🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩
My Boys 👨👦👦
Work Drinking🥃
Feeling Good 😎
I’ve understood since seventh-grade science class how a child is a somewhat random and yet somewhat traceable mish-mash of his parents and their parents and their parents ad infinitum. It’s so cool to see that play out with my own boys.
Boy The Elder is very much his mother’s child. Wifey Poo was a serious and dedicated academic and is extremely analytical and very process-driven. BTE is maniacally focused on his studies and always has been. He’s a junior-to-be food science major at Mizzou who’s interning at a flavor creation company, doing research and development in a lab putting all sorts of chemicals together for clients who want their products to taste good. He is single-handedly keeping the note card industry afloat with the bajillion flash cards he makes to help him study for each test.
Yet when it comes to music, he’s all mine. BTE feels music. We’re constantly tossing our latest finds in musicians and bands back and forth via text. Today he texted me from his morning workout to tell me to listen to the new Logic album start to finish. He understands that this is the way to listen to music, not as one-off track selections, and he thought I’d dig Logic’s Vinyl Days because it harkens back to some post-Licensed to Ill Beastie Boys. And he’s right. I do like it and it does sound like some Paul’s Boutique and Check Your Head.
Boy The Younger? He’s so much me it’s scary. Put him in a baseball uniform and run him out there to the pitcher’s mound, and it’s like I’m looking at myself. In life, he’s a goofball who sees his academics as an interlude between being able to do the fun things he really wants to do, and he and focus have a bad relationship with each other. That was and, to a large extent, is me.
He’s a feeler in every sense of the word. He cannot abide hearing anything about the mistreatment of animals, he’s extremely self-critical and caustically aware of his mistakes. He has a huge heart and instinctively knows what someone is “not right.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been silently screaming as I’ve battled my demons and he is the one who wordlessly comes over to give me a hug. He knows, and I love that about him.
Yet he’s got this side of him that comes out that is intensely organized and structured and methodical. BTY loves processes and structure. He wants steps and lists and detailed instructions. When he was a toddler, he’d line up his monster truck toys in a precise line, all facing the same way. If I turned one around while he wasn’t looking, he’d eventually turn back and immediately notice something was amiss and fix it.
That’s all Wifey Poo.
Whereas BTY’s brother helps feed my need for deep, philosophical discussions — which we’ve been having since BTE was, like, 4 — BTY is too carefree to worry about much of anything and would rather be grounded for a month than have a deep discussion.
Very unlike his brother (and me) and very much like his mother, he gets over slights and disappointments extremely fast. When BTE’s baseball teams would lose, he’d agonize over it with great regret for weeks. BTY? His teams lose 28-3 and he’s 100% fine by the time we’re pulling out of the parking lot to head home. It’s not that he doesn’t care; the kid has the same level of insane hustle I had. It’s just that, when it’s done, whatever the outcome, he’s onto the next thing.
BTY (and Wifey Poo) is very much The Lego Movie; Everything is awesome, and he’s gonna sing about it. And sing he does. He and Wifey Poo are random when-no-one-else-is-looking singers. BTY used to go to the bathroom during the middle of dinner, pee, and then have to be loudly called back to the table because he was giving a concert because “I like how my voice sounds in there.”
I say all of this as a way to reflect upon the fact that I’m pretty damn lucky. I have a 20-year-old son who loves his dad and wants to hang out with him. He’s already told me (kinda sorta) what my Father’s Day gift is. He and I (and his amazeballs girlfriend) are going to the Marcus King Band concert.
And I have an almost 13-year-old son who gets me probably better than just about anyone else in the world. They are fabulous kids.
Life isn’t all sunshine and Christmas cookies. But it’s good.
It’s currently noon on Friday, and today is my last day of work at my soon-to-be old job. I am currently at LIT Cigar Lounge alternately savoring a great cigar and a double Angle’s Envy on the rocks. I wish things would have turned out differently at The Best Damn Real Estate Team on Either Side of the Mississippi, but they didn’t, and when the phone rang, I answered it. It’s hard to turn down a 60% raise, especially when you’re seeing massive cracks in the foundation of your currently employer’s business structure.
So I didn’t.
I now have next week to decompress and enjoy life to the fullest before I start my new gig June 27. Part of that enjoyment is a solo escape to the Ozarks in Northern Arkansas. I’ve rented a cabin out in the boonies and plan to do a lot of writing and relaxing.
I think I’ve earned it.
Regular readers of this space (hello to the three of you! I’m lookin’ at you, Read Between The Lyme!) might have noticed that this space is now being taken up with writing of a different tone of late. Looking back at what my writing has been like over the past few years, there are so many indications of the soul-deep struggle I’ve had with simply existing. One of the main purposes of this site has been to give me a forum to work through my shit, to get all these feelings out (see above about BTY) and to hopefully help others who are going through their own shit.
And folks, a lot of that writing has been about the ugly side of life.
I hesitate to talk about what’s changed because I’ve learned first-hand how vile and hypocritical people can be when it comes to those who openly share their struggles with brain illness. I may or may not have signed a document that may or may not exist with a company that most certainly does exist because of this kind of crap that may or may not have paid me to not pursue any possible or not possible future litigation. Yet any sort of vindication I felt in that is tarnished by the fact that those who may or may not have been responsible for the discrimination still enjoy gainful employment in that very real company and that it social media trumpets its support of mental health awareness.
That said, where I am today is because of a decision I made in August 2021 to wade into the deep water with a new therapist and confront the things I’d never dealt with before. I say that I made the decision, and that’s true, but what’s more true is that I just sorta one day found myself in the deep water with no real option other than to keep swimming (or drown).
The work has been hard. My therapist is a dude in a different part of the lovely state of Missourah whom I talk with via telehealth and who doesn’t take my bullshit. He calls me on my cop-outs and is great at holding me accountable to truth. Patiently, lovingly, professionally, he’s guided me through some nasty stuff. In a roundabout way, he helped me find a somewhat experimental treatment I’ve been in for the past month, and the differences in my heart and head are profound.
I’m not at the point of feeling comfortable talking about this treatment in this space, but I will talk about them with anyone who emails me (well, just about anyone). johnagliata@gmail.com. I’m not saying what I’ve found will work for everyone. It won’t. Brains are fantastically complicated and individual things. I’m not even saying that what I’ve found will work for me in the long term. What I do know is that it’s working for me right now and that I haven’t felt this centered and sound since, well, ever. The differences this is making in my personal and professional lives is beyond belief, and each new morning that I greet feeling regulated and good gives me hope that what I’ve found is going to stick.
It also leads to impromptu concerts in my car in which I’m belting out this song as I cruise down the highway with the windows open.
These are my words
That I’ve never said before
I think I’m doing okay
And this is the smile
That I’ve never shown before
Somebody shake me ’cause I
I must be sleeping
It’s a (Dysfunctional) Family Matter
Top 3 questions to ask yourself before going into business with relatives. My wife, Carla, is an amazing woman. She is exceedingly brilliant, the owner of a whole lot more A’s in school growing up than her future husband had. We’ve known each other for nearly three decades now, the past 25 as spouses. And…
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- Date night tonight!
- A week of no day job awaits!
- I feel good.
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🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Urgent Care 👂👂Alone Update 😔Rest 🛏️ It’s never a good sign when, less than two seconds after sticking a light in your ear and gazing through the little viewfinder thingy (patent pending), the doctor says, “Oooooooooh.” That was followed by a diagnosis of a “nasty” left ear infection and the question,…
Keep readingFitting in — Nov. 25, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Alone 😔Christmas Changes🎄My Two Skillz 🔪 I would venture to guess that most of us like the feeling of fitting in somewhere. Even the most self-confident, secure person likes to have a tribe. We’re social creatures, and to have a place we just seem to slide into safely is a blessing.…
Keep readingSpouse+ Subscription — Nov. 23, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Marriage Talk 💑Requesting Money 💰Murder-Free 🔪 If you’ve been married as long as I have (rounding the corner and heading toward 26 years), you understand that conversations between spouses can sometimes be awfully weird. I mean, Wifey Poo and I have known each other more than 30 years now. How much…
Keep readingCoffee Hand — Nov. 22, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Man Cold? 🤒Balloon Analogy 🎈World Flop ⚽ If you want to know how my Monday started yesterday, I poured coffee all over my hand. It isn’t that I don’t know how to pour coffee. I’ve done it a billion times. It’s that, on this particular Monday, somewhere in between the start…
Keep readingZoo Signs — Nov. 20, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Gorilla Harassment 🦍Brother Love 👨👦👦True Crime 🔪 My love of wild animals was fostered early in my childhood. Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom was appointment viewing for my family. I grew up with scenes of hungry cheetahs chasing down baby gazelles that included what’s not included on nature shows today ……
Keep readingNo Slides Allowed — Nov. 17, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Presentation Skillz 📽️No Tribe 😔Fuck 45 🖕 There was a time not all that long ago, cosmically speaking, that the mere thought of standing up in front of a crowd and giving a talk would have made me want to throw up in my shoes. In fact, there has been a…
Keep readingWhat’s Funny? — Nov. 15, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Boss Kudos 🙌Chill Time 😌One In 8 Billion🧍 It always feels good when the Big Bossman comes up to you and shakes your hand for a job well done. That happened last night when El Presidente of our company congratulated me on the video I wrote, shot and produced for our…
Keep readingEngaged — Nov. 14, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩BTE and Div 💍Brother Greetings 👨👩👦👦Travel Day ✈️ The morning after Boy The Elder was born, I awoke in the hospital to his sweet cooing and his momma’s deep-sleep breathing. Scooping him up carefully and holding him nervously, I sat in a rocking chair in the pre-dawn darkness and talked to…
Keep readingDying Democracy — Nov. 11, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Election Message 🗳️School Priorities 🏫Tickets Aplenty 🎫 It would seem to me that if a common sentiment from wise people following an election is that it’s a good thing the results were so muddled because it means not much will get done in the next two years, you’ve got yourself a…
Keep readingFairy Tale — Nov. 9, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Stephen King 🕮Legal Weed🌿Public Schools🏫 I read my first Stephen King book when I was in high school. It was summer, if I remember correctly, and everywhere I went, I carried a worn library copy of Pet Sematary. Since that time, King’s words have been a regular companion through every stage…
Keep readingYear In Music — Nov. 5, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Concert Craze 🎵Back Crackin’👩⚕️To-Dos Done🚗 My year of music is over. And, my God, has it been good. It started on a sweltering mid-July afternoon at Hollywood Casino Amphitheater in which Wifey Poo and I watched my Backup Wife Jewel do her thing. It ended last night on an evening that…
Keep readingUpdate: My Favorite African — Nov. 3, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Little D’s Return 🏥Irony 🔨Planet Killer 🌎 Being a host parent to a little boy from Africa (Burkina Faso, to be precise) was one of the hardest and most rewarding things I’ve ever done in my life. And now, that little boy is returning to the United States. For those not…
Keep readingMega Billions — Nov. 2, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Stupid IT Rules 🖥️The Bend 🚑Is The War Over? ✌️ Tonight, there will be a lottery drawing in which someone could win $1.2 billion. That someone won’t be me, as I didn’t buy a ticket, but it didn’t stop me from thinking about what I would and wouldn’t do with that…
Keep readingFun Family — Nov. 1, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Family Dynamics 👪New Mattress 🛏️To Share Or Not To Share? ❓ Let’s say the only cracker you’ve ever eaten is a Saltine. You have no experience with any other crackers. In fact, you don’t even know that there is such a thing as other crackers. You might not love the Saltine,…
Keep readingHalloween Haters— Oct. 31, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Ghosts of Halloween 👻Wrinkles 👴Words Spawn Action ✍️ Wifey Poo made a bold declaration about her opinion of Halloween on our drive back from Springfield, Missourah, Saturday afternoon: “Halloween is a great time for kids to dress up …” If you think there’s more to that statement, nope. She added: “Period.”…
Keep readingHow I Do Me — Oct. 27, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Empath Life 🤗Earthquake 🌎Revolutionary Failure 😶 About six months after I started my career as a professional journalist, I started walking past this job opening in our company every time I walked in and out of the building. It was for editor of a weekly paper routinely ridiculed by those who…
Keep readingSchool Shooter Match Game — Oct. 24, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Game Time 🎮Family Picture📸Marriage Tips 🪢 I remember when it was simple. Horrible, yes … but simple. There was Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and they matched up with Columbine — which, side note, would have been my high school had my parents not moved to NY when I was 2.…
Keep readingHelping the Homeless — Oct. 23, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Helper Bags 🆘What’s In The Bag?🎒Mini Golf ⛳ I was raised to avoid the homeless. Avoid eye contact. Avoid conversation. And most definitely avoid giving them anything they asked for. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this, which doesn’t make me feel any better. What was instilled in me as…
Keep readingMarcus F’n King — Oct. 21, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Books & Covers 🕮Seeking Balance ⚖️Weirdo🤪 We’re taught at an early age to not judge a book by its cover. If I remember correctly, that was impressed upon me sometime around the first grade. Yet to be honest, I don’t think it’s a lesson that ever really sunk in. I imagine…
Keep readingPolitical Ads — Oct. 20, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Illegals or Guns? 🤦Scrolling Through Stupidity 🖱️Worst Nurse Ever 👩⚕️ If there’s anything I hate more than politics and politicians, it’s political advertising. Cutting the cable cord has lessened its intrusiveness in my life, yet it still manages to seep in. Case in point: I was watching the Padres-Phillies game last…
Keep readingChocolateman— Oct. 19, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Passion 🍫Sarcasm 😜Poop 💩 I appreciate people who are passionate about something. Well, except politics. Then I’d prefer it if you’d just keep your mouth shut. But if you’re super-interested in photography, goats, cooking, geocaching, quilting, etching … whatever … your enthusiasm feeds my soul. Which is part of the reason…
Keep readingTop 5 Things From The Past Week: Oct. 10-16 edition
Welcome to Issue No. 9 of Listicles, the feature that presents the Top 10, Top 5, Top 3, Top 100 or Top 1,000,000 of whatever it is you want to know about. Email your Listicle suggestions to johnagliata@gmail.com. No. 5: I pledged to finish something I am a writer. If I’m going to be a…
Keep readingEvolution — Oct. 17, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Monkey Crap 🐒BTY Day 👨👦Incomplete Stories 🖊️ If you’re of the belief that human beings evolved from apes, I’m not here to try to dissuade you. What I am here to say is that, if evolution is true, we sure have come a long way. I say this after a trip…
Keep readingBasement Water — Oct. 15, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Personal Growth 🌱Mad Mom 😠Oh, Jeffrey 🧠 About a year ago, Arti The Wonder Therapist waited patiently for me to finish yet another of my amazing monologues detailing just how I felt about the various situations I was attempting to address in my life at the time and then calmly asked…
Keep readingDeath! Death! Death! — Oct. 14, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Cue the Outrage 🔫Animal Extinction 🐆Eye Update 👀 Even back in the day when I considered myself a Republican (before the dark times … before the Trumpire), I never quite understood the death penalty. Perhaps it was because I looked around at the other nations that still killed people as punishment…
Keep readingCorneal Complications — Oct. 13, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Hello Darkness, My Old Friend 👀COVID Costs 🦠Jackass Jones Verdict👩⚖️ I’ve spent much of this week so far in forced darkness. After I wrote on Monday morning, my right eye started to get blurry. Then it got real blurry. Then it became utterly useless. In this, I have reprised my role…
Keep readingMattress Shopping — Oct. 10, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Awkward Shopping 🛏️Disingenuous Holiday 🗓️Help the Homeless 😔 If there’s a more awkward retail excursion than mattress shopping, I have yet to find it in my 48 years. Wifey Poo and I went to a high school gym to do exactly that on Sunday afternoon. The bed we’ve been sleeping in…
Keep readingSo Long, Cards — Oct. 9, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Playoff Disappointment ⚾Oh, Britney 📲Friendship Failure 😔 In the span of just more than 24 hours, I went from the excited expectation of being in Busch Stadium to watch the hometown St. Louis Cardinals eliminate the Philadelphia Phillies and advance to the next round of the playoffs to watching those Phillies…
Keep readingPlayoff Baseball — Oct. 6, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Baseball Gear-Grinders ⚾Sunrise Woes 🌄Heavy Pumpkins 🎃 There are a few baseball-related indignities in my home that, as the saying goes, grind my gears. The first is that there is a state championship trophy on the mantel above the fireplace in our Humble Country Home with a gold-plated baseball player, bat…
Keep readingThere Will Be Blood — Oct. 5, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Weird Wound Treatment 🧂Phillies Bring Doom ⚾Meetings Suck 👎🏽 Apparently, I’ll take medical advice from waitresses and allow myself to receive medical treatment from busboys. This, I learned last night. I have a tendency to get hurt in really interesting ways. When I tell you that I once got a concussion…
Keep readingTop 5 Things From The Past Week: 9/26-10/2
Welcome to Issue No. 8 of Listicles, the feature that presents the Top 10, Top 5, Top 3, Top 100 or Top 1,000,000 of whatever it is you want to know about. Email your Listicle suggestions to johnagliata@gmail.com. No. 5: I held an epic car concert If you were anywhere in the vicinity of my…
Keep readingPlace Your Bets — Oct. 3, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Football Picking God 🏈Fish Story 🐟Free Floating ☁️ A few months before Boy The Elder was born, I had about $100 set aside to buy Wifey Poo a gift that I intended to give her after she ushered our child into the world. It was the least I could do for,…
Keep readingSliced Bread — Sept. 30, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩New Route Home 🏎️Confirmed Weirdness 🤪Here’s Your Sign 🤦 I took a new route home from the western part of Missourah yesterday after doing the whole open-house thing for work in St. Joseph. Rather than shoot down to I-70 and traverse the state on that familiar road, I went across Hwy.…
Keep readingRental Tank — Sept. 29, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Woo-Woo vs. The Beast 🛻Dart Throwers 🎯My Job 📋 I am not used to driving a tank. My normal vehicle is Woo-Woo, AKA The Shitty Little Car, AKA a Nissan Versa. It’s practical. It gets great gas mileage. I hate it. Woo-Woo normally accelerates as quickly as a child asked to…
Keep readingLinkedIn — Sept. 26, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Unwitting Guinea Pigs 🐹False Bragging 🦹♂️Put Me In, Coach 🚀 My regular readers (hey, you three!) know that I have a hatred for social media’s influence on society with an intensity rivaled only by the heat of a thousand suns. The latest bit of “Are you fucking kidding me?” comes from…
Keep readingTop 5 Things From The Past Week: 9/9-9/25
Welcome to Issue No. 7 of Listicles, the feature that presents the Top 10, Top 5, Top 3, Top 100 or Top 1,000,000 of whatever it is you want to know about. Email your Listicle suggestions to johnagliata@gmail.com. No. 5: I reached out to a friend I have not been shy about sharing that I’ve…
Keep readingiPhone Envy — Sept. 25, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩More Stupid Human Stuff 📱KC Trip ⚾Miserable Missourah 😠 Quick: Take a look around you. If you’re in a room with five other people, one of them thinks you’re financially struggling if you don’t have the latest iPhone. That’s according to a new survey following the release of the iPhone 14.…
Keep readingHuman Babies — Sept. 23, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Loser Species 👶Email Win 📧Dad Pride 👨👦👦 I’m pretty sure I’m not normal. Normal people respond to that statement with, “Oh, John, nobody’s normal,” which is just a sign for us non-normies that the person we’re talking to is normal. Yesterday, I was waiting for Wifey Poo to pick me up…
Keep readingIn It — Sept. 22, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Concert Thoughts 🧠Marriage 💍Drunk Idiots 🧉 There’s this scene in the 2004 movie Garden State in which Sam (Natalie Portman) looks at Andrew (Zach Braff) and notices … … And yeah, that resonated with me then and resonates with me now. Ever since then, being “in it” has become a thing…
Keep readingRemembering Sarah — Sept. 21, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Sadness 😥Beautiful Skies ⛅Two Terms For 2022 ✌️ Back in our early days at Pound Ridge Elementary School, Sarah was the fastest girl runner in the class, which bought her some serious playground cred. There were only a few of us boys who could hang with Sarah in the 50-meter dash…
Keep readingSmall Ear Canal — Sept. 19, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Ear Flushing👂Grunge God🎶Tech Guy📺 If you have to have a doctor tell you a body part or yours is small, I suppose one of the least offensive would be the ear canal. That’s what a doctor told me this morning, after I finally broke down and actually went to said doctor’s…
Keep readingSunday Randomness — Sept. 18, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Two, Four, Six, Eight👑Tips💰Book Buying📖 Some random thoughts from the week that was: Today’s Reasons to Keep Living
Keep readingNominee Day! — Sept. 16, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Toys in the Hall🪅Idiot Governors🗳️Flopping FedEx✈️ Last night in my hotel in Springfield, Missourah, I set out a glass of milk and a plate of cookies before going to bed. It’s not that I don’t know how to read a calendar or have any particular belief in a fat man in…
Keep readingSpringfields Aplenty — Sept. 15, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Which One?🗺️Leave Introverts Alone🤫Oxford Commas🤪 I’m on the road for work this week, in Springfield. Ahhh, but Springfield what? There currently are 35 populated places in the United States named Springfield, spread out over 25 states, including five in Wisconsin. In addition, there are 35 Springfield Townships, and Ohio owns 11…
Keep readingF’n COVID — Sept. 13, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Surrounded 😷Wood Splitter 🌲Morons 🤪 I’ve had COVID. Twice. The first time fucked up my life for a year. I’m still not back to the me I was before it came into my home, and I’m pretty sure that now, nearly two years later, that’s not going to change. The second…
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One response to “Genetics — June 17, 2022”
Congratulations on your new position, John! It sounds like things are going well. I sincerely appreciate your openness and truthfulness and that’s basically why I’m here. And your writing is awesome! While I envy your upcoming trip of solitude, I certainly hope it is one that feeds the soul. Take care!