In the Summer of 1998 when I was seventeen I finally found some friends with whom I could be rebellious. It wasn’t my intent to be rebellious, but for most of my teenage years I had associated with a crowd of well-behaved kids from religiously conservative families, because that was expected of me, and they were some of the worst people I have ever met—
Read MoreWow, it has been almost six years since I first began this journey back to health and wellness. If you are familiar with my story (my book) you may know about how I contracted cancer and was dealing with alcoholism and the destruction of pretty much everything in my life as it all came crashing down at once. Or maybe more accurately the final culmination of health and wellness problems I’d been having for some time. But things got better once I
Read MoreAt the beginning of this year I saw the writing on the wall, and when most people were posting about their New Years resolutions I instead railed against the last decade of my life and the hardships I had to endure.
Read MoreWhen I was twenty I was living apart from my family. Two years before my parents had asked me to leave their home because I was gay and because we were not getting along on account of their harassment and persecution of me in refusing to be straight.
Read MoreThe degree to which we filter our life experience is by magnitudes far greater than we can really comprehend. As a human being we are designed to survive in a world where mortality is real, and can even come from ways as simple as stepping out into the street without looking, or succumbing to an invisible pathogen we never saw coming.
Read MoreMan, people are really mean about sugar these days. I had someone chew me out on Instagram recently after I took issue with them body shaming others, who claimed I was responsible for promoting diabetes, as if they actually cared about the people with diabetes whom they were just fat shaming.
Read MoreIn the ninth grade I broke my knee during tryouts for for the basketball team. Someone was playing dirty and knock me over, and my knee was the first thing to hit the ground. After surgery it took me nearly a year to recover. But even after all that time I still couldn’t run on it, and I wanted to keep playing a sport (especially one I liked). After some searching I finally decided to join the swimming team.
Read MoreAmong the very few problems I have is having to regularly confront people about misconceptions of fat, self worth, and what it really means to be healthy. I never cease to be amazed by the people who think they are awesome just because they are fit, even when failing to demonstrate the most basic of human niceties, let alone traits which are actually admirable such as empathy, intelligence, or humor.
Read MoreI don’t have to tell anyone how the coronavirus COVID-19 has disrupted markets, caused massive layoffs and financial losses, and contributed to panic, fear, and economic instability and hardship across the globe. Ironically, the panic has been no where worse than in the United States, a country blessed with obscene economic property with no real need for panic, except that it is now a country full of angry, ungrateful, suspicious, selfish human beings
Read MoreEver since recovering from cancer I have only gotten sick twice—a cold once and a more serious viral throat infection which took about a week to fully resolve. But in spite of having been recently very ill with cancer and thyroid disease, before and during which I would catch the flu every year and which took near a month each time to fully recover, I have not gotten it once since recovering. This is no accident, as some of the various techniques I use to help improve my own health
Read MoreWhen I was fifteen years of age and struggles with my parents began to reach a fever pitch, my mother one day came into my room after a row and told me she was afraid I would not be able to provide for a family when I grew up. She was not concerned about an abundance of employment opportunities or the decreasing trend in wages compared to inflation and the const of living..
Read MoreOne night when I was still fairly new to Los Angeles I attended the premier of a friends’ comedy show. If I had known then that making friends with aspirational actors would be a liability to my happiness I would gladly have altered course in this time of my life (people whose purpose in life is to “make it” do not make good friends).
Read MoreAs soon as I got home from a trip to visit my family I promptly fell asleep for sixteen hours straight, waking only once to pee and take a bite of an apple. I have spent so many years around people who are intensely afraid of everything, and I can hardly bear it anymore and was totally drained. Humans are an incredibly fearful animal. Perhaps it is our position halfway between the prey and the predators. Perhaps it is our superstitions. Perhaps there really is much to be afraid of.
Read MoreLike most people in Western societies at this time of year I will be traveling to visit my family, and like a great portion of these people I found myself experiencing some intense anxieties about my upcoming trip which were making my daily life at the moment a bit unbearable
Read MoreSeveral years ago I was on a phone call with one of my sisters. She began venting about how her children were not eating. “What are you feeding them?” I asked. She rambled off several different food items, most of which were vegetables. I began to explain to her why kids don’t like vegetables, and how she could get around it,
Read More