So it goes*

If you're a Kurt Vonnegut fan, you know exactly what this means... and that an asterisk isn't always an asterisk.

May 19, 2025

Dear Friends,

A couple of weeks ago, I had an initial appointment with a primary care doctor who we picked at random from our insurance’s website because she was both accepting new clients and within walking distance of our house.

During that first conversation, she ran me through depression and anxiety assessments, ones I know well, ones I know to not distinguish between rumination and reasonable worry, or between depression and sadness.

So I added the context:

Yes, I worry; I read the news.

Yes, I fear for bad things happening in the future; I read the news.

And so on.

The doc casually noted symptoms of anxiety (to which I’m both prone and, again, I read the news) and we kept it moving.

Later, after clicking the button in one of the many emails inviting me to join the digital charting system, I saw on a form that felt impersonal – rote and even inaccurate in a couple of spots – that the one personalized thing she had written was, “but keeps saying the world is on fire.”

Which is true. I did say that. Several times.

As context.

As in:

The world is on fire and I would have imagined that I’d be sweating a lot, maybe cowering under fireproof blankets, but I’m actually better than okay.

The world is on fire and yet I’m grounded.

The world is on fire and I’m living in my values, both in response to the fire and in general.

The world is on fire and still I feel quite certain that it won’t burn the whole house to the ground.

I wonder if I made the doc uncomfortable.

I do that, sometimes, that making people uncomfortable with my bluntness.

I used to make some people uncomfortable by naming that my friend’s stage IV breast cancer was going to lead to her death, which it did.

It’s possible I make some people uncomfortable by naming just how heavy this now is.

I know I make my mother-in-law uncomfortable by pushing for clear and detailed information so that we can care for her in the ways that she wants, rather than the ways we think to be correct.

Thing is, both dispositionally and after nearly 12 years of coaching, I’ve gotten really good at living in my understanding of reality.

And I’ve gotten really bad at living in polite skirting, nice-making lies, avoidance and innuendo.

In high school, I somehow stumbled across Kurt Vonnegut’s book Breakfast of Champions, a book that was published five years before my birth. It was, according to the narrator of the book who is also ostensibly the author himself, a 50^th birthday present Vonnegut wrote for himself.

If you haven’t read anything by Vonnegut, here’s how I generally describe his work:

Hahahaha, ooof.

His writing is the reason the words “biting” and “satire” so often go together.

He was blunt and ridiculous and insightful and left the reader nowhere to hide, and somehow did it all in a way that led so many of us to say, “Okay, which book next?!”

I picked Breakfast of Champions back up last week. Despite the farcical drawings of tombstones and boobs and cows and such, the book is raw, its broken fourth wall leaving jagged edges for the readers to pick their way around. It’s hard to read in ways that my teenage self couldn’t yet grok but could feel.

I suppose we could ask of any early influence: Was its influence a chicken or an egg?

As in, did I love Vonnegut as a teen because he spoke to a blend of ridiculousness and bluntness that touched something already existing in me, or did running across him at such a formative time (especially in an era that was defined by ridiculousness and darkness ie the grunge 90s) turn me in this direction?

I find the question interesting but unimportant, ultimately. We are who we are due to our collected experiences interacting with our unique biology.

And my interaction has led me to this quote which is actually a quote of a quote – Kurt Vonnegut quoting his Uncle Alex who said:

“I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’”

My very first public zine was based on this quote; it’s a sort of gratitude journal kind of thing.

Recently, I reworked it to have space enough for an entire year of daily entries.

I have seven copies left.

If you’d like one, leave a comment or DM me your mailing address.

Because though the world is on fire, there is all sorts of really nice stuff happening, too.

Let’s roll up our sleeves and engage with it all.

With love and gratitude for all you are,
SB

So it goes*

If you're a Kurt Vonnegut fan, you know exactly what this means... and that an asterisk isn't always an asterisk.

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