A Queer Life

Every morning I announce I’m going running, then I don’t run. It’s a running joke. Hello my pretties! As I've said before, I watch too much YouTube. Then I stop watching YouTube and I feel better about life and everything else. Then I stumble onto YouTube again and the cycle repeats. The truth is YouTube is not just a destructive addiction, it also has valid, wonderful things on there I don't want to lump in with the garbage.  YouTube has helped me: Process religious trauma and articulate so many things actually wrong with Mormonism. Process past abusive relationships and how to move on and be stronger. Learn how to think critically.  Learn how to think philosophically. YouTube is an awesome learning tool, but it is also an entertainment tool and YouTube entertainment feels terrible to me.  So if I focus my YouTube time on learning then I can learn all kinds of things. I heard a rumor of a woman who learned accounting from YouTube and got a corner office without ever gett...

Sometimes I feel deep shame about the amount of time I spend on YouTube, watching pointless shit and reading comments. I feel like I'm looking for something and I'm disappointed. Obviously some YouTubers and their videos are more fulfilling than others and sometimes I feel like watching a video is worthwhile. I will sit and watch a two hour video just staring at someone's face with rapt attention. I will regularly pause to read comments, to see if anyone has anything to add to the discourse. I have spent hours and hours and hours of my day doing this. Then I feel shame when I look up from my phone to see the house messy and my mind hazy and the kids hungry and I don't know what month it is.  I like watching creators who have interesting things to say, new points of view, or just funny points of view on anything. I find a channel and I think: "This is the one. This is my favorite YouTuber from now until the end of time." I have even contributed to the occasiona...

When I was in high school my addiction was at its fever pitch. I thought about it all day. I thought about whether I would give in or not when I got home. I didn’t want to. It was an addiction. Addictions are unhealthy. I was out of control. How long could I go without losing control? Never very long.  Could something so simple create such relief? Was it simple or insidious? I didn’t know, I just knew I had to relieve the pressure. When the pressure built to intolerabile levels I would rush home after school, dash into my room like a full bladder dashes to a toilet. In my bedside table lived my dirty little secret: my notebook and pen. Was it really so simple as that? Would it really work this time the way it had in the past or was this when the rug would be yanked out? Addictions could never be trusted.  I would lay on my floor, open my notebook and empty the vault with the pen. It took hours to get everything out but relief always came. Addiction fulfilled.  It needed t...