Welcome to the Sudden Changes I Probably Needed...

...but didn't really want.

A few years ago, for LGBTQ+ month, I took the time to watch the six hour HBO miniseries "Angels in America" adapted from the play with the same name by Tony Kushner. I knew very little about the play other than a recommendation in one of Lindsay Ellis's YouTube video essays and by watching Kyle Kallgren's YouTube analysis of it.

I immediately fell in love with the 2 part, 6 episode production. If I ever get the opportunity to see the original play on stage, I will take it in a heart beat.

One of my favorite quotes from the play comes at a point where one character, Harper, is being forced to reevaluate her life and figure out what she wants. She ends up having a conversation with an animated mannequin of a pioneer Mormon woman that goes as follows:

 “Harper: In your experience of the world. How do people change? 

Mormon Mother: Well it has something to do with God so it's not very nice.
God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain! We can't even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled and torn. It's up to you to do the stitching.

Harper: And then up you get. And walk around.

Mormon Mother: Just mangled guts pretending.

Harper: That's how people change.”

I was laid off this past week.

It's a little easier to type those words out, now that it's been a few days. When I first got the news, I tried my best to not cry in front of my boss (though I think he knew I was going to), but I couldn't stop all of the tears. I spent the next few days alternating between feeling numb, crying my eyes out, and screaming away my pain.

I knew my current job wasn't going to be forever, I just thought I'd stay on a few more years. I really liked my coworkers and bosses. I liked the work. I wanted things to go a lot differently.

I was content with how my life was going, even if it wasn't perfect.

Tuesday came, and the universe decided I needed a good hard b!tch slap.

Thankfully I'm in a better position than I thought, even if it's been difficult for me to see that through all of my emotions. I have a very loving and supportive family, even if it sometimes feels like they are trying to smother me. And I have some of the most wonderful friends a person could ever ask for.

Everyone is giving me really good advice and assuring me that it's not the end of the world...even if I still somewhat feel it is. I need to process all of my emotions before I can take my next steps.

I have no idea what's going to happen over the next few weeks, let alone the next few months. Well, I do know that my sister needs help with her wedding, so I have that on my agenda.

And I do have some good news to come out of this week. I received my first publication contract. One of my short stories will be appearing in the anthology Hell's Highway. It was wonderful news to come after being laid off.

The Mormon Mother's words on change are graphic, painful, and spot on. My body felt like it was being ripped to pieces on Tuesday.

Today, though I'm still sad and scared about what the future will bring, I'm doing a lot better. I'm more hopeful and positive.

Change is a constant of life. I may be resistant and try to avoid it, but I may have needed it.

Thank you all for reading and if you haven't seen it, please go watch "Angels in America".

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

I might take next week off from writing since I need to dedicate some time to my sister's wedding. So I'll simply say, until next time.

Welcome to the Holiday Blues

Christmas is supposed to be "the most wonderful time of the year." At least that's what the radio, movies, advertisements, and the media keep telling me. It's a time to spend with family and friends. To share and create memories.

So how come I've been feeling so down?

I'm not going to lie. I cried almost every day this week. It seems silly right?

Part of me was realizing that I needed to upgrade my tech and how pretty soon, everything I own will become obsolete. This should have been an obvious realization. After all, change seems to be the only constant in my life. Anyone who has ever seen an ad for Radio Shack from the 90s knows that everything they used to sell individually is available in a smartphone and/or laptop.

Did you guys know that the last VHS player was built in Japan this year? Yeah, VHS is pretty much gone know. If you have a bunch of home movies, you might want to consider making digital copies. Apple is ditching the analog headphones with their latest iPhone. DVDs players are become less common. Not to mention that kids today have no idea what a floppy disk is (they just think it's a universal symbol for "save").

I think the reason I'm so sensitive to all these changes is because I'm finally realizing how quickly time goes by when I'm not paying attention. I didn't realize until very recently that my loyal laptop from college was pushing seven years. It still works, but it's definitely having issues.

Ten years no long seems like a long time. When I was 15, I felt completely different from how I was at the age of 5. I can't say the same thing about looking back at my teens from my mid-twenties. I think a part of me realizes how much time has passed. I've grown a lot since I graduated college and even more since I graduated high school.

It probably doesn't help that I'm still constantly being mistaken as a teenager.


Feeling down at this time of year is not unusual. Between mass consumerism and realizing how much time has passed since you last had the time to take a breather. Time seemed endless as a kid. I felt like I had all the time in the world. I thought I could do anything and everything.

While setting up my Christmas decorations and cleaning my apartment, I found some of my old journals. I started rereading some of them. There's a lot of bad spelling and I had horrible handwriting, but it was interesting to see my inner thoughts as an 11 year old. I mostly wrote about food (go figure right).

As much as I would love to go back and relive all the good times and visit with friends and family who have passed away, I can't. I can only move forward. It's tough to let go of things and sometimes I've just got to accept the feelings I feel (crying and all) and be thankful for what is happening in the present.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me. Until next week...which also happens to be Christmas.