Where I Tell My Haters To Suck On It

As with many things in life, it's not about you.

I had various blogs throughout different stages of adulthood, most of which I never stuck with. I finally started blogging more consistently in 2013. At first, the idea of the blog (then called Context of Things) was to take complicated issues, like whatever the hell a “debt ceiling” is, and break them down into easier-to-understand parts. I did some deep dive posts back in 2013 on hard-to-grasp topics, and I’m proud of some of those posts, for sure. Over time, I started writing more about work and a little bit about true crime, which is a fascination of mine. I got noticed and found more for those things in the 2013 to 2015 period.

At the same time, I was living in Minneapolis and struggling with adult relationships and why I was even in Minneapolis and various wedding and birth arcs of friends of mine, so sometimes I wrote personal shit. I think the first time this ever intruded in my actual day-to-day life was sometime around April of 2014. I lived in Uptown Minneapolis then (ha), and used to go to this beer bar periodically. I forget the name of the bar now, honestly. I was also working a contract role for Teach for America and traveling as a result of it. So, one Monday, I had just come back from Memphis (ha) and my wife (now ex-wife) had just come back from New York City and seeing some of our friends. A few of them had mentioned my blogging to her. My ex-wife and I end up getting in this huge fucking fight that night. For time/space context, this was the night of the 2014 NCAA Men’s Basketball title game, I.e. UConn over Kentucky. I was in a bad place that night.

What was funny about the fight was (well, nothing was funny per SE) — all the people who had been complaining to my ex- about some stuff I wrote? None of what I wrote was actually about them in the least. And this theme has perpetuated for years at this point.

So, just to be clear quickly: insofar as you care, and you shouldn’t really, but almost everything I write is in the aggregate. Entitled moms? Seen that 25+ times. It’s not about you. (My own mom was entitled too.) Shitty male friends? Literally scholars go online and talk about “tragic levels of alienation” among modern males. I’m not specifically discussing you.

Now, have I brought in specific stories in what I write? Absolutely. I’ve used names here and there, but oftentimes those names are changed.

Something like this is a good example of how I write about things: