Well I haven't done one of these in years so I guess the good news is that late 2018 I got married and I've been doing more work for more outlets on the journalism side.

But since then I've been getting fucking rocked. My main merch supplier for my business went through a nasty divorce and it hurt our sales last year: more than 100 grand short from our five-year average and in turn about 40 Gs spent out of savings as everybody else was still leaning on me just as hard or harder.

We had some major changes at the primary client I have for journalism stuff and none of them were good. It's reaching the point where working for the most recognizable publication in the world might actually be *bad* for my career.

Of course we got totally screwed by the suspensions and postponements and all that with pro leagues, arenas, etc.

A lot of things that were rock solid for years on end vanished and suddenly I started to get very nervous about my parents, even before all this COVID-19 shit. It just seemed like the way stability was disappearing from my life, that was the next logical thing.

But my mom had been getting over a lot of her health issues and kind of managing, and my dad, though he was 74, was more active than he had been in a while and happier than I'd seen him in 30 years. He was letting a lot of regrets and old stuff slide, reconnecting with past friends, enjoying the work he did for me and Jesus Christ did he and our dog (my wife and mine) ever love each other. It was better than bringing him a grandchild, and the dog looked at him like a best friend and a protector.

Well a couple Sundays ago our dog started insisting on something and we couldn't figure out what it was since all the normal stuff was taken care of. So my wife said "He wants to see your dad, take him over there." So I did, a little surprise visit. We're there more days than not but almost never on non-football Sundays. So I went over and we talked for a while and played with the dog a lot. He said he'd been feeling in a good rhythm and that he talked to his brother for a couple hours (this is extremely rare). We took the dog for another walk and I left with plans to come back the next day to work together.

Three hours later, I get a call from my mom saying something is wrong. I call an ambulance and hustle over to help him in and follow them to the hospital. That was the last time I ever saw him; 26 hours later he was dead.

He had a small heart attack and then a huge one the next day, and of course the whole pandemic thing didn't help matters as they had to investigate that also (and initially told us he had it, which was another tangled thing). Even the grief process is awkward because nobody can travel; we just had four of us at the viewing even.

So at this point I don't have a lot of confidence in much of anything. I just take each day as it comes and try to be there for the people around me.