It’s Christmas day. I feel alright, more or less, sitting in my apartment in the Tenderloin, San Francisco. My partner, parents and most of my friends are in the Midwest so I’m out here alone, but that’s okay. I think Christmas for me is mostly a non-issue, unavoidable but at the same time not really resonating no matter how much I used to enjoy the … Continue reading It’s Christmas…
It’s 3:30 am as I write this and in five hours I’ll be on a flight to Las Vegas. It’s a stupid city, in a desert, using too much water and too much power and too much consciousness in a lack of consciousness sort of way, but I always have a good time. I’ll be meeting my partner there, who is flying in from Chicago … Continue reading Four days in Las Vegas…
…and it has been for a long time. Walking to the grocery store this morning up Hyde Street, and I glanced up at the distinct San Francisco architecture, bay windows and whatnot and crossing Post, looked West towards Polk Street and I had this realization: shit, none of this means anything to me right now. I stopped on the corner and thought about everything I … Continue reading Shit, it is depression…
I moved back to San Francisco 8 months ago, a long debated change influenced by past memories, thoughts of meaning, the pandemic lock downs and a growing dissatisfaction with a repetitive, routine Chicago. This relocation was supposed to be a solution, get me back to doing the work I loved in an environment I related to where I could once again, begin to see my … Continue reading Back in San Francisco…
As a social worker, you develop a really dark sense of humor, a mindset often used as a coping mechanism for some of what you see and the stories you hear. During Katrina, I was living on the West Coast and at conferences, or in simple conversations with co-workers a statement I heard more than any other went something like this: “New Orleans? Jesus, that … Continue reading The Legacy of Katrina Study – The Kids Aren’t Alright
From Kenneth Feinberg, soon to be arbitrator of the $20 billion dollar fund during a congressional hearing on July 21st – “If you start compensating purely mental anguish without a physical injury — anxiety, stress — we’ll be getting millions of claims from people watching television…you have to draw the line somewhere. I think it would be highly unlikely that we would compensate mental damage, … Continue reading Update: The State of Mental Health in the Gulf Coast…Here Come the Numbers!
Drake Toulouse: Photography and Words 