I had to go to the service bar on the main casino floor at work to get my coffee because in the team member dining room (referred to colloquially as the TDR) they had none, and there was this really smoking hot cocktail server in there, and since that’s like their own private area I always feel bad when I have to go in there to ascertain my pre-shift coffee, hat in hand, to ask if it’s all right if I get my coffee, and even though they always say yes I still have this like sheepish energy where I am rushing to make my coffee, and since this particular girl was so incredibly attractive my sheepishness was on another obviously heightened level, so when I inevitably spilled a noticeable amount of sugar while rushing I told her she was making me nervous, and she laughed this cute little laugh because she thought I was joking, but I really wasn’t.
Whenever I am forced to stop at a stoplight I generally creep up to the line, the one that signifies that there’s an impending crosswalk, and I have been driving since I was 16 so for me this is fairly common driving protocol, but I have recently noticed that if I am already stopped at the stoplight and another car driving in the lane parallel to mine is approaching they will not creep all the way up to where I am. They will stay behind by roughly the length of half a car such that if I wanted to look over at them, or they wanted to look over at me — through our respective cars, of course — neither of us would be able to.
Is this a new thing or has it always been this way? Is it possible that I have been driving for twenty years and noticed such a phenomenon only within the last handful of months?
Grocery shopping is something people do. It is something I, as a person, do as well. I used to go to the local Stater Bros once per month — sometimes even less frequently — because I am a bachelor and thus I shop for only myself. Naturally my diet is not the best: A lot of frozen bullshit and canned goods. Snacks. Desserts. Etc. There was this one night about six months ago when my condo was barren so I had to reload on absolutely everything, and when I went to the cashier it was an endless array of nonsense. The problem was: There was nobody to bag my goods, and so while the middle-aged male customer behind me sighed and bitched at how long it was taking I just stood there, anxious and sort of like embarrassed that it was taking so long because of me, and eventually the cashier bagged up all my shit and I went on my way.
Then I spoke on the phone that same night with my dear friend Sarah, and I asked her if it was my responsibility to bag my own goods if there wasn’t someone there to do it for me, and she said yeah, of course, as if I should have known. And I guess I should have. When I was in line watching the cashier do my dirty work I wondered if that was a thing I was supposed to do, but since I didn’t know what I didn’t know I just stood there. Frozen. I did not listen to my instincts, which in retrospect were quite obviously right.
Long story short: I am now basically running to bag my own groceries. Further, it is even my hope that there is not somebody there to help bag so that I can show not only the customers behind me but the cashier, because of that one fateful night, that I am doing everything within my power to get the line moving as quickly as goddam possible. There was an old lady behind me a couple weeks ago who asked if she had to get the big ass ice bags herself out of the freezer, and I said yeah, I think so, and even that made me feel lesser-than because I drove home that night criticizing myself for not walking forty or so feet to get the fucking bag of ice for that old lady and her old husband.
I’m working through these grocery store politics, and my own ability to be as charitable with my effort as I can be. I really mean well, you know? Like I’m not a goddam saint or anything, but in most public situations I do my best to be that cliché poster boy from a Hallmark movie. Or like Bill Murray from Groundhog Day when he turns a corner and does good deeds for everybody. That kind of thing.
As of May 22nd I am two full months sober. I guess last year I was what they call Cali Sober, which my barber put me on as meaning that I wasn’t drinking but I was smoking weed. My version of ‘smoking weed’ as a 35 year-old (last year, that is) meant I would take literally one hit per night off of a Stizzy — a far cry from the days of yore when smoking meant I was high from sunrise until sundown. Alas.
It isn’t an accomplishment worthy of flowers or a parade, as it signifies a mere one-third of what I was able to achieve in 2025, but it does allow for some confidence moving forward because the rewards seem far more tangible this time around. Whereas a year ago the learning curve was steeper and the self-realizations more frequent and illuminating, this time around the urge to drink has been stronger, and the purpose for withholding alcohol from my life nonexistent. In other words, in 2026 it’s required more effort.
I have documented many a word over the last few years about the oft-elusive concept of caring. Caring about somebody. Caring about myself. Caring about anything, really. I don’t often write about caring because I don’t often care, and then when I do begin to care I don’t like writing about it because I don’t like the world to know that I care, which furthers my aversion to writing about it. So that’s a thing.
And it feels like such a Catch-22, caring does. Because when I care about somebody it means I am feeling strongly — which is a thing humans sometimes do — and yet when I feel so strongly I never seem to obtain what I desire. I turn into a worse form of myself, someone who takes more personally the little insignificant things, someone who displays his vulnerabilities, someone who can’t help but feel insecure even when every bone in my body attempts not to show it.
When I don’t care the world has seemingly always opened itself up to me, and rewarded my ambivalence. I eat like a cow and sleep like a baby. I can talk to whomever, whenever, without any caution or regard. I turn into this beacon or like siren song to the opposite sex who become so infatuated with me and the prospect of getting me to care — even though I only rarely come around to doing so.
The thing I find so amusing is how truly miserable I can be on a day-to-day basis when I’m in a caring phase, and simultaneously how much I miss caring when I no longer do. It’s like I am engulfed in a labyrinthian cycle where I am either unhappy because I care too much, and love someone whom I know it’ll never work out, or I’m just nonchalant and numb and therefore unhappy intellectually in a different sort of way.
It’s as if I can already see the future: One where I will wake up one day and make some intangibly vague peace, thus relieving myself of all these strong feelings I so ardently loathe, and then some days will pass, or weeks, and I won’t even realize that they’re all gone, and only then will I arrive in front of this very same computer screen, lamenting about how fucking great it was to care so much. I’ll miss all of this.
But I have yet to get there — to that place. I keep convincing myself that there’s a purpose to all of this, that I will either sing the songs of the victor who slayed the dragon, or climbed the mountaintop, or whatever. Either that or it will lead me to someone else I can care about and write about how unexpected the timing was and pretend for a fleeting moment that everything happens for a reason.
In the meantime my struggle is very much centered around enduring all of these feelings while at the same time maintaining my sobriety. It’s a challenge I have never really had to deal with: Experiencing a hopeless sort of love without all the coping mechanisms that once made it so much easier to go through.
Future Bets 
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