Perhaps the greatest pitfalls I navigate on these excursions are my desires to vent.

Too often, I sit down and do just that. Then I stop, read back over what I’ve written and realize it’s rubbish. That’s when I start asking questions.

What do I want to write? What would I want to read?

The answer to both of those is pretty fucking simple.

Something awesome.

Recently, I was gifted the maxim that humility is not thinking less about yourself, but thinking about yourself less.

This has probably been the most rewarding challenge I have accepted in this project. It’s one that I consider especially testing as this is essentially a continuing collection of minimal, experimental, personal essays.

Writers are taught to consider their audience. I have come to address this simply by asking myself if I’m doing anything beyond tending my own ego.

Ultimately, what people want from narrative—and me as both a writer and, I truly feel, a person—is the reassurance that everything is OK. And that it always will be.

Happily everafter.

So maybe, instead of adamantly reasoning out what I perceive to be the truth, I decide to fudge it. Just a little bit.

Or maybe a lot.

I change names and places and events.

I challenge my own knowledge. Create a context where I can judge it by comparison.

That everafter, after all, is yet to be written.

Might as well write something you’d like to read.

Metaphors are bullshit.

We are who we choose to be.

Even when circumstances require us to be something specific, the choices we endeavour to make tell us a great deal about ourselves.

Lately, I have been trying to make more responsible choices. Like drinking significantly less and finally hauling my ass to the dentist to figure out exactly how much damage I’ve done by routinely bathing my teeth in stomach acid as a consequence of said drinking.

Turns out, I’m doing all right. But I made a really stupid decision on Sunday.

In sorting out my life, I was cleaning out my room. In the process, I figured I could just throw out a bag full of my own personal information, as long as it was buried deep inside a larger garbage bag full of the grossest stuff lingering in my fridge.

It isn’t even ten minutes after I’ve pitched this thing that someone climbs into my building’s dumpster and begins tearing through everything inside it. I watch him as I scrape the frost off of my car.

Eventually, he emerges from the dumpster, places a few items in his bag, and wanders off down the dark alley.

I figure whatever damage I’ve done, I can’t undo now. I drive off into the night, across the river to the apartment where I’m catsitting, wondering what steps I might now take to protect myself from the machinations of this clever fiend.

He’s going to get access to my credit cards. He’ll take out new ones in my name. Empty my bank account.

Victimize me.

Ruin my life.

Do I call Visa? Do I call the cops?

Even if I went back and climbed into the dumpster and found some of those bills and statements and stubs, I couldn’t be sure I got them all.

But at least I could be sure no one else would get whatever else wasn’t already being traded to gangsters for crack.

If I don’t at least check, I won’t sleep.

I drive back across town. I get out of my car and walk towards the dumpster as someone passes with her dog.

I’m too stressed to worry about my pride.

I open the dumpster with my left hand and flash my smartphone inside with the right.

There it is.

The green plastic bag that I had been careful to bury inside a larger bag among decaying produce and month’s-sour milk.

It’s now out in the open, so I grab it before anyone else can. There’s only one thing that I’m certain is missing.

A not-quite-rotten banana.

I remember, earlier that afternoon, thinking it was probably still good, but just not worth the chance.

I fear many things in this world.

But nothing more than how you will react if you ever connect this blog to me, which I have always considered to be an inevitability.

I have not always lived the way you wanted me to, and I can guarantee that this trend will continue into the foreseeable future. Although I like to tell myself that, if you were able to understand some of the nuances of my motivation, you could still be proud of me.

But I’m in no hurry to test that hypothesis.

After all, our differences are negligible compared to our similarities, as undesirable and heartbreaking as they may be. And now it seems, mommy, that I have inherited your most disturbing and unique predisposition.

I am addicted to casserole.

Pasta.

Potatoes.

Veggies.

And the cheese.

So much cheese.

There’s just something about a complete, piping-hot meal fresh from oven-kissed glassware. It fills the endless expanse of emptiness.

Like summer’s bounty rising from the dust.

I’ve never particularly cared for tuna, and I’m not sure how you’d feel about my latest tex-mex experiment. Our preferences are undeniably different.

But we share a common understanding of the dish’s basic elements. Perhaps, one day, our disparate tastes can come together in a properly hearty and delicious recipe.

It doesn’t need to make use of bizarre ingredients.

And I won’t suggest politically, morally or socially provocative monikers for this casserole.

When we prepare it, I promise not to be high on drugs, but I’ll probably come up with some ideas for it while I am.

Love,

Your son