Lots to Be Thankful For
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Psychosis
11 min read
The author explicitly discusses living with a 'lifelong psychotic disorder' and how mental illness affects professional opportunities and social accommodation, making this directly relevant to understanding the personal context of the piece
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MP3
15 min read
The author discusses Poweramp and the philosophy of owning music as files versus streaming, making the technical and cultural history of the MP3 format—including the codec wars, compression debates, and its role in digital music ownership—highly relevant
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Harper's Magazine
12 min read
The author devotes significant discussion to Harper's as a publication, praising its literary ambition and editorial identity. The magazine's long history since 1850 and its role in American letters would provide rich educational context
I have, at times, been accused of being a relentlessly negative killjoy by some internet scallywags, so let me give you an annoyingly sincere gratitude post where I discuss things that are good. It’s that time of year, after all. None of this stuff is sponsored in any way, obviously. (Though if Lagunitas wants to send me a free case, well, I wouldn’t complain.)
That My Novel Exists, Looks Beautiful, & You Can Buy It
I don’t want to belabor this too much, but…. 2025 has been a year where the professional limits I have been living under have reasserted themselves again. I have gotten to the point where I have accepted that I am probably never going to fully leave behind the constraints that have been imposed on me by my past behavior, by what others make of my past behavior, and by the wages of an industry that’s still governed by petty clubbiness and networking. There are of course a lot of admissions to make here - I am responsible for my behavior, and some of it has been legitimately bad - but there’s also the fact that a lot of people who consider themselves progressive and friends of the disabled refuse to extend the slightest accommodation to me, given my mental illness. This is all boring to you and boring to me. The reality though is that this has been a year where a lot of potential professional opportunity has come up and then eventually slipped away, thanks to a reputation for bad behavior that seems not to have a statute of limitations. Well, we forge the chains we wear in life, as a wise hotdog restaurant once said. I just find myself more and more looking for the door out of whatever this career of mine is, because at this point it’s clear that I can’t move on if others aren’t willing to let me. I apologize for being arch.
I guess it’s just still weird to live in a world where people believe in “Pathological Demand Avoidance” and treat it as a genuine disability that should prompt accommodation, but who won’t weigh a lifelong psychotic disorder in trying to assess whether someone deserves another chance. Oh well: quest for glory is like same old story. No one ever promised me anything.
It’s in that context that I say that I’m genuinely, sincerely so grateful that
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