Category: Wyatt’s Words

Six months later and I’m learning about gratitude.

It’s always a lesson I scoffed at as if it wasn’t important.

It seemed too simple, too childlike, too inapplicable.

Six months ago I walked out of the ICU to get a bagel and some coffee.

Another bad night of sleep against a window, hoping the new day would bring some good news.

I ate and returned, and sat wearily on the chair, scrolling through houses, and then as soon as I found one I thought would work, that godforsaken alarm started again, but this one was different, louder, unceasing, the numbers went to zero, and I quietly filed out of my chair in the corner to the hallway fearing but knowing what that all meant.

Six months later and I’m pacing the house, a house that hasn’t seen you for six months, because there’s nowhere else to go. Everyone has to stay home, and there’s a great fear that many families will have to face a similar experience: a loved one hooked up to a ventilator in the ICU slipping away in 36 hours.

I can’t sleep. I hate this. The house is quiet and feels empty. Since it was built, this house – and I – have never spent this long without you and we both heave belabored sighs.

I’m irritable at the constant reminders. The previous order is gone, and there’s a thin layer of dust over everything.

When you lose someone, you gain all their abandoned organization projects, the good silverware, the amalgamated junk drawer, the half-used bottles of shampoo. The everyday items and the special items are the most heartbreaking, they represent the dual spectrum of the constant and the celebratory. All things you miss without the person.

I’m sitting through all of this wondering what I have to be grateful for – a mess? An echo of low-grade irritability that flares from room to room? Being trapped literally, figuratively, and now by government order?

I’m grateful you don’t have to see all this. I’m grateful you don’t have to worry about getting sick during this mess.

I’m grateful you don’t have to watch news get worse.

I’m grateful you left me with these wonderful things.

I’m grateful for all the happy memories I have here.

I’m grateful there is a here – a place – a home – my childhood home – a familiar building to go to when nothing makes sense.

I’m grateful there’s someone I love here to share it with and look after me.

I’m grateful I have enough and I’m not for want.

I’m grateful for this breath, and the last.

I’m grateful I had the best mother in the world, and nothing can take that away from me.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B3FecrznvXm/?igshid=a9kfkvorwm2

There’s no reason I should have to write an obituary with such a short span of years, but the ravages of cancer require such mathematical adjustments.

The Fresno community lost a truly special lady, Holly Carter.

I know Holly from the 2008 election, where she coordinated a media event the day Sarah Palin was named as the VP candidate. She saw the footage of me suggesting candidate McCain choose Palin as his running mate, and the unconventional choice had the media scrambling to find out where this decision came from.

Holly worked with a local political organization, and her communications savvy catapulted the story into national news. There were nightly news segments, blog chatter, and video clips all featuring yours truly (“how did this kid know?”)

I didn’t, I just put my ear to the ground and made a suggestion that happened to be caught on film. Holly picked up the ball and ran with it, and as a 17 year old graduating high school it was an extremely cool experience.

Over the years Holly and I occasionally kept in touch, she was consistently supportive and was excited to see what I was doing in life through my college years and after. When my dad and I were featured in the produce industry trades as a father-son team (what seems now like a lifetime ago) she amplified it with pride.

She didn’t have to do that. She wanted to.

She approached life’s difficult situations with absolute gusto. When she found that local political representation was insufficient, she ran for office. When she was diagnosed with cancer, she started a charity, The Face of Cancer, to help female cancer patients with the psychological and emotional consequences of cancer treatment. Her final act from hospice care was to coordinate a successful GoFundMe so her children didn’t have to cover her funeral expenses. Those four children, who are no doubt grieving the loss of their mother, will go on to do wonderful things – she is with and within each of them.

In her last message to me, she said, “I appreciate you.” When I found out she was entering hospice care, I sent her a message that I appreciated her too. I don’t think she was ever able to read it – she was a popular gal in the community and probably deluged by well wishes. But I do appreciate her, for what she did, and for who she was.

I don’t know what approaching the end of life looks like, I know it’s something that some of us will experience gradually and others suddenly. I’d like to think my dad was happy, I remember one of the last messages from him expressing joy at the neighborhood celebrating 4th of July together, a wonderment, a peace. I hope that Holly found her peace. She was pragmatic, and upon her initial diagnosis faced down death and won. There’s a community that misses her deeply.

Generations of humanity light candles for those who they lost. I tend to my plants. I like the idea that something can grow, and bloom, transposing the energy these people bestowed upon the world into something vital. Three of the kitschier pots I purchased are emblazoned with one word each: COMFORT – PEACE – SERENITY.

It’s something we go through life striving to achieve, and it’s something we only truly attain once we’re gone. After a decade of battling cancer, I hope Holly achieved her comfort, her peace, and her serenity.

There’s no reason I should have to write an obituary with such a short span of years, but the ravages of cancer require such mathematical adjustments.

The Fresno community lost a truly special lady, Holly Carter.

I know Holly from the 2008 election, where she coordinated a media event the day Sarah Palin was named as the VP candidate. She saw the footage of me suggesting candidate McCain choose Palin as his running mate, and the unconventional choice had the media scrambling to find out where this decision came from.

Holly worked with a local political organization, and her communications savvy catapulted the story into national news. There were nightly news segments, blog chatter, and video clips all featuring yours truly (“how did this kid know?”)

I didn’t, I just put my ear to the ground and made a suggestion that happened to be caught on film. Holly picked up the ball and ran with it, and as a 17 year old graduating high school it was an extremely cool experience.

Over the years Holly and I occasionally kept in touch, she was consistently supportive and was excited to see what I was doing in life through my college years and after. When my dad and I were featured in the produce industry trades as a father-son team (what seems now like a lifetime ago) she amplified it with pride.

She didn’t have to do that. She wanted to.

She approached life’s difficult situations with absolute gusto. When she found that local political representation was insufficient, she ran for office. When she was diagnosed with cancer, she started a charity, The Face of Cancer, to help female cancer patients with the psychological and emotional consequences of cancer treatment. Her final act from hospice care was to coordinate a successful GoFundMe so her children didn’t have to cover her funeral expenses. Those four children, who are no doubt grieving the loss of their mother, will go on to do wonderful things – she is with and within each of them.

In her last message to me, she said, “I appreciate you.” When I found out she was entering hospice care, I sent her a message that I appreciated her too. I don’t think she was ever able to read it – she was a popular gal in the community and probably deluged by well wishes. But I do appreciate her, for what she did, and for who she was.

I don’t know what approaching the end of life looks like, I know it’s something that some of us will experience gradually and others suddenly. I’d like to think my dad was happy, I remember one of the last messages from him expressing joy at the neighborhood celebrating 4th of July together, a wonderment, a peace. I hope that Holly found her peace. She was pragmatic, and upon her initial diagnosis faced down death and won. There’s a community that misses her deeply.

Generations of humanity light candles for those who they lost. I tend to my plants. I like the idea that something can grow, and bloom, transposing the energy these people bestowed upon the world into something vital. Three of the kitschier pots I purchased are emblazoned with one word each: COMFORT – PEACE – SERENITY.

It’s something we go through life striving to achieve, and it’s something we only truly attain once we’re gone. After a decade of battling cancer, I hope Holly achieved her comfort, her peace, and her serenity.

Somehow I’ve crawled from beneath the dust of my own writer’s block to return to this silly little project I started awhile ago.

It’s remarkable – the timbre of the voice that says “your writing will never be as good as it was, and it wasn’t even that good to begin with.”

I don’t know why I put myself through this. Everything, even the most basic steps, seems exhausting. Some days I don’t even unpack the keyboard, and I’ll spend endless hours refreshing Twitter or deep in a Wikipedia black hole about George McGovern, leaving the one thing I *should* be doing unattended.

In a sense it’s like eating healthy – you know you *should* be eating that salad, but you opt for the burger instead, and you tell yourself you’ll have a salad tomorrow. And then you’re 200 lbs.

When I write, it doesn’t seem like it’s me speaking – I’m just channeling a voice. It’s like a one-sided conversation, and I don’t think of anyone reading or hearing it, it just is.

But I can’t just *be*. If I’m not stressed over something, it feels like I’m not doing something. And if I’m not doing something, I have no action from which to derive my self-worth.

It’s all a grand self-defeating symphony.

When I’m happy, I don’t feel like writing. I’m happy, why would I jeopardize that precarious mood by delving into uncomfortable topics? The last thing you want when you’re up is the creeping sense of “not THIS shit again”.

And when I’m down, I don’t have the energy to really do anything anyway.

So there’s a very specific mood I have to be in to write, and it’s just the right teetering of existential despair, free time without distraction, more than $50 in my bank account, and nothing that exciting happening on Twitter.

When I started the one post a day challenge, I thought it would be a neat way to hold myself accountable. And it felt good to do at the time, but then one day I’d get behind and then one day turned into a week and so on and I thought “well, maybe I can just outrun this ridiculous thing I signed myself up to do”.

And here we are, and a part of me misses the daily accountability and the opportunity for the tens of you to read what was going on in my head that day and the brief ford in the stream of consciousness that is my life.

So I’m back. For now. We’ll see. Until, say, the images of Felicity Huffman’s arrest come out and I spend a couple hours scrolling through memes.

As those of who you follow my Instastories know (god I’m sorry you have to see those), I’ve recently become obsessed with Marie Kondo and her whole tidying up routine.

For those who haven’t seen the show (including me!) it’s about sifting through the clutter and identifying things that no longer serve you, and letting them go with gratitude. For example, she’ll have a couple empty their entire closet onto the bed, followed by the inevitable shock that people have all this STUFF. (Yes I haven’t seen the show, but goddammit I read the Atlantic piece on it.)

When it comes to identifying what stays and what goes, the key is identifying if the object in question brings you joy (longtime listeners of Adam Carolla know the maxim “does it make you money or make you happy?” in choosing how to spend your time).

For things that don’t bring you joy, you thank them for their service and let them go with gratitude.

The mindset helps people understand the sentimentality held towards objects – for example, if it was given to them as a gift, or by a loved one who’s now gone. And unless the item is utilized or displayed, it can usually be let go – instead of shoved unlovingly in the back of a walk-in closet.

I had already drawn a line in the sand late last year and said that 2019 would be a year of minimalism, much as 2018 was a year of excessivism and maximalism. It’s been an exhausting amount of work getting rid of everything I don’t need anymore: clothes, furniture, and so on.

I can confidently say I don’t miss a thing I got rid of/sold/donated. So I scaled up and sold four cars – projects I wanted to fix up and keep around for a little bit, fun vehicles. Paying all those registrations was silly, and I still have 1-2 more to go (in varying stages of disrepair). Walking around with a janitor’s loop of keys was silly. Holding onto anxiety about where to park them and when to avoid tickets was silly.

Next was disposing of habits that no longer served me. Nail-biting may have worked as a way to channel anxiety and stress as a kid, but as an adult it’s a crippling habit, worse than smoking. I also started going to therapy to identify thought patterns that were sapping my energy. Of note were self-reinforcing anxieties – existing fears I unconsciously manifested in order to keep those fears relevant. I’m untangling iron strands of spaghetti torqued into knots.

I’ve joked that the cult of Marie Kondo would lead to a mindset of eliminating people who no longer brought you joy, yet here we are.

I could easily identify friends I had a great time with at one point or other in my life that I still felt heartstring attachment to. But what had we done lately? Had we grabbed a bite to eat? Had a nice chat? Even checked in with each other at all?

Or maybe we’d had an argument and just put things on ice – too wistful to end the conversation, but too embittered to continue it?

What’s helped me is expressing radical positivity – wishing the best for all, even those who I’ve felt “did me wrong” at some point or another. Sometimes this wish was sent, sometimes it was just put out into the universe. It’s helped me to let go of a great deal of anger, resentment, feeling trapped by a portion of my thoughts occupied with the voices of those long gone.

All I know is loyalty, so to do this brings me great sorrow. I don’t know letting go of people, you forgive and move on, forgive and move on, argue and fight and battle and at the end of the day, you still have each other.

But what happens when it’s entirely one-sided? When you’re fighting for something the other person doesn’t want, or doesn’t want to the degree of doing anything about it, or still holds on to their resentments too deeply? What then?

I’m learning the art of letting go.

As painful as it’s been, and as delicious as the concept is of wanting to just end this process, something came to mind that felt sharable, in the event it could help others:

“You can’t lift someone with a broken arm. You can’t love someone with a broken heart.”

I’m not of service to anyone if I’m limping along – I’m giving them hope I can help and just making things worse. Realizing my limitations has been a difficult process, but it’s oddly freeing. I see the boundaries of what I can do and what I can’t do, what I’m good at and where my abilities and capabilities stop.

And it’s opened doors to the “meant to be” things in your life. If you’re meant to live in a certain place, a door will open. Or have a certain thing – it will find you. Or have a certain person in your life, they’ll fight to be there.

It’s equally dizzying and petrifying to let something out of your control. It’s horrifying that your perspective towards it was one of control.

It’s the only way, for better or for worse, to grow.

As those of who you follow my Instastories know (god I’m sorry you have to see those), I’ve recently become obsessed with Marie Kondo and her whole tidying up routine.

For those who haven’t seen the show (including me!) it’s about sifting through the clutter and identifying things that no longer serve you, and letting them go with gratitude. For example, she’ll have a couple empty their entire closet onto the bed, followed by the inevitable shock that people have all this STUFF. (Yes I haven’t seen the show, but goddammit I read the Atlantic piece on it.)

When it comes to identifying what stays and what goes, the key is identifying if the object in question brings you joy (longtime listeners of Adam Carolla know the maxim “does it make you money or make you happy?” in choosing how to spend your time).

For things that don’t bring you joy, you thank them for their service and let them go with gratitude.

The mindset helps people understand the sentimentality held towards objects – for example, if it was given to them as a gift, or by a loved one who’s now gone. And unless the item is utilized or displayed, it can usually be let go – instead of shoved unlovingly in the back of a walk-in closet.

I had already drawn a line in the sand late last year and said that 2019 would be a year of minimalism, much as 2018 was a year of excessivism and maximalism. It’s been an exhausting amount of work getting rid of everything I don’t need anymore: clothes, furniture, and so on.

I can confidently say I don’t miss a thing I got rid of/sold/donated. So I scaled up and sold four cars – projects I wanted to fix up and keep around for a little bit, fun vehicles. Paying all those registrations was silly, and I still have 1-2 more to go (in varying stages of disrepair). Walking around with a janitor’s loop of keys was silly. Holding onto anxiety about where to park them and when to avoid tickets was silly.

Next was disposing of habits that no longer served me. Nail-biting may have worked as a way to channel anxiety and stress as a kid, but as an adult it’s a crippling habit, worse than smoking. I also started going to therapy to identify thought patterns that were sapping my energy. Of note were self-reinforcing anxieties – existing fears I unconsciously manifested in order to keep those fears relevant. I’m untangling iron strands of spaghetti torqued into knots.

I’ve joked that the cult of Marie Kondo would lead to a mindset of eliminating people who no longer brought you joy, yet here we are.

I could easily identify friends I had a great time with at one point or other in my life that I still felt heartstring attachment to. But what had we done lately? Had we grabbed a bite to eat? Had a nice chat? Even checked in with each other at all?

Or maybe we’d had an argument and just put things on ice – too wistful to end the conversation, but too embittered to continue it?

What’s helped me is expressing radical positivity – wishing the best for all, even those who I’ve felt “did me wrong” at some point or another. Sometimes this wish was sent, sometimes it was just put out into the universe. It’s helped me to let go of a great deal of anger, resentment, feeling trapped by a portion of my thoughts occupied with the voices of those long gone.

All I know is loyalty, so to do this brings me great sorrow. I don’t know letting go of people, you forgive and move on, forgive and move on, argue and fight and battle and at the end of the day, you still have each other.

But what happens when it’s entirely one-sided? When you’re fighting for something the other person doesn’t want, or doesn’t want to the degree of doing anything about it, or still holds on to their resentments too deeply? What then?

I’m learning the art of letting go.

As painful as it’s been, and as delicious as the concept is of wanting to just end this process, something came to mind that felt sharable, in the event it could help others:

“You can’t lift someone with a broken arm. You can’t love someone with a broken heart.”

I’m not of service to anyone if I’m limping along – I’m giving them hope I can help and just making things worse. Realizing my limitations has been a difficult process, but it’s oddly freeing. I see the boundaries of what I can do and what I can’t do, what I’m good at and where my abilities and capabilities stop.

And it’s opened doors to the “meant to be” things in your life. If you’re meant to live in a certain place, a door will open. Or have a certain thing – it will find you. Or have a certain person in your life, they’ll fight to be there.

It’s equally dizzying and petrifying to let something out of your control. It’s horrifying that your perspective towards it was one of control.

It’s the only way, for better or for worse, to grow.

Not accustomed to happiness, and I’ve probably covered this topic before. But like a car that’s gotten used to running on regular gas, I’m used to running on a shitstorm of horrible. It drives me – problem solving, having to work your way out of a tight jam, those last minute Hail Marys.

However, I’ve fallen into a situation I’m totally unprepared for – happiness. There are no fires to put out. And it scares the shit out of me.

What exactly is my identity? My sense of self is forged in saving things, people, situations – throwing someone under my arm and running out of a burning building.

That’s not to say I’m particularly good at it or honorable – most of it has been out of a sense of self interest and survival. It’s a mindset, a way of life.

But nothing horrible is going on and I’m fearful of growing complacent. My mom and dog are happy, I have a wonderful family and friends, a new place, work’s taking shape, and I’m in love with and loved by the most special human in the world.

It’s all I could ask for. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. I’m trying to live in it and savor every minute.

Not accustomed to happiness, and I’ve probably covered this topic before. But like a car that’s gotten used to running on regular gas, I’m used to running on a shitstorm of horrible. It drives me – problem solving, having to work your way out of a tight jam, those last minute Hail Marys.

However, I’ve fallen into a situation I’m totally unprepared for – happiness. There are no fires to put out. And it scares the shit out of me.

What exactly is my identity? My sense of self is forged in saving things, people, situations – throwing someone under my arm and running out of a burning building.

That’s not to say I’m particularly good at it or honorable – most of it has been out of a sense of self interest and survival. It’s a mindset, a way of life.

But nothing horrible is going on and I’m fearful of growing complacent. My mom and dog are happy, I have a wonderful family and friends, a new place, work’s taking shape, and I’m in love with and loved by the most special human in the world.

It’s all I could ask for. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. I’m trying to live in it and savor every minute.

I may have talked about it before (I think? Hell if I know) about writer’s block, and the best way to overcome it being incrementalism (complete one small task, and then pick up on that momentum).

But what *is* writer’s block, or analysis paralysis, exactly? And why does it feel like the creative version of trying to digest two Chipotle burritos, I had a BOGO coupon and I don’t need your fucking judgment, Linda.

Writer’s block manifests itself to me not just with writing, but life in general. It’s when I’m left to make a decision, one where I either A) am fearful it’s going to have unintended consequences B) I’m going to lose something C) I’m going to have to let someone down or D) a mix of all the above.

Sometimes these decisions keep me up at night, and other days (what I’d like to revolutionarily moniker “Decision Days”) I can fire off 3-5 big decisions and be entirely happy with them.

A life full of reflective moments would be absolutely paralyzing, much as a life full of Decision Days would be absolutely reckless. I think I lean a little too much towards reflective moments, because it feels like things can get stagnant and then it’s a year and I bought a car I was going to fix up and it’s still sitting in the driveway and all I’ve done was wash it twice and pay the registration.

Another factor is I despise disappointing people. I mean, no one enjoys it, but I am probably oversensitive to it to the point where I anticipate disappointment that doesn’t even happen. As a result, I limit decisions to ones that, if they’re going to be destructive, are bombproofed to only be self-destructive. Nobody’s saying this is a winning strategy, but it is what it is.

And then we come upon the core issue – writer’s block. There’s the same issues at play – fear of disappointing people, of doing something wrong, of closing doors, and so on. So many of the world’s greatest writers are considered that not because of measurable skill but because they either had the balls or the outright liquid courage to put that pen to paper.

I have unceasing envy (anxiety settles in at this specific moment in trying to remember if I used that phrase before) for those who wake up in the morning and are “do stuff and break shit” people. I want to know what their interior monologue is. Are they in a state of permanent terror, or does their inside reflect their open brashness?

Others adopt a “what’s done is done” attitude, which seems like it gets you through the short term but doesn’t allow you to learn from your mistakes.

Other people surprise me with how entirely unaware they are of all of these monologues going on.

And the rest of us are sitting behind a keyboard, a pen, a typewriter, a closed door before a meeting, a scrolling monitor, a desk, or a cup of tea on an end table, roiled by fear but outwardly inert, trying to calculate the angle to strike the match to light the fire that drives us forward.

I don’t throw things away.

It always surprises people when I find a postcard they wrote me 5 years ago or a picture from college. I really don’t get rid of anything. And unfortunately that extends to clothing.

As someone who’s perpetually deal-obsessed and has always been surrounded by people who love accumulating clothes, I’ve found I’ve hoarded a regional distribution center’s worth of clothing.

*extended soliloquy about using clothing to sublimate years of stifled sexuality and identity issues something something okay good the boring part’s over*

The result is way too many Abercrombie polos, flannel shirts, tanktops, heavy jackets (great for those chill 70 degree LA nights) and dress shirts (for all those office jobs I go to).

The good thing is that I’m a master of resale and love the keep the churn going. The bad thing is that I have a photographic memory of every outfit and a mental museum of “oh remember the Christmas party I wore that jacket to?!”

And therein lies the problem – memories shouldn’t translate into real life, real life should translate into memories. I can’t be nostalgic for a dinner that’s long since been composted just because I wore a certain pair of jeans there, and I don’t need to slowly acquire storage units just to accommodate an overflowing closet.

An ideal wardrobe is churned and worn constantly, and you have some legacy pieces (Prada boots) that you wear the hell out of, fix them up, and wear them again.

So I’ve undertaken what’s been, thus far, a semi-crippling task – inventorying a decade of clothing into stuff I can sell, stuff I can donate, and stuff I can keep.

Such a charmed life! But for years of gift giving, I always just asked for clothes or the means to purchase clothes. I don’t have the latest PlayStation or Nintendo Sybian or whatever the kids are using these days. I do, on the other hand, have a Polo collection that could cripple a country club.

Yet I realized I was constantly wearing and re-wearing the same stuff, and just in different permutations. Black dress shirt. Black pants. Sweats. Shorts. T-shirts. A few different dress shirts. Jacket. No real surprises, and I look as silly in streetwear as I do in a suit.

Are people going to be wearing Off-White belts in 5 years? Probably not, and by the time they come back around your dirty rental car seatbelt leftover isn’t gonna look good compared to a brand new holographic pantsholder from streetwear brand du jour.

But at this point, it’s anything goes. Baggy and skinny and flared and messy and clean and patterns and patterns and bright colors and dull colors and everything in between. There are no trends anymore, and nothing’s out of fashion, and it’s so freeing to finally get rid of all my “trendy” clothes and just dress as me.

Which, let’s be honest, is going to be indistinguishable any season now from a Disney supervillain.

pictured: on a casual snack run to Trader Joe’s