on, and as much as I would have liked to have left on my own terms, at least I can start growing now, and focusing on the things that actually matter.

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Last night I experienced my first true moment of pure joy in I'm not sure how long. I was so happy in fact that I nearly had to pull over my car, because I could see the road through the tears.

What brought on this elation? I've been in therapy now going on 4 months. Its been incredibly helpful in managing the behaviors of mine that lead to depression. The last 2 weeks have seen a handful of actions taken by myself that I never would have done 6 months ago.

So when I discussed them with my therapist, and she asked "Did that make you feel good?". The thought hadn't even occurred to me. They didn't just make me feel good, they made me feel great. So as the session went on, I noticed my mood heightening, I began to talk very excitedly about the future.

When I left I was on top of the world. So I sat in my car and just all of a sudden it was like a dam burst. All of the emotion and happiness I willingly suppressed over the last few months came rushing out of me.

My depression was building this giant concrete wall around me. It served to protect me from thing I perceived as harmful. Unfortunately that also meant that this rigid structure often blocked things that weren't in anyway harmful, but instead were supposed to make me FEEL something.

So all of this happy had just been building up. And there's been a lot. The last year as been one of the most incredible of my life, even despite my depression ramping up considerably.

You spend so long covered by this black cloud, you eventually get used to it. You being to suspect and accept that you'll never be rid of it. So you get in a rut and it just keeps digging you further and further into the ground. But eventually, if you work at, you do get to see the sunshine. And let me tell you, its fucking great.

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The hardest thing to manage about depression is that it isn't any one thing that makes you feel this way. Its the result of hundreds, if not thousands, ingrained brain processes. To deal with them you need to identify a handful, then actively subvert them either by proactively thinking the opposite or sometimes just talking it out.

So for every victory, there is the inevitable fail. Not failure necessarily, but just not a win. So you might deal with one thing, and feel pretty solid about it, only to have this other thing pop up and take its place in your rolodex of shit that is making you feel bad this week.

My depression is so thoroughly a part of me that the mere act of not feeling bad all the time is a slight miracle. But that also means that for every hole you dig to unearth some forgotten concept or social cue, depression is waiting right behind you fill that hole right back up. 

Its almost always how I internalize conflict or action outside of me. Its never really any one person or thing doing and one thing to me. Its the "we bought you lunch"/"but I didn't want that." scenario.

I guess you just have to live day to day and celebrate the victories and try not to focus so much on the failures, because Jesus Christ we know you're good at that so maybe focus on something else every once in a while?

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On The Eve of The First Year

One year ago this evening my wife began labor. It lasted over 12 hours. While I remember snatches of it, its hard for me to recall the event as a whole. I mostly remember my wife walking up and down the stairs while I held her hand, getting in and out of the tub while I held her hand, and laying on the couch while I held her hand. It's hard to say it was a pleasant evening (especially for my wife), but as far as labors go, it was particularly straight forward.

Around 4 a.m. on July 23, we knew it was time to make our way to the hospital. I sat in the backseat, ready to be the delivering physician in our makeshift labor room if need be, while our doula drove, ever so cautiously. She was far enough along at that point that by the time we checked in and got ourselves situated, she was ready to push. At 6 a.m. our son was born: no interventions, no epidural. It was exactly what we wanted.

This is where my memory kicks into vivid, full color. Like I had just landed in Oz, a metaphor made all the more appropriate by our weariness from the lack of sleep. I recall the little things like the shape of my sons oblong head, or his tiny, high pitched wail that sounded exactly like the creak on our closet door at home. He was the calmest thing I had ever seen. He complained of course, as babies will do, but he didn't seem to mind being held by his mom or dad, or even being measured and weighed.

My dad was at the hospital all day, waiting breathlessly for his first chance to see his grandson. Later that evening we were joined by the rest of our family, everyone ooed and awwed at this little guy like he was made of gold. So precious and so valuable. 

Needless to say, it was one of the happiest moments of my life. One I was glad I could share with the woman I love, and our new baby boy. He's going to be one tomorrow. And as happy I was on that day one year ago, he's given me 100 even more happy moments since.

Happy Birthday sweetie, you're the best.

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Education (ramble, ramble, ramble...)

I'm more terrified of my son not knowing what drugs are or what they do than I am of him trying them. Eventually. Hopefully not anytime soon considering he's still a toddler.

While I don't recall my parents directly telling me "Hey, Don't do drugs." I do recall my Dad being very honest about his past drug use and how they made him feel. As far as I know my mom was never a drug user (just cigarettes), but she was aware of the simple fact that kids will be kids and they will do plenty of things of that their parents do not want them to do.

I bring this up because, to me, education is a priority. I'd rather my son know as much as he can, and let him make his own informed decisions from there. Granted, theres plenty of decisions that will be made for him: where he lives, what color his skin is, who is parents are, etc. But as far as the major milestones along the path to maturity (a path that I'm finding more and more doesn't actually end, it just gets easier to navigate.)

It's always been so disturbing to me that the reaction of conservatives has always been to ban or limited the freedoms of the things they are afraid of. Abortion, drugs, immigrants, gays, etc. 

My parents certainly never told me: "If you get someone pregnant, DON'T LET THEM GET AN ABORTION!" But they did instill me with a healthy knowledge of the responsibility one wields with their naughty bits. There are consequences, and some consequences take 9 months to manifest and eventually cause you to find human shit under your finger nails.

I took the same approach to my wifes pregnancy. It was something I just didn't know a lot about. And while I didn't read everything, I read a lot, watched a lot of videos and asked a lot of questions. So when the time came, I can't say I was prepared, but I had at least a pretty good idea of how it was going to go down (and how to react should anything go wrong.)

This rambling post is all to say that I'm glad my parents taught me that learning is the best path, and its something that I hope to pass on to my son, so hopefully the world seems a bit less scary. Because the only thing thats actually scary about the dark, is not knowing whats out there.

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Yeezy

I would never claim to know exactly what anyone else is going through. There are far too many varied people and experiences, I couldn't possibly know everything. But thats the root of empathy isn't it? Understanding not only that you couldn't possibly understand everything, and being compassionate none-the-less.

One thing no one tells you when you become a dad is how drastically your worldview shifts. They sort of joke about it or beat around the bush, but the ultimate ramifications of this shift aren't ever fully discussed, at least  nowhere I've seen. Perhaps it manifests itself differently for everyone, so its hard to pin down.

You become a much less important person in your own life. "But being selfless is a good thing." Yea I suppose it is, but being selfless doesn't me you have to entirely stop caring about yourself. This is a thought I'm having trouble grasping and putting into action.

The result of which is me finally going back to a therapist after over 5 years. I'm not afraid to admit that, everyone needs some help getting along every once in awhile, and I can't expect my wife and family to shoulder that burden as well. It's perfectly reasonable for someone who is having trouble understanding their new place in the universe to seek a little advice.

So now we finally come to what sparked the idea behind this post: this article about Kanye West's new singles "New Slaves" and "Black Skinhead". To summarize, a lot of people are suddenly struck by the sudden angry/political bent of Kanye Wests latest songs, all while entirely ignoring the consistent angry/sad/political narrative he's had for the whole of his popular music career.

The reason I feel its a relevant discussion to me, and a lot of people, is that Kanye is about to be a dad. Impending dadness can have a lot of odd effects on people. The article mentions that "New Slaves" and "Black Skinhead" can only have been released now because Kanye West is at the apex of his career, he is the most visible right now that he will likely ever be, its an all too perfect time to finally get his point out there. An additional interpretation: Kanye West doesn't want to bring his child into a world in which he hasn't gotten his point fully across. A world that he feels has wronged him, and many people.

So he's baring his soul and being brutally honest at a time when he is likely the most vulnerable he's ever been. If that isn't compelling as hell, then what the hell else do you want from the man?

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Why I donate to Maximum Fun (and you should to)

I do my best to spend as little time as possible on things that don't make me happy. Not because I'm attempting to futilely block it out, but because I realize those things are not worth my time. I try to come at everything as sincere as possible.

I would much rather hang out with my wife and child, or listen to some really great podcasts than watch some pedantic TV show or listen to some silly nonsense with the intent of ridiculing it in the future. Ironic detachment gets you nothing but emptiness, its the fast-food of modern pop-cultural relationships. You may feel full after watching the Real Housewives of Orange County, but your brain and heart are malnourished.

So I donate to Maximum Fun because Jesse Thorn and his group of hilarious podcast brothers and sisters because they make me feel great.  Plain and simple. There is nothing pedantic, insincere or fake about any of the Maximum Fun podcasts. And I think it's worth ponying up a bit of scratch to guarantee that something like this can continue to exist.

Donate here, and spread the sincerity. 

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You Are Not A Unique Snowflake

One of the most difficult things I've had to deal with since becoming a parent is the realization that I am not the most important person in the world. I think I'm doing a better job with it than most because as someone who has suffered from depression, my self worth was already used to plenty of beatings. But I still wasn't quite prepared for the sudden shock of the ice bath that is having a kid.

Everything that you thought made up your personality: your taste in music, movies, your hobbies, what you like to eat, drink, do on weekends. All of it? Doesn't fucking matter anymore. You know why? Because you now have a singular focus. Your child is the prism through which the light of your personality must pass through to become the public (and private) YOU.

So it's Saturday night, what do you like doing on Saturday nights? Going to a show? Going out to dinner? Seeing friends? You will be shocked at how fast your priorities will make u-turn towards more homey hobbies like laundry, sleep, and making sure you're eating food.

Most nights I'd much rather just sit next to my wife while the baby falls asleep in one of our arms than worry about bumping up my K/D ratio in Call of Duty. Its not because I don't want to do those things, because I do, and I still get to every once in a while. Its just that those things are nowhere near the top of the priority list anymore.

When I met my wife, I embraced the idea of having to care for another person. I am not living my own life anymore, I was living the life that Maggie and I had, and now the life that my family has.

Do I still have a personality beyond "That guy with the baby", I'd like to think so. I'd also like to think that its pretty similar to my pre-baby personality. But now I give even less fucks about stuff than I used to because if it doesn't have anything to do with my kid, who cares?

This is both a good and bad thing. Good because you have less time to think about how dumb you are, or how many times you messed things up  (which is a series of thoughts most depressos should be familiar with) and bad because you also have less time for maintaining friendships. Hopefully though, your friends are of the rad variety and are as excited that you're a parent as you are. If not? Fuck 'em.

All of this boils down to the simple notion that if you aren't willing to give up the fact that you are no longer the center of the universe, then you probably shouldn't have kids. Sorry. But if the idea of relieving yourself of the burden that comes with constantly obsessing over yourself and your life, then get ready because that won't even be an option anymore.

It's actually freeing in a way and I love the hell out of it. So far anyways.

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Great story by the wonderful games writer Phil Kollar, congrats Phil.

Here’s a story about me that you probably don’t know.

When I got the news: It was the summer before I turned 18, and I was in a trailer at the county fair. My on-again, off-again high school girlfriend did horse shows at the fair, but she had finished for the day. We were most assuredly on...

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A good way to describe depression is still feeling incredibly sad without any outward reason to. Sometimes its just as Paul Gilmartin describes it, a gray blanket.

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The 5 Best Things for 02.16.2013

Lunch with Tom and Mary! 

The babies first time in a high chair at a restaurant.

Getting to see Uncle Ben, Auntie Alex and Grandpa.

Going out to dinner with Uncle Ben and Auntie Alex.

Despite us not getting home until 10:30, my son fell asleep in the crib for the first time without us rocking him to sleep and without a pacifier. He's a champ.

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I have an incredibly unhealthy relationship with food

I lamented to my wife today that eating food and exercising were complete opposite feelings for me.But not necessarily the way one would think.

I spent most of my day thinking about what I am going to eat next. I'm not joking when I say that. I probably think about food more than almost anything else. So when I finally do eat, no matter what it is, It feels incredible. Whether its a healthy salad or even an infectiously delicious cupcake, I feel the same elation. The same momentary fleeting bliss, because I had been damn near obsessing about whatever that food item is from between the last time I ate and when this finally went down my gullet.

As I said, the moment is fleeting. Like a goldfish, my food memory only last a short time. As soon as I'm done, its on to the next one. This isn't between meals, or even between snacks. But sometimes between bites. I'm constantly looking forward to the next thing, only to be immediately disappointed and looking once more.

Some would define that as an addiction, and yes I suppose I would to.

Exercise on the other hand is the last thing I would ever want to do 100% of the time. Why would I go run or do sit-ups when I could just drink this Coke or eat this pretzel instead? The gulf between what my active mind wants me to do and what my logical mind knows I should do couldn't be larger.

You can even tell by how many words in this post are devoted to food, and how many are devoted to exercise. I can't possibly think about it less.

So when my wife asks, "Did you work out yet?" or "Are you going to work out?" she might as well have asked "Did you run your head over with an ATV yet?" because there is no way I was even considering it up until that moment.

Its worth noting the distinction between my active mind and my logical mind. I'm not dumb, I know I should work out and not eat total garbage food, but my active mind is pretty good at convincing my logical mind to shut the fuck up.

So when I do actually get up the gumption to work out, its usually decided upon with in the few minutes before I actually do it. I've tried to plan to work out, it never works. I could find infinite excuses (none of them good ones) before I ever did it.

I'm writing this out mostly for myself, so I can see how completely obnoxious my own mind is. I'm actively sabotaging my own well being. It was fine to do this I suppose when I had no one else to worry about but myself, but now? I have a wife and a child. I owe it to them to not be a food asshole.

I could write even more about this, but I'll stop here for now. Because it is going to be a long hard road to not being a giant fat ass.

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The 5 Best Things for 02.15.2013

Stayed home from work

Got to play with my son ALL DAY. I looked after him while my wife got some work done.

I'm normally lucky if I get to feed my son solid food once a day, but I got to feed him both times today, and its always a lot of fun.

My wife made an incredible African sweet potato stew for dinner.

A request through my bank to defer payment on my credit card went through so now I can put that money towards other cards. Ideally, I will have 75% of my debt paid off by years end.

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The 5 Best Things for 02.14.2013

Getting to work early

Leaving work early

Getting home early

Delicious chinese food with the family

The incredible card with the heart shaped pizza on it that my son gave me (he even "signed" his name)

BONUS BEST THING:

My wife for being THE BEST

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The 5 Best Things for 02.13.2013

Realizing I owe less one of my credit cards that I previously though

Setting in motion the first major push to start paying down my debt

The look on my sons face when I got home from work. I wish I could describe what this made me feel like, but its easily the BEST part of my day.

Chilling out and watching Conan with my wife after a long day

Falling asleep while watching Dawsons Creek next to my wife.