my careless contagion

For months now, I've been watching the COVID-19 pandemic unfold. Initially, I thought people were underestimating it, that we (the U.S.) should close its borders, etc. Now I'm starting to see things that make me worried in a different way.  Something doesn't add up. The news stories of "war zone" hospital scenes are not corroborated by people on the ground. People have gone to those supposed war zone hospitals that are desperately saving lives while untold numbers are dying amidst the chaos, cameras in hand, filming, and are finding ... nothing of the sort. The hospitals are mostly empty. If there are "tent cities" set up, they are mostly empty too. I've been wondering for a long time which way we were being lied to. I mean, China has no new cases of coronavirus just a few months after it all started, yet they're telling us to prepare for 18 months of this crap in the U.S.? And Wuhan residents say the incinerators are "working round th...

Divorce changed me. I mean, that was the point. It was supposed to change my life, but something else happened along the way.  It's been more than six years (seven years?) since I first breathed those words out, "I'm going to leave you," to my now ex-wife. The things I've gone through in that time — first trying to save the sinking ship of my marriage and then setting the damn thing on fire — have penetrated into the very core of my being. There are phases of grief. We all know that. You don't really think about them as you're going through them, though; you just don't have that kind of perspective. It's not a linear process, but a back and forth, messy thing sometimes. But, after six years of having a heart "like a crime scene," today I feel at peace.  A divorce is like a war, but a war no one wins. It doesn't matter who came out better in the end. It doesn't matter what was lost or who got the couch (I still miss that c...

We all have those make-it-or-break-it-moments in life. For most of us, they pass without noticing because we did what we had to do. We made it. We did the right thing. Some of us can't seem to get it right, though. This is about those people. This is about me.  Some of us come pre-loaded with difficulties we have to unravel throughout our lives and make sense of. We're already two strikes down when we get up to bat. I consider this keeping things fair. There's something special about those of us who come from behind and (hopefully) win. It's the classic underdog theme. Underdogs make for happy endings. Life doesn't always give us happy endings, though. This is about those other endings. I'm one of those guys who came pre-loaded with trouble. When I think about my life, it's amazing that ANYTHING WENT RIGHT, as there were so many strikes against me. It's no wonder I've had so many dismal failures. The cards were stacked against me. It wasn...