feeling alternately jittery and melancholy, so I’m chalking it up more chemical than narrative, but still a hell of a position to consider my life from

well, maybe some of it’s narrative, comedown from the election we’ve been having for the last what, year and a half? I’ve gotta say I do invest a lot of identity and ego in what I do here, knowing a lot of connected stuff, obscure America stuff, all the weird currents and corners of The Discourse, being able to connect the threads.

And, like, it paid off! And from a purely selfish perspective, thank fucking god, when your life’s not hitting benchmarks, after a while (say, 2013) you really question pinning your salvific sense of superiority on “~I~ think internet racists are very important”

But there we were, the single most important thing to happen in/to America in my lifetime, everyone of any authority thought it was impossible, and the week after the escalator debut I messaged my friend on Capitol Hill very insistent that Trump would win, and then watched in awe as he hit every turn I thought you’d have to hit, drunken master-style

And it paid off, and I grokked The Thing, and what the hell did it pay off for me

I’m sure all the things I wrote helped get me these more and more followers, hopefully cemented my reputation with people I really esteem

But now, in that field I invest a lot of identity and ego in, in a way that compensates for benchmarks &tc &tc, I feel like a big part of my edge is lost, my wad of several years is kind of blown in a way that hasn’t really improved my position in any way other than internet points, I increasingly suspect the next turns will come from other things entirely, something that gave me structure and purpose and value and future-orientation (or even seasonality) for more than a year is gone, and now where the fuck am I

whew