Writing is just a Gambler’s Fallacy (+ News)

I’m gonna do one of those things I dislike, which is writing about writing. It always feels…I don’t know, almost masturbatory in a way, even if it’s self-deprecating. Like in movies or shows, or any of Stephen King’s short fiction where the protagonist is a writer, it strikes me as so obvious that I’m just consuming somebody else’s self-insert fantasy.

Which, I mean, what else am I subjecting your potential eyeballs to with this rant, really?

My point is that rejection letters are a part of this game. They go along with that saying of how success is 1% reward and 99% work that others don’t see. Speaking of 1%, actually, a lot of places I submit work to have an average acceptance rate of 1% or less. I take that to mean that I can expect 99 rejections for every pickup I get, or to put it another way, I have to try 100 times for each success I can expect. Now, I’ve beaten the odds on that a fair bit, but rejections start to get a little brutal when they pile up without a win somewhere in the mix.

But there are things that keep me at the table.

Like when a rejection is personalized. Most are form letters, templates, fine. But when one is personalized to say “Hey Evan, I liked your story. Here’s what it did well, here’s what missed, and we almost accepted it, but have to pass this time. I know it would have been a good pay day with great distribution and you were this close, but nah. Better luck next time. Kisses.”

Boof. Ouch. I think back to Loki’s words in the first Avengers movie, talking to Nick Fury: “It burns you, doesn’t it? To have come so close, but then be reminded of what real power is?” I don’t know what “real power” is in this analogy, but shit, yes, ouch.

That said, my brain can’t help but focus on the huge other side to all that: So…you’re sayin’ there’s a chance?

The truth is that there are a million reasons why work can get rejected. Loosely paraphrasing an essay I read from an outlet, Dream Forge, on the subject: Your story could have been funny and a good fit, but the editor who read it just didn’t feel like funny that day. Could have been the slush reader who happened across your story in the pile just went through a break up and took it out on you. Your story about kickass ninja vampires on the moon could actually be a perfect fit, but it just so happened that the story just before yours on the stack was also about kickass ninja vampires on the moon, and they accepted that one because they saw it first.

So submitting fiction is a lot like playing the lottery, if you don’t have an agent or a hook-up (and maybe even then, I don’t know). And knowing that I got super close to a win makes it feel like I’m about to, you know, just like the logic that the steretypical gambler that uses to lose their house at a blackjack table.

And there’s also the rush to consider. Either when an acceptance comes through, or even just when a new prospect or idea surfaces. I get a lot of my news about available submission windows through newsletter services like Freedom With Writing and Authors Publish, and most times when I send out a bevvy of submissions, it’s like sending a bunch of soldiers out on a suicide mission. I know most of those aren’t coming back.

But you have to try.

And when a fresh wave of new submission opportunities pops up in my email, scanning through them to look for anything promising…ooo, the rush of potential is what keeps me addicted to trying. And in the background, I try to always have something cooking, some new grist for the mill.

And sometimes those come through.

My story, “Shoes for Little Sap” is coming out with Abyss & Apex Magazine on the 1^st. It’s cozy, quick, and has a special place with me, both being a former NYC Midnight piece of mine and something I read to my mom when she was in hospital some years back and got her to smile. (I remember thinking then and there that the story had served its purpose, and I’d be okay if it never again saw the light of day after that. Of course, pretty thrilled to have it be published, but still, you get my meaning.) So yeah, check it out! I’ll be bugging folks about it on here more between now and then, but mark your calendar anyway.

A Brief Discussion About JOMO

I’m not a hermit, I don’t play one on TV, but I do sometimes fantasize about being one.

Of course, when I say that, I’m sure I do mean “not a real hermit,” but a squishy kind. I fantasize about a cozy, far-away cabin, tucked away in the cradling arms of some distant mountain, where I could spend my days as I wished in pleasant solitude. Of course, in that daydream, that cabin also has central heating and WiFi.

But precisely what makes that a daydream is that that isn’t the real world. In the real world we have responsibilities, obligations, endure a constant barrage of attention-grabbing things and whatnot. In a world where we lead our lives in a seemingly increasingly faster and faster manner with so much going on, I’ve no doubt at least some of you have heard of the term FOMO: a Fear Of Missing Out.

If you don’t suffer from it yourself, I’m willing to bet you know someone who does. They always need the new thing on its release, or better yet they preorder it. They want to be a part of conversations they would/should otherwise pass by, and they anguish the thought of missing an event or announcement that’s got any degree of public interest. And sometimes, either feeling eroded by the anxiety of FOMO or being surrounded by those afflicted by it, it can feel like you’re on the outside.

Well, please allow me to enlighten you.

I’ve never really felt the pull of FOMO, but as I’ve gotten older (I’m 30 now, yeesh), I’ve it’s become even less so. I never would have thought to describe myself as a private person, but evidence builds more and more to the contrary. I love my friends, I love my family, I like going out and doing stuff – I do. But I also kind of love not. It makes me feel like a boring lump to say it, but dang, I enjoy quiet afternoons or evenings after work just spent at my desk, by myself in the kitchen, or on the couch. In the earlier paragraph where I described the cabin daydream as providing “pleasant solitude”, that was a careful word choice. Solitude, not isolation.

If this sounds like you at all, allow me to present to you the delightful cousin to FOMO-

JOMO: The Joy of Missing Out

Just as schadenfreude describes the tiny inner thrill at another’s pain, JOMO is the tiny inner thrill one might experience when plans get cancelled or postponed. Have dinner plans with a friend or for a beer after work with a colleague that fall through? Mmm, nice. Had plans to see a movie with your cousin but something came up and now you have the afternoon free? Cooool.

It doesn’t at all mean you didn’t want to do those things or that you dislike those activities or the people involved. You very much were happy to grab that beer, get that dinner, see that movie, socialize and all the rest, and for sure maybe there’s a pang of disappointment in there. Totally.

But that little breeze of freedom you feel now too? Aaaah, that shit’s JOMO.

So there, hopefully if you’ve felt the same way, or have wanted a way to express it but couldn’t quite find the way, now you have a word for it. And with words come power.

Go forth an enjoy life with the power of JOMO as you wish, you triumphant bastards.

The Meaning of Life has Four Legs

I’m willing to bet you read that and thought, “Dog. It’s a dog. He’s gonna say dog.”

Or maybe you’re more of a cat person. Or something weird and adorable like a capybara.

After announcing my blissful marriage a couple of weeks ago, I’d expected to follow that up with a travel blog-style round up of the adventures that were our honeymoon – which were awesome. But in the couple of weeks since, telling those stories to friends and family is all I have been freaking doing. And I have more of it ahead of me. Don’t get me wrong, I have loved recounting the tale and reliving it each time with the retellings; and in fact, that’s sort of our point here today. But I’m going to take a breath and enjoy talking/writing about something else for a second while I recharge.

In any case, with regard to all the above hypothetical answers I’m positing then taking upon myself to shoot down: No. You have a guess of your own? Give up?

…

It’s a table. The meaning of life is a table.

When I was in my early twenties, I was taking an English class, and as an icebreaker the professor had us pick a question for the rest of the class to answer. It was a good way to get a feel for personalities, both in the asking and in the answers that followed. Some were pretty creative, too, and others ran a bit of the usual gamut, one such being: “What is the meaning of life?”

Well’p, the young lady who’d gone and asked that had messed up, because I was a pretentious 20-something who’d done some “deep thinking” and had an answer for her. Now, I denigrate younger me a little, but I feel now still as I answered then: Life doesn’t have any inherent meaning, and the question itself assumes too much. It assumes there is a meaning to this life, it assumes there’s only a singular one, and it implies (at least to me) a bit of universality to it, like it’s a one-size-fits-all.

Now, ironically, around that same time I’d come across someone else’s definition of their meaning of life, which I’ve gone onto adopt as my own, and that is a table.

A table where folk sit together and swap stories – about their day, about crazy things they’ve done, confessions, adventures, complete fiction! – is the meaning of this life, in the best way. A table, laden with food, drink, cards, etc, shared with loved ones or new friends, is a place that brings together the things that matter most in this human experience. When I imagine that, I imagine a safe, warm place together with people who matter to me.

And the thing about stories like that is that the best ones come from experiences you gather from getting out there and living life. I have legitimately made decisions, gone and done adventurous, memorable things I might not have otherwise, and vastly more for the better than for the worse, off of the motivation that “this will be really cool to tell my friends at a dinner party.” With the prize of that story awaiting you, it can get you to go and live your freaking life, which is the whole point!

Tables are magical things. They represent togetherness, shared times, a motivation to go on adventures and a safe place to come back to when those adventures are had. And to counter the title, not every table needs to have four legs. Sometimes it’s a campfire, or the cab of a car during a road trip or move, or even a journal or postcard.

And I think I came just shy of a proper rant. So we done good today.

So yeah. Get out there, do stuff, try new things, surprise yourself, then tell people about it.

A Quick Thought on Spoon Theory

I’ve always sort of prided myself on maintaining patience as a virtue. Of course, that doesn’t mean I don’t look back and see times when my patience failed (good God, my teenage years), but on the whole I regard it as a strength of mine. But now, as I prepare to exit my twenties, a decade in which a freakin’ lot has happened, just…damn.

I feel like it used to be a lot easier to be a patient person.

Nowadays most of us have heard about Spoon Theory, and if you haven’t, here’s the gist: We all only have so much battery life to us, and that’s in regards to different kinds of energy – physical, mental, emotional, social, and otherwise. And as will happen to all of us, given enough time, those energies and stores of them wear out, wear a little low, and need to be replenished.

Spoon Theory, as far as I understand it, basically represents that energy pool for socializing as a handful of spoons, and any time you might hang out with somebody in a social setting, it costs you some spoons. Everybody has a different amount of spoons on them at any given time. Somebody might have a whole drawer full of spoons, while someone else might be all tapped out, and the whole point to the thought exercise is that sometimes people just don’t have spoons to give out. It’s okay to not have the energy for something sometimes.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be imagined with spoons, I think that’s just a funny, palatable way of imagining it. But lately, I’ve come to realize something based off of something we’ve all probably heard somewhere: Butter makes everything better.

Potatoes, pancakes, toast, corn, Slip n’ Slides – everything.

And I think the same applies here.

I’m finally reading The Lord of the Rings after a long while of, well, not, and while spoons are well and good, Bilbo’s quote to Gandalf before leaving the Shire articulates the feeling the best: “’Well-preserved indeed!’ he snorted. ‘Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread. That can’t be right. I need a change, or something.’”

See? Leave it to Tolkien and a simile involving butter to accurately articulate the feeling of needing respite and the toll that regular, daily adult life can exact on the person living it.

Count your blessings, of course, and realize the Good Old Days you might be living through in the moment, but allow yourself the mercy too of recognizing when you just feel like some thin-ass butter scraped across too much of the Goddamn Bread of Responsibility.

My First Hater (?)

I’m a nobody.

Not demeaning myself, either. The world’s just huge with a lot of people in it. But especially in internet terms, my little presence here is barely non-zero sum. But it is kind of cool to, on occasions when I feel the need to validate my existence through a search engine, google the title of one of my stories and – pop! – there it is with my name next to it.

Today was one of those days, but I found something new.

Now, I haven’t really written anything since about April. No major life events or distractions, I just straight up hit a wall, and after a pretty busy couple of months in the Spring, that silence has been kinda deafening. Normally, when I hit a block in the past, I’ll just try and hammer through it. I’ll sit down and just write a whole bunch of bullcrap with no direction or intention of it being any good ever, but just used to beat down the door of nothingness that was halting me.

This time, I decided to take a different tactic. I decided to take a break.

Revolutionary concept, maybe, but I made the choice to just chill out and take a break from writing for a minute, my story schedule be damned. But a look in the mirror told me that the burnout was very real, and a moment away to let the idea of my notepads and keyboard become fresh (and something that I wanted to do) again was a good move. Rather than beat my head against a wall, I would patiently take some time away and let inspiration come to me…

I posted recently about my one-sided rivalry with a successful author who probably couldn’t remember me if his life depended on it, and as a part of that shared an anecdote that I introduced with a complaint over not having any negativity in my writing life to harness for motivation.

Well’p, found some.

I googled an old story of mine that aired with the NoSleep Podcast a couple years ago, “The Bones of Lily Gordon”. It was a spiritual sequel to another, “The Scars of Eliza Gray”, that aired with The Nightlight Podcast a little bit before that. (Funny enough, I wrote it off of a recommendation that Nightlight’s showrunner Tonia Thompson gave me during my interview with her for my story’s episode.) It’s definitely nothing prolific, but still pretty good, I think. Ironically, though I’ve had a number of horror pieces get picked up, I’ve long said I’m more in camp Fantasy Nerd than I will ever be in tribe Horror Geek.

And “Bones” certainly isn’t a thrill-hopping ride of terror, but a slower, aesthetic horror story with soft worldbuilding and intentional vaguery.

Well, I guess it also has a reddit post dedicated to shitting on it.

I want to be clear that there exists much harsher criticism for art out in the world than was given to my poor story, and I’m sure other work of mine has been read by someone who then went, “Eeeh, not for me,” “Pfft, lame,” or “Jesus, that was stupid”, but I’ve never had to see or hear that before.

But the title of the post is “The Bones of Lily Gordon LOL or whatever”.

…

“Or whatever”??

And don’t you laugh out loud all dismissively at me, whoever you are. You…nerd.

The post addresses some of the vaguery in the story and postulates answers for some of the unexplained, shown-not-told elements, and certainly came away with vastly different answers than what I thought while putting it together. But cow tools are cow tools, and you’re not gonna please everybody.

On the plus side, I feel like a kid that just fell off of his bike for the first time, came away with a lightly skinned wrist, and got those first critic jitters behind me. It also makes me feel sorta bonafide. Like, the worst response you could hope for to your art is apathy (which…I mean, happens plenty, but that’s a separate thing entirely), so if someone thinks negatively of it (ie calls it sleep-inducing, nonsensical, and lame) I’m weirdly compelled to think of that as a compliment.

And it’s gotten me back at my desk and back at work to fill the world with more of my literary crap on this quest for glory and lame critics. So, thank you KF2015 or whatever, you total nerd from two years ago, for reigniting the creative fire in me that fuels my passion for this weird pursuit.

To the rest of you: You’re…you’re just the best.

Update: Truth be told, I wrote this about a week ago and have been meaning to find the time to post it. In the meantime, while looking up the URL’s for the links for this post, I actually found another one critiquing the same episode, that restored my faith in humanity some. Not saying that just because this one included some compliments for my story this time (among more critiques), but the critiques that were present were more fairly given. Also, in reading the first “mean” post back…it really was pretty dang tame. Just called my story “sleep-inducing”, pretty harmless, and I was frumpy about that.
But the praise did help. It always helps. lol
I’m a Leo.

Fiction isn’t (Just) Nonsense

We’ve all had those times after a conversation with someone. You know the ones I’m talking about. The “Oo, I should have said this” times. And of course, then, we replay the conversation in our heads but this time it goes in such a way that we’re a badass with all the right things to say.

The other thing about those moments is that they can stick with you for years down the road.

I was having a conversation in the break room with my boss years ago, we’ll call him Mike, and he’d heard about my (at the time) upcoming sabbatical. I never knew him all too personally, but my read on him was that he was a very left-brain sort of guy: math, numbers, engineering, logistics, factors, etc. He knew that I was trying to become a fiction writer and I think that he was just trying to find a way to relate, even if that meant communicating a lack of relation.

“I tried reading a bit of fiction before,” he laughed. “But once I was done, I was like, ‘What was the point of that?’ I just have all this useless information now.”

I’m loosely quoting him there, but the words I’m sure about are the ones of him referring to fiction as “useless information”. And again, I’m pretty sure he meant it kind-heartedly and jokingly, but whoa, bub, word choice. In the moment, I just laughed a bit awkwardly and agreed because I was twenty-five, not sure of what the heck I was doing (still not), and talking to the CEO of the company about a pursuit he just deigned “useless”.

Since then, I’ve found myself in odd moments here or there having that conversation again in my head and justifying the value of fiction to him. The first quote that came to mind to neatly and concisely encapsulate the sentiment I wish I’d had the presence of mind to communicate in the moment is one from Neil Gaiman:

“Fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people and gives us the gifts of seeing the world through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over.”

The ability to relate a situation in your life to another you know of, whether real or fantastical as found in fiction, that skill of being able to draw patterns and associations between those circumstances and draw wisdom, advice, inspiration, or answers from them is valuable. Characters found in novels or movies are just constructs in our own minds, but the beautiful part is that by their nature we forget about that fact. Those characters, for all intents and purposes, are people with real experiences that we can choose to relate to and learn from – if you just freakin’ choose to.

Don’t believe me? While thinking up this little piece you’re reading right now, I jotted down two names that, in very real, substantial, earth-changing ways have historically demonstrated the value of storytelling.

Jesus and Disney.

One can be a devoted church-goer and readily tell you of the impact that a powerfully delivered sermon had on their life, or be decidedly atheist and still see Christianity’s undeniable impact on world history and society today. And if money is the measure by which you choose to estimate success, Disney Enterprises–a massive corporation built off the back of selling fictional stories–could buy the moon, half of Western Europe, every truffle to come out of the earth from now until the collapse of society, and still have plenty left over to continue bankrupting the state of Florida to spite DeSantis.

And all of this cutting, razor-sharp wit is what I would have said to Mike…if I’d freaking thought of it in the moment.

Eh. There’s always next time.

Like What You Like, a Pirate Taught me That

I don’t know why I was thinking of this earlier today, but I’m glad I was. And don’t get ahead of me thinking there was some clutch moment where that life lesson of self-acceptance saved the day. Nope, just a mundane day at work where the thought caught me and it made me smile. In fact, with this lengthy preamble, I’m already treating this nugget of life advice like it’s some unknowable secret I’ve mastered that you probably haven’t figured out yet. Psh.

It was a scholastic book faire, circa 2006. I’m in middle school, and I should preface (some more) that I went to a tiny, tiny Lutheran private school – and yes, it was about as cool as that sounds. It wasn’t because of any sort of privileged position, either. Just that it was right by our house and my mom wanted to do her best as a parent. In truth, I would now as I would have then traded in my time for the same years spent at a public school where I could have begun cultivating meaningful friendships sooner.

At the Lutheran school I attended, it was Kindergarten through 8th Grade with around 120 kids – total. TOTAL. That meant that if you didn’t fit in with your 15 or so classmates, it was tough nuts, because you were stuck with those same 15 kids your entire time there.

I did not fit in with my classmates.

By my memory, their interests largely ranged between baseball, horror movies, Top-40 pop music, none of which interested me. Baseball? Not a sports guy. Horror movies? I’ll take a comedy, thank you. Pop music? I like Metallica. And I played D&D and read manga, things that only nowadays are sniffing “cool” territory (except you, manga, you’re still a pariah from what I hear).

So yeah, book faire.

We peruse the pencils, browse the books, and excavate the piles of colorful erasers looking for favorites, and exit into the gymnasium. Two other boys, we’ll call them Jimmy and Timmy, are poring over their haul, namely a couple of sports magazines. They ask what I came out with, and I show them: an issue of Shonen Jump with Monkey D. Luffy on the cover.

For those not in The Know, One Piece was a cartoony pirate adventure, and that grinning doof in the middle is Luffy, the happy-go-lucky pirate captain protagonist

I still remember the looks on their faces and the sound of them laughing at me. And especially as an eleven-year-old, I’d been defensive and embarrassed before. I knew the reflex to hide it in my backpack and say, “Yeah, no, it’s kinda dumb. It’s for my-” blah blah blah.

But today was different.

I don’t know where it came from or why, but a muse of some kind came out of the ether, broke into my thoughts, and said, “You know what? No. Fuck these guys. One Piece is cool, and I like this.”

It wasn’t anger behind the thought, either, just complete and total dismissal. Their thoughts and opinions on my interests could NOT bother me one bit. And I credit Luffy’s dorky grin, now that I think back on it. He felt like backup, telling me it was totally alright to enjoy the things I found enjoyable, other people’s thoughts on the matter be damned.

And good goddamn am I ever grateful that lesson occurred to me as a kid. I think we all know someone who – or maybe ourselves struggle with this – lets the opinions of others dictate their interests and pastimes.

Bottom line is this: Like what you like, be secure in your opinions because your the one who they’re for. Try new things, sure. And if someone wants to disparage your interests, like your an adult who likes video games and cartoons or someone in a biker gang that enjoys crochet, just realize it’s the limitation of that person’s worldview. Take pleasure in the things you like.

Or else, hell, what else are we even here for?

Ciao for now.

An Argument for why Disneyland Might Legitimately be Magical

Sup everybody, and happy holiday madness (whatever your particular flavor of that may be).

I’m 28, and I tend to be behind the curve on a lot of things. I haven’t had chicken pox yet, I watched Avengers: Endgame years after it came out, and I finally went to Disneyland for the first time a couple of weeks ago.

My fiance’s parents gifted us tickets because Mandy had been wanting to make the trip materialize for years, knowing I hadn’t been yet and wanting to be the one to take me. Add to that a couple more years of frustration and patience what with the world shutting down recently, and we finally made it happen (safe as can be) last month.

I won’t lie: I was worried. Worried that I’d heard almost three decades of hype around the “Happiest Place on Earth” and that there was no way in heck a place could live up to all the stories and expectations. I was worried we’d go, and I’d be a jaded, grumpy old cuss who was too adult for the whole place. And with how excited she was to take me, show me, and see my reaction, there was a lot of emotional investment that hinged on that reaction – and I’m no good at faking that stuff, I’ve tried.

So, along with all the fun, it was also a gigantic f***ing relief when it turns out that Disneyland is awesome. And when I say “awesome,” I mean super, incredibly f***ing awesome.

Y’all, for three days, I was a kid. At first I felt the enchantment doing its work, could see the design to the park and the reality of where I was, but that eventually all melded into the background behind the music, the characters, the food, the smiles, charms, rides, and everything else.

Y’all…Goofy waved at me. Me!! Mickey’s own buddy Goofy waved at me, and I got to take a photo with Flynn Rider while he hit us with the smolder and tried to talk smack about Maximus – the greatest horse in the Disney universe. (And you can check your arguments at the door. He’s a horse that upholds the law and friggin’ swordfights. He’s a horse that buckles effin’ swashes. #swashbucklinghorse)

But beyond the glitz and glamour of the theme park, there were a few moments that we experienced that I legitimately cannot figure any other way beyond some level of actual – and I raged against the term at first, thinking it too overused – magical influence. And I have an argument for why I think that is in a minute, so you’ll see what I mean. (If you’re boring or short on time, feel free to skip past the numbers to the juicy bit at the end. #smoothbrain #busybee)

First, I present the evidence…

Uncanny Luck with Reservations
There’s a restaurant at Disneyland called the Blue Bayou. If, like me, you hadn’t heard of it, it’s essentially a large cafe inside the Pirates of the Caribbean ride where you sit under dim lighting, eat overpriced stuff, and can vaguely see park goers on the ride in the quiet background. Something also associated with the Bayou is how impossible it is to get in. Mandy tried six, eight months out from our trip to get seats and they were all booked up.
Now, put a pin in that.
There’s also a new ride at the Star Wars Land section of the park called Rise of the Resistance, and when I told people about our trip coming up, everyone and their DOG was telling us how we need to try and get it, and to try really hard because it’s next to impossible to do. At the time we went, you had to reserve your space online using the app, and check-in times were at 7:00am and 12:00pm, so you had two chances each day. The first time we tried, we hit ‘Reserve’ right at 7:00 and were told it was booked up, having filled up in microseconds.
Back to that pin.
We exit the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, pleasantly sighing at the fun we’d had, when Mandy sees the Blue Bayou hostess standing at her podium. She basically figures “What the heck?” and approaches, asking if there’s space available. The hostess mentions at first that they were, at present, booked out for the next two months. Just as we’re beginning to say our “We understand” and turn to leave, she does a quick scan of her seating chart, does one of those surprised frowns, and says that if we have time right that minute, there was actually an open table for two.
We stand there blinking for a moment before we say, “Um, heck yes, why not?” She tells us to stay close by and they’ll call us up in a moment or two. That’s when we check the time and see it’s 11:57, and we need to start smashing that refresh button on the Disney App for the Resistance ride. It’s 11:59 and the hostess calls us up, and we hold up a polite finger with the “Wait oooone second” while we pray to whatever god will listen for a spot in line. The clock ticks over to 12:00…
…and we made it, just at the end of the queue behind a couple thousand other people.
Within the span of a couple minutes, we nailed two rumored-to-be impossible reservations. Disneyland just started serving alcohol in limited amounts to adults, so you bet your tookus that we celebrated with a couple of exorbitantly expensive cocktails and a dessert. It felt like the most baller move to pull, was my thinking. If we were there on a months-long reservation, you can be sure I’m not getting out of there for less than a filet mignon and a lobster tail. But with some spontaneous serendipity like that, I’m there to get sweet, get krunk, and get out.
The Missing Pin
That weekend was also when I learned of the crazy pin culture that surrounds Disneyland. You can buy them, obviously, but you can aparently also trade them with either park attendants or fellow park goers. Folks will set up “shop” out in front of storefronts with BINDERS full of specialty pins they’re collecting or trading. I like pins, but these mofo’s LOVE pins.
Mandy has a couple of Disney pins from previous trips she went on as a kid, and one of the days while I was in the restroom she traded up with a couple and surprised me with a Maximus pin I put on my hat. Besides that, she has her core two or three she wouldn’t give up for the world and one she likes but planned on trading for a special one she was on the hunt for (we’ll get to that).
We were all set with our pins – me with Maximus and her with her traders – as we were getting in line for the Star Tours ride. If you’re unfamiliar like I was, it’s basically a next level POV Star Wars movie where your seats lean and jounce around to make you feel the gravity of the starship movie you’re watching. We’re about to walk into the “theater” when she sighs, says “Oh, no…” and explains that her trading pin had come loose and fallen on the ground somewhere, now lost.
Maybe it was the childlike joy and innocence I’d been marinated in for the last two days, but that missing pin left me heartbroken for her. It wasn’t just the missing property, exactly, but also the fact that the pin was a stand-in for the one she’d meant to trade it for, however easily it could be replaced. Explain it however you want, we were bummed.
Which is what made it all the more impactful when, after the ride was through, she pulls on my sleeve going, “Evan, holy crap. Look.” The pin had somehow fallen off of the strap of her bag by her shoulder, fallen a couple of feet, and been caught by the swinging pocket of the sweater she had tied around her waist.
I…I can’t…
I don’t know enough about statistics to give you any numbers not out of my butt that can express how unlikely of a catch that was, and I also won’t be shaken out of my belief that it took the ghost of Walt Disney himself to make it.
The Only Way to Watch Fireworks From Now On
So, once we got off the Rise of the Resistance ride, Mandy and I each found a rock out of the flow of traffic to sit on and we just stared at the sidewalk with thousand-yard stares. It was THAT good. One of the first things I did once we came back into ourselves was text my aunt and thank her for the advice and the push to try and get on the ride because of how worth it it was. She gets back to me with some congratulations and some follow-up advice to try the Big Thunder Mountain rollercoaster if we hadn’t already. We hadn’t yet, so we make it our next stop.
It’s well past sundown by this point, and on the way to Big Thunder Mountain, we notice foot traffic and lines for rides are getting pretty thin, and quickly realize that it’s because the park is gearing up for its nightly fireworks display. Mandy pauses us to ask the obvious question: Do we pause what we’re doing to try and find a good spot to watch them from? And we pretty much conclude together, “Nah, they’re cool, but seen one fireworks show, you’ve sort of seen them all,” and keep making our way to the rollercoaster.
We were right, and it paid off. The line for Big Thunder Mountain moved pretty darn quickly and we were at the front in no time. Big Thunder Mountain is probably best described as the “least themed” of the rollercoasters in the park. Matterhorn has the bobsled and Yeti, Space Mountain has the total darkness, trippy warp-lighting thing. BTM is basically just fast and loud. That said, it’s a really smooth ride, and a lot of fun. We had a great moment to appreciate how fun it was while it slow-climbed up the second big ramp for the exterior drop, and I heard some distant, low, “Thuum, thuum-thuum, thuum.”
We had just enough time to wonder what the heck it was when, in the sky directly in front of us right as we’re about to crest the peak for the big drop, fireworks exPLODE into an eruption of color and sound.
Y’all, if you ever have the chance to catch a fireworks show directly beneath it from the back of a rushing rollercoaster, you have to give that sh** a try.
But again, what was uncanny was the timing of it. A second or two in either direction and the moment isn’t the same. If we hadn’t been smack-talking the “You’ve seen one, you’ve seen ’em all” fireworks just half an hour before, it wouldn’t have been the same. It couldn’t have been PLANNED better.
The Theme Park Read My Mind
Bear in mind for a moment, that up until now, all these events (including this one) have all taken place in the same day. We were there for a grand total of three days, the first to be spent in Grand California Adventure and the next two in Disneyland proper. Grand California Adventure was awesome, no doubt, but I can see why it’s popularly held that it doesn’t compare to the mainland itself.
So we’ve had our first day of fun, toured most of the park, eaten the food, seen the storied attractions, ridden some crazy sh**, and now we’re on our way out around 11:00pm taking the moment to slowly walk by the storefronts we’ll be perusing more thoroughly during our last day tomorrow.
I have no idea what hits me, but while walking down that main thoroughfare on the way out, I pause in the middle of the road. Our year has been pretty rough and stressful with some real adult stuff – housing stuff, financial stuff, health stuff, job stuff, the works – and I’ve got the thinning hairline to show it. These couple of days to completely and utterly forget all that, to give ourselves over to enchantment and just enjoy it and each other’s company were…(damn, I hate to say it at risk of overuse)…magical.
So I stopped. I took a minute to breath in the incredible relief and monumental power stored there. I turned around to look at the statue of Walt Disney holding Mickey’s hand, with the famed Disney castle aglow in the background, wondering and hoping at what kind of man Walt himself was and if he knew what the place would become. I turned back to look up at the gigantic Christmas tree in the main roundabout – oh, yeah, the whole place was done up for Christmas, shoulda mentioned that – and just felt…goddamned grateful.
Suddenly, chuum! The surrounding lights all glare a crisp, robin’s egg blue, and a voice comes over the PA saying something to the effect of, “Hey everyone. The world has its up’s and down’s, but we here at Disney try to make your time here just a little bit magical and do some good, and we hope we’ve done that for you. Happy Yule Time, everybody.”
And fucking snow machines start filling the air with fresh, wintry little bubbles.
I swear to God, it’s like someone at Disneyland Command Center saw me on one of the cameras and called it in.
“*static* Ma’am, we have a first-timer with a case of Inspiration. Permission to engage Protocol Yuletide Magic?”
“Permission granted, Imagineer. You are free to engage. I repeat, you are free to engage.”

When Disney eventually builds its own private military corporation to topple world leaders and fully take over the planet, I’m first in line for citizenship. Sign me up.
Last Little Bit of Impossible
Our second day in Disney proper was, like I mentioned, mostly just a second sweep. Re-doing the things we enjoyed our first time around, and making sure to go over anything we missed. This entire time, however, Mandy’s been looking for a particular pin to trade hers for: the grape soda badge that Ellie gives to Carl when they meet as kids in the movie ‘Up.’
At this point, it’s about 11:30pm on Sunday. It’s been three days of a lot of walking, and I have a long drive ahead of me in the morning, so as we do our final sweep through the stores on our way out, I excuse myself to sit on one of the benches in the roundabout while she finishes up her own shopping. After a while, I’m about to call her when she walks up to me with a bag on her arm, hands behind her back, and tears brewing in her eyes.
In the last minutes of our last day in the park, she found the last two grape soda pins in the last store on our way out.
Fucking. Magic.
(And yes, I know this post started with me censoring cuss words and has now devolved into dropping hard F’s. I even kept my language squeaky clean while in the park on our trip out of respect for the park [and yeah, the kids too, I guess]. Otherwise it just felt like I was littering the air with my profanity. But here, it’s the only thing I can think of to bring proper emphasis to how magical that shit was.)
As she tells it, she was on her way out of the store when someone passed her holding the pin to put it back on the rack because they didn’t want it. She explained that, actually, if they were going to put it back, she’d been looking for that exact one for days and would love to take it from her. That was then overheard by the store’s clerk, who mentioned they had precisely one more behind the counter if she could use two to match with someone. The rest is history.

So, yeah, thus concludes the highlights of that trip, even if this can’t possibly encapsulate the whole experience, all of the incredible little moments that comprised the whole. Now, the important bit, the angle I think all of those paragraphs justify and why that hallowed ground might legitimately be magical.
You know the reverence we give to haunted houses? Or the sites of massacres and terrible tragedies? There’s always the talk of the ways in which all of that negative energy, after enough of it with enough time to soak into the walls or the ground, can be felt as a palpable psychic presence.

At the end of the day, good and evil are just perspectives. Light and dark are just states. Positive and negative are just directions. If something is true of one, it’s reciprocally true for the other. If enough death, sadness, fury, and negativity can soak a ground so that it’s haunted and give one the heeby-jeebies, why can’t the reverse be true? The millions of people that have walked those square miles of park over the years, brimming with joy, imagination, love, innocent wonder, and all the rest…couldn’t…couldn’t that create a kind of positive haunt which lends itself to more positivity in the way a negative haunt spins further bad juju?
Now, obviously, I don’t have a conclusive answer beyond the weight of the rhetorical question, but I think it stands to reason, to some degree. Obviously, how you feel about the original premise surrounding lasting energy soaks will affect how you think of the theory it leads to, but it seems worthy of mild consideration.

Whatever the result, I’m just glad to have formed insanely happy memories that will be lifelong. Or at least until I have children of my own, try and take them, and have the memories re-shaded with how much I hate how expensive it all is. But such is life.

Getting Laughs

“Heh heh, I’m funny.”

I don’t think it’s a wild assumption to think most of us have uttered those words at one point or another while spending time with friends or family. And if you think you are, you are. There will be different styles, different audiences our humors are best suited for, different approaches, but most folks have a good sense of humor.

And there’s a reason people pursue comedy as a way to make a living. When a joke hits, when it really hits, it can make you feel like SUCH a SORCEROR.

The first time that comparison really settled on me was at a live performance. My fiance Amanda had scored tickets to the Oddball Comedy Festival down in Mountain View, CA in the Fall of 2016. One of the performers that night was Demetri Martin, and if you don’t know him, he’s almost more of a comedic-one-man-show performer. He uses props, posters, instruments, and one-liners a lot, but this night he delivered a pure stand-up set.

What draws out the sorcerer comparison was his posture. He stood on stage without any props, any music, or much energy at all. He had on a pull-over hoodie, jeans, Vans, and hung out with his hands in his pockets. Straight up, I don’t remember his jokes, but I remember their impact. Whatever he said was so f***ing funny that my body contorted in on itself. You know what a spider looks like when it dies, the way it just withers and its limbs curl in towards the center? My abdomen hurt so much from laughing that I looked like that, only spasming with laughs, too.

I have no interest in being a stand-up performer. Not really much interest in the being The Funny Guy in the group, either. But I enjoy having a sense of humor. And like Mr. Martin demonstrated to me five years ago, when properly sculpted, words have power. Like Friggin’ Magic levels of power. And while I get a good, solid joke to land from time to time that starts a chuckle fit, I recall two moments where it made a palpable difference. On the outside looking in, the moments may not have appeared to be much if anything, and maybe their significance didn’t extend beyond my own perception of them, but…

Well, maybe you’ll see what I mean.

The first time was at an office job I held a few years ago. There was a woman who worked at the company who for the purposes of this we’ll call Olga. Only way I’ve ever found myself able to describe Olga was that she was just…Winter. It sounds overly poetic, and it might be, but it’s fitting, trust me. She was beautiful, for one thing. Her complexion was fair, but light, which isn’t to say “pale.” More like someone with fair skin who’s just come in from the cold. Her nose had a gentle point and was a shade or two more pink than her cheeks, really lending to the cold weather look, and her eyes were a deep, lapis blue that shone against her brunette hair the color of wood bark.

More to the point was her demeanor. She was a quiet person, muted and soft like fallen snow, but there was an icy…hardness to her expression at the same time. She didn’t look mean in that way or unfeeling, in fact it was a bit serene, actually; just a little cold and unreachable from the outside. Like a layer of frost, keeping with the theme here. And reading all this as I lay it out, it almost sounds like I’m making up a person or something. But you have to believe me that a lesser description wouldn’t do Olga justice.

Anyway, already-long-story-shorter, she was walking around the office trying to find something or someone I don’t remember now. I happened to be nearby and mentioned I had recently seen who or whatever she was looking for and offered to lead her to the person or place in question. I’m not always great with silence between myself and a stranger, so I took to small talk. Again, it needs to be noted that to this point we haven’t shared more than a tiny handful of words between us and I’ve never seen her expression break from a gentle neutrality.

Then, I made some joke. I don’t remember what it was about at all, but I remember the impact: Olga chuckled aloud. And not the polite, spare-your-feelings chuckle. It was genuine. (Believe me, I’ve bombed enough attempts at humor to smell the difference a mile away). It was brief, and her expression relaxed into neutrality again some seconds later, but for a moment winter had grown warm.

Like I said, magic.

The next was with a contractor I met while working on my mom’s house a couple years back. For this, we’ll say his name was Richter, because it sounds cool. In short, we had a few items around the house that needed seeing to so that it would clear a pest inspection, dry rot removal, mostly, then some stairs to build and a couple of doors to hang. Richter was similar to Olga in that his neither his expression nor the tenor of his voice rarely broke from a neutral mask. If Olga was Winter, then Richter was Stone: eternal, unmoving, silent.

And to boot, he wore reflective sunglasses.

All. The. Time.

Between his unflinching manner and his literally unreadable eyes, it was a nigh impossible task trying to relate to the guy. And in fairness, I understand. He wants to get in, detail the job, do it, and leave. The bummer is that he ran into me, and if we’re talking, I’m gonna glean a bit of humanity off you, goddammit.

And boy, did I try. Any hobbies? Nope, doesn’t have any. Interest in sports? Doesn’t touch ’em. Been doing construction long? Yeah. Period. What’d he do before this? “Nothing interesting.” Jesus Christ, travel much? Townie, born and raised. I threw jokes at him, and could watch my words glide past or bounce off him with as much impact as a ribbon on damn boulder.

But like the river carves away rock, or like the seasons will sunder stone, one of my jokes got through.

Again, I don’t remember what it was I said, who I ribbed, or the subject matter, but I got him. It wasn’t an out loud chuckle like I’d pulled from Olga, but one of those sharp exhalations through the nose followed by a lasting smile all in lieu of a proper laugh.

With words alone, I had cracked stone.

So there we have it at the end of the day, by the use of Words of Power now long forgotten, I achieved the impossible tasks of bringing warmth to winter and sundering solid rock…just if it didn’t look quite like that from the outside. The borderline between making a genuine human connection through humor however brief and being an annoying asshole can be perilously thin at times, but if the prize for managing that razor’s edge is legitimate magic like the acts heretofore described…

Worth it.

Dorian Gray is Awful…(but we might have something [else] in common)

When I first entered the adult world and started taking college classes, I went on a big reading binge of classic literary works because I was leaning into feeling smart and sophisticated. I’m not saying that that worked, but it was a good journey. I now know why ‘Frankenstein’ was terrifically tragic, how ‘Dracula’ was somehow both lamer and way cooler a tale than I’d thought it would be, and that Dorian Gray is a massive douche.

I’m serious. It’s a decade later, and despite the hundreds of stories I’ve taken in since then through the different mediums – books, movies, television, video games, etc – I haven’t found a character I vehemently despise with a greater fervor than I hold for Dorian Gray.

Now, first off, I recognize that it’s a little ridiculous, and I’ve cooled my jets some. Kurt Vonnegut has a great quote about hating fiction:

“Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.”

Well for a while, I bathed my armored boots in the sugary blood of Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” for the simple reason that the protagonist is an utter shithead.

I rant about it now a lot less often than I used to, but I hold to the opinion that Dorian Gray sucks. That’s probably a good thing, though, since I think he’s supposed to be disliked. If you haven’t ever read or heard of the story, it essential goes that a young nobleman, Dorian Gray, has a portrait painted of him by his meek friend Basil. He soon discovers that the portrait, rather than he, will bear the marks of things that ought weigh heavily on the soul: stress lines in the face, silvered hair, wrinkles that come from a Liar’s Frown, etc. He struggles a bit with whether or not he’ll lead the kind of pure life that will render his portrait forever perfect and unblemished, or live wantonly since the picture will foot whatever ethical tab he runs up.

Spoiler, he opts for the latter option, like a total dick.

*RANT INCOMING*

(I’ll keep it short, but) What I can’t stand about him isn’t that he’s selfish, conceited, arrogant, smug, and manipulative, but that he whines, bitches, and is so spineless too. Whenever he’s in a position of power or leverage, he’s completely mad with whatever little power that may present him, but the moment the tables are turned even slightly, he moans, complains, begs, weeps, and mews. Then, if he gets his leverage back, it’s right back to being an insufferable ass-hat. Like, if you’re going to be a conceited, villainous asshole, at least be sure of yourself in that. At least stick to your damned guns. But to flip flop back and forth between villain and victim is SO gross, and I’m SO happy when he *spoiler* f__kin’ dies at the end.

I forgot where I was going with this, but- oh! Yeah, my car.

Right, trust me, it ties in.

I realized earlier today that my car, Phoebe, is kind of my own portrait. I took great care of her a few years ago. Got her regular washes, got her oil changed ahead of time, maintenance and check-up’s before things had a change to break, and she’s served me well for it.

Then, life got sort of topsy-turvy and difficult, I’ve really had to realign my financial priorities, and that meant Phoebe couldn’t get the same kind of treatment. At the end of the day, with everything I’ve been through and continue to work against, I try to keep my head up, shoulders back, eyes forward, and a bit of smile at the life I’ve got. Almost like you wouldn’t know things have been rough.

But my car looks like total ass now.

I’ve said from the beginning, that as my first car that I’ve had for over a decade now, I’m going to drive it until it dies. She’s in her twilight years, and BOY does she look it. But until lightning strikes her outright dead, I’m going to act as though she intends to roll on.

It’s just created a funny bit of imagery and comparison wherein it’s like I’ve endured some rough stuff, but maybe you wouldn’t know it, and meanwhile my car is bearing all the telltale signs of hardship instead of me.

And I think that’s worth a larf.

Have a good one, everybody.

Ciao.