Content Note: Mental Illness, Suicidal Ideation.

Guys, 2017 was a giant garbage fire for me in a lot of ways. I have repeatedly wanted to bring this blog back up and repeatedly not been able to do so. My first 2017 post literally says that I need encouraging and have been struggling to write.

I need some encouraging these days. I have had a lot that I’ve wanted to write about, from the dogs, to the breakfast nachos I made this morning (inspired by Isis’s tendency to make amazing breakfast nachos), to why the beer industry needs to change their phrasing around nomadic brewers, to how fun it was to do a beer photo scavenger hunt with Leslie. I even have taken some great photos and started framing out posts in my head. But it doesn’t stick.

I thought I was getting back into the game then, but man alive was I wrong. Just a handful of posts last year. Damn near all my posts discuss that I am struggling or that I need help or similar. And I just never got traction.

I don’t know if 2018 will be different, though just as I did in 2017, I hope it will. And I feel a bit better than I did at the start of 2017, I think. And it’s time, just as it was not too long into 2017, to say a little bit more about myself.

I struggle mightily with major depression and with ADHD. For me, means that I am the most distractable human at times, and it means that some piece of my brain is passively plotting my demise.

In 2017, especially the last quarter or so, that piece of my brain managed to get a lot more active and a lot more aggressive. It was genuinely difficult at times to see if I had a place in the world; if I was at all of value. I slept a LOT. And combined with my tendency to be “flighty,” I could barely see anything but negativity about myself.

That I am writing this tells you I didn’t die.

In 2017, I came close. But in 2017 I also managed to hold on. And in the eerie (for me) space between my birthday and the dawning of 2018, I solidified my commitment to myself to stay here.

And then, moments later, I reminded myself that for all the goddamn fucking shit I sometimes feel, I also feel a lot of good ways. Sometimes they are in direct conflict, and I feel them both. And I smile or frown or laugh or growl and remind myself that I am human. And humans do these things.

In 2018, I hope to write more, and in so doing continue to show the multitudes that make me up. Frankly, in writing more I hope to uncover some multitudes I don’t know about. And I hope to meet many more people and discover their multitudes.

So today I’m writing and publishing something for the exact same reason I wrote and published my last post. But also to let you know a bit more about me, and to be honest about where I’ve been and who I am.

Thanks for reading.