Stephen Bollich

Given how difficult my life is at this point, I find it hard not to regret the decisions I’ve made that got me here. The huge, overwhelming, contrasting positives I always think about, though, are my kids. I have a 5-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son, and they are probably the most amazing people I’ve ever met. They surprise me every day. There is so much drama surrounding how those two ended up in the world, but I can’t imagine my life without them. That said, most other difficult and often wrong-headed decisions I’ve made have not had such shiny silver linings. I’m not currently working. Coronavirus is an appealing excuse, but I was already failing in that department before social distancing amped up. I was very occasionally substitute teaching, and that’s obviously off the table now. I’ve never been good at working from home, and it has been such a struggle to set something up. I need almost complete financial support from my family. I’m too distracted by my ongoing custod...

In a world that prefers quiet compliance and shame, it’s difficult to always maintain a compatible facade. It’s exhausting to keep track of which new atrocities we’re supposed to accept and defend. We’re trained to pause and think before we openly empathize with those less fortunate, and consider their gender identity, immigration status, income, history of state-imposed demerits, or some other officially disqualifying factor before determining their worth. I don’t tell people I’m fine anymore when they ask. I stopped managing to perpetuate that lie about a year ago, and now that the existential imminence of climate change has progressed even further, and with COVID-19 still infecting new victims daily, it doesn’t make sense for any of us to be saying we’re OK or that we’re fine. It is not and we are not. Greta Thunberg is right when she talks about the urgency of our situation. As inhabitants of this burning planet we should be doing everything that is necessary to put out the fla...

The injustice of the prison system is something I’ve wanted to research and write about for a couple of years now, but I haven’t had my thoughts and actions coordinated enough to complete such a task regarding any subject, much less one so complicated. I’d like to live my life more consistently with my principles, and I think that focusing on this topic is a start. As far as putting feelings into action, the only salient idea I’ve come up with so far is to send letters to inmates and find out about their lives, what their conditions are, on what grounds they’ve been placed in confinement, and really just give them an opportunity to reach out to someone on the outside. I know a number of people in there probably don’t have friends or family who write, call, or visit regularly. It’s the sort of thing that people seem to have empathy for when it comes to the elderly in nursing homes, but we as a society often have an ethical blindspot when it comes to incarcerated individuals. With COVID-...

I was listening to NPR several weeks ago, and there was a story on how following the news too closely during the pandemic could be bad for your health. Given that immuno-compromise is associated with serious symptoms or death in COVID patients, I became scared that being too stressed out from the information barrage would leave me vulnerable.  Therefore, as someone who is both a news junkie and also cripplingly empathetic toward victims of capitalism receiving media attention, I made an immediate change, and I haven’t listened to NPR or watched live news broadcasts since. I appreciate the irony. I have made the decision to become ignorant of the virus or its spread because I was too concerned about it to stay cognizant of what my specific concerns should be. I have created the possibility that I could accidentally expose myself to infection by being so scared of infection. Then again, my chances of exposure are pretty minimal. I’m trying to recall any decisions I’ve made that a...

There’s a term for the inability to start on projects or any task in general. I can’t recall it right now. I think it’s distinct from “executive dysfunction” but it might be a similar sounding term. I’m in a state of inertia at the moment, so I just don’t think I can switch over to my Google search bar and figure it out. I’d have to think about which keywords to use, and my brain can’t even begin to come up with anything. “The inability to start a thing?” “Not good at beginning?” “I don’t know what to do first to do things?” Damn. Yeah. It’s just way too complicated. As a fan of the meta-arts, I am writing this blog post so my web content writing samples are plural. I just don’t think my blog post from a few weeks ago where I described the sandwich I ate that afternoon quite passes mustard on its own. Haha! Mustard! Instead of muster! Pun meets anthropomorphism! Hey sandwich! Do you have any Grey Poupon? I know I have dozens of excellent things I’ve written in the past, but it would ta...