Doug Messel

Category: Blog Posts

  • A Shocking Experience: Unexpected Heart Surgery Near Valentine’s Day

    A Shocking Experience: Unexpected Heart Surgery Near Valentine’s Day

    A few weeks ago, I thought I was dying.

    Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that drastic, but it wasn’t fun. A “call the ambulance, go to the emergency room, have a somewhat invasive surgery” situation.

    Here’s the story:

    I’ve had heart conditions my whole life. There’s a hole in my heart that has been there since birth, and with it a pronounced murmur; the kind of washing machine rhythm that nurses and doctors get excited to show to med students. I was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in high school, dashing my non-existent dreams of being a high-achieving high school athlete.

    These conditions mean I make regular visits to the cardiologist, where I am usually the youngest person in the waiting room by at least a decade. Maybe two. Even as I speed toward 40, I bring the average patient age down by double digits.

    My heart issues have always been kind of serious but not serious, or at least that was the general mood for most of my adult life. I was told in high school that eventually I might need a pacemaker or to go on medication, but those were possibilities that always felt far off. At every checkup since diagnosis—across three different hospital systems and four different doctors— things looked stable. Some doctors said to avoid most exercise. One said I could probably train for a 5K race if I wanted.

    Since 2017, I’ve tried to be active through regular walking and strength training, and I’ve generally felt like there were no issues.

    Until November 2024, anyway.

    A routine check-up and echocardiogram gave my cardiologist some concern. Enough of one that he ordered me to wear a heart monitor and undergo an MRI as soon as possible. The former I stupidly decided to start wearing on election day, but the latter happened in January 2025. The MRI showed that I had developed enough scarring on my heart to suggest the potential for dangerous arrhythmias. Like “heart beats over 200 times a minute” kind of arrhythmias.

    My cardiologist suggested that it was time to have a defibrillator implanted, but because I was young, he didn’t want to pursue the traditional type with leads that go through veins and into your heart. Instead, he suggested a subcutaneous implantable defibrillator (S-ICD), which would sit next to my ribs in — for lack of a better word — a little pocket in my side. A wire with a lead would be tunneled across my chest and sit just under my heart, but inside the skin. It’s less invasive than the traditional route, and for someone with no previous episodes, it’s a good fit. Ideally the battery on this thing would last around 15 years, and I wouldn’t have to deal with it again until then. No worry about lead corrosion or heart infection, either.

    emblem MRI S-ICD from Boston Scientific
    The Boston Scientific ICD that was implanted on February 26, 2025.

    Which was great! And it worked! For almost an entire year!

    And then, on February 10, 2026, it decided to work a little too well.

    🎵Shock three times near the shower if you want me🎵

    I was toweling off after an afternoon haircut and shower, prepping for parent teacher conferences, when I saw what felt like a very abrupt strobelike flash and a sudden jarring sensation in my whole body. It took me a second, but I figured it out: the defibrillator had given me a massive shock. Which was weird as hell, because I didn’t feel sick at all. No dizziness, no discomfort. Nothing.

    I finished drying off as fast as I could and thought about next steps. Which is when the second shock came.

    This one was worse than the first, and it sent me to my hands and knees. I had my phone in the bathroom listening to music on a speaker, so I called Erin in a panic. Which was silly. She was at work, not able to do much. 

    The next step was to call the doctor, but first I needed to get dressed. I put on clothes — a t-shirt and jeans, for some reason — and started looking for my cardiologist’s nurse line, but couldn’t find the direct number. Then I called Erin’s dad, because I desperately did not want to call 911. I did not want to pay for an ambulance if I didn’t have to.

    My heart rate as seen in Apple Health during the hour that my defibrillator shocked me and when the ambulance came to pick me up. As it turns out, this is when the device started double counting and shocking me multiple times.
    My defibrillator fired close to 2:30 PM on February 10, 2026. I put my watch on almost immediately after it fired the second time.

    Then the third shock came, worse than the other two. I fell sideways toward the bed and used it to help get me to the floor, where—on my hands and knees—I knew I couldn’t wait.

    There, on my hands and knees, I called 911 and waited with the operator for the fire truck and paramedics to arrive.

    I’d never called 911 before, so I didn’t realize our bedroom would be filled with firefighters. At least five of them, paramedics not included. They showed up a few minutes later. The dog was barking her head off downstairs, but frankly I’m just grateful that’s all she did.

    The assembled group sat me up, helped me call Erin to let her know what was happening, and helped the paramedics get me downstairs with a chair because my heart rate was too elevated to feel comfortable walking. I didn’t want a fourth shock if I could help it. I was done with being shocked that day, I said.

    Later, I joked with my coworkers on Slack that it felt like being carried on a palanquin. When I looked over on the way out the door, Erin’s dad was sitting on the ottoman in the living room; when I didn’t answer the phone when he called me back, he came over. I asked if they’d take care of getting Banjo home from school.

    They got an IV in and peppered me with stickers, watching my EKG on the way to the hospital.

    No more shocks. Just shaking as I came down from the adrenaline dump.

    The nice thing, I guess, about the situation is that I did not have to wait long for a room in the ER. They wheeled me into a private space with a sliding glass door and started taking my vitals. Erin got there either shortly before or after I did. My heart rate stayed elevated, but I think that was more the stress of the situation than anything else. As we waited to talk to a doctor and nurses and perhaps eventually the cardiologist, we listened as another down the hall wailed; the sound carried to us, a long refrain that alternately sounded like “Help!” or “Hey!” and happened anytime this person was left alone. 

    Owing to the current state of American healthcare staffing, that meant lots and lots of moaning. 

    As staff cycled in and out of my room, we quickly figured out that they couldn’t interrogate my device to see what happened at first because they didn’t have the right equipment. Apparently my specific kind of S-ICD isn’t one they commonly implant. They tried a couple of different ways and positions, but their specific tablet didn’t have the right software to connect to the hard puck that bulged beneath my skin.

    But when they eventually did scan it once someone from cardiology came downstairs, something fun came up: I hadn’t actually had an episode that required a shock. It had fired, yeah, but not because it actually needed to. The cardiologist arrived and explained what this meant:

    As it turns out, changes in my EKG — T-wave oversensing due to a bundle branch block — meant that the defibrillator was double counting and delivering inappropriate shocks.

    “On the one hand, that’s great, right? I’m not actually sick or having a severe problem,” I said.

    “Yes,” the doctor said, “but we have to reprogram your device so it won’t double count. And even then, we need to look at whether or not the lead in your skin will accurately record your heartbeat. I also want an echocardiogram to see if there are any physical changes in your heart since November.”

    That meant staying at the hospital overnight. Not a great plan, but it beat the hell out of being shocked again at home.

    A few hours later, Erin went home to pack me a bag and bring Banjo up to see me. He was nervous, as he had every right to be. But we assured him I was right where I needed to be, and that we’d figure out what was happening and I’d be back home before we knew it.

    Not long after they left, I got moved to a room and tried to get some sleep. It wasn’t easy, especially with the IV in my arm and the nurses coming in and out every hour or so.

    Too Stressed to be Blessed

    The next morning passed slowly. I waited for any kind of news and in the meantime let my coworkers know what had happened in more detail. Leaving so abruptly with little more than an “hey going to hospital for heart issues” message in Slack felt awkward. There was a bunch of unfinished work on my desk. I was in the process of building out our contractor list and assignments, but I hadn’t completed everything I wanted to. There were still outstanding edits on a piece I’d written for the company blog.

    The idea of letting everyone down stressed me out something awful.

    As it turns out, there wasn’t any reason to be afraid. Catherine, my boss, told me not to worry too much about it. Everything would get handled.

    So I logged out of Slack. Shut off my email (but forgot to set an out of office reply). And then I just…didn’t think about work after that.

    Eventually, they pulled me out for a stress test. There were three people in the room: two nurses and another medical technician.

    “The doctor wants to see if the changes we made to your device will stop it from delivering inappropriate shocks,” one nurse said.

    I got on the treadmill in my grippy socks, having not packed a pair of shoes for the trip.

    The treadmill started slowly, but the lack of shoes didn’t impact me too much. At least until the incline and speed ramped up a bit. That’s when I started to notice how difficult it might be. Then came another realization.

    “Hey, uh, if it didn’t work…aren’t I going to get shocked on the treadmill?”

    “We can stop it fast,” they said.

    “We’ll catch you,” another nurse added.

    “That still seems less than ideal,” I said. I could feel my breath getting ragged. My pulse quickening even more than it would have by exercise alone. I did not want to get shocked.

    “You okay?” they asked as the treadmill pace and incline bumped up.

    “Just kind of freaking out about getting shocked again,” I said.

    I watched the monitor. My heart rate crept up to 150. If the device was counting double, I was definitely in the shock zone.

    Before anything could happen, another guy ran into the room.

    “Stop! Stop!” he said. “We have to wait for the device rep to turn the therapy off.”

    They stopped the treadmill and I got off.

    The doctor came in. “We needed to wait,” he said. “The device rep will be here in about ten minutes.”

    The nurses helped me back to the bed and got me some water. It was more of a workout than I’d had in weeks. There were other patients, so they asked if I was fine to hang out on my own. Of course. I texted Erin to let her know what was happening.

    I sat alone and waited, looking through the door at a strongbox with NUCLEAR MATERIALS printed on a sticker on its side. It felt less than secure.

    Eventually the medical device representative arrived, turned off my defibrillator’s therapy options, and we restarted the test.

    My hands were slippery as I gripped the treadmill’s bar and we increased the pace and incline again. The doctor and device representative watched the screen and my EKG as I struggled uphill, feet thumping against the hard surface of the treadmill. Grippy socks don’t provide a supportive walking experience.

    After a few more minutes of this, I said I couldn’t take it anymore. Not because I was going to faint or because walking was hard, but my sweaty palms were quickly losing their purchase on the handrail and my feet were starting to hurt. They shut down the treadmill, satisfied that they’d gotten the data they needed.

    Bad news: the oversensing was still there, even after the adjustments.

    The doctor and device company guy pored over something on a computer behind me. As I listened to them, it sounded like they were both unhappy with the placement of my defibrillator’s lead. It wasn’t the best position, apparently. The device rep was more annoyed than the doctor.

    Eventually they came around and talked to me. We’d leave the device off for now to avoid the potential for shocks, but we’d need to figure out a solution sooner rather than later. They couldn’t let me go home with a defibrillator that might go off at the wrong time, especially now that we knew there was an issue. Plus, they still wanted to look at the echocardiogram to decide whether or not my heart had changed. So back up to the room.

    Eventually, the doctor came to see me with a couple of options:

    1. I wait in the hospital for him to have an opening to perform a surgery to move the lead in my chest and, potentially, the defibrillator.
    1. I head home and wait until next week, when the doctor who performed the original implantation would have availability to do the same thing. In the meantime, I’d need to wear a portable defibrillator vest which I would describe as something that looked like the world’s most unsupportive bra.
    1. The third option, which was what he recommended, was to completely replace the subcutaneous defibrillator with a traditional model that offered pacing capabilities. There were risks; no one wants to put one of these in someone in their late thirties unless they absolutely have to. But based on the EKG and the issues with oversensitivity, it’d be more accurate and stand less chance of inappropriate shocks. The soonest he could do the procedure was the following Friday.

    After thinking it over, I chose option three. I was ready to be done, and I didn’t want to risk getting shocked while driving or picking Banjo up from school. But that also meant I couldn’t go home until after the surgery.

    The next two days were painfully boring. Uneventful, really. Erin and Banjo came up to see me every night for a bit, but there’s only so much you can do to keep a second-grader from being bored in a hospital room. Otherwise, I read a lot and watched the Olympics — thank God for the Olympics — but by and large it sucked. I cried at least once, either because I was terrified that something awful might happen during my procedure or because I was deeply lonely or some mixture of the two.

    On the day of the surgery, I was a bundle of nerves. I hadn’t eaten since the night before. I hadn’t had a shower in days. For some reason I didn’t think to take one until that morning. But I was able to shower.

    Doug, wearing a green hospital gown. He looks annoyed.
    On the morning of my surgery, I was very much over being in the hospital.

    Erin and her dad came over around 11:30, and we sat in “hurry up and wait mode” for the rest of the afternoon. Eventually, they wheeled me down to surgery around 4:00 or so. Before we left, I asked if I should take off my pants.

    They said it was fine, so I didn’t take them off.

    After another 45 minutes and discussion with nurses, nurse anesthetists, and the anesthesiologist, the cardiologist came in and asked if I had any last questions and to calm my nerves. He apologized for the delay; apparently he’d had a “very challenging” case earlier that morning, but he was ready to go.

    Next, he asked if I was ready, and I told him I was just extremely nervous. That was normal, he said. But this was a routine procedure. He does four or five of these a week. It would go well. All I would need to do is pretend I was sipping margaritas on the beach and taking a nice nap. The only concern was whether he wanted to do two leads into my heart or one. We decided to do two just for the additional visibility and the potential for pacing down the road if necessary.

    They wheeled me back to surgery. Erin and I said our “see you laters,” and I disappeared behind the last set of double doors into the procedure room, full of giant monitors and machines and people, all of them in masks and scrubs.

    I was more present this time than last time because I knew a bit more about what to expect. I cracked jokes with the nurses and support staff. The situation didn’t feel as dire, despite the fact that I was there because of a very serious problem.

    “Hey, we need to take your pants down,” someone said.

    “They told me I could leave them on!”

    “Yeah, we gotta pull them down in case we need to get to your groin.”

    I lifted my hips and shimmied them down around my ankles. I felt exposed. Had I known otherwise, I would have left them upstairs. I didn’t want to get blood on them. They’re my good $80 lounge pants.

    That was the last thing I did before I went under.

    The Day After

    After waking from surgery, I was very out of it, of course. Pretty much incapable of coherent conversation for more than a minute. But after Erin left, I got a second wind and decided I needed to eat. But because the surgery ran so long, dinner service was over. The only thing I was able to eat was jello, apparently. So I ate my jello and watched TV and texted Erin. Eventually I crashed and went to sleep.

    The next day, I found out—both from Erin and from the doctor during our discharge discussion—a few interesting pieces of information:

    • I had panicked about my pants and asked Erin about them at least a dozen times. My nurse, Mercy, looked under the sheets. There they were. Around my ankles. She took them all the way off for me.
    • The surgery went well, with one caveat: they had to place my defibrillator on my right side because the vein they usually use to insert the leads on the left side doesn’t exist in my body. Instead, it loops down and underneath my heart. Of course the other congenital defects mean there’s another anatomical difference.
    • A not-insignificant amount of scar tissue had developed around the original lead, meaning my doctor had to use…some degree of force to remove it. Could have gone my whole life without hearing that bit, but oh well.

    They finally let me go home the next day, and I was sore. But I’m healing up. In fact, I’m almost completely healed. For the first week, I had to keep my arm immobilized and my incisions generally dry. 

    I spent the weekend on the couch or in the recliner, napping and trying to stay comfortable. I could bend my arm at the elbow, which was nice, and sleeping didn’t hurt nearly as bad as it did the last time I’d had surgery. But I snored a lot, and frankly started to smell by the time the fifth day rolled around.

    More importantly, I tried to log into work on Monday after my surgery and dig myself out of the hole of the previous week. But I didn’t know where to start. There were so many emails and Asana tasks and half-answered questions.

    Catherine messaged me to ask how I was feeling, and when I told her about what was happening in my office, responded with a frownie face emoji. 

    “Log off,” she said. “You just had heart surgery. You don’t need to work right now.”

    “Are you serious?” I asked. I’d been out a week, more or less incommunicado.


    “Absolutely,” she said.

    I set my out of office response. I dropped a message in Slack saying I’d check in later. And then I logged off again, spending the rest of the week reading books, napping in the chair, and healing.

    I’m back to work now. Mostly having dug out of the trench that my absence left. I’m building out my processes (and my idea of what my writing program at work will look like), developing skills, and finding a new routine. I’m taking things both more seriously and with a sense of flexibility than I did before. My “annual” performance review, which comes just five months after joining the agency, was excellent. I’m earning my keep and more.

    From a physical standpoint, I’m still restricted. I’m not supposed to lift anything heavy, and I can’t move my arms over my head yet. I still have about a week left until I don’t need to sleep with the immobilizer anymore. I’m excited about being able to move my underdesk treadmill back into position and walking every day almost as much as I am at the prospect of warmer weather to walk outside in.

    I had planned on February being a true reset, only to receive a shocking surprise just ten days into the month. But it’s fine. I’m fine now, I think. A little uncomfortable, but having a new piece of plastic and circuitry wedged just under your collar bone will do that. My chest itches where the hair is growing back in. 

    And I’m blogging again, I guess. Writing something that isn’t client centered. Thinking about fiction and poetry and creative projects I’d desperately like to do.

    There’s no time like the present, of course.

  • 33,212 Emails

    33,212 Emails

    My name is Doug. I’m 39 years old. And at this very moment I have 33,212 unread emails.

    I also have 140 unread text messages, but that’s slightly more forgivable. Most of those are 2FA requests I only needed to read from the notification. They didn’t require clicking through. They’re still there, though. Nagging. Bright red on green, sitting at the bottom of my phone’s home screen.

    I’ll clear them out. Eventually.

    The emails, though? That’s a goddamn disaster. In the few minutes it’s taken me to write the first few lines of this story, I’ve gotten another one. Some of them, like the invoices and survey request from the company that just finished installing a new fence, are important. Others, like the four emails I’ve received from home goods company Oakywood since visiting their website today, not so much.

    I can’t keep up. How can anyone keep up? Most of the time we get at least five or six emails from the same brand within a day: promo notifications, abandoned cart emails, reminders…it’s too much. That doesn’t even factor in the stuff that gets pushed immediately into the “promotions” inbox, where it sits unnoticed until being pushed up to the top by Gmail as an important item (only three days too late, natch). And then there’s the actual important stuff that comes through. Payment reminders and eStatements and invoices and…so many emails. 

    I hate email. I used to enjoy getting it, back when I had pen pals in seventh grade and a Canadian online girlfriend — I shit you not — that I used to log into AOL to flirt with for a few hours every night. Back when I had like four friends who had my address, and maybe even notifications for a new Facebook comment or tagged post. I could actually stand to get a new message.

    Not anymore, though. Now it’s at least 15-20 emails an hour. I eventually turned off push notifications for my email app so I could get some work done once in a while, so often I was getting interrupted. I’ve tried so many tips and tricks and tools to make it manageable; Unsubscribe apps, quickly reading and deleting as soon as things come in, and regularly archiving stuff by subject and/or sender.

    It never works.

    My work email is just as bad, if not worse. Jumbled among important announcements, you’ll find automated messages from Google alerting me to denied or approved paid ads; ads I didn’t write and don’t manage, but that I get notifications for because that’s just how being added to a client’s alias works. And because it’s in Microsoft Outlook, managing those emails is even more arduous. So I don’t.

    Someone will ask if I saw an email from a client, and I shrug. How could I? It was wedged between two notifications about PTO, because Microsoft doesn’t see fit to just block off people’s calendars when they’re going on vacation. Instead, you have to alert others that you’ll be gone.

    I once read a post from someone about the concept of “email bankruptcy,” which is where a person who is about to go on vacation (or just returning from one) clears out their inbox in one fell swoop. Everything gets deleted, and I mean everything. Jesus, the guts it takes to do that. Do you know how strong you’d have to be to just assume anyone with an important issue will reach out again? The confidence that you’ve addressed every outstanding issue?

    Well, I do. Because I do that shit all the fucking time.

    If it’s the first day of a new month, we’re back to “Inbox Zero,” baby. No messages whatsoever. Read and delete. Archive. Keep if it’s something important, like client notes. I play FMK with my inbox at least once every few weeks, and it’s exhilarating.

    This is a mea culpa, I guess. I’m so sorry. If there was something important you needed me to see, you probably should’ve texted me. Maybe even send a Slack or Teams message. Sent up a flare in the middle of the night, I guess.

    Just don’t do it over email, because I won’t see it.

    Because it’s buried under 33,213 other messages.

    What I’m Reading

    Been a minute since I’ve done one of these, but here we go.

    • Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King and Bilquis Evely: We went to see Superman last weekend and it was really good, and I hope I’m not ruining anything by mentioning this one. Milly Alcock’s cameo near the end of the film is fucking hilarious. Because next year’s Supergirl is based on this book, I decided to pick it up and give it a read. I’m not that far in, but the art and writing has been gorgeous so far. A pretty strong endorsement for reading more comics, too.
    • A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway: I threw this one on my Kindle in an attempt to read more before bed, but I’ll be honest and say that I’ve turned my pages by reading it on my phone while otherwise occupied. I have a hard copy downstairs in my office, but I’ve honestly found that it’s easier to focus more with eBooks now. Not that far into it, and reading so sporadically means I’m kind of disconnected from the plot.

    What I’m Listening To

    A couple of nights ago, my son was showering with the bathroom door open and singing “HOT TO GO!”  at the top of his fucking lungs, but for a brief few moments he slipped into singing the chorus of APT by ROSÉ and Bruno Mars, and so I’ve been listening to that record on repeat.

    A reminder…

    Did you know I’m available for consulting and freelance work? I love to write, and especially for clients. I charge $400 per blog post, which might seem like a lot but I’m a professional who knows how to do my job well. I also have an addiction to athleisure fits. But it’s mainly that I’m a professional.

  • we are not the same

    a tweet that reads You: take 2 hours to read 1 book. Me: take 2 minutes to think of precisely the information I need, write a well-structured query, tell my agent Al to distribute it to the 17 models I've selected to help me with research, who then traverse approximately 1 million books, extract 17 different versions of the information I'm looking for, which my overseer agent then reviews, eliminates duplicate points, highlights purely conflicting ones for my review, and creates a 3-level summary. And then I drink coffee for 58 minutes. We are not the same.

    I have recently joked that a lot of the AI stuff I’ve seen and read on LinkedIn has been slop, but I think there’s a real value in telling these people off. Especially the people who think it’s going to completely replace competent people.

    The above tweet is an example of that.  Someone wrote “these people are the enemy,” and if we’re being honest I think that kind of framing, while inflammatory, isn’t wholly off the mark.

    There is no moral virtue in being lazy or not. But that’s what this is. It’s laziness. Intellectual sloth and incuriosity on a systemic level. In the example above, it’s someone who wants a specific answer but is unwilling to encounter anything adjacent to it that might encourage accidental learning.

    People are touting AI agents as this thing that’s gonna revolutionize how we absorb information, shop, make reservations, etc. Basically how we live.

    I hate it. I hate it all. I want to smash my computer with a hammer when I learn about it. I understand the joke from Parks and Recreation where Ron Swanson carries his computer to the dumpster with an intimate familiarity that borders on the parasocial.

    Ron Swanson throwing his computer into a dumpster.

    Because when it comes to reading or writing or making dinner reservations or ordering flowers for our spouses or planning birthday parties for our kids…What’s the point? What’s the point of any of this if we outsource our experiences to a computer? If I don’t internalize my wife’s favorite flowers or my kid’s current obsession, am I truly invested and present in their lives?

    Probably not.

    Having a computer do that work, or the work of research at all (and then lie to you about the things that it’s read or made up out of whole cloth) robs you of your very literacy. Reading a text and wrestling with its ideas—and learning how to summarize it yourself—is fundamental to the act of storytelling, both creation and consumption.

    And speaking of creation, why bother learning why putting words, one in front of the other, is such a rewarding experience? What good is poetry if no one stops and thoughtfully considers how the syllables fall into place, juxtaposed against one another and bouncing off the tongue as you read it aloud?

    Why bother learning about the importance of framing a photo or shot or composition if you can just say, “Make a picture of my dog that looks like he’s in a Wes Anderson movie?” without understanding why Anderson makes the aesthetic choices he does?

    And for the more mundane things that AI is supposed to fix, maybe there’s an argument that it shouldn’t? Waiting on hold is an exercise in emotional regulation and patience. Going to a store and buying things from a sales associate teaches empathy at best and helps you think about things you never considered. I don’t want to read AI summaries of reviews. I want to read the actual reviews from the people who have bought and loved or hated the thing they purchased.

    We are in such a race to the bottom of efficiency with this stuff—stuff that has a wildly destructive environmental impact. What is the point of making the tasks we dread faster if it ruins the planet and robs us of the ability to do those tasks anyway? It’s like that joke about millennials and the phone—I HATE the shit out of making phone calls to make appointments and would rather do it online, but at least I know HOW to make a phone call and perform the basics of telephone etiquette. 

    Kafka from Final Fantasy VI saying Hate hate HATE!!
    I have Kefka levels of hate for making phone calls. For real. I worked at a video store that required me to make up to 20 phones calls a day trying to get movies back from people who were late. Every single one was an exercise in anxiety, and that’s before I started texting regularly.

    I won’t argue that sometimes it would be nice to have more time, but as we’ve seen the “efficiencies” so many of our companies are chasing with heavy-handed AI usage are never passed down to workers. We’re not saving time so that we can have six-hour workdays or four-day workweeks. The stuff that we’re ostensibly supposed to be making that time for.

    No. Instead, we’re saving time so we can do MORE work for MORE clients to make MORE money, but not for us, no, but our c-suite leaders. 

    And none of this even begins to approach the other problems with LLMs, like the propensity of people to fall into psychosis through continuous use.

    I wanted so badly for LLMs to make my life as a content marketer easier, and in many respects I guess it still has that potential. I could use it to write outlines, or even first drafts, but I can tell a huge difference when I sit down to write something after having heavily leaned on it for work tasks. Writing introductions is harder. Synthesizing my ideas, too. Finding the right word isn’t as simple as it used to be.

    And for someone who prides themselves on authenticity in writing—whether that’s a client blog post or some shit I came up with and typed in the Notes app of my phone after reading the Tweet at the beginning of this post—finding the right words is where the work starts.

    Not with a prompt. Not with a robot doing the heavy lifting.

    I’ll be honest: When I sat down to write this (on my couch with a cup of coffee), I didn’t really have an end in mind. That’s why it’s so abrupt. It’s a post. But maybe there’s something in there worth thinking about.

  • how to disappear completely (and never be found)

    searching for early online acquaintances in the age of using your real name online

    Nick is what I’d describe as devilishly handsome.

    He was a charming Australian with fucking impeccable teeth. He had incredible taste in clothes, music, and movies. He loved The OC and Scissor Sisters and was an incredible writer and unabashedly bisexual.

    In short, he was just about everything I wanted to be, whether or not I knew it at the time.

    And despite the fact that we lived so far apart that we existed on literal separate days, he was kind enough to host my (terrible) blog on his vinylinvasion URL during the summer between my junior and senior years of high school.

    We met as part of a loose blog ring. He was acquainted with another friend of mine, a web developer from the UK named Lawrie. Lawrie got well-known in online circles due to an article about being straightedge and also a quiz he made to tell you what Jedi you would be. Lawrie ended up hosting my blog for a few years before I bit the bullet and paid for my own web hosting, which I’ve done on and off now for the past few years.

    I’m actually still friends with Lawrie and with a few other people from that network, including Alexandra (a teacher from Canada). I occasionally keep tabs on the singer/songwriter/graphic designer Elliot Caroll, whose own website was hosted by Nick. She’s immensely talented, but we sort of fell out of contact around the same time that Myspace collapsed, and if anything she has ended up far more famous and successful than I could ever hope to be. I frankly doubt she remembers our conversations about Garden State (!) and Death Cab for Cutie (!!).

    There was another member of the vinylinvasion collective named Kat, and she was a musical theater obsessive from Pennsylvania. She was dark and mysterious and sexy, impenetrable and cool. We flirted a lot that year. Heavily. She snapped blurry webcam photos and uploaded them for my benefit. She would occasionally record breathy, flirty audio messages that often took 15 minutes or more for me to download because they were .WAV files and I only had dial-up internet. Hers was the kind of attention I’d never really gotten from girls, and I greedily took as much of it as I could.

    \"a
    The last archived version of Nick’s site, from summer of 2006.

    For whatever reason, we stopped talking around the same time I went to college, and to this day I’m not exactly sure why.

    I thought about Nick—and by extension Kat and Elliot—for the first time in a long time last week, spurred on by a bit of midweek boredom (and because Lawrie tweeted something funny. In the 16 years I’ve known him, he has always been funny). But I can’t remember (if I ever knew) Nick’s last name. I could barely remember where he lived.

    I looked up his screen names and handles and found next to nothing. I went to the Wayback Machine to scour archived versions of his site for any kind of useful information. I was desperate to find him and to discover what became of his life. I needed to know where he ended up, this man who was immensely talented and good-looking. What does he do now, as an adult, that could fulfill all this promise I have built him up to have had.

    The only things I found were a link to a long-abandoned DeviantArt profile and a sketchy as hell website from the mid-2000’s where men of all ages posted photos of themselves in underwear.

    My search for Kat was just as fruitless. I used every variation of her name that I could remember, but I found absolutely nothing. I did, however, accidentally click on a fair number of Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn profiles for women who—upon much closer examination—are not the Kat that I knew back then. I hope she’s doing well, wherever she is. She had big dreams of make-up artistry and singing. I remember her as immensely talented.

    There are other members of that social circle whose names I can’t remember, but whose websites I recall. They’re just as difficult to find. And for the ones I have kept in contact with, how do you start a conversation? Do you ask, “Hey, remember that friend of yours? What are they up to now? Did you have a falling out?” My motivations are pure curiosity more than any real desire for connection; I follow plenty of people I want to be friends or friendly with now. There are at least a dozen people in Kansas City that I’ve known for a decade through Twitter and Instagram that I haven’t had the chance to hang out with.

    Adding a handful of people I talked to more than ten years ago to the mix just seems like asking for trouble.

    What I am interested in is how someone can simply cease to exist on the internet. Because that’s what it feels like these people have done. I’ve changed screen names a handful of times in the past 15 years, but searching for my old ones yields some results. You can trace a line, however jagged or disjointed, from those early usernames to the @dougmessel I use (for better or worse) in almost all instances of my online existence.

    I search for Nick or Kat or Christina and find zero evidence that they exist today in a modern context. If it weren’t for archived websites or conversations with Lawrie about these acquaintances, I would almost be deluded into thinking that I’ve made them up.

    And in the grand scheme of things, these two years may not really matter all that much! It definitely doesn’t feel as formative as the two or three years I spent living in anime-focused chat rooms pretending to be someone else, or the very real moments of college heartbreak and failure I endured before meeting my wife and falling head over heels for her.

    But I still think back on that time fondly. For all the terrible words I put to paper and the very, very rudimentary web design (and badly photoshopped header images) I proudly threw out there, these were real connections! They were meaningful interactions over a period of time where I didn’t know who—or what—I wanted to be in a tumultuous transition prior to leaving for college.

    I’d really like to thank them for playing a part in that, however small. So I suppose I’ll keep looking up their names every few years, hoping that maybe some new clue may be unearthed. Some fossils of that long-distance friendship to reveal.

    Current Mood: Nostalgic

    Current Song: How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found – Radiohead

    Current Book: Out of Office – Charlie Warzel and Anne Helen Petersen

  • Bathtub Poop

    On reaching the wrong kind of parenting milestone.

    \"bathtub

    So here’s a real gross story.

    I’d planned on writing about something else entirely for today’s installment, but as I’m sitting here watching Shaquille O’Neal get put through a table in a wrestling match, I thought maybe instead I should tell you about my kid’s latest, greatest accomplishment.

    Bathtime is my thing, but we’re just now getting to the point where it’s kind of fun to play around with Benji as he’s in the tub. So sometimes I get distracted; either by my phone or by talking to Erin, I may not always be 100% attentive.

    Sue me.

    Well, I was answering a question that Erin asked me tonight and turned to look at Benji, who’d gotten very quiet, and I saw him on his hands and knees. This isn’t out of the ordinary. He crawls around in the tub a lot, especially on bubble bath nights.

    What was out of the ordinary, however, was the large turd just kind of…hanging out of his butt.

    Benji was on his hands and knees trying to poop. Well, actively pooping. In the bathtub.

    I immediately screamed, “No, no, no!” in rapid succession and started to panic. I didn’t want it to fall in the water; that would mean bleaching the whole fucking tub and having to fish through poop soup to get it out. As Erin ran in, I did what any sane person would do, or so I thought. I picked up my slippery, wet kid and threw him on the toilet, praying to God and Jesus and anyone else that the poop would stay “attached” to his butt instead of falling to the floor.

    I more or less tossed him onto the toilet as Erin came around the corner and looked down to see that I did not, in fact, get Benji on the toilet in time for him to poop in it. He pooped on it. Right in front of the seat cover sat this…gargantuan poop.

    “Why didn’t you just grab toilet paper to pull the poop off? Why did you pick him up and put him on the toilet?”

    “I don’t know! I panicked!”

    “Why are you yelling?” Erin asked.

    “I don’t know!”

    The whole thing reminded me of a conversation between my friend Jono and our old boss Brian from my insurance brokerage days. They were comparing notes on kids, and since Jono’s little girl wasn’t that much older than Brian’s, they were discussing gross kid stuff. I couldn’t really contribute to the conversation—it’d only been a few months since everything happened with Charlotte, so I honestly tried to tune it out—but it stuck in my mind.

    “Has she pooped in the tub yet?” Jono asked.

    “Nah,” Brian said.

    “She will. And it’s gonna be gross.”

    Toilet training is wild. Have you ever stopped to think about it? Someone had to literally teach you how to pee and poop in a toilet. How to recognize that it was gonna happen and then get to a place where you could do it. I think about it a lot, mainly in terms of asking “Why is this so difficult? Don’t you know when you’re gonna do it?\” and “Why do you hate sitting on the toilet so much?”

    It takes like 30 seconds, right? It’s not like he has a phone to distract him. Just sit on the toilet, do your thing, and let me wipe your butt. You won’t have to poop your pants anymore and it’ll make life so much more comfortable.

    Instead, I have to watch like a hawk to make sure my kid doesn’t drop a deuce in a tub full of lukewarm water.

    Recommended Reading

    My library hold for Lauren Oyler’s Fake Accounts finally came in last night, and although I’m only two chapters in, I’m really enjoying it so far. I’ve had a hard time focusing on books this month, so it’s nice for something to grab my attention and keep me reading and off of TikTok.

    The other major things I’ve read this week that have stuck with me include:

    • I started paying for Anne Helen Petersen’s Culture Study newsletter this week because I really enjoy it for its insights, and this latest installment about imaging what remote work looks like after the pandemic is very smart. It’s really important to remember that however you feel about working from home on a semi-permanent basis (spoiler alert: it kind of fucking sucks), things will improve and we’ll be able to work remotely from parks and coffee shops and other places sometime in the future.

    • A big part of the psychological (and literal physical) harm that’s come out of the pandemic has been the direct result of mixed messages from government advisors and health advisors. So much of that is touched on here in this Atlantic piece from Zeynep Tufekci. I’m guilty of being a scold as much as anyone, and I’m wondering if all that stress has done immeasurable harm to my capacity for empathy.

    • This piece about far-right news sources and how much traction they get on Facebook is a really important thing that underscores what we all know: Facebook is extremely harmful and detrimental to the very fabric of our national discourse.

    Musical Interlude

    Here’s a playlist with a bunch of shoe gaze and 80’s alternative music. I listened to it a lot last year and got quite a bit of work done, back when I was able to focus on anything for more than five minutes at a time.

    Final Thoughts

    I ordered the “new” crispy chicken sandwich from McDonald’s tonight and it was fucking terrible. We eat Chick-fil-A every week as part of our routine on Saturdays and, man, it just pales in comparison. I can’t express to you how terrible it was. I was legitimately angry about it. I wouldn’t recommend it.

    You know what else I wouldn’t recommend? What I did last year: had my wisdom teeth removed.

    Here’s how that went.

  • Charlotte Day

    Today is one of the most emotionally complex days of the year. Here\’s this year\’s version of me talking through it.

    TW: Miscarriage, Infant Loss

    Today—February 26, 2021—is “Charlotte Day.”

    This is an extremely special day in our household because it’s the day that Erin and I became parents for the first time. Just after 7:30 P.M. on a cold Sunday night in late February of 2017, Charlotte James Messel was born into the arms of a waiting team of NICU staff who were prepared to fight for every second of her life; who had been working with and preparing us for any number of potential outcomes, all of which stemmed from the fact that she would be coming to meet us so much earlier than we anticipated. At 23 weeks gestation and change, we didn’t know if her tiny lungs would be able to sustain any sort of life. That our little girl came into this world with a squawk of a cry at all is something of a miracle in itself. That the doctors and nurses were able to intubate her and whisk her away to the downtown campus of Children’s Mercy Hospital is a whole other miracle entirely.

    For these reasons, Charlotte Day is also a day of intense anxiety and—to some degree—post-traumatic stress. I didn’t know, four years ago, just how long I would actually be a father to a living child. Would it be minutes? Hours? Days? For the rest of my life?

    As we’ve talked about before, the exact number of days sits just shy of three weeks at 19 days.

    That my daughter’s birthday sits at the tail end of February is poignant because February is—with the exception of this day in particular—my least favorite month. I’ve often said that February is so short because it is often packed with misery. So much of the worst moments of my life have happened in February. Failures—both professional and personal—and tragedies litter its days. But this solitary, bittersweet bright spot conjures up the memories of an emotional and physical rollercoaster that we barely made it through intact.

    On Charlotte’s birthday we usually buy tiny cakes to celebrate. In recent years these have been our favorite flavors from Nothing Bundt Cakes, which are delicious. Sometimes I’ll treat myself to other gifts, like a new record or pair of shoes. On her first birthday, Erin and I went shopping as a way to get out of the house. Last year I “treated” myself to a visit to the cardiologist, a work outing to Main Event, and a wrestling show that night where I got to see one of the best matches I’ve ever seen live. But I also spearheaded a charity drive at work that week to provide happy kits for caregivers of patients at Children’s Mercy. I nearly cried with joy at the enthusiasm and commitment from just about everyone I worked with as we gathered money and donated supplies to build something like 75 of the kits, which can go a long way at providing a moment or two of distraction for parents and patients alike.

    The days at a NICU bedside are long and often exhausting. There are conversations with doctors, social workers, support staff, and the ever-present nurses who become something like temporary friends. It’s this last group that I think about often, especially these days, when the anxieties and stresses of caring for the sickest, tiniest babies are magnified tenfold with worries about COVID-19.

    Last year’s Charlotte Day “festivities” and activities were actually the last normal week I had prior to the beginning of the pandemic. The following week, my wisdom teeth were removed and I had my final in-person tabletop game session of the year before we moved everything online. I took two days off the week after my surgery to recover some more, and when I came back to work that following Wednesday (the 11th) it was the last “normal” day before it became painfully apparent that we would all need to upend our lives to get through the winter…and spring…and summer..and fall…and winter again. I’d been hoping to do something bigger for Charlotte Day this year, to continue to build it among my coworkers as a charity effort until it got large enough to outlast even my tenure, but the pandemic had other plans.

    I’m preoccupied with the idea of COVID quite a bit these days for obvious reasons, but both Erin and I decided last year that we couldn’t imagine having a baby in the NICU while also dealing with a pandemic. I can’t even comprehend the additional stresses that it would cause; I have a small window into it with friends whose babies were born in 2020 and who spent time in various NICUs, but I would never want to live through that experience if I didn’t have to, let alone on a good day.

    This year that kind of ideation is even worse, what with the pandemic stretching on into an entire year’s worth of misery. Parenting is hard enough on the best days, but the added stressors of dealing with pandemic-induced milestone delays and experiences missed is something else entirely. The idea of not being able to visit your children in the hospital is anathema; the fear of not being there for something important—like Charlotte’s last breaths, which she took in my arms—would haunt me for the rest of my life. 

    I am grateful that my son Benji—who spent a month in the NICU after he was born, although much further along—has more or less caught up linguistically thanks to his enrollment in daycare three days a week. That’s a roll of the dice on its own, putting him (and us, as well as Erin’s parents) at risk—however much it’s been mitigated by the daycare’s protocols—of COVID exposure.

    But there is so much that he has been unable to experience fully—such as learning how not to be a real asshole in a public place—that I wonder how things will go when it’s finally time to reintroduce him to the joys of “dining in chain restaurants” and “going to the mall.” Hell, I barely remember how to do the latter sometimes, given that my aversion to standing near people or dealing with crowds is at an all time high. Will we have raised an entire generation of agoraphobes by virtue of generally keeping our preschool children cloistered in our homes?

    When I think about these things, I often pause and ponder Charlotte; how the experience of being her dad influences so much of how I love and care for her brother. About all the moments with her that I feel robbed of, and the ones I absolutely must push for when the time comes to safely experience them with Benji.

    The Charlotte Test

    Back when Benji was little—a potato, we like to say—and a few months after I started working for my current company, I gave a Friday inspiration presentation about my experiences as Charlotte’s dad. Being with her nearly every day in the hospital, holding her close on that last day of her life, and really understanding just how fragile things are—it all brought clarity and a reminder to zone in on what really counts, when it counts. They helped inspire me to take better care of myself and to focus on what brings me joy and serves my needs. It’s why I have zero patience for jobs I don’t want to do, experiences that aren’t fulfilling, and books I don’t want to finish. I don’t feel obligated to do things that aren’t enriching anymore, either professionally or personally, because time is short. If it’s not something I’d be proud to share with Charlotte—the eponymous Charlotte Test—it’s not something worth doing.

    Of course, I say this having developed a recent affinity for watching TikTok for literal hours on end (and even trying to come up with videos on my own). The Charlotte Test, like all aspects of self-improvement, is always a work in progress.

    Something that I want to be more intentional about throughout the rest of 2021 is setting up a solid foundation for the rest of my life and that of my family. Cutting down on ridiculous spending habits, debt, and really living out the values that I’d want both of my kids to have—reckless compassion, patience, kindness, charity, hard work with purpose. Benji is getting older, and (as we’ve recently discovered) he’s a damn good mimic when it comes to everything from curse words to mannerisms. He is also ridiculously funny, and that kind of unbridled joy is something worth pursuing.

    I don’t often wish for revisionism, but I do wish so badly that my kids could meet and play with one another. I often wonder what that would be like, even knowing that one would not exist without the other. I have a complex relationship with the idea of the “rainbow baby,” but I am so thankful for the presence of both of my children in my life; past, present, and future, their being here is a reminder that there is good worth pursuing in this world. That there are things worth fighting for. And the best thing I could do to make them proud would be to follow their example and fight joyfully to make the world a better place.

    Required Reading

    Here’s the thing: I’ve been really bad at reading books the past two weeks. I started four books on Saturday, got through five pages, and chucked them. I just couldn’t get into them. And we’re not talking trash, we’re talking well-respected pieces of modern literature. The Poisonwood Bible, another Richard Russo novel, and a couple others. I honestly am really bummed out that so many of the books I want to read right now are unavailable via the KCPL (because they’re already checked out). I placed holds, but waiting 20 weeks for more books isn’t gonna fly. I still have that copy of Bird by Bird on my bedside table, though. I should probably get my shit together and finish that one. But anyway, here are some really good things I’ve read this week.

    Please Don’t Call My Daughter a “Pregnancy\” Loss” – Jessica Wolff

    Oh, man. This one hits hard. Erin sent it to me Wednesday night—while I was downstairs working through some data for a client—and it just rocked me. Jessica Wolff cuts to the heart of the matter and says something that all of us who have lost children—especially kids so young—want others to understand:

    When we, bereaved parents, share with you information, a story, or a picture of our child, we are sharing a piece of our soul. It is your privilege to know them, and more so your privilege to pass judgement on our choices when you have never walked in our shoes. When we open our hearts to you, instead of silence, here are some ways that you can support us:

    Acknowledge that you don’t know what to say. Tell us that you want to offer support but don’t know where to start. We’re learning as we go as well — it’s a relief to know that you’re willing to join us as we navigate life without our child.

    If you haven’t had enough grief for one day, please read the rest of her essay.

    Here are some other things that have resonated with me lately.

    Musical Interlude

    I made this playlist last week when I started writing my new novel/novella, and it’s all over the place. I’m not even going to jinx the progress I’ve made by telling anyone what it’s about, but here’s the playlist which started with one mood and is going in a whole other direction by the time I got five or six songs in. It’s made for some really interesting scenes so far.

    https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6DBGjTzuUFx4ezfqGLVJgA

    BONUS PLAYLIST!!!

    I made another playlist this week after a friend and I were discussing the joy of Merril Bainbridge’s 1994 song “Mouth,” which got massive airplay in my neck of the woods thanks to 89.1—the Bash! It’s a completely inappropriate song for a pre-teen to sing, and yet I used to know every word. It also has Jann Arden’s “Insensitive,” which is another great tune.

    https://open.spotify.com/playlist/40NHR7zAC8wWwiU9uaulPo

    Final Thoughts

    One of the things I’ve been most grateful for throughout the course of the pandemic is the flexibility and willingness of my company to pivot to working from home. I’ve had some really candid conversations over the course of the past few weeks with several members of corporate leadership and management as I’ve sought out personal and professional growth. While it sucks that we’re not in one place (trust me, I really fucking miss my coworkers), I know that this whole trial by fire is going to make us all better. But part of that appreciation is also reserved for my direct boss, who knows how fucking rough February and March can be for me on any given day. She’s a compassionate person who really listens and takes things to heart and really understands that sometimes shit gets messy and work and life bleed together. We should all be so lucky to have people like that in our lives.

    If you’re feeling inclined to be charitable, consider giving to Children’s Mercy. One of the most surprising elements of our stay there with Charlotte was the realization that we wouldn’t be responsible for any bills—presumably because we were not able to bring her home. The only reason for that generosity (which, frankly, was much needed) is due to the benevolence of donors. If you’re in a position to help make that happen for another person, please do so. And feel free to make your donation in Charlotte’s name (a nakedly selfish request to help us keep her memory alive, I’ll admit).

    Anyway, next week I’ll try to get back to our regularly scheduled garbage and not be so much of a downer. Cheers!

  • Fashion Show

    I was thinking about clothes today and remembered the time I was in a fashion show.

    One of the weirdest moments experienced during my first tenure at Express—back in 2007 after they closed down all the men’s stores and folded us into the existing women’s ones—came in the spring, when Eastland Mall decided to hold a food court fashion show on a Saturday afternoon.

    I loved working for Express back then, back before I really came to appreciate just how little I was being paid. The discount was decent and the hours were good enough to buy new clothes and—on the weekends—a six pack of beer (when I could get someone to buy it for me, anyway). These days I’m a little bit more clued into the fucked up labor dynamics of a store that expects encyclopedic knowledge of products with limited other incentives to sell thousands of dollars of merchandise in a day. But at the time? That shit was fun.

    Anyway.

    “Hey,” one of my managers—I don’t remember which one—said, “Go ahead and jump off the register after this customer. We need you to change for the fashion show.”

    “Fashion show? What the fuck are you talking about?”

    “We’re in the fashion show and we need you to model a look.”

    I did what they asked, switching registers with one of the girls, and went to the back to grab a garment bag. We were running late and needed to change fast, so I ran upstairs to one of the empty mall offices or conference rooms and ended up in a room with a couple of guys, all of us throwing our personal outfits on the floor and switch into outfits. I wasn’t a huge fan of what they’d picked for me—it wasn’t something I’d normally wear—but I threw it on and went out to stand in line.

    The thing about the fashion show is that there weren’t a lot of other guys involved. In fact, I don’t even remember most of the other stores, except for Cache, a mall brand that sold expensive formal dresses in bright colors. I’m 85% sure that Cache did hire models because they were all preternaturally thin and tan, and all of them knew how to work a runway.

    Fun fact! I, a 34-year-old man, do not know how to do my little turn on the catwalk. A whole decade of being self-conscious and insular and a homebody has just sucked what little joie de vivre I got out of dancing (or trying to dance). 14 years ago? I was probably even worse at the concept.

    See, here’s the thing about me at 20: I had just gone through an acrimonious breakup, after which my ex-girlfriend decided to start dating my next door neighbor, also one of my best friends since junior high. My grades were slipping pretty hard for the second time in a year, and I was desperately trying to figure out how to navigate the period in between spring and fall semesters. I wasn’t just completely unequipped to walk a fucking catwalk as a model; I was barely functioning.

    Mid 2000’s fashion was weird. Corduroy blazers were in. I don’t get it, either.

    My confidence was totally shot, and yet I went up there and plodded my way to the end of the catwalk, paused in pose, and then walked back down the stairs and disappeared again to change back into my clothes and go back to work shilling high-interest credit card debt in exchange for getting what amounted to your sales tax removed from your final total.

    I bring this anecdotal story up not because it’s particularly interesting (it’s not), or because it’s particularly salient (again, no), but because I was doing some online shopping/browsing over lunch, and thanks to an absolute barrage of J. Crew ads, I have fallen head over heels in love with this sweater and want it in my closet immediately.

    This sweater is definitely something I would’ve worn fourteen years ago, but it’s also something I would wear today. And the big difference between those intervening years—which I have written about elsewhere—is the accumulation and subsequent loss of about 50 pounds and the acquisition of a whole lot of confidence in, if not my skills on the dance floor, but my ability to absolutely rock the shit out of certain types of clothes.

    I’ve always loved fashion and shopping. There’s a reason why I pursued a management career in the industry, after all, and why I still shop all the time, even in the midst of a pandemic where my most adventurous sartorial choice has been to wear garment dyed chinos on a random Tuesday in January.

    But since I left Express in 2012 and J. Crew in 2017, I’ve been more than a little peeved at how difficult it is to find clothes that I’m in love with. And that hasn’t become any easier as I’ve gotten older. The discount definitely helps when it comes to filling out your closet (and makes you a little more willing to compromise), but when you’re not tied down to one brand because you no longer have to sell that sort of aSpIrAtIoNaL LiFeStYlE, the concept of being able to shop wherever you fucking want to is damn near overwhelming.

    There are like…a handful of stores in which I like to shop these days. I don’t like to settle. Which makes it hard when you’re a parent whose kid has to go to daycare and eat and needs shoes every two months because their feet grow at random intervals (and because he beats the shit out of them).

    So I’ve been trying to think a little bit more about what and where I buy, and it’s just so difficult because quite frankly I am turning into an old fucking man who still wears skinny jeans from Abercrombie & Fitch and sweaters from J. Crew. I don’t want to settle into being okay with ill-fitting sweaters from Old Navy, but I don’t want to be someone aging into their forties or fifties still trying desperately to cling to that last gasp of “hot dad energy” or sartorial relevance. Thank God I never bought into the tacky-ass Buckle Dad aesthetic (even in college), but at least those guys are outwardly confident on an almost aggressive level. I second guess myself all the time! And my only public appearances these late are in the drive-thru at McDonald’s, the curbside pickup at Target, and the handful of Zoom conference calls I attend each week.

    When this whole thing is over (or as close to over as it will ever get), I will be so ready to dress to the nines every goddamn day. I just need to figure out what that means for me as someone in their mid-30’s. If that means shopping at one store that makes me feel fully confident, well, I guess it’s time to go back to the days of having an entire closet full of one brand.

    Harnessing “hot dad energy” in the bathroom at work, like you do.

    Recommended Reading

    I am currently working my way through Lily King’s Euphoria, and by that I mean I borrowed it from the library last week and have maybe read a handful of pages. I’ve been distracted by work and parenting and whatever, to be sure, but also my attention span for books is flagging at the moment. One of the real struggles is that I can’t really read a paperback book with Benji in the room because he always wants to grab it, and the alternative is reading on my phone which basically makes it seem like I’m ignoring him*.

    *I’m not. We just watch cartoons on Saturday mornings and while he’s distracted, I read. It works for us, and will continue to work for us until he’s old enough to enjoy listening to music and/or entertaining himself enough that I’m able to sit down in my office and write in the mornings, which is when I tend to get most of my work done.

    Musical Interlude

    Hey, have you listened to Beck’s 1999 masterpiece Midnite Vultures lately? Because I listened to it this afternoon and it still holds up (duh). It’s damn near perfect and one of those holy grails of vinyl collection. Maybe someday I’ll own a copy.

    Anyway, if you haven’t given it a spin you can do that with your streaming platform of choice. Here’s the Spotify link just in case.

    Final Thoughts

    Where do you shop? This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot today, and something I’m curious about—especially if, like me, you’re a married guy in your mid-30’s whose primary goals are feeling confident and impressing your coworkers and friends. Leave a comment or send me a message on Instagram or Twitter. And don’t forget if you want to help me buy more expensive clothes (like that cashmere sweater I’m coveting), you can always subscribe to this newsletter for $5 a month.

    That’s like…1/25 of the price of the sweater.

  • Michael Myers is Pure Evil

    Another Problem Customer from the Family Video Days

    Hey, did you know it’s really kind of hard to write these every week? Especially when you do something stupid like say, “Thursdays are my newsletter days!” except that Wednesday nights are for watching wrestling and preparing for Thursday night tabletop RPG games.

    Anyway, this one’s about another positively absurd customer from my days at Family Video, which was the larger of two video stores I worked at and also the one that seemed not to give two shits about labor laws.

    You can’t really prepare for bad customers, even though you want to try.

    Guertz was one of those that I wish I’d been warned about, but in hindsight I am thankful to have been working with Bruce the first time I met him. He was an overweight guy in his mid-to-late 30’s, if I had to guess, and he had a curly mullet haircut and a leather jacket straight out of the late 1980’s. Guertz was quiet at first, relatively unassuming, and I didn’t pay him any mind when he came into the store other than to note that he smelled pretty strongly of cat piss.

    The first time I encountered Guertz, it was a Friday night and we were practically slammed. I think I was trying to run a stack of recently returned movies out to the floor when he cornered me.

    “H-hey,” he said, “You got any Halloween movies in?”

    “Uh, I can check,” I replied, gesturing to the stack of DVDs in my hand. “Just let me finish with these and I’ll look in the computer for you.”

    By the time I finished running the movies out, I went up to the computers and—thankful for a lull in customers—started to look to see what was in stock. Bruce stopped me.

    “Hey,” he said, Don’t waste your time. Guertz isn’t gonna rent shit.”

    “What? Why?”

    Bruce nudged me aside and pulled up Guertz’s info on the computer. He was a regular customer, or at least he had been, up to the point where he didn’t bring back movies totaling upwards of $90.00 for a bunch of pornography that had never been returned. And these weren’t just run-of-the-mill late fees. These were “purge” fees, dollar amounts that couldn’t be negotiated down. Not only would Guertz not be renting anything tonight, he probably wouldn’t be renting anything for the rest of his life.

    “He comes in all the time and bothers us,” Bruce said. “Try not to get wrapped up in a conversation with him. It’s not worth it.”

    Right on cue, Guertz approached the counter like he had business. “H-hey,” he said, “d-did you find those Halloween movies for me? I like those Halloween movies. That M-Michael Myers? He’s pure evil.”

    Bruce rolled his eyes, but because we had a decent number of customers in the store there was no way he could be as short with Guertz as he wanted to be.

    “Hey, man,” I said, “I don’t think we have any in stock.” I chose diplomacy, cognizant of my experiences being accused of highway robbery a week prior.

    “Are y-you s-sure?” he asked.

    “Yeah,” I replied. “And besides, you owe too much. You have to pay your purge fees first.”

    “Th-they told me I could pay on them,” Guertz protested.

    “Nah, man. Gotta pay them all at once. That’s the rule.” I was already learning the ropes. Learning how to be stern.

    “That ain’t f-fair,” Guertz said. He skulked away, disappearing in between the racks. Eventually he left, but not before protesting once more and trying to strike up a conversation with another customer about the moral depravities of Michael Myers.

    Bruce came up beside me and laughed. “That’s what you have to do, man. Just be a hard-ass about it.”

    I’d like to think that Guertz’s decision to slink off into an emptier part of the store was a sign that he wouldn’t bother us again, but—as Bruce predicted—he came back again and again. His appearances were sporadic, but they always happened at the worst moments possible, like when we had a crowd of customers in line and couldn’t really stop to answer his inane questions. Sometimes he’d pop in about 40 minutes before close, refusing to leave until we answered why we wouldn’t let him rent, where in the store he could find his favorite movies (that we wouldn’t let him take home), and—at one occasion—if we had a favorite porn star.

    This last question was particularly galling because, even if we felt like having the conversation, we sure as hell wouldn’t have it with Guertz.

    One night he came in extremely close to closing time—like ten minutes prior—and just wouldn’t take the hint that we didn’t have time for his shit. He went through the normal routine, asking about Halloween, bugging the other few customers (especially some of the women), trying to surreptitiously creep back to the porn corner to ogle the uncensored covers.

    Bruce nearly snapped.

    “Get out,” he said. “Just get the hell out. We’re closed.”

    “Wh-what? No way,” Guertz said. “I still have a few minutes!”

    “You’re not gonna spend any money, get the fuck out.”

    Guertz left under protest, of course. But he left just the same.

    We followed this routine over and over again throughout the next couple of years until I left the company, and I am regularly thankful to not have to have interactions with him—or customers of a similar ilk—anymore.

    It should be very clear that, much like Jukie, Guertz had some form of mental issues. But this is not the key reason that I did not like encountering him. His presence (unlike other customers who actually came to pose a danger to our team) was relatively benign.

    He was obsessive, rarely bathed, but—by all accounts—was lucid enough to get out of the house on his own. He was persistent in his refusal to pay his fines, say inappropriate things, and to pretend that it was acceptable to try and flirt with the women who worked at our store. He was the kind of customer you did not want and who could not—or would not—understand why he was so unwelcome.

    This is in stark contrast to another customer who actually developed a truly dangerous obsession with one of my coworkers, a man who referred to himself as the “Reverend Doctor Charlie Cole,” and lavished them with gifts and called to leave abusive messages on the store’s answering machine for all of us.

    I think about Guertz a lot, though. More than fodder for amusing anecdotes, he was emblematic of the kinds of customers that made—and continue to make—working in retail so damned perplexing.

    It’s a rule of retail, I think, that the negative experiences stick out so much more prominently in your mind. There are days that I can recall with absolute clarity the worst experiences I’ve ever had as a sales associate or manager, but far fewer where I can examine positive ones. I can materialize some names and even fewer faces, but the actual emotions those interactions conjured? Those are as fresh as the earthy scent after a spring rain. I think about the guy who refused to let me take an odometer reading for his oil change when I worked at Walmart in 2006. I distinctly recall the night a woman stayed for a half hour after close trying on dresses at Express, all without walking out with a single item—and on the night when the whole store needed to be prepared for inventory, no less.

    What is it about people that seems to render them unable to be polite in the presence of customer service professionals? And yes, I’m going to bring up professionalism because despite what you may think, the people in the stores are professionals in at least some capacity. They are trained to do a job, and they know how to do that job, and they are being paid to do it. Hence: professionals. While we’re at it? They deserve a living wage, fair compensation, paid sick time, and the ability to tell a silly son of a bitch to shut the fuck up and get the fuck out of the store for not abiding by policies.

    I think the one thing that sums up my time in customer service is that there should be a day each year where retail employees are allowed to fight customers, which I not only endorse, but actively will evangelize.

    I mean, I’m pretty sure I got fired from Fossil at least in part because I yelled after a dude and called him a “stupid cocksucker” for wanting to return a watch that he literally broke into a thousand pieces and then called defective, so maybe this is something I’ve felt in the depths of my soul for a long time.

    Anyway, I don’t have a list of recommended reads or music this week because the Chiefs are playing in the Super Bowl today and I’m too excited to think about anything else, except maybe that we probably shouldn’t even be having a Super Bowl and we sure as shit should not be having one attended by fans.

  • I Saw the Sign

    On the topic of European dance music and why it\’s okay to listen to bad songs.

    Depending on who you ask, I have an eclectic taste in music that is either remarkably good or unbearably terrible. My musical proclivities can vary wildly, not just from day to day but from hour to hour. In the morning I can start with mood-boosting 90’s pop music or boy bands and end my day with symphonic metal. And when it comes to 90’s pop and dance music, there’s perhaps no more ignominious album in my collection than the 1992 Ace of Base album Happy Nation, best known to U.S. audiences at the time of its 1993 release as The Sign.

    Let’s be clear-eyed about this: The Sign is, in no way shape or form, a good record. It has not aged particularly well, and its distinctly early 1990’s brand of synth sounds and dance beats stick out like a sore thumb. Lyrically it’s kind of a mess, too, with such “hits” as “Don’t Turn Around,” “All That She Wants,” and the title track, “The Sign” being cliche-filled, loosely translated messes.

    It did, however, get pretty substantial airplay in the U.S., and I remember hearing “Don’t Turn Around” quite a bit on 100.7 MIX-FM, which was the Wabash Valley’s best Top-40 station when I was growing up. But the main reason I came to own the album—on CD, of course—is slightly more embarrassing.

    “The Sign” really is a perfect pop ear worm, designed to get under your skin and linger in your brain, and that’s exactly what happened to me when I saw the Full House episode “We Got the Beat” in reruns. That, combined with hearing the other tracks on the album on the radio, made me want to own it. So I begged my mom to buy it, and she did, and I listened to it on repeat approximately five million times. Even John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats is/was a huge fan of the album, mentioning that he bought it on cassette once and played it over and over again during a road trip. Actually, here’s a video of him doing a cover of “The Sign.” It is pretty good.

    Here’s the thing, though. “The Sign” is not the best song on the album, or at least it’s not my favorite. That honor goes to “Waiting for Magic.” Of course my exposure to it is primarily through the U.S. version, which is a remix of the original track that appeared on Happy Nation. But the lead vocals are different—at least as far as I can tell—and that’s why the track stands out to me.

    The thing about Ace of Base is that I have never, in one million years, been able to determine who is singing what part. Unlike other pop music videos, where it feels like there’s an effort to show who is singing I’ve watched a bunch of Ace of Base videos at various times in my life and I cannot figure out whose voice belongs to which person. And it’s not like this is a thing I have chosen not to study. It’s like that period where OK Go would do the viral videos, but the lead singer in those was never actually Damian Kulash; those onscreen duties went instead to the band’s bassist, Tim Nordwind. And if we’re being frank here, I am 35 years old and a parent and a full-time writer, so maybe it is not a productive use of my time to finally try to research or suss this out. I should just enjoy the music.

    And I do enjoy the music quite a bit. It’s good background for working, although sometimes I actually put Happy Nation on instead of The Sign because there are a few tracks that don’t carry over, namely the bizarre dance number (they’re all dance numbers) “Fashion Party,” which sounds like it could be background music for any number of Eastern European pornographic videos where thirty people get down in orgiastic delight.

    It could also be boss music for a Streets of Rage game.

    A few days ago I went down a rabbit hole that led me back to Ace of Base, and it’s all because one of my coworkers posted a link to a Spanish version of Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” in Slack. I don’t revisit Aqua as much as I do Ace of Base. But much like the latter, I tend not to listen to their most popular song as much as I do others. My favorite Aqua songs are not, in fact, “Barbie Girl” but the tracks “Turn Back Time,” from 1997’s Aquarium, and “Cartoon Heroes\” off their follow-up, Aquarius.

    “Cartoon Heroes,” much like “Barbie Girl,” has some pretty out-there lyrics, but it’s a song that sticks in my head more for the sound than anything else. Other songs I enjoy in this genre despite their lack of popularity or ironic inclusion on mixtapes and playlists include:

    • “We Like to Party” by Vengaboys

    • “Another Night” by Real McCoy

    • “Luv U More” by Rollergirl

    There is something about dance music—and particularly dance music of a European bent—that is extraordinarily calming. It induces productivity, at least when I find myself avoiding the temptation to tap my toes and sing along. If you haven’t revisited these songs in a while—or ever listened to them before—perhaps you owe it to yourself to give them the time of day.

    Required Reading

    Before I sat down to write today’s defense of bad music, I finished reading Writers & Lovers by Lily King, which I started reading yesterday morning. It was, in addition to being a fast read, a very engrossing, lovely book. It beautifully captures the sensation of being a writer while also flailing and failing at everything you put your effort into. I gave it five stars on Goodreads and Amazon, which is a rarity for me. I almost wish I could read it again. In addition to capturing my attention completely (sorry, Benji), it threw me headlong into a new idea for my own book and got me outlining last night for the first time in years. The last time that happened was with Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl, and that resulted in an almost 130,000 word draft.

    Final Thoughts

    January is over, and thank fuck for that. This month has been nothing more than a distracting garbage fire that’s completely sapped me of creativity and energy. February is traditionally my least favorite month for a litany of reasons, chief among them Charlotte Day, but I’m poring over my mind trying to come up with some kind of fun fundraising activity to rope people into, especially since we can’t repeat last year’s “Happy Kit” drive.

    One other exciting thing that’s happening this month is that I’m throwing myself back into running games for my long-distance tabletop group, and we’re kicking things off with Chariot of the Gods, the Alien RPG Quickstart. Maybe I’ll provide a review in the next issue, or maybe I’ll spend time talking about another one of my video store customers with an unhealthy obsession for Michael Myers of Halloween fame.

    Until next time.

  • Jukie

    Bad customers, late fees, and forgiveness.

    \"One

    We called him Jukie on account of how he moved in the hallways at school.

    His real name was Cody, and he was maybe eighty pounds soaking wet, all of four feet and some odd inches tall. He had this timid, tiny little mouse voice with a quavering lilt to it that made him near goddamn impossible to understand. He was a scrawny little shit who would sprint toward you at full tilt, only to duck and weave out of your direction at the last second—the eponymous “juke” motion.

    Now, of course, it should be stated that Jukie had some kind of learning disorder and was predominately in special education classes. My interaction with him was pretty limited outside of the scope of seeing him in the halls with one major exception.

    Jukie, you see, liked to come into the video store a lot. Sometimes he’d come in with his dad, George, and other times he’d come in by himself. But one common theme for these visits was that Jukie never had any goddamn money. The other common theme, seemingly birthed by the first, is that Jukie always wanted to try to scam me out of something.

    Movie Madness didn’t have a complex computer program to handle customer accounts, but it did its job. It could track rentals, late fees, invoices, and rental history (to an extent). And when it came to Jukie (and George), it told a pretty compelling story:

    Jukie’s family never, ever brought movies back on time. And because they never returned rentals on time, they racked up a bunch of late fees.

    Late fees at Movie Madness were pretty easy to grok; if you didn’t bring your rented movie back by 6:30 P.M. on the following day, you got charged another day’s rental. After a few days, we’d print the invoice, put it in a basket, and call and hassle you about bringing our shit back.

    Most of the time the late calls worked, but sometimes they didn’t.

    As an aside: On at least one occasion before my time there, I was the recipient of these late calls. I’d rented movies under my name for movie night at a friend’s house, and said friend never took them back. I ended up accruing at least $40 in late fees, a whole heap of anger from my mom, and got banned from the store for a while.

    Anyway, I called Jukie—well, George—more than a few times about late movies, but as far as I can remember no one ever answered the phone. Sometimes it rang. Sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes the phone was disconnected. This was actually a pretty common occurrence. Even though the late fees grew exponentially, it didn’t stop Jukie from coming into the store and trying to rent movies every few weeks.

    “Cody,” I’d say, “We can’t just let you rent stuff. You gotta pay some on this late fee.”

    “I’ll put a dollar on it,” he’d reply.

    “Cody, the late fee is $35. We honestly shouldn’t have let it get this bad.”

    “Let me put a dollar on it,” he’d say again, in that weird garbled speech of his.

    “Dude, no,” I’d say, all of four years older but drunk on the power of telling him no.

    This would repeat for at least five minutes, up until the point where he’d get pissed off and call me an asshole and either go out to get his dad for more money or just leave entirely, often just dropping whatever “giant animal versus other giant animal” movie he was trying to rent on the floor.

    I’d like to think that this is just isolated behavior, that Jukie’s actions are not indicative of society as a whole, but three years of video store rental clerkdom proved me wrong.

    Despite the absolute clarity of the video store rental agreement, no one ever wanted to pay their late fees. What’s worse, a not insignificant percentage of the population didn’t even want to admit that their shit was late in the first place!

    I tell a fictionalized version of a story in my novel about something that actually happened to me about a week or two after I started at Family Video back in 2007, but the most intense argument I’ve ever had with a customer over late fees involved being accused of trying to steal from someone.

    The short version of this story is that Family Video, God rest its soul, used to allow customers to rent an odd number of movies for $1 a piece or, if you doubled them up, two per dollar.

    A lady came in with a handful of six movies and explained that they were late. But the conversations turned sour when I told her that she owed $6 for all six.

    “But they’re fifty cent movies,” she said.

    “No, ma’am,” I offered, trying to be as polite as possible. “They’re just two for a dollar.”

    This went on for a few minutes and a line developed, until finally something in this woman snapped and she literally threw a twenty dollar bill onto the counter and screamed.

    “Fine,” she hissed. “Take it. Take my money. You want to steal it anyway, it’s all yours! This is highway robbery!”

    My friend Bruce says that he will never forget the way I deadpanned to this woman, after accusing me—and my brand new employer—of theft, “I’m sorry you feel that way,” but I just remember feeling like my skin was melting as my insides turned to molten chunks.

    I quietly made change, passed the appropriate amount across the small counter, and watched her snatch it up from the orange surface like she was worried I would try to take it back.

    As she left, she stopped in the door and shrieked, “I feel sorry for the owner of this company when he meets God!”

    As far as bad customers go, however, that was pretty tame. I don’t begrudge her the frustration she felt that night all those years ago, because if we’re being honest the whole “Two for a dollar” thing might feel pretty confusing for maybe the first thirty seconds you’re thinking of the concept. What I do begrudge her, however, was her insistence that I was the asshole for just reading the screen.

    It’s the same level of judgment and disdain I held for good old Jukie, who always had a shitty attitude regardless of the situation. Whether he was about to run you down in the hallway or trying to convince you to let him add another $5.00 to his already astronomical balance at the video store, nothing was ever his fault.

    I looked up Jukie the other day because I remember both his first and last name, and I’m proud to report that he hasn’t seemed to change in any meaningful way. In fact, I think he’s a Juggalo these days, which is really fucking wild because as far as I can tell Juggalos are generally some of the most chill, nicest people on Earth.

    Even when it came to video store behavior, Juggalos were always apologetic about stuff. They had late fees the same as everyone else, but they were never combative about it. They’d either grin in a mea culpa, a sort of “Oh, fuck, ya got me!” smile, and pay the amount without argument. Sometimes you’d just tell them the dollar amount and they’d get kind of crestfallen. But then they’d lean across the counter and whisper, almost conspiratorially, to ask if they could put down a couple bucks on the late fee this time because it’s their weekend with the kids and they really want to watch some movies tonight.

    And you know what? That kind of attitude goes a long way. More often than not, I bet they had a really good time with their kids watching movies and hanging out.

    Look, late fees and movie rentals have gone the way of the Dodo Bird, and eventually no one is going to remember the joy of wandering the aisles of a video store seeking out something to watch or put on in the background while you do shots or try to get laid or whatever. It’s just another relic of history, like Nokia candy bar phones and physical mixtapes.

    But I’ll remember them, and more than that, I’ll remember the weird fucking kid with thick glasses, unkempt hair, and a penchant for nearly slamming into you full-tilt in the hallway without a second\’ thought.

    Required Reading

    So I don’t have a lot of reading recommendations this week because I haven’t done a lot of reading, and a big part of that is just being too busy. But I will tell you to go subscribe to my friend Ella Dawson’s Patreon because she is very smart and honest and knows a lot about digital marketing and relationships.

    If you’re looking for other smart writing that happens to be about sports, I can tell you that you should go snag a copy of This Publication to Be Named Later, which includes sports writing from a whole bunch of really talented people and was edited by another friend of mine, Sarah Kelly.

    Curious about all the Gamestop bullshit? Luke O’Neil has you covered with this installment of Welcome to Hell World, but you may have to pay to read this one, but I honestly can’t tell because I’m already a paying subscriber.

    There’s been some really heavy shit that’s gone down in the Kansas City beer world this week as a couple of people at much-beloved Boulevard Brewing Company were revealed to be creeps and/or apologists for sexual harassers, but by and large those assholes have been fired and the workers are beginning to reclaim some of their autonomy.

    Musical Selections

    I’ve been digging through old writing playlists I’ve put together for when I start coming up with new ideas for books that I abandon less than a week later. I put this playlist through the rotation a couple of times this week and while I can’t even begin to tell you what the theme of the book was supposed to be, the playlist itself isn’t that bad.

    https://open.spotify.com/playlist/26UeWgUA8NslU6ZmDbNwpV

    Final Thoughts

    I made a joke a few hours ago on Twitter that my approach to writing was to just shit words out onto the keyboard/screen/page and then ignore them until it was time to hit post, and that’s more or less what happens here, if we’re being honest. That’s why the version that hits your inbox is usually a tiny bit different than what gets linked to. I will inevitably find a typo somewhere that needs fixing.

    Except there’s a piece of writing I’ve been working on that’s pretty personal and raw, and I’m curious as to whether or not I even want it to go live. I’ve worked it over at least five times in the past week and had several friends take a look at it. I’ll let you know when it’s coming (if it is), but in the meantime I just want to thank everyone who clicks and reads and subscribes and shares my shit because it really does mean a lot.

    Speaking of sharing and subscribing…