Does it count as an admin reveal if, at several points in the past, I've posted photos of myself here already?
Excepting publications, I don't do much personal posting on here in recent years. But I've had this blog since 2008, so it's undoubtedly happened before. It's for the best that I'm not adept with the way-back machine, because it would likely be humiliating to revisit posts I decided to delete.
I just picked up a new pair of glasses today, for the first time in many years, so it seemed like a good time for an update. I was astonished by how much worse my eyes were. I'd gotten used to seeing as well as I was able to with the glasses I had, which wasn't very. This is also the longest my hair has ever been, and I'm enjoying it.
It's been two years & two months since I left the ICU in Reno, and as long that I've been sober. Sometimes I worry I write about sobriety and my near-death experience with alcoholism too often, but it really is nothing short of miraculous that I am alive and sober. For the last eight years of my two decades and change of problematic drinking, it had become an essential component of my being. I wasn't John if I was sober. I didn't know how to be myself, or even who I was, without alcohol. I never wanted to get sober, and I ignored innumerable reasons to give up drinking. I am lucky I was forced to, that the doctors told me I could never drink again without dying, because I don't know that I ever would have quit otherwise.
Life is far from perfect. There is a lot I wish were different, better, easier. I guess being satisfied, entirely, with one's life is unrealistic. Unobtainable. I don't know. But life is also, easily, the best it's ever been. Most days I don't feel like I deserve any of the good that's come my way, but I am trying to learn to accept it. To forgive, which includes forgiving myself. I have more regret than I can articulate, and plenty of resentments. I fret about how many people have resentments involving me, but I also remind myself those thoughts are a bit self-important. Better to imagine people just don't think of me, which is also fine.
Now that I don't have alcohol, I've thrown all my obsessive energy into writing, and for the first time in years of pursuing it, I finally feel comfortable calling myself a writer. I felt embarrassed self-applying that label in the past, but with almost 40 publications, a handful more forthcoming in venues I once thought out of my reach, and a debut novel being released next year, I guess I'll accept it. Again, I'm not where I want to be, but I also have to consider that for the first eighteen years I was working toward this, my drinking was impeding any actual progress.
I wonder who even looks at this blog. It's just turned into this little museum where I've curated art and writing and such that I enjoy. It's mostly for me. Still. This site gets hundreds of visits a day. Based on their source, many of which are abroad, and the sheer volume, I am certain it's a lot of bots and such, mostly. But there have to be some real people that end up here, like, by searching artists whose names happen to be included in the titles of posts I've made? But does anyone I know or knew read this? Nobody comments, but I know setting commentary approval is a touch prohibitive. After a particularly mean-spirited anonymous comment, from someone who I can only guess is deeply unhappy in their own life, I couldn't see any other option but to toggle that setting.
Life is weird. Still being alive is a surprise, but one that I am grateful for. I continue to marvel, daily, and more-so now that I am experiencing it with a clear mind and a lighter soul, at how bizarre and beautiful existence can be. It's also a major drag and totally bogus sometimes, but that's part of it, I guess.
Anyway, if I actually know you, or once knew you, or don't know you at all, or if you're just a robot, thanks for swinging through. I hope as long as the internet exists, blogger doesn't go away. This place is the best estimation of who I am aesthetically, and I'm fortunate to be able to share things that I find meaningful with this ocean of anonymity.
If you're someone to whom I owe an apology, I am sorry. Truly.
I hope all of you, whoever you are, are doing well in your own strange adventures out there.
