Whenever you hear me typing

Fam, I'm struggling.

I mean, we all are, of course. We're hanging on by a thread, flailing in the looming face of the unknown. I talked about this a couple weeks ago, how weird it is that we're still going about our lives as normally as possible, because what else can we do?

As mentioned, to relieve the constant dread (though it doesn't always help) I've been trying to focus on creative endeavors. Kill by Kill has recorded episodes recently on The Black Phone, It: Chapter 2, and Alien: Earth. My sister-in-law gave birth to a beautiful little girl in August, so I cross-stitched a sampler for her nursery. Mostly, along with editing my manuscript, I've been writing a lot.

This is good, of course. Certainly better than lying in my bed frozen in despair while reading a New York Times op-ed about why Stephen Miller threatening public executions of Trump's enemies is bad for the Democrats. I went to the Brooklyn Book Festival for the first time since before the pandemic, and found it wildly inspiring. I have several ideas (and copious notes) for projects once I finish my current manuscript.

I just don't know what to do with any of it. It feels futile.

I don't know what to do with this newsletter. I started it with the idea of writing about movies and television shows I watch, but now wonder if there's anything new I can say. I saw One Battle After Another, which was fucking incredible, but I also don't know that there's anything I can say about how perfectly it encapsulates current events (despite being based on a book written in the 80s about 60s revolutionaries) that writers more erudite than me have already said. Well, wait, here's something: Paul Thomas Anderson naming his primary antagonist Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw might seem silly, but maybe not after Whiskey Pete Hegseth's speech about how Trump's new and improved military is doing away with those faggoty rules of engagement, and allowing drill instructors to physically abuse their recruits. Sean Penn is terrifyingly good as Lockjaw, right down to the weird thing he does with his mouth whenever he's nervous. I can't tell him apart from the real people.

The thing I wrote on "Home" a while back did well, do I want to focus on that? I can't seem to keep the tone I want to go with here straight: it's emotionally exhausting to recount how bad everything is, but at the same time it feels weirdly inappropriate to write about stupid shit no one really cares about, and giving in to the tiresome discourse. I don't know what I want to write about. Everything. And nothing. God, sometimes I wish life was too boring to write about.

I don't know. That's all I can say about anything these days: I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. Most useless fucking answer I can think of, but it's all I have, and I'm not lying, I really don't know, and neither do you, and neither does that guy on Twitter or Bluesky, even though he desperately wants you to think he does.

Does just doing whatever I want seem flippant, privileged, especially when it's very much to distract myself from the hellscape we're all barely getting through right now? Do I deserve to distract myself? Should I be contributing to the distractions? Again, I don't know.

What would you guys like to see? What can I do for you? How are you doing?