Note: I make generous and unabashed use of the word “crazy” in this essay, in part because it describes so well what my brain feels like on the really bad days. Also, I have extensive and complicated thoughts about how we decide which words should and shouldn’t be used to talk about mental health which I won’t go into here.

Today, I unlocked a major adulting accomplishment. After at least three years of anxiously procrastinating and saying that I’m going to do it, really really really this time, I made an appointment with a psychiatrist. In 2018 and 2019, I had a therapist, but I haven’t been with anyone who could really monitor my antidepressants and change them for at least 10 years. I don’t just want to deal with my ever-present depression; I’ve become more and more certain that my wandering, unfocused brain is at least in part because of ADHD. I want to make that official and see what can be done about it.

I get my joy and hope where I can, these days. It’s hard with Trump parading around the White House as everyone pretends that he’s President. Hannah Arendt put her finger on something important when she coined the phrase “The Banality of evil,” in Eichmann in Jerusalem. Trump shows us something else, though: The pettiness of evil. He’s far too flamboyant to be banal; most of the time, he seems to be trying to act out a classic supervillain who cackles and boasts to the hero about his evil plans. But everything Trump says or does is driven by a pettiness of mind, spirit, and imagination that you just don’t get from Doctor Doom or a Bond villain.

Continue reading “Fighting Fascism with Daleks, Posterboard, and Corgis” →

I have really been unsure about how to introduce my new blog at The Orbit. The honor of it is pretty damn overwhelming. A good chunk of the writers here are people that I’ve been reading and admiring for a long time, and the ones that are new to me seem to be every bit as incredible. There is, to put it bluntly, a fuckload of brain power and integrity here.

Even at the best of times, I’m never really good at introducing myself in writing. Whenever an editor asks me to furnish them with an author bio, I kind of freeze up; after writing 2,000 to 4,000 of intensely researched and proofread prose, those three lines about me are always the hardest to write.

Continue reading “An Introduction of Sorts: 100 Facts About Me (Part 1)” →