my careless contagion

This is going to come off as a dumbass post, I'm sure of it. I'll give it a shot, though. My idea, though it may sound antithetic, is that saying no to something is actually saying yes to a whole lot of other things. One of those books that affected me as a young man was Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls. It's a book primarily for boys, I think, but it has some universal lessons. One of those lessons is letting go.  The young boy in the story wanted to teach his hounds how to hunt raccoons. But he needed a coon pelt to do that. How do you get a coon pelt if your dogs don't know how to hunt coons? A raccoon trap was the answer — a hole bored into wood with a shiny trinket in the bottom. The hole had to be large enough to admit the raccoon's little hand yet small enough to hold it once it grasped the trinket and made a fist. I experience the same thing when I make a fist in a Mason jar. It's not fair, of course, for the raccoon, as they love shiny t...

The truth is a two-edged sword. It liberates you, but sometimes what it liberates you from is yourself. It cuts to the bone, severing tendons and muscle and ligaments. Nothing stands in its way when it comes to dividing truth from fiction. Sometimes what it makes you see is the very thing you want to hide from.  Love doesn't matter. I'm not a cynic. It's not just bitterness talking. I mean, of all the things in the world that matter, love is at the bottom. Money matters. Good health, sure. Family, friends, a good head on your shoulders, maybe an education or a job with a good benefits package; all of that matters. Love, well, love is Tinsel Town stuff, frippery, the kind of thing that sells books and movies because people like to believe in it, but it's absolute shit.  My whole life, I thought love mattered. Sitting here now, I realize nothing could be further from the truth. Human love is not worth spit. There is no human good enough to die for, or, well, to lo...