Is this the end?

Our world is burning—who gives a damn if I learn to play Wonderwall?

I have not posted since May 22, because that post really took a lot out of me. I have also had some pretty major health changes in my life in the few weeks—and also, the damned country is burning.

In case you were wondering, I am 100%:

1. Black Lives Matter

2. A prison abolitionist

3. A police abolitionist

4. Not about to tell black folks how to protest correctly

If you have a problem with any of this, you can unsubscribe from this newsletter today. We ain’t friends, you and I.

Fix your hearts or die.

Yep.

The rest of y’all, thanks for indulging in my venting of political spleen. Let’s talk about this newsletter. I have been plugging away at these challenges in fits and starts for eight months. I am currently re-writing a dusty old script that Jennifer and I wrote many years ago in hopes to turn it into a web series. It is about a couple who are kind of in the doldrums sexually and romantically who try to spice things up with (the worst) tips from Cosmopolitan magazine. Based on the amazing article, "Cosmo’s 44 Most Ridiculous Sex Tips" by Ben Reininga for the now defunct nerve dot com, I cannot find an archive of it, but maybe y’all will have better luck. These tips are not just bad, they are clearly trolling their readership into having very awkward sex.

An actual sex tip from Cosmo.

I do think that this piece, with a little tweaking and rewriting, could be a delightful little web series if it was set during quarantine. For eight years this script has been sitting on the hard drive and cloud, waiting for the right time to be made—and that time is now. I am very excited to rewrite and reconceive this project. That said, I am really curious, even skeptical, about how it can be produced in a post-COVID world. How is anything going to be produced until after there is a vaccine or effective antiviral treatment for Coronavirus? What kind of world are we even going to be living in if this fascist bullshit keeps up? I am not willing to put myself and others in harm’s way to make a web series about middle class folks having mild marital troubles. Even if it is funny.

The only safe way to shoot this is to have actors that already live together play the couple, while a masked and socially distanced crew shoots the series. They would all need to quarantine as a pod staying in a hotel or guest house, to take their temperatures before coming on to set, and then to quarantine for two weeks after the show wraps. There is no bloody way I would be able to pull this off financially, much less logistically. Therefore,

As of today I am suspending indefinitely challenge number nine:

9. Produce and distribute a completed web series.

I just don’t see how this goal can be safely completed by October 2, and I will lose no sleep over cancelling it for now. All other goals are still a ‘go’. Except for the ones I’ve already scrubbed that I have forgotten about. (I have attention problems.)

Perhaps “hiatus” is a better term.

There is a larger issue here; does a somewhat silly blog like mine even have a right to exist now? Am I just fiddling (playing guitar) while the world burns around us? Is a lifestyle blog about this (hopefully) loveable schmo trying to make some changes in his life worthy of anyone’s time? Especially when the vast majority of the posts are about how he is failing, quitting, or otherwise fucking up the admittedly low-stakes challenges. I truly don’t know.

I do think that I do offer something that not every other blogger does, and that is an honest portrayal of how someone with mental illness deals with it every day. How a backsliding ne’er-do-well makes halting and sporadic progress at his own peculiar pace. I never candy coat it for y’all. It’s just me fumbling along toward my goals and telling you what I see on the road I’m taking. In our success-driven capitalistic world, I’m just trying to be a little less of a fuckup and to write some nice posts for the nice people.

This has been the theme of my life, and of this blog.

Is it enough? Is it enough to write unflinchingly of your own journey to self-love and acceptance, disguised as a wannabe Tim Ferris-style lifestyle and achievement blog? Is it fair to let this newsletter have such extreme mission drift?

I sincerely don’t know the answer, but I’m going to keep writing and posting until no one else is reading.

This is not the only post I am writing this week—I promise. I do have some stuff to write that only relates to the challenges and achieving goals. No hard-left politics or deep dives into mental health during a pandemic. Thank you for indulging me.

For those that are interested, here are the health changes I have recently made:

1. I have had two psych meds adjustments, and they seem to be working well.

2. I am on a new diabetes medication—in March my A1C had skyrocketed since the last blood work I had in 2019. My doctor put me on a more powerful drug in hopes that we can reverse this trend. There was talk of insulin if the numbers don’t improve, which frankly terrifies me. I started monitoring my blood sugar every morning, and I have noticed that the numbers are going down since starting this medication.

3. I am on a new blood pressure medication. My previously fairly well-controlled hypertension had gotten dangerously high and was impacting my daily life with having cloudy head, headaches, or both, and a general feeling of unease and discomfort. I have also started monitoring my blood pressure, and I have had a drop in my blood pressure numbers since starting this new medication.

4. I have started an eating plan to watch my carbohydrate intake. Both my blood pressure and blood sugar numbers have really started to go down—much faster than they did with medications alone. The lymphedema in my legs and feet is noticeably improved. My wedding ring is no longer digging into my finger, because my hands are significantly less swollen.

I swore to myself that I would not go on any sort of a diet this year. It was, in fact, my only New Year’s resolution. There is a part of me that feels like I am yet again walking back the promises I made to myself. But, I made that resolution in order to practice self love. To declare a year long truce in the decades long war with my body. To love this big, imperfect, smelly mess of a thing I drag around.

If changing my diet up, under doctor’s orders, will help me be healthier and potentially live longer, than I damned well better do it. I’m not watching the scale; just the numbers, so I should not be the nervous wreck that I am while dieting, and thus far that’s been the case. I still feel conflicted about this, but I have to face facts—I am diabetic—everything counts now, and I must be vigilant. I am having a bit of discomfort now to avoid a lot of pain later, and I’ll be damned if that is not anathema to my whole way of living, epicurean, self-indulgent, sensualist that I am. But I am also a rational creature who can see that my alternatives are; to ignore what I eat and have terrible health outcomes or to keep a single macronutrient under a certain level and thrive. That ain’t no kind of a choice.

Thank you, as always, for reading.

Drop me a line: jeremydnichols@gmail.com

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