Thanksgiving 2016

It’s Thanksgiving here in America and 2016 has been a dark and depressing year personally and for the world as a whole. I’m not gonna sugar coat my feelings about the state of the human race. As we keep losing the best and brightest of our creative mind, Leonard Nimoy, David Bowie, Natalie Cole, Leonard Cohen, Glenn Frey, Merle Haggard, Prince, Janet Reno, and Gordie Howe just to name a very few. We are embroiled in an undeclared third world war for the fifteenth year in a row with no end in sight and what appears to be the real possibility of escalation to degrees unseen since the 1940s. The economy teeters, and the only jobs for those of us near the bottom don’t pay enough to support anyone. Our rights are being curtailed left and right, and the media refuses to cover it. As we lose what little we have, the ultra-rich spend money like it’s water flowing from the mountain, and to them, it might as well be. The climate is being destroyed, and the most powerful and richest country in the world will soon be led by a man who thinks climate change is just a Chinese hoax to destroy America.

We are entering the era of Mr. Donald J. Trump.

America has elected a man to the office of President of the United States who seems to represent everything we’d thought we had left behind. Through his words, his actions, and most importantly through the people he chooses to surround himself with we see that he’s a liar, a bigot, a misogynist, a warmonger, and a man truly disconnected with the real world. He lives high in a gilded bubble and chooses not to see how bad things are for those of us on the ground level. He was the worst possible candidate on the field, and we chose him.

I weep for the next generation.

And yet I am thankful. While so much is wrong in this world, I can look at the corners of my life with brightness and love despite the situation we live in. Nothing is ever all good or all bad and today I choose to see the good in my life as opposed to the bad. Tomorrow I will go back to being as one person said years before, “The most depressing damn optimist in the world.”

I am thankful.

I am thankful for my wife Karen, she standsby me and supports me no matter how messed up I am. She forgives my fuck ups and loves me for me. I am thankful for my partner Jennifer. Without her Gorillas With Scissors Press would still just be my own little vanity company and not a growing Indie Publishing House. I am thankful for my authors Kiri, Al, Dawn, Michelle M., Michelle H., Lisa, Ken, Nikki, and Denise you have trusted me with your creations and I am honored to have them in my stewardship. I am Thankful for my children Joshua, Siera, Stephen, Lydia, Beth, Zaid, Chrissy, Alex, and Katie—you kids are the reason I get up on the bad days and I love you all more than you know. I am thankful I can do the job I want to do as opposed to the job I have to do. I am thankful for my family who loves and supports me. I am thankful for all my friends in real life and online. I love you all. And I am thankful for Billy, Jessi, and Mike, the family who chose me.

Life may be dark right now, but today I choose to see the light and feel the love.

Happy Pooping Day!