#17 Endings, beginnings

San Francisco, September 2014, a discarded, very bad mock-up

On Tuesday of last week, Tempest (fka Hip Sobriety) was acquired by Monument, an early stage organization that provides MAT (medication-assisted treatment) and therapy to help folks stop drinking. That might mean nothing to you, or maybe it means everything. I don’t know how to talk about it yet, the same way someone might not be able to talk about an endless divorce that won’t stop coming for you, new papers served every time you think you’ve finally moved on; the same way you might not be able to talk about something you haven’t even begun to mourn.

On Monday I owned about 25% of Tempest, I own nothing of the new venture. Everything that attached me to it went poof on Tuesday, including any rights I have to my old materials and probably more things I didn’t spend a lick of time trying to figure out or defend. If I started this to get rich, as many have genuinely assumed of me, I would be, um, mad. But I didn’t. I started it to change something, to effect something, to do something—and that, I, along with many, many, many people in it for the same exact reasons, did. We changed something, effected something, did something. It fucking mattered and so few things I have done with my life have.

After the press release went out, I sat numb and watched my inbox and text messages swell with a variety of questions and statements and pure kind love, and while I wanted to reply to everyone, I could not reply to any. All I could do was savor that something had been completed, and it was good, even if my body was racked and it turned out so different than I planned for.

I haven’t been involved in Tempest in any kind of meaningful way since March of 2021; no influence, no material involvement. An ornament, an impuissant, a show pony with public facing responsibility and no real authority. In this new combination, with a new governing board and CEO, it’s the first time since separating where there’s an opportunity to potentially be of service to what I started, to the people who continue to run it, to those who use it now and in the future. I am carefully considering involvement, and will disclose what that involvement looks like should something be formalized.

It’s a weird thing, what we deem success and failures, and honestly I have come to hate the distinction this past year. Amazon is a success, Elon Musk is a success, and Nina Simone died poor and alone. The first is a scourge, the second too, the third an actual legend and the only success of the three through my lens and what I value. Our society hasn’t caught up with what matters. If I have learned a single thing this past year, it is that I am so limited in my own site and value judgments. This is an end. It’s also a continuation. It’s also a beginning. Beyond that, I don’t know what it is; perhaps the best thing that could have possibly occurred; in my fatalistic God-loving mind, it was the only way it could have happened because it is what happened.

A thing that has saved me this past decade of recovery: not believing it could have been anything other than it was, not wishing for different decisions made along the way. All of the dumb things I have ever done, all of the mistakes and worst thinking and what we’d call regret—they are just things that happened, and here I am and my face is forward. Sometimes I think I am unsentimental, and other times perhaps too forward moving, but then I know the truth of it is both of those things, plus knowing that forgiveness, according to Lily Tomlin at least, is not wishing for a different history. I never wish for a different history.

All that being said: This ending, this continuing, this beginning, it means a lot of things for a lot of people and out of respect for all of them and their very personal and different and wide ranging experiences and the impact of this event, this is the extent of my comment on any of it in this newsletter at this time. To every single person for whom this matters at all, who cared anything about it or gave anything to it or reaped even a fragment of benefit from it, thank you.

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ICYMI

QUITTED two-part episode with Martha Beck

This two-part series was what got me to, um, upend my life about a month ago. If you want fuck-it inspiration, I cannot recommend it more. If you are worried about making very rash sweeping decisions that have permanent consequence maybe hold off.

Part I

Part II

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14 Things Right Now

Because it’s been a few weeks and I have hundreds of links, 14 instead of 10.

1. Yes.

2. This podcast on burnout, aptly titled Burnout, is really very good, if you’re okay with some cringe-inducing production flair, which I am.

3. A thing I’ve wondered about over the past few years: our increasing need to label or name everything in a simple, made-for-content phrase. Actually, I’m lying. I am not wondering about it, I am crusty about it. From languishing, ambiguous grief, to revenge nighttime procrastination; from Hot Vaxx Summer to Goblin Mode to Short King Spring and [enter a thousand things I’m too old to keep up with here]; to the brand new mental illnesses with the requisite three-part title. I can’t stand it, and while I’m investigating that internal why (because it’s always me!), here’s a relief-giving article to my fellow curmudgeons on how trends are dead.

4. A theme: One of my conservative (spending-wise, that is) friends re-adjusted his life expectancy down by 10 years due to climate change and spent the money he’d otherwise planned to live off; he’s not alone. In related news, someone recommended Jenny Offill’s Weather [public library] and I read it in one sitting; hard recommend if you’re in an extended post-apocalyptic fan-girl phase. I’m hacking my way through another book that I so far do not recommend, but do not recommend mostly because I don’t want you to read too much into what’s happening over here. Finally, ”dystopiacore” workouts are a thing.

5. An article on whether micro-dosing works and a book on a related topic (psychopharm) I cannot wait for to come out.

6. Meanwhile, overdose deaths break yet another record.

7. “I don’t want to be more interesting” reminds me of Haley Nahman living up to her lowest expectations reminds me of me right now.

8. How Big Tobacco hooked Black smokers on menthol cigarettes.

9. “What I have found is that when we, as queer people, enter recovery, we often recover more than sobriety,” Getting Sober Hits Different for Queer People

10. “There are people who admire Joan Didion, and people who enjoy reading Joan Didion, and people who think Joan Didion is overrated. But then there are the rest of us.” I get the actual Atlantic delivered and couldn’t find this piece online, but the cover story for June, Chasing Joan Didion, slapped for a person who counts herself among the rest of them and is worthing chasing down if you’re one of us, too. I also cannot read about Joan Didion without also thinking of this article by Myriam Gurba (passed to me by Jessica Hoppe), It’s Time to Take California Back from Joan Didion.

11. Revisiting Little Earthquakes is like smoking Marlboro 100s in my Toyota Tercel wearing my Whitie’s Pets uniform on a 102 degree Fresno day, and wondering how I could possibly miss a time I hated so much. Further terrifying: I still know every word. Also listening to Dummy and wondering if this return to 1993 has more to do with the reparenting work we’re doing in therapy or the loss of Tempest and a search for some kind of past fabric or just this encounter I had with a twenty year old who, when trading stories of our worst tattoos, told me my barbed-wire lower back tattoo was what she wanted next.

12. She Invented Adulting. Her Life Fell Apart. She Wants You To Know That’s Okay. I love her.

13. This week I gave to RiseUp Kingston, a local, grass-roots anti-racist and anti-oppression organization.

14. And finally, courtesy of Mic, the intersection of WALL·E and my literal life.

Matthew McCormack @historymatt

On my bike ride this morning, saw a delivery robot lost in the woods

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