Learn to CUre:

In 2014 when I first found out there were five tumors on my thyroid gland it was a great relief. I had been struggling mightily with my health for several years, been to five different doctors, and this was the first time any of them had gotten any tangible test results and not the rapidly tiring, “you have elevated white blood cells, but you’re fine.” At the same time it seemed like it might be too late. Five tumors?

As I neared the end of my twenties I began having very disturbing dreams and nightmares from which I would wake breathless and bewildered, and seemingly normal situations which for others might produce maybe a little anxiety would leave me wracked with crippling and debilitating panic. For instance when I was twenty-seven I was invited to a vacation on Fire Island…

In spite of my best efforts I caught COVID two, maybe three times during the pandemic. It was not fun but my symptoms only lasted less than 48 hours. Why? Because as a research scientist I already knew quite a bit about viruses and immunity and used several tools explained in my article “IMPROVING RESISTANCE TO CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) AND OTHER VIRAL INFECTIONS”

I live in an area of Salt Lake City, Utah which has a significant number of homeless people. There are all different types, from young people with tattoos hanging out and smoking to older men and women sullen and depressed and having a hard time getting around. A few days ago I passed an elderly lady sitting on a broken old chair outside a fast food chain. I gave her some peaches from my grocery bag and then went back into my air conditioned, secure flat…

It is well known the GOP plan for court packing has paid off, and captured the Supreme Court to force their religious ideology on the American people. And while the six Catholic judges currently sitting on the court are the ones who cast the deciding votes there is actually a greater reason why we are even in this situation in the first place which has also promoted the increase in hate crimes, white nationalism, anti-LGBTQI+ hatred, and anti-democratic movements we have been seeing growing in number and severity over the last few years, and it all comes down to Hillary Clinton.

In the 2008 Presidential Elections there was a powerful force at work behind the scenes which helped set the stage for future President Barack Obama’s victory and a complete sweep of congress by the democrats which resulted in a supermajority. One of the most surprising things about this victory was, in fact, the scope, coming off several cycles of Republican dominance it just didn’t seem like there were enough potential democratic voters in the whole country to deliver such a result.

Six months or so after my attempt at suicide I went to live with my family in Hawaii. A few years earlier they had abandoned me in Utah and absconded to the island paradise after several very rough years on the mainland. We had lived in Hawaii for a few years when I was very little—the only time in my young life that any of us were really happy—

A plague has been infecting us for a long time now, and no I’m not talking about COVID. Loneliness is one of the most widespread afflictions burdening people today, and this is exceptionally ironic considering the sheer unfathomable amount of human beings alive on this planet. I used to be completely perplexed living in Los Angeles, a region of 12 million people, year after year continuing to suffer from crippling loneliness that plagued my life even as I socialized, dated, and successfully pursued my career.

In 2014 I came down with a mild case of thyroid cancer. I was actually elated when we discovered the tumors on my thyroid because for the last five years my health had been spiraling downward, and no medical professional had yet been able to tell me why, though my tests always came back as showing elevated white blood cell count.

A great deal of the current political and social climate is fixated on systems of economy and government and the nature of Democracy, Republics, Communism, Socialism, and Capitalism, with much of the left convinced that Democratic Socialism will fix all our problems and much of the center and right believing we currently live in a divinely ordained Capitalist Republic. All y’all are so, so wrong.

So, I am NOT a clean person. I mean, I am—I like a clean house. I find a clean kitchen to be very calming, and there are few pleasures as wonderful as beginning to cook a great meal in a clean kitchen. But cleaning for me has always been a source of serious anxiety.

I was really surprised when I first learned about Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, not only because I was only eleven when he retired from the Supreme Court and was not apprised of contemporary politics as an eleven year old, but that someone as progressive as Justice Marshall and the progressive act of appointing a black man to the court had happened before I was even born.

A few days ago I was shopping at a grocery store that doesn’t carry my preferred products, and browsing the butter section I was disappointed to find no other obvious options. Frustrated, I grabbed a butter from a brand I recognized, and finished shopping.

I sometimes (surprisingly rare, actually) get criticized for the amount of sex in my books. One homophobic person wrote an Amazon review in which they hilariously said there was “disturbing homosexual erotica,” (my book is NOT sold on Amazon) as if my book was some Fifty Shades of Grey and not retellings of my relationship and coming of age experiences.

Growing up in Utah I didn’t actually ever witness very many explicit examples of racism. In fact, because the Mormon church romanticizes some other cultures like Pacific Islanders and Central Americans in their religious texts, some others with different skin colors were often regarded with admiration, and so I always assumed that Mormons weren’t racist.