I will often complain to my wife that I don’t feel like writing. Much like the band NOFX, I am a Professional procrastinator, and particularly during the school year, I want very little to do with extracurricular reading and writing.

That’s not to say I don’t read, but I’m a literature student, so during the school year I’m already juggling books and writing about them and find little time for other things. What free time I do have at this time of year is devoted to growing cannabis and listening to music while playing computer wargames.

One of our three dogs also follows me around all day long, so I like to bring him out a lot. He’s a Shiba Inu/Fox Terrier mix. I bought him off of some farmers in the deep, beautiful woods of Kentucky for $75.

He needs a shitload of exercise and the shadowing has helped me on days where I’m struggling. He will whack at my chair while I’m working repeatedly, but even when I’m pissed, once I look at him I melt.

This reminds me of something. We had the best English professor when I did a semester at Springfield College. This guy was one of those teachers whose charisma gets everybody to contribute. Anyway, I tend to shoot from the hip in my writing and I began a paper on Gawain and the Green Knight with the sentence “The Green Knight is a dick!” I managed to make my argument though, and he gave me an A along with a warning that a third use of “dick” or “dickishness” would’ve affected my grade. Living on the edge, baby.

Also, shoutout to Springfield College alumni John Cena, who main evented WrestleMania 41 tonight, although I won’t spoil the result. It was in Vegas, a city I’m completely in love with, in a desert that I also adore.

I don’t really watch too much wrestling these days, but I follow it online and watch highlights. I loved it as a kid, and my dad took me to wrestling at the Springfield Civic Center in the late 80s and early 90s.

Wrestling brings back memories of sitting with my old man watching Tito Santana matches, and life was a lot simpler then, so I still try to keep up with it.

When it comes to reading, though, I have so much at all times, and it makes writing feel like a chore. Right now, I’m reading a ton of Lovecraft, who, by the way, is WILDLY racist. I’m also reading the book Finding Latinx: In Search of the Voices Redefining Latino Identity, by Paola Ramos.

I’m not going to sniff my own farts about reading a book on Latino identity, but I will say this. As a kid who grew up loving history, discovering literature showed me the most unique window into it that I could ever imagine. This love of history turned into a love and appreciation for learning about the experiences of people who aren’t like me.

I grew up in a rural town in a house in the woods with narrow-minded biker parents, and I’ve always been too curious to confine myself to that set of ideals. While I will never know what it is like to be Latino, certain emotions translate across cultures.

Shit, watching Danny Glover’s A Raisin in the Sun had me feeling some kind of way for days after finishing it, and I don’t directly identify with a Black family in inner city Chicago. What I can identify with is hopelessness and overcoming it, which are central themes to Danny Glover’s character. It really is an incredible piece of art.

Hey, I wrote about nothing and it worked, thanks Amber!

If you read this nonsense, thank you very much, I appreciate it,

Tommy