Oh, hello. We're in the thick of it.

Welcome, reader, to These Trying Times. 

It feels necessary to speak and write truthfully about things happening, the real world implications and impact, and to connect with people who see what I am seeing. I imagine others wish to see evidence of the same. Saying anything here is less about convincing anyone, and more about documenting a perspective to gut-check against others.

We’re being gaslit daily, and I feel I must use my voice in attempt to break through the noise; because despite conversations with my husband, therapist, and Facebook feed, I regularly feel and am astounded by the cognitive dissonance between what I’m seeing and how others and the media are reacting to the same. I am desperate to find that communion of experiential dread that can make us feel so very much less alone. Did anyone else weep through the last act of Thunderbolts?

There was no single catalyst that led me to writing here, to you, today; no switch flipped, no lever was pulled. Rather, a long-packed away need to express myself in writing refuses to stay latent while the world around me changes so drastically. I have an urgent and persistent desire to make myself heard — right now, specifically — and came to the obvious conclusion that the only thing stopping me, is me.

I could create additional goal posts (a domain, a platform, a backlog of content, “the right time,” or any other procrastinatory excuse) but the only difference would be the time that has passed. As the separation of powers erodes and my husband and I begin to seriously consider expatriating, time is too valuable a resource to waste. 

In therapy, I frequently discuss my surprise, frustration, and in some cases disgust with the absolute lack of empathy I have observed. Or maybe it’s willful ignorance. Or both. Whatever it is that makes otherwise intelligent, literate, educated, and generally aware people look at mass racist deportations, laws that discriminate against 1% of the population, or whatever other right-wing boogeymen are being overinflated to distract from the absurd wage gap, blatant white supremacy, and actual high crimes and misdemeanors being committed by this regime — that are then described by the fourth estate as “shattering norms” rather than accurately as “authoritarian lawlessness.” All of that actively ebbing and flowing at the back of my head at all times, and the only way to excise (or perhaps exorcise) that pressure is by writing.

I wrote a lot in my youth and into college, in those hyper-focused bursts of productivity with which people living with ADHD may be familiar — complete with different varieties and styles of notebooks. In junior high, I used those good old-fashioned composition books with covers like Rorschach tests. By high school, gel pens were the rage and so were the black-paper spiral notebooks in which they worked so beautifully. I think I still have a few of these in a box somewhere.

I made a Geocities website for myself at some point, and eventually transitioned to LiveJournal. The only consistent thing was the urge to write. Despite all these distinct stages of expressing myself in text, I somehow allowed other things to meet the needs of, obfuscate, or otherwise distract me from the compulsion to write — the low thrum of an unrelenting urge to process with myself outwardly as I have a conversation inwardly. 

That’s the best description I’ve come up with to date for my process. There are two voices, distinct, yet both me; usually one is audible (out loud; I’m one of those), and the other is rattling around the dome like a long-forgotten character from Herman’s Head.

As a fair-weather astrology enthusiast I liken it to the two sides of my Libra scales. But it’s a legitimate inner monologue. I remember describing it that way in high school, subsequently being made fun of, and that voice saying, “Well I guess I’m crazy and I’ll never talk about this again.” But it turns out it’s simply not a universal thing. 

Like being able to literally picture things in one’s imagination. To some people, you can say “Picture an apple,” and in their mind’s eye they can see it clear as day — it’s their favorite kind, perhaps; they imagine the gradient inconsistency in the color. The pores, pits, and striations that mark its surface. They may even have a sense of the heft of it, could describe the slightly waxen texture of the skin as they test it for ripeness in the grocery store. 

Some people see the equivalent of a crayon drawing. 

Some see nothing at all. 

In the past, I may have used this autoconversational process to work through these thoughts with fiction. Today, I’ve not got the fiction in me. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that the imagination and curiosity necessary for such an endeavor is currently being overshadowed by two things: the miasma of existential dread growing with every new step toward Christofacism in America, and the absolute refusal to be cowed by it.

So I want to create a space that calmly, clearly, and firmly lays out what’s happening as I see it. If nothing else, this becomes a record — my way of refusing silence. I can protest, I can donate, and I can document my experience. 

Because these times are indeed trying. And we are all trying to get through them. I’m trying to understand them, trying to work through them. I’m trying literally to work, to focus and keep working, as the world distorts itself drastically from even what I could have imagined as a worst-case scenario in my sad and pragmatic youth. Also I love a pun, good or bad. These Trying Times seems like the perfect fit.

This isn’t strictly journalism. It isn’t strictly journaling. It’s self-expression in search of connection. It’s documentation. It’s probably also a little research because I try not to talk out of my ass or about things I don’t actually know about. A novel concept in these trying times, I know.

So here we are. These Trying Times is where I make sense of things out loud, with whoever chooses to sit at the table with me. 

Here’s what I’m aiming for:

• Once a month, I’ll publish a longform essay — something like this one, but (hopefully) more focused. 
• In the weeks between, I’ll share shorter blog-style reflections: smaller observations, expansions on past posts, or whatever’s rattling in my brain.
• Sometimes it’ll be serious. Sometimes playful. Occasionally both in the same paragraph.

If you find value here, I hope you’ll stick around. This isn’t a “sure thing.” It’s not neat, not normal, and not always comfortable. It will be subscription based (in this economy? yes.) at $5 a month. For that, you’re a part of the record with me — supporting the time to write, to research, and to try. I am thankful for that support, and for your company.

Next week is the first Monday of October, the day after my 42nd birthday, and the formal launch of These Trying Times. That feels like as good a time as any to turn the focus on myself. I’ll dive a little more into my history with writing, with work, with aging — you know, trying. 

Thanks again for joining me,

Josh