The sign on the metro platform says “considering suicide? We’re here for you”, and I roll my eyes. Sure, it's an important message, a necessary lifeline, but as a high functioning person with mental illness, it feels like there's no support until you threaten to throw yourself onto the tracks.

I can't quite pinpoint when extremism became the norm. For every instance I consider as a starting point, I can hear the voices of one “team” screaming that it only happened because the “other team” did blah blah blah first, pushing the timeline back, and proving my point with their fierce defense of the extremism from “their side”.

Welcome, Dear Reader, to the shitty part of winter. The parties are over, the sparkly hits have been packed away, and now…well, now it's just cold and dark.

Words have power. In so many ways, we speak things into reality. For instance, the people who are always complaining, tend to lead themselves into reasons to complain, while attracting others who thrive on the same fuel.

There's a wide range of ways to step into the new year. The spectrum goes from rolling off someone else's couch, wondering what day it is, to waking up with the sun, meditating, then heading off to the gym, committed to a new paradigm.

Friends, the days are getting longer again. Sure, it's barely perceptible, but it's true. We've crossed the threshold, and now the same slow slide that brought us How’d It Get So Dark? is slowly leading us back to Early Sun / Prolonged Evenings, which is everyone's favorite show.

See, I was on the waiting list for an adenoidectomy and a deviated septum correction. First, I must tell you, because I had no idea, but adenoids (spongy thingy like tonsils) go away in your tweens. Like, your body reabsorbed them. What the shit? We’re such wild creatures. But mine never did. Mine were huge, and angry, and blocking my airwaves.

For years, researchers have been talking about the Happiness Curve. The theory held that happiness drops off in your mid to late 20s, plummeting till 47, before climbing back to shiny, young standards. It explained the concept of the mid-life crisis, and explained why by the time we're grey, we’re enjoying ourselves again.

I don't think anyone ever really feels rich. Well, ok, if you own a yacht and a spacecraft, I'm pretty sure you feel pretty rich, but not so rich that they stop grasping for more, which makes me think it's more of an obsession, some sort of financial dysphoria. Short of that though, I've never met anyone who thought they were rich.

The summer I was 16, I read my first Tom Robbins book, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues. It was my Plateau summer, the one where I discovered St. Louis Square, Eva B’s, and good coffee. I sat at the Jazz Fest writing, people watching, listening, taking the vibes in through my skin. St. Louis Square was better for reading. I finished Wuthering Heights there, not because of any prescribed reading list, but because I held “the classics” in high regard.