In order to assuage any guilt about not updating this blog enough, I direct anyone who finds this to read Cary Tennis' advice column on salon.com. He's consistently amazing: kind, loving, funny, compassionate, eccentric. And he writes nearly everyday. Initially he was just a source of good vibes and thoughts and writing, although of late we have converged on a path he doesn't know exists, and every column is a punch to my solid gut. "Dear Mother Disliker"? The thing with an advice columnist is that I'm not simply converging with him and what he writes, but with the presenting problems of the salon.com readers writing to him.

I am not alone in disliking my mother. And like the lady who has awoken from her OCD slumber, I'm on a path. I'm like the dozens of letter writers who struggle with drinking, who want to know how to love people more, who want directions on how to live a good, decent life. If we can agree that a major feature of our common American life is a focus on the superiority of the individual desire, which intersects with capitalism in a major way and results in a soil rich for the production of narcissism, then I believe we can also use an advice columnist to remind us that our problems are collective and our solution is complex but doesn't involve thinking less, feeling less, or buying more.

On the me tip, I'm like a perpetual "Stayin' Alive" video, I'm strutting around trusting that something fantastic is happening, with occasional breaks to stop strutting and crouch, terrified, at in the middle of the sidewalk because...you know...being alive is terrifying. And then the music starts again and I'm back to hustlin'.