Every morning I kiss my GF and tell her to run away for several hours because I am going to dive head first into the septic tank and fish around for chunks of gold which I will then place into a list of COVID stories. I am a sensitive man. I may not seem like this affects me, but when every day there’s a 9/11 of deaths and illnesses and suffering, it hurts me because, these are people and I love people.
Who cares if you have a pre-existing condition? I am a relatively healthy man but if I did from the Rona they will say oh he had high blood pressure. As if I ordered it off Amazon too many times. If my GF dies they will say oh but she had the diabetes. As if she begged for it. These were both conditions nature delivered to us which we take meds for and try to eat in healthy ways. Then this hidden killer as I call it gets you in the middle of the night and yr gone.
So delving into that pit of news every day is emotional for me but it’s important to the website I work for because it brings eyeballs and if there’s one thing you know about me it’s that I have been figuring out how to get eyeballs to web sites since 591 Haight Street in 1994.
I try to do it in a sensible, informative, respectful way. The other ways may be effective to, but I like the straight and narrow path.
The problem with that dive into the muck is I am a terror to deal with for hours afterwards. Here it is 5 hours later and I am still a mess, in part, because the failing NYTimes in a link on this list below, says that by next month we will see 3k deaths every day. That’s more than a 9/11 a day. People alive and flipping the TV will not see the fourth of July. I have a thick skin for many things but not that.
Usually after I make that list I lay down for a few minutes or I take a nap or I have a shower. Today I had to take a meeting. I don’t like meetings. In my world all meetings should not only be emails, but they should be Tweets.
The only exception to that is if it is a motivational meeting where the boss goes around and praises everyone individually and we all clap for everyone. I ran LAist for a little while and we never had one meeting. We had drink fests once a month, BBQs at my place and sometimes work would come up, but never meetings.
Am I weird. Very. Should I expect that the world would act like I do? Nope.
But because I am weird I get uptight a lot. Nowadays more than ever. In part because I feel like at 53 years old I should be given the benefit of the doubt that I have not only been around the block, but I have been around This block and I etched my name in the old oak tree.
Because of that I never want any one to ever say no to me. An insane request. It’s a Trumpian come-from. Obama would never say that. He wouldn’t even think it. Obama would never say, I went to Harvard. I got Michelle to marry me. I got white people to vote for me. Are you crazy to disagree with me about anything?
But I am not Obama. Hell, I lost to Larry freaking Speer. By only one vote, but I lost. And I am glad I lost because I didnt wanna run that ship, I wanted to write. And I am writing now. And it’s great to write every day. It’s great.
It’s great.