Pulse nightclub, Orlando.

I won't have to link to the referenced story here. This is now infamous. A historical mass-shooting. And once this is published, this story will exist in the archive of the internet, more information will be available to you, the future reader than to me, the present writer.

My heart wrenches for those in Orlando. The family and friends. The community. The ringing cell phones, unanswered.

This is absolutely soul-crushing. pic.twitter.com/x10BEuqzsl

— Kami Mattioli (@kmattio) 12 June 2016

Fuck homophobia. Fuck racism. Fuck misogyny. Fuck automatic weapons. Fuck toxic masculinity. Fuck fundamentalism. Fuck your set doctrines. Fuck your bathroom laws. Fuck your trans-phobia. Fuck your prayers. Fuck your inaction. Fuck your ignorance, your arrogance, your entitlement. Fuck you for supporting a culture that's so proud of its own idiocy. Fuck you for creating a culture where satire and deep, cynical sarcasm is our way of pointing out your inanity - and you don't fucking get it. Fuck your entitlement to our bodies. To violence. To space. I am insanely angry. I am unbelievable horrified. But today, the day after such deep engulfing sadness, I'm also indignant to the point of unrelenting opposition. Progress is coming. We're all fighting for it. You are desperate and angry and afraid, and we're sick of dealing with your hatred and your bullshit. Fuck you. Get over yourself. Your words affect lives. Your policies police bodies. Your homophobic jokes keep people in closets. Your homophobic church, pastor, temple or shrine, your homophobic leader, your synagogue, mosque or statue, your homophobic, misogynist fear-mongering religion is dated, it comes from a hateful history and you should know the fuck better. Read a fucking book. Meet fucking people. Go outside. Experience the lives of other. Learn. Better yourself you fuck.

And to my LGBTQ brothers and sisters. To the a-gender. To the sexless and to the sex-full. To every possible denomination of gender, sex, race, culture, class and ability. To all of us, I say I'm so fucking sorry.

I wish I could do more.

All I did today was make my contour especially sharp. I highlighted a little more. I walked out my door resolute to be myself.

I wish I could do more.

Update - 15/06/2016 - So I'm less rage-y right now, and want to point to the stories of those helping, those being brave, those being amazing in an awful time.
star

Lonely island, indeed.

I've not been doing well lately.

I'm tired and feel like I'm the heaviest I've ever been. My joints hurt. I feel like a hunchback. I just can’t get enough sleep.

Work isn't great. I'm bored and frustrated. I don’t feel safe here. Looking for another job is hard, and I feel like shit so the prospect of interviewing seems like a waste.

Interviewer: “What are your weaknesses?”
Me: “Patience, and I wish I was dead a lot.”

Not the best. Feeling useless and shitty isn't the best time to be thinking through a lens of ambition. It’s like creating a black hole in your own mind, it just doesn't compute and you end up feeling anxious and fucked.

I'm still trying to live and function. I'm getting a haircut tonight. I'm spending the day with my closest friend on Saturday, and hopefully seeing Popstar and getting pedicures can make me giggle and feel human.

Sunday, 9:19 pm.

I am not ready for another week to start.

Tonight I am filled with anxiety pangs that start in my stomach and fester in my mind.

I feel I'll get fired. That I have no real value as a working person. That my art and creativity are forced - a joke. That I'll end up unemployed again. Worthless.

I am not even designing these days. I'n a glorified assistant.

I don't have enough hours in the day. I am not cooking. I am not doing laundry. 

I want to work less. But how would I get by? I already live pay-check to pay-check.

I think about the notion of me living on my own and my chest palpitates. How can I take care of myself? 

Is it possible for me to live in an assisted living facility? Should I limit my budget in order to limit the financial pressure on myself? 

If I end up in a shit apartment I'll just get depressed at my environment. I need sunlight. 

Yes, my mind has these thoughts that flutter in and out, but overall tonight I feel tired. I don't want to try. I want to just do the least amount I can. Commit as little as I can. 

It's too much.

I want to check myself into a mental hospital. I want a fucking break. 

I want a fucking break.

Sad Ghost Club.

 

I am in love with the Sad Ghost Club. I just ordered their limited edition poster, as well as the comic print whose cost funds workshops on mental health.

I'm obsessed! Love love love!

"Comic writers – tend to be desperately unhappy."

There’s an old stereotype that comedians – and perhaps comic writers – tend to be desperately unhappy, depressive or deeply unhappy. Does this match your experience with the folks you knew there?

Not just there. I know a great many people who do comedy for a living. And it’s kind of common. Comedy seems to spring from the desire of the underdog to rewrite reality. In a comedy scenario, some measure of justice is finally achieved when the poor beleaguered antihero finally whines his way into a little power. It’s a much nicer way to deal with feeling furious and helpless and disenfranchised than to pick up a gun. Maybe someday gene-splicing will allow us to give violent psychopaths the ability to create comedy instead.

Excerpt from an interview with Letterman head writer Merrill Markoe over on Salon. This is a reoccurring comment in a lot of the reading I've done on depression, and it's in a lot of the back-story of a lot of comics, so this will come up again, no doubt. I have a lot on the topic of comedians and depression but I haven't had the time to sort through it. Soon!