Rage Phase

"Why are you so angry all the time...?!"

It's arguably the most common question I was asked by my mother in the last few years we still talked to each other.

It's also the question I could answer eight ways until Sunday, and it didn't matter. She just never seemed to get it.

Neither, unfortunately, did anyone else really.

In their defense, it's not their fault, nor am I blaming them. Anger is a hard thing to rationalize or make sense of, and we're seeing more and more evidence of that as we become increasingly split between political, social, cultural, religious, economic and gender divides with both ever-increasing frequency and ever-escalating hostility.

If I'm honest, the anger I've carried for much of the last four decades pales in comparison to what I see wielded by other people, either on social media or in the real world, every day. Most of it for nothing else than to be pissed off about both something and/or everything they find objectionable about the world at present.

And thanks to the power of the internet, social media and the ability to foster a true outrage culture, I watch tens of millions of people launch their intercontinental ballistic rage missiles at each other day after day without even a nanosecond's thought as to who they're directing all that angst toward in the first place.

If there's one thing I can say makes me an exception to that, it's I can both identify the reasons why I've developed my rage arsenal into what it's become and why I'm not so quick to hit the button to obliterate the targets they're currently fixed on.

I once heard an axiom which states, Having strength is one thing. Knowing how to use it is another. The same, as I've experienced, also applies to anger.

To truly understand the foundation of where mine emanates from requires the ability to comprehend a person's life in both totality and context of the various episodes that make up said totality. You have to be willing to examine a childhood interspersed with abuse and neglect. Where I was made to feel both powerless and stupid, no matter what I did to show I was actually neither.

You have to recognize that many of the labels that are thrown about indiscriminately nowadays to define pretty much everyone, don't necessarily apply to me.

Yes, I am a white, cisgendered male. Contrary to popular belief, I had no say in that whatsoever. That's how I was built at the factory and how I rolled off the genetic assembly line.

The dominating rhetoric at present would have it believed that that construct automatically guarantees I also came with inherited traits like privilege, bigotry, misogyny, entitlement. And while I am the first to recognize and admit that I am far from a flawless human being and that I carry my share of prejudices and biases, the assumption that I subscribe to any of those things is antithetical to who I am or have always been.

How do I know? I've either been subjected to them or I've seen people I cared about subjected to them. I've had to watch as every door that potentially led to a better life get slammed in my face by people with those exact same traits, without a damn thing I could do to pry them back open, and all it did was add even more fuel to my anger, because how can it not when you see lives you'd give anything to have squandered by those who never deserved them anymore than they thought you deserved yours?

Not that matters to most people nowadays, of course. We live in a world so cynical and untrusting that I could say the sky is blue or water's wet and someone would have to take to Twitter or Facebook and call for the social media lynch mobs to gather their pitchforks and torches before marching off to bring me to heel.

Editorial Note: For me to recognize just how cynical we've become is saying a lot considering I was a journalist for ten years. If there's a more cynical lot in the history of humankind, you'd be hard-pressed to find them.

You'd also have to venture into the whacking great hole in the center of my being where my heart used to be, and you'd have to be willing to understand why it's not there anymore.

If you did, then you'd see that every person I've ever loved in this life, from my mother on down, took their shots at it, smashing it to pieces over and over again because I wasn't good enough for them to love back. It didn't matter how much I cared about them, how much I wanted it or what I tried to convince them otherwise. The answer was and has always been the same.

No.

And all that's done is add more fuel to my anger, because how can it not when the one thing we're all told we need to survive and be happy is the one thing you have to live without?

I know I'm not the only man to find myself in that situation, nor will I be the last to either. Right now, there's an entire legion of them so pissed off that they believe it's somehow their right to subjugate every woman for their own sick and twisted purposes.

We call these people InCels, and more than once, I've been lumped into their ranks by someone who usually operates solely by indiscriminately slapping discriminatory labels on those they think fit their own prejudicial profiles.

For the record, the ideology these people operate under abhors and disgusts me, and were I to ever come across an InCel in person, I'd be more inclined to knock his twisted head off than shake his hand and say I agree with him in any way, shape or form.

But good luck trying to convince a supposedly rational and open-minded person of that these days. You're just as likely to get a response of socio-political doublespeak cultivated from their own personal echo chambers of media and like-minded sorts who would never dare to think their twisted view of the world could ever be wrong.

And all that's done is add even more fuel to my anger, because how can it not when someone is so quick to define you without realizing the definition it places squarely on them as well?

Now the obvious question at this stage is, Well, if you're so angry all the time, why don't you take it out on everyone who makes you feel that way?

Believe me, there's days where I find the idea more than enticing. Some days, the rage is so intense that I'd like nothing more than to channel in the direction of everyone who, for whatever reason, caused it to build up in me in the first place.

It's one of the most Newtonian things we can do as human beings. Action met with an equally-opposing reaction.

Except here's the thing. I'm old enough to have been introduced to the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction when it was still a relatively new term in human existence. The idea being that in nuclear war, if both sides launched their arsenals either simultaneously or in succession, the outcome would be the same.

Neither side would live through the aftermath.

If I wanted to, I could destroy the people who destroyed me and I know there would be at least some modicum of even momentary satisfaction in that. That I would feel just as justified as they did.

But that doesn't necessarily mean I would survive it either. And there's a second axiom that I've tried to adhere to with each passing year: The best revenge is to live well.

And part of living for me, whether I like it or not, is with my anger and not using it against those who gave me all the reason in the world to have it in the first place.

It may be the harder option. It may not always be the better option. But I choose that over salting the Earth with the emotional firepower I carry any day.

Stupid Depressed

I got an email last week from my son's mother, letting me know the elementary school he goes to has been testing him to see if he qualified for their Talented and Gifted program.

The results turned out to be quite promising.

Having just turned eight years-old earlier this month, my son scored high enough that he met the criteria to be considered intellectually gifted with a strong proclivity for both mathematics and reading comprehension.

As a parent, this is one of those things I'm supposed to take a measure of pride in, and don't get me wrong, I absolutely do. My son is an amazing human being and I've had friends who've told me that, "He gets a lot of that from you."

But does he?

On some level, being theoretically half of his genetic blueprint, I guess that's possible. When I was his age, I too was considered intellectually gifted to the point where I was put in a similar program that my elementary school called Enrichment. Unfortunately, I didn't last long in it because that was about the same time that outside influences, namely a rapidly-deteriorating home situation thanks to my step-father's abuse and my mother's denial of reality, impacted how I functioned in school.

Now I, like virtually everyone else on this rock, never likes to think they're not intelligent. In fact, there's a great social and cultural stigma surrounding intellect and our ability to both learn and function as human beings, considering we pride ourselves as the top of the evolutionary food chain.

We look at those who suffer from ailments which affect the brain, many from the time we're born and despite our sympathetic tendencies, there is almost a universal acknowledgment that they are somehow defective people and are therefore, by albeit biased and prejudicial metrics...not really people at all.

If there's one thing I've noticed a definitive shift in since my Depression evolved in 2011, it's that from an intellectual standpoint, and this is going to sound a bit harsh but it's the only way I can accurately describe it, I can't help but feel like I've somehow become...dumber.

Someone I knew mentioned a New York Times article yesterday about an urban dispute between a resident and one of her neighbors...who happened to run a Dominatrix school out on the same block. Their opinion of the article was that it represented "surface-level repetitive hearsay," which is a pretty damning conclusion, to be sure.

Reading the article myself, however, I wasn't seeing much of the same context. Granted, I realize that no two people ever share the exact same opinions on anything. But what concerned me was that my critical eye seems to have developed a cataract or glaucoma, and I couldn't process the information the same way that I used to a decade ago when my vision felt clearer.

The same goes for even simple or repetitive tasks. Where I used to be able to go through them without having to expend much mental energy, nowadays almost everything feels like a constant uphill slog just to get them done.

While I was still living in New England and participating in clinical trials for Depression treatments at Massachusetts General Hospital, one of the things I was both screened and tested for was how my cognitive functions might have been impacted since my mental illness escalated. Along the way, I also discovered an article published in 2016 by the Harvard Medical School, that talked about how Clinical Depression can negatively impact how we think.

"...depression can actually change your ability to think. It can impair your attention and memory, as well as your information processing and decision-making skills. It can also lower your cognitive flexibility (the ability to adapt your goals and strategies to changing situations) and executive functioning (the ability to take all the steps to get something done)."

To be fair, one article does not a formal diagnosis make. But what alarms me is that the older I get and the longer I live with my Depression as it's currently constituted, the more I'm seeing little markers here and there of my brain's inability to process and function like it did before I had my breakdown eight years ago.

It definitely feels like part of why reading has become more difficult than it used to be, even though my eyesight hasn't changed at all. Same goes for both short and long-term memory recall and being able to follow orders of operations. Even the creative side has become more of a consistent uphill climb. Whereas I could sit down and churn out a couple of thousand words a day with little effort or difficulty, nowadays, it's a good day if I can find even two hundred or so.

When it comes to Depression, we tend to look only at the emotional impact it can have on the human mind. It makes sense, considering part of how we diagnose it in the first place is determining a lack of serotonin and/or dopamine in the brain. Both of which are key neurotransmitters that allow us to feel happy. 

But to think that it can also attack and debilitate your mind to the point where you're potentially not as smart as you used to be...?

I'd like to think that I'm not an unintelligent human being and I've proven that many times in my life. Most recently when I completed my education about a year before my breakdown. I know I have the capacity to be able to do all the things I used to, but now they feel harder to execute than they did.

Some of that could be part of getting older, yes, but it's hard not to think that the toll this whole process has taken on me isn't also affecting my intellect, as well as my emotions.

And that is a damn scary thought.

Hated

How do you know when someone truly despises you?

Given the inherent volatility that all destructive and negative emotions can carry in the moments we find ourselves tapping into them, it's one thing to say you're angry enough with someone to quantify it with the word hate...

It's an entirely different level altogether to find yourself feeling that hate in its sweet, comforting, rage-filling forms even at the mere acknowledgment of a certain person's existence.

How do I know? Because for a large portion of my life, that is how I felt about both a person, my first stepfather...and also myself.

That might not make much sense, but if you'll indulge me for a moment, I'll explain.

My first stepfather (a distinction I have to make on account of I've had two stepfathers, to date) was a truly despicable man. He was both physically and emotionally abusive, incredibly misogynistic and seemed to revel in being the sort of toxic, power-tripping patriarch that was consistent with growing up in the early-mid 80's.

By the time my mother finally got the hint that being married to him was never going to lead to anything close to a happy ending, the damage was already done when it came to me. In the five years I had to live with him, the experience transformed me from a happy, pugnacious, outgoing five-year-old, to a combative, rebellious, depressed and extremely angry ten-year-old.

And I would spend the next quarter-century hating him with every fiber of my being.

At its worst, anytime he was brought up in the conversations I had with my mother, my entire demeanor shifted on a dime and all that hate shot straight to the surface of my being. She never understood why that happened, in no small part because she's both incapable of empathy and could not grasp what living in that environment could do to a hyper-emotionally sensitive kid like I was.

The fuel for that hatred wasn't just what he did and what he put my family through, however. It was also because I underwent that transformation because of the time he spent in my life...and the natural byproduct of that is said hatred bled into how I view myself too.

Now, to be fair, there is no way of creating metrics that can determine a person's ultimate impact on your life. If you'd told me when I was younger that that period would be so pivotal in my becoming who I am now, I'd like to think I'd know what my response would be:

God, I hope not!

But here I am, a long way from back then, and even though I managed to finally let go of that hatred I felt for him a few years ago, it's not lost on me just how much energy I devoted to keeping that feeling going for that long. The big lesson I took away from it is that it was too much energy that I could've used for other things, better things.

What I took away from all that was I couldn't and shouldn't let myself fall victim to that level of hatred again, no matter who it is that hurts me. It's just not worth it, and while it bothers me that it took me so long to figure that out, I also realize that the only reason I did was because I went through it in the first place.

Which brings me to this.

I don't remember the last time someone hated me as much as Ghost appears to now.

The last person who could make that claim is likely my ex-wife, who told me as much in the last days of our marriage, when I was trying everything I could to keep it from completely disintegrating. When you're going through a divorce, it's easy to be angry enough with the other person to feel like you hate them.

Having been through three of them, two of my mother's and one of my own, I think I'm as qualified as anyone to make that observation.

But once the paperwork was all signed, we went our separate ways and our son continued to grow up, it feels like both of us realized that we had to find some way to co-exist for his benefit. It wouldn't be fair to him to have two parents continuing to war over things that really don't matter anymore.

Do we still have our disagreements on things? Sure, but the way we deal with them could be much more toxic than what we've managed to do so far. I'd like to think if you asked her, she'd tell you that while she doesn't love me anymore and is happy with her new husband, she's not angry enough to say she truly hates me, either.

Ghost is another story entirely.

When we last saw each other two years ago, I had reason to believe that we'd be able to salvage the uneasy friendship we'd rebuilt over the preceding three years. During that discussion we'd had, I made my position in the clearest and simplest terms I could.

I wasn't interested in trying to establish a romantic relationship anymore, despite the lingering feelings I still held at the time. That was not even part of the equation.

What I wanted was simply a dialogue, starting with that first conversation. At some point, we'd meet again and have a second conversation. If that went all right, maybe we'd have another after that...and another...and another...until hopefully we'd finally worked through all the crap separating us from that possibility.

Well...so much for that.

I was talking with my female housemate about it the other day and she brought up two key points that apply to every relationship we ever have with anyone, platonic or otherwise.

1.) The point where a relationship becomes truly irreconcilable is when one side develops any degree of resentment for the other.
and 2.) As much as we like to think otherwise, there really is nothing we can do to control how someone feels about us, whether it be love or hate. All we can do is evaluate ourselves, learn from it and still try to be the best version of ourselves we can be.

Look, here's the thing.

I fully admit and accept that in the course of my relationship with Ghost, I both did and said some incredibly stupid things.

If I hadn't put myself in the position of allowing her to manipulate and use me like she did, had I not been honest about my feelings and how'd they'd evolved and if I wasn't so emotionally unstable at crucial times, thanks to my highly elevated Depression and anxiety...odds are I wouldn't be writing this now.

I've never shied away from that and if anything, I've done everything I can think of to make amends for them. And if you were to ask her, my suspicion is that's what she'd say is the problem.

I already know her favorite adjective to describe me is obsessive, and I can't objectively says she's wrong either. As I've discovered in the last few years, what drives that obsessive nature is the frequency of intrusive thoughts that I deal with every day, whether I want to listen to them or not.

Contrary to popular belief, my motives have never been to make an already bad situation worse. Be that as it may, however, that's exactly what happened and now there is a version of me that exists in her mind that can only represent every negative thing she believes I'm potentially capable of, regardless of how insane they might be.

But that's what happens when you find yourself hating someone. You either forget or flat-out ignore that that someone has any degree of humanity left, because to do so could mean that your hatred is either misplaced or ill-conceived.

Unfortunately, the only way to truly find out is to do what people who are on opposing ends of the hate equation are unable to do. Talk.

At this point, I don't think I'd be out of place if I was to just do the same thing and start hating Ghost back. After all, as much as I hurt her, she hurt me just as badly in return. There's plenty of reasons I could use to justify giving into my baser feelings and let myself just spend the rest of my life returning the favor.

The difference between us though is that I've already been there once. As much as this situation continues to pain me, I have no interest in dropping back into that emotional strata again.

As it is, all possible avenues that once connected us are closed. Going on LinkedIn, of all places, to do some job networking and applying on Friday, even there all traces have been scrubbed. Having already been scrubbed from the rest of social media, even though I'm using it less and less and am seriously considering getting out of it altogether, I can't help but look at that and think the whole situation has gone to a completely different level.

You don't get to that point unless you feel nothing but absolute hatred for another human being and that reality makes me even sadder about how this has all gone.

Six years ago, Ghost wrote the following at a point of self-evaluation, where she was telling herself she was "emotionally detoxing, overhauling and trying to become a better person."

"I've driven one of my best friends away.  I've broken four hearts, three to the point I also destroyed the friendship that went with them. I've drifted away from the groups I'd supported and contributed to.  I've given up asking permission in favor of asking forgiveness. I've adopted a habit of bending the truth and lying to get out of or lessen punishment and damages when I'm caught doing something wrong or that will be interpreted as bad.  I've stopped thinking about the things I do and their consequences."

From where I sit, that evolution never happened. Instead, she did what a lot of us do. What I did for more than half my life.

She chose to hate someone and no matter how much I hate the fact that I put her in that position, there's nothing I can do about it any more.

The way is shut.

Milepost

Eight years ago today...I lost my mind.

Putting it in those terms, I'm not sure what's the weirder thing to accept...that it's been that long now, or that it happened in the first place.

From the standpoint of suffering a complete nervous and emotional breakdown, it's both surreal and a little scary to try looking back on that moment in my life.

The reality that it's been that long ago now, on the other hand, just feels damned weird because it both feels like it happened yesterday and yet so much has happened since then.

For one thing, I was told in no uncertain terms that yes I, like a lot of people, am dealing with mental illness, which is why the breakdown happened in the first place. Two doctors in two different states informed me, after considerable testing and conversations over the next two years, that my particular issues are Severe Chronic Depression, General Anxiety Disorder and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Even now, it's hard to look at those three conditions and not feel somehow detached from their diagnoses when it comes to me.

It's not that I don't believe the doctors who told me I had them. If anything, I suspect it's not unlike what people who deal with being told they have a potentially terminal illness might feel once the reality sinks in. As if somehow not admitting it to yourself can make it seem like it doesn't actually exist.

I still find myself catching on it when I'm talking to someone and I'm inclined to mention that these are the things I have to deal with everyday. In the moment, it's like the admission detaches those conditions from me and instead I'm talking about some random person I don't really know.

"See that guy over in the corner, sipping out of the big cup of coffee and reading the National Enquirer...? That's the guy who's gone off their rocker, not me! Don't ask me how I know. You'll just have to take my word for it."

That might not make all that much sense, but it's about the best I can explain it. Like I said, it's a rather surreal, bizarre feeling.

But it's not some other guy who got that news. I did. And in the eight years since, I'd like to say that my life has gone on a consistently upward trajectory filled with things like therapy and healing and positive relationships and the definitive realization that, "It's all going to be okay!"

Seriously, I'd really like to tell you that's exactly how it's gone. That, as I write this, I am both healthier and happier than I've ever been before, certainly before everything imploded in 2011...

Except it hasn't...and if I'm honest...I'm neither healthier (at least, not emotionally) nor happier.

From a physical standpoint, I'm actually doing better than I think I have since I was a teenager because I've been going to the gym on a regular basis since early 2017. At first, my going was as much out of basic necessity as it was a want to get back in shape. In that time, my body has slowly transformed from being an overweight, middle-aged guy to a slightly less overweight, middle-aged guy.

That's not to say it's accomplished nothing, of course. To the contrary, I've seen parts of my body evolve from being quite flabby to having muscles again. Were I better about a lot of my eating habits and more disciplined on not going for comfortable 'cheat' food, I know I'd probably see a more drastic difference.

Even so, if there's a definite positive that I can cling to in the last eight years, it's I managed to build enough of a routine for myself around going to the gym that it's a regular part of my week. I make sure I can go 3-5 days a week. Whenever I go in, I leave my phone in my jeep and use the time as efficiently as possible.

Sure, it's not the same as sitting down with a therapist, but that hour or two provides me space to think and process things, and also channel all my anxious, volatile energy into something productive and positive. In that context, I suppose it could be considered just another coping mechanism, but in the grand scheme of things, I'd like to think there are far worse ones I could be investing in.

On the emotional side, however, it's a much more precarious position.

Most days are a matter of just grinding through things as they come and that doesn't always come easy, either.

While things are better since I am no longer living alone, either in my own place or as I had to for close to a year, out of my car, that brings with it its own set of challenges, worries and anxieties. That's not to say I'm in a situation where I'm stuck dealing with bad people. To the contrary, I couldn't be in a more safe and supportive environment right now.

But if the last eight years have taught me anything, it's that no matter how much you try to make your life better, no matter how much you want your life to get better, and how much you're willing to work and sacrifice to get there...nothing is guaranteed.

My career in journalism and media fizzled out before it ever got a chance to begin. In eight years, I've bounced around from place to place, going after jobs that ultimately promised more than they actually delivered. And at a time where the industry as a whole should be put on the Endangered Species List, the odds that it will ever be anywhere near what it could've been seems slim to none.

All the books and stories I had planned to write sit either unfinished, unedited, unread or even unstarted. Trying to find the motivation or energy to put towards them is a lot more difficult to cultivate than it was before the breakdown.

Other projects I tried to start, like a YouTube channel for video essays and a couple of podcasts, all withered and died on the vine before they had the chance to grow into something potentially life-changing.

Why? Because once I started, it didn't take long for my Depression and anxiety to convince me that I was wasting my time, because it didn't matter how good the finished product might have been...no one would give a damn about it anyway.

The same goes for dealing with people. Basically...I really don't anymore.

Because social media provides the ability to relive everything that you've experienced since it became the official chronicler of our lives ten years ago, I got the reminder this morning that when I first explained that I'd had the breakdown, the friends I had at the time offered whatever feedback they could.

Most of those people who chimed in and offered some degree of support are now gone from my life. The hardest casualty that I've had to deal with was the loss of the woman I now refer to as Ghost.

Prior to the breakdown, she was my best friend from college and we seemed as emotionally tight as two people in a platonic relationship could be in. After that...? Well...I've written enough about it here that it doesn't require further revisiting. You can read about it all over this blog.

As is often the case when being connected to someone who is battling mental illness, there inevitably comes a point where that someone can become too much to handle.

To be fair, it wasn't like I made it easy for them, either.

Trying to rebuild a personality that essentially collapsed on itself is never an easy thing for the person having to do it. To think there isn't ramifications and side effects from that endeavor that can negatively impact every relationship that person is connected to is a gross understatement.

Along with leading to the end of my marriage, the breakdown was the start of a long road of losing friends and family, not because they're all just terrible people who actually didn't care. A lot of it was because I wasn't the same person that I was before it happened, and no matter what I did, that version of me wasn't coming back any time soon.

In a lot of ways, I can understand their frustration in dealing with me, because they may not know it, but this new version of me frustrates me as well. It can be very aggravating knowing that the same things that would've bounced off me prior to 2011, can hit me like a freight train now. And whether we know it or not, when someone comes clean about having a mentally-based affliction like Depression, addiction, schizophrenia, whatever, the subconscious reaction a lot of us have is...

"Okay...SO...when are you going to be 'normal' again...?"

Again, people don't exude that because they're necessarily terrible...even if some ultimately prove themselves to be exactly that. It's because from both a social and cultural perspective, we still equate recovering from mental illness like it's the same as breaking a bone or pulling a muscle. We like to think it takes going to a doctor, having it checked, downing some designer opioid painkillers, maybe undergoing surgery and/or physical therapy, and in a few months' time...Bingo! Good as new!

Except it doesn't work that way. Not even close and deep down, I think we all know that. The problem is...no one really wants to accept it.

Seeing someone who seems nigh-impervious to all the brutal shit life can throw at them, ultimately crack, is scary enough in its own right. The possibility that that someone might not come back from it...? That's downright horrifying to consider.

In the past eight years, I've seen three different therapists, downed many doses of Prozac, and even took part in a Harvard (Yes, that Harvard) research study to explore whether or not Omega-3 can impact a Depressed person's mind or not.

I've had times where I've been incredibly lucid, upbeat, hopeful, optimistic and good-natured.
I've also had times where I was so emotionally paralyzed, overwhelmed or despondent that the very real question of whether or not I was going to be alive long enough to get through that day was seriously in doubt.

Therapists and other learned people are quick to point out that on those really bad days, it's hard to believe that things aren't that bad, but because the Depression, anxiety and whatever else that person is dealing with is telling them it's that bad.

As a result, my go-to coping mechanism is simply to tune the world...and the people in it...out by escaping into things that can occupy my attention long enough for my mind to focus on something else. That means, when I'm not at the gym, you can usually find me at my computer playing games, watching movies, listening to music or doing something to just pass the time.

Either that, or I'm in my Jeep driving to somewhere I hadn't planned on going when I woke up that morning, usually with my camera in tow. Travel has become one of the true joys I've found in the last few years, especially. When I was in Washington and New England, I made it a point to go to as many different places as I could and now that I live in the Midwest, I'm hoping to start doing the same thing when summer comes around.

I'm also hoping I can finally get back to full-time work for the first time in about six months. Right now, I have a part-time gig that'll run through the summer, but that's not going to get me to where I need to be long-term. There's a few jobs that I'm still in the running for, but after applying to more than 650 jobs since 2014, I'm not holding my breath that they'll figure out I'm someone worth hiring, which means I'm going to have to keep waiting for my life to start moving in a forward direction again.

So, for right now...I guess I'm still in a holding pattern of not really knowing what direction I'm heading in next, which is a continuation of where I was this time a year ago and the year before that.

I know where I want to be, but whether I reach that milepost a year from now is not entirely under my control.

Guess we'll have to see what happens between now and then.