REALITY CHECK

Some of you dear readers may have noticed there’s been a shitload of stuff posted here lately on the humble Vault. That’s certainly been the case and it was mostly due to taking to heart a piece of advice stating that if people are going bother reading your blog, the least you can do is have something there for them to read on a daily basis. No matter how minor, there should always be something, and I took that to heart with a vengeance, but in the past month or so I’ve been posting with regularity for a completely different reason.

When my life becomes overwhelmed with stress I resort to one or more of a number of stopgaps that make me feel good:

• Eating
• Pouring tequila and beer down my gullet
• eBay purchases that I really shouldn’t be making
• Putting on MIGHTY JOE YOUNG — the original version — and crying my soul out until I’m once more centered
• Talking with Jewish Warrior Princess
• Writing for hours on end, focusing on what I’m coming up with and thereby refocusing my thoughts.

That last one has kept me (mostly) sane lately in the face of snowballing stress and misery, stuff that’s the fault of life just happening as it does and being horrible for many of my friends, family and love ones as I try to be supportive. I try to be a good sounding board and nurture as best I can, but sometimes everything just piles on and I don’t have the option of just blowing it off. When your friends and family need you, it’s up to you to be the solid place of comfort and familiar stability that will see them through dark moments of existence, and hopefully the darkness will soon pass.

Among other stressful events in the past month or so, my uncle suffered major heart issues that to put it very mildly do not look good, another friend got the living shit kicked out of him by a couple of the neighborhood delinquents, my mother faced blood sugar-related issues including heart palpitations, a favorite friend from my days at the barbecue joint just suffered a stroke the other day and is currently hanging on in the local hospital’s ICU, and the father of a friend of over two decades who’s like a brother to me passed away recently and I’m going home this weekend to attend his memorial service. All of these people are in my heart and on my mind and I have dealt more directly with some more than others, but nonetheless I’ve had a hard time not dwelling on all of it twenty-four hours a day and I have to admit that in relation to some of these situations I have become so upset that I could feel my blood pressure in my eardrums, and that isn’t good.

Rather than doing the comfort eating or the crazy drinking to excess, I’ve combated getting too wound up by meditating, doing martial arts forms and writing this blog, and I find the writing to be the most effective of the three chosen curatives. All of you who are out there reading this humble blog give me a reason to keep up with my random ramblings and I appreciate your participation, so don’t ever forget that.

That’s it for this brief bit of heaviness and I will get back to the usual pop culture explorations, lurid stories and outright filth immediately. Thanks for being there, even though I don’t know the vast majority of you.

-Sincerely,
Yer Bunche