The LWKS Story

An Unnecessary Introduction

(Or, Things My Therapist Would Wisely Ask Me To Refame.)

I’ve never been comfortable being the center of attention. I have body image issues and bad teeth and I don’t care for the sound of my voice (neither on mic nor the ones in my head). Even the things that I have grown to like or be proud about myself aren’t necessarily things you can see. (Except for my tattoos. They’re awesome and the artists who made them are incredible humans. Please stare at those.) I mean to say, I’m not a live performer. I don’t want to be a live performer. I don’t even wish I was the type of person who does want to be a live performer. The words “stage”, “camera”, and “microphone” produce roughly the same response in my body as “You’ve been selected to test the first-of-its-kind Limitless Rocket Fuel Powered Tilt-a-Whirl + Testicle-Punching Machine!”

So, when I started working on LWKS as a thing that exists and makes things and shares them with people- when I knew that all this was going to escape “my enclosure” (as we call my home office around here), I realized it was only going to make sense to tell a little bit of my own story. Being that stories are the big thing here and (spoiler alert) the little weird kid at the center of all this is me.

In truth, every story you read here is mine. Every character is me. Every scene, subplot, and argument. Every joke or theory or cannabis-and-french-roast-fueled flight of whimsy is me. All of these stories are the way that I process my world. How I deal with my own mind and mental health struggles, certainly. But also how I make sense of physics, biology, music, cooking, relationships, parenthood, spousehoo- marriagehood? Husbandom? (See what I mean about the cannabis?)

They’re all my story. All the characters are different bits of me. All the wonderful characters doing heartless, terrible things. All the terrible villains doing selfless, wonderful things. They’re all me and my neuroses. I’ve just found that spending time with those neuroses is more fun when I give them funny hats and costumes and make them sing songs about each other.

These stories live in my head, some for decades, evolving and growing with me, processing. That’s the one constant for me. The one, sort of reliable, safe thing that’s been with me for as long as I can remember. Closer than a relative. Like a body part, an organ.

“Yeah. It’s called a brain, dummy.”

I know what a brain is, but like- this is different. Like a pancreas or kidney. You don’t have to think about it to make it work. You know? It’s just always there, doing its thing.

“Like a brain.”

Ugh. But like a brain that talks to you and has ideas-

“What were you just saying about smoking weed?”

See, this is why I write the stories. Because I can’t explain this shit in their language.

“Sorry, whose language?”

Them. The people reading this. Shit, I should get back. They’re probably wondering when the space prisoners and werewolves are finally going to make an appearance.

Sorry. That’s the other guy in here. You’ll get to know him one way or another if you spend any amount of time with these stories.

But that’s what I’ve boiled this all down to, I guess. If this is art, if anything is art, then for me that means speaking in my own language. Maybe finally for the first time in my life, but certainly for the first time to anyone other myself and the other guy in here.

So, writing an essay about myself to introduce a bunch of stories that already tell my story in a language that I’m more fluent in- it kind of feels like playing guitar with my feet. I know where all the notes are, but it’s uncomfortable, painful, and it makes a clumsy, stuttering noise that I can’t imagine anyone would be interested in.

But I am asking you to go on some adventures with me, and maybe join a club of other little weird kids if you like our treehouse and music and have some silly ideas of your own. So I feel like it’s only right to know a little something about me and how this all came about.

I’ll do my best to keep this short, focused, and minimize the side conversations. I’m going to fly past some things (real juicy stuff) that will almost certainly frustrate you, but there are other, more visceral ways to tell those stories that give them their proper due. I’m going to casually mention alcohol abuse and my 20+ year struggle escaping it, but I don’t take that subject lightly by any means. I consciously speak very openly and clearly about that part of my life because I believe in helping others who might be struggling silently but won’t get the help they need because they’re afraid to say the words out loud. But there will be plenty of time for addiction, self-harm, and mental illness, so stay tuned, folks! This will mostly be the broad strokes. Sort of a job-interview-gone-hilariously-wrong / first-date-from-hell just getting to know you level of detail.

Here we go.