Sheesh, I've been here how long? Five, six years?

  • I've been approved for ages. Cool.

  • I'm even a mod. That's like being an astronaut.

  • I have followers. Woo-hoo. A lot of them.

  • I get instant messages. Sheeit. A ton of them. (Please stop.)

  • I get emails of (1) appreciation, (2) scorn, and (3) condemnation; all at the same time.

I've attributed much of my success to stoney and steele. I've also acknowledged the crucial role w&s plays, but also, played specifically in particular for me. Of course SK, uem, bogey, bp, and more.

Tonight, however, I want to talk about horns of apathy.

HOA and I chat a bunch - in reddit - but mainly these days in discord. He's a smart dude. I've seen all his kookie, long-winded posts. He once told me he writes like me: kookie and long-winded.

But never before tonight have I been on the receiving end of his advice; leveraging his expertise, benefiting from his knowledge, opening up doorways of discovery I had not previously considered.

You take a dude like me, who legitimately doesn't care - by care I mean invest himself in one outcome or another - and present his position to HOA and you get something beautiful in return.... a perspective I had not considered, perhaps a perspective I simply could not consider.

You see, I had nuked my marriage recently. No big deal. I was good with it. And not like askmrp-shit-talking-I'll-say-I'm-good-when-I'm-bad, but legitimately good with it... as in que-cera-cera, life goes on, my choice, my rules, my wife will no longer be my wife.

Four concise words, one sentence. That's (figuratively) all he had to say.

Of course it opened a larger conversation, one we're still in the midst-of.

But goddamn did it give me perspective where once there was none.

The four words:

"She just loves you."

I say this to both (1) tell you all that this dude is the real-deal, but also (2) remind you that this process works. Even for an old dog like me.