when you do things over and over again, that is known as repetition

It occurred to me that when I restarted this newsletter last year that my first post was in October. My newest post since restarting this newsletter this year was in October. I think there is a pattern here, one where I develop some kind of drive to create in the later months of the year, which peter out in the early part of the following year.

That’s the explanation for the title of this newsletter. YOU’RE WELCOME.

This is Astrologically Known as Turkey Season

November. The leaves are turning vibrant colors and then just dying, just dying right there, in front of you, holy shit. The cold wind of winter whips through your hair from around the corner, teasing you with its promise of Santa Claus doing a B&E at your house. Your favorite hipsters have donned their cardigans, pea coats, and thick cable-knit sweaters, sometimes all at once. Decorative gourds are fucking everywhere. Check your bathtub for errant gourds.

November begins the two months where it’s family time, whether you like it or not. Families get together for Thanksgiving, families get together for Christmas. You eat a turkey and a ham, respectively. You argue on Thanksgiving, you complain about your presents on Christmas. The president pardons turkeys, arguably the dumbest tradition in the history of the United States. And we’ve got some dumb ones over here!

I haven’t traditionally had great end-of-year holiday experiences. Thanksgiving was a nightmare for me as a kid, as I was terrified of eating new foods and felt incredibly embarrassed to be at a table surrounded by my extended family eating all the stuff that I was scared to eat. It’s weird to think of my child self back then; I wish I could somehow go back and tell him that all that stuff he didn’t want to eat is actually pretty good! Especially the stuffing. Man, 10-year-old me would’ve loved stuffing.

Christmas, meanwhile, tends to be an awkward holiday mainly because I don’t give presents, but I don’t expect presents either. When I see everyone’s social media feeds, though, it feels like everyone gets presents. I grew up poor and as I got older, the presents were fewer and fewer. In a way it’s my fault; I am notoriously hard to shop for because whenever I see something I want, I just buy it, because I don’t expect gifts. Similarly, I’m not great at hearing code words from friends or loved ones, cueing me re: things I should gift them for Christmas. So I just stopped doing gifts, and I don’t expect gifts. I miss the quality of Christmas you get as a child, though—the tree, the lights, the look of presents underneath the tree, the social warmth that you feel during that time of year. It’s not the same as you get older, at least it hasn’t been for me. Going to other people’s houses feels awkward; it’s not my tradition I’m going to, it’s yours. It’s different.

When I first moved to Portland, for a couple of years we did a Friendsgiving that was a lot of fun. But most of those people have left and gone to other places. It happens. I feel like Christmas as a holiday is poorly defined for loners. At least for Thanksgiving you can plug into anyone’s home who will let you in. Thanksgiving feels more like a rich meal experienced with people, a social tradition, if you will, whereas Christmas feels like a family tradition, something you and your immediate loved ones experience together.

Also, the recent tradition of watching movies on Christmas has also kind of ruined it. Though, on the other hand, what the hell else are you going to do on Christmas Day? I remember as a kid, waking up early, ripping open presents around 10, 11am, and then what? Food, and then you tinker around with your gifts for a bit, but then life goes on and you might as well go see a movie.

Anyway, this isn’t a plea for help or anything. More of a rumination on getting older. Things change, traditions change. People change!

Movember

I have signed up for Movember this year. The gist of Movember is raising awareness of men’s health by growing a mustache.

I had really only known Movember as “when guys grow a mustache in November,” and didn’t realize that it was this big fundraising event for men’s health and men’s suicide awareness. Maybe it was the former at first but then over time grew into a fundraising thing. I don’t know. What I do know is that starting today, I will be clean-shaven except for a patch above my upper lip which will grow from nothing, to wispy bullshit, and then eventually into a pretty nice mustache if I do say so myself.

Movember also includes moving 60 miles in the month, raising awareness of the absolutely staggering statistic that around 60 men end their own lives every hour. That’s 1,440 men killing themselves every day, over half a million every year. So I will be moving for them, moving for myself, keeping my head up and appreciating the life and the body I’ve been given.

Mental health is a big deal for me because mine has been pretty bad for some time, and the only thing that’s really made it better is my cat, therapy, supplements, and exercise. In basically that order. I won’t go into great detail (unless you really want me to) but 2014 to about a year ago was rough for me, lots of ups and downs, lots of depressive brain fog, lots of avoiding bridges because of intrusive thoughts. Thankfully I already had a therapist and Jowers and those two were enough to keep me healthy, relatively, and I want to help make sure that more men have access to mental health resources so they don’t end up in worse positions than I was in.

With that in mind, I am attempting to raise $200 for Movember to help fund men’s health and hopefully end the stigma of men’s mental health. I know inflation is making buying everything shitty, but if you have a few bucks to spare, consider clicking the link above or below and donate! I would seriously appreciate it, as would all the men out there who need the support to help deal with their mental and physical health.

NaNoWriMo 2022

I shaved my face AND I’m doing NaNoWriMo again this year? Utter lunacy. What am I, some kind of … guy, who … does things? Gone are the days where I’d just play video games all day long. Today, I play video games like 60-70% of the time!

This is my 20th NaNo. Twenty. I started in 2002, when I was nineteen years old. Today, I am 29 years old, so something’s clearly wrong with the math there.

It’s crazy to think about the passage of time. There was a time when I was nineteen years old. I’m not that anymore, but I was once. That time existed, and I was in it. But when I think back on it, I’m not in it anymore. It’s back there, and I’m here. But it happened! The future’s going to happen to. The only difference between the future and the past is that I can’t remember the future. But it and the past are still things that exist and that I will be or have been a part of, but will never exist in. Wild stuff.

Also, who knows if the past is a concrete thing? Just because we have records of things that happened in the past doesn’t mean that when the present ends, the past remains the same. It could be the langoliers out there, chomping up time and making a terrible miniseries out of it.

So, my idea is to write articles for my wiki about my D&D homebrew world, Avo. That way I’m not stuck with a single story idea, I can just develop articles and maybe dabble in some short stories if I want. If you feel like reading along, I’ll link the NaNo articles on the wiki’s main page. Huzzah!

I Ran a 5K

Folks, I’ve been running again. I started up around the beginning of October, trudging around the Lone Fir Cemetery with Zombies, Run!’s1 Couch to 5k training program. This was the natural progression from all the walking I’ve been doing recently; at some point a tiny voice in the back of my head would pop up while I was walking and say, “Go run.” “But I am fat, and lazy!” I would respond. “No,” the voice said. “Go run.” So I bought some running shoes. Fucking voice.

Basically, I’m Getting My Shit Together in true Belvillian fashion: very slowly. After 2.5 years of sitting on my ass during a global pandemic, eating way too much Del Taco and … well that’s it, really, just being lazy as hell, I started going on walks, and now I’m running, and on the 30th I ran a 5k. Well, mostly ran.

This was the Tar’n’Trail run at Mt. Tabor here in Portland, OR, a hybrid street/trail run that kicked my ass all the way to next Tuesday (which is today, the day this newsletter is being posted). I always run these things on my own because I don’t have any Runner Friends. It’s sort of weird to show up and see all these people who know each other or are in family packs, etc. It’s not too bad now but there were some Shamrock Runs in the past where it felt kind of melancholy, if not downright depressing, to just be there by myself. You run and then you go home and that’s it. (To be fair, I was also much more depressed back then, which didn’t help my general outlook.)

It was All Hallows Eve Ever so there were some costumes. One lady was dressed like a hot dog and made me wish I remembered quotes so I could quote Tim Robinson at her. A guy dressed his cute dog like a referee.2 Another lady dressed as something that I will describe through our awkward interaction after she asked me to hold a map of the run route so she could take a photo of it:

Me: Are you Inspector Gadget?

Her: More like “noir detective” but you can call me Inspector Gadget if you want.

The morning was cool but not cold and it wasn’t raining, which was perfect.

If you’ve never been to Mt. Tabor before, it used to be a volcano. It’s not an active volcano anymore, or else this would’ve been one hell of a run. But it is very hilly. VERY hilly. It’s gorgeous and there are lots of these reservoirs (and by lots I mean three) that the city uses for drinking water. They’re empty now because apparently there are structural issues underneath the reservoirs. Also sometimes they flush the entire reservoir because people pee in it. This has happened twice, I believe, since I moved here in 2008. It’s strange because it’s an open air reservoir, so ducks get in there and shit and piss. What’s a little human pee gonna do, eh? You actin’ like you ain’t never drank no human piss before?!

Anyway, I knew this run would be rough because of the uphill climbs, but it was 10x more rough than I realized. I also didn’t know that we were going up these stairs:

After those stairs, I resigned myself to walking most of the way. There were some sporadic runs here and there but stairs kill me. I know I’m not alone here but still. However, I did maintain my one cardinal rule for running races: I ran past the finish line. Unless my leg breaks off or I collapse unconscious, I will run the last bit to the finish line.

At the end was my favorite part of running races: snacks. Also, booze! I picked up a bottle of Honey Spiced Cider from 2 Towns; it was very delicious. I ate a sugar cookie, drank some Gatorade. Good times.

Overall, 51 minutes is a terrible 5k run time, but a pretty good run/walk time for a guy who hasn’t run a 5k in over a year and has been mostly sedentary since the pandemic, and a very good run time for a guy who has all that AND the course is like 75% hills. I’m pleased with the results and know that I’ve got work to do to improve. Always improving!

Jambon Beurre

As you may have noticed because I told you about it before, remember?, I created a little side podcast to this newsletter, called Jambon Beurre. I did it because Substack allows it; that’s the only reason. It’s like they opened a door in my house and there was an empty room in there. “Hey, you want this room?” They asked. “Free room!”

The first episode was me talking about wellness and then eating and reviewing a jambon beurre sandwich along with some macarons. This upcoming episode will be Thai-centric, with a classic pad thai, and mango sticky rice for dessert. I will also have a ratings system in place, mainly because reviewing food by saying “Mm this is good” is basically just how everyone eats food.

We’ll also be talking about running and how much it sucks and is also awesome. So stay tuned for that.

Recommendations

This is the part of the newsletter where I recommend some stuff at you.

Grounded

Grounded is a video game wherein you play as a teenager who was shrunk down to tiny size and you wander around in a backyard trying to figure out how to get unshrunk. That’s basically it. It’s Honey, I Shrunk the Kids meets “survival crafting game.” And it’s very, very good. I cannot stop playing it. Every time I play I find a new, fun thing. Last time I remembered that ziplines exist and made a zipline from the Upper Yard (the more dangerous part of the yard) to my base, situated on the banks of the Pond. The above screenshot was taken after I finally realized that if you blow up the rock next to the shovel, the shovel moves and creates a pathway up to the picnic table, where bees are hanging out over a pot of honey. Why does this table where people were playing D&D have a big pot of honey on it? Who knows. This game rules.

Carly Rae Jepsen – The Loneliest Time

Look, I won’t belabor this: the new Carly album is excellent. It’s better than the new Taylor Swift album. There, I’ve said it. Deal with it, Swifties. Just go listen to it okay?

The End

Thanks for reading through my latest missive of what’s going on in my life. I hope you enjoyed yourselves. The podcast will be out like a week or so after this so stay tuned for that. It’s funny how we still say “stay tuned” even though nobody tunes into TV or radio stations anymore.

Have a great November! See you next time.