aalgar.com

I hope you’ll excuse the following, which is a bit more personal than I usually prefer to be on the Internet. I realize I, like many people, have made myself extremely reachable via all manner of social media (and for quite a lot of years now), but, believe it or not, I try to keep most of the details of my actual private life you know, private. Still, this is a thing I feel like I should talk about. For some reason.

It’s not easy for me. I’ve always enjoyed presenting the illusion of transparency while keeping my actual business to myself. And I’ve always tried really hard not to whine about my problems, primarily because I spent the ages of sixteen to twenty-one (or thereabouts) doing nothing but that, and that’s not a fun guy to be. Trust me, I was and it wasn’t. Also, I won’t say I was raised not to talk about my feelings, because I certainly was, but there was a definite sense of shut up and do something about it in my upbringing. And that’s not a criticism at all. My parents are very practical people. They don’t like to dwell on things. They like to fix problems so they can move on to the next thing. But this problem just won’t seem to go away.

Here is its most recent manifestation: for the better part of the past week, I have found myself in a pretty bad state, emotionally speaking. I guess it’s no real surprise — the week before that, I was on top of the world. The Law of Conservation of Moods says that happiness and productivity cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred. So, since I had a happy week, it stands to reason the following week was a depressed one. Or it could be that I’m bipolar. Yeah, it’s that one.

Here’s the thing: I’ve known about this for quite a long time. Probably my entire adult life. I’ve sought help for it I don’t know how many times. I’ve been on three types of antidepressants that I can remember, and I swear there was a fourth, but I can’t seem to recall the drug or the circumstances surrounding that. The other three were quite memorable, though, because they carried with them all manner of horrible side effects.

• I went on Prozac in 1994 or so. I was involved in a near-fatal car accident (the side of “near” that ends up with everyone walking away unscathed, but only by centimeters of pure chance), and during that experience, my heart rate didn’t change in the slightest. I remained even-tempered, even bemused, by the idea that I might be about to die in a fiery wreck.
• I tried Paxil in 2002. And while I’m sharing some personal details here, I won’t share all of them. Suffice it to say, there were certain side effects that occurred below my waist. Probably not the one you’re thinking of, either. The car started, but I couldn’t get it to go anywhere. I guess that’s a metaphor that works here. Or not. That’s all I’m giving you, in any case.
•  In 2007, I was given Effexor. This one was a doozy. Part of the depression I was going through wasn’t the usual chemical cycle of Bipolar Disorder — it was situational. I was in a horrible job that I didn’t know how to do, and that I dreaded going to. So after about a week or so on Effexor, I was filled with this indescribable sense of… I don’t know. It’s indescribable. I felt like it didn’t matter. Like the post-hypnotic Ron Livingston at the beginning of Office Space. I called in sick to work, because I just didn’t want to go. (This is, admittedly, a thing I have done with some regularity over the years, when the downswing of my moods just makes it the easier choice.) But then I did it again, the next night. And again. I pretty much stopped going, and I continued to feel like it wasn’t a problem. Everything was going to turn out okay. I was, as expected, fired from the job. (To his credit, my boss at the time — who was never the actual problem — displayed a tremendous amount of patience in dealing with my shenanigans.) I mean, I hated the job and I did need to leave it, but that sense that “this doesn’t matter, it’ll all be fine” freaked me the hell out. Thank goodness I’d at least retained the sense to be freaked out by it. So I called my doctor and demanded immediate instructions for getting off the stuff as soon as possible.

So, yeah. Each of these medications came from a licensed mental health professional, and each of them caused me some form of discomfort or distress. There have been additional mental health professionals in between, who have tried to help me through counseling and other such non-medicinal tactics. But as of now, at the age of thirty-seven, I am no closer to understanding (or indeed controlling) my bipolarity than I was when it first occurred to me that I probably shouldn’t still be a moody teenager at age 20.

There are, of course, varying degrees of these things. Mine is not the kind that results in suicidal thoughts or anything like that. I can honestly say that, apart from some overly dramatic and not-exactly-serious teenaged threats, I’ve never really had those thoughts. It’s not that bad. No, this is more the “you’re wasting your life, why bother?” sort of depression, when that part of the cycle hits me. Anyone who knows me at all knows that I love creating things, and I always have loved creating things. And this is where the depression hits me, in my weakest and most idealistic spot. You’re not funny, it says. You’re a terrible writer, a terrible performer and nobody wants to hear what you have to say.

When I am having a normal, emotionally balanced day (which happen with some frequency — just enough to make me think maybe I’ve been imagining those polar extremes all this time), I like to think that I have a fairly objective read on my skill set and marketability. I’m not making things that deserve mass attention, but I believe I’m better than I was a year ago, and better still than I was two years ago, and so on. I like to think that one day I will hit a skill/talent level at which an audience will find me. And if they don’t, I’d at least like to think that I’ll be making things that fulfill me personally. I’m seeing hints of that in the past year or so, if nothing else.

So this isn’t a lack of confidence or self-esteem. This is depression, hitting me where it hurts. (It’s also tried to tell me that my wife doesn’t love me and never did, but that doesn’t work — that woman’s sheer force of presence and willpower overshadows the most emphatically negative mood my psyche can produce.) It also affects my ability to interact with people, to the point of severe isolation. This is one of the reasons I found myself a quiet cubicle job a few years ago — so that I might be ready when/if this sort of thing hit me again.

This, you are probably thinking, is no way for a grown man living in the 21st century to live. And you’re entirely right. But given my previous failures, and given the difficulty I have picking up a telephone for help when I’m feeling the worst of this (once I get better, I tend to shrug the whole thing off and just return to business), it’s not exactly easy to reach out for help. Add to this my usual (attempted) stoicism, and I basically spend the better part of a week staring at the wall in my computer room, waiting for the awfulness to pass. It definitely helped that we were snowed in this week, so I didn’t have to go into work with this ridiculous baggage.

I’m trying, though. I have a list of names and I’m going to try to get help for this. Again. Each time this fails, it gets a lot harder for me to take the whole idea of psychiatric treatment/pharmacology seriously. I know a lot of people who speak highly of The Day They Got Medicated (hell, I have a day like that myownself, when Ritalin opened my eyes and made it possible for me to read a book), but so far I’m batting zero touchdowns here.

Why am I posting this here now? I don’t know. I recently saw a BBC special that Stephen Fry did on his own bipolarity, and I thought it would make me cool like Stephen Fry. (Or, you know, the same motive he had — saying “you are not alone” to anyone else who might see this.) Or maybe I thought it would excuse my occasional bouts of sudden, unannounced touchiness. (I doubt it; there’s no excuse for that. If I feel that coming on, the first thing I need to do is close Twitter, Facebook and the rest of it.) I’m definitely, definitely not doing it for sympathy. I know your tendency, if you’ve read this far, will be to offer me some show of sympathy and support, and I appreciate that… but it makes me uncomfortable. I’m not looking for attention. I want attention for the things that I make — for the words I write, for the jokes I tell, for the books and the comics I’ve published — not because I was born with the wrong brain gene. Lots of people have what I have. I know a bunch of them. I am no different from they are, except that I haven’t figured out how to fix it yet. But I really want to. I’m trying, you guys. Honestly, I am.

All right, that’s just about enough of that.

Addendum: Welbutrin was the fourth antidepressant they had me on. I don’t remember the disastrous thing that made me want to stop taking that. But I’m sure there must have been something.

I’ve been writing lately.

This seems like an odd non-sequitor from a guy who claims to be a writer, I realize, but hear me out here. The one piece of wisdom that’s spoken nearly universally from all my creative heroes is the idea that starting to write is the hardest part of all. Hell, I rambled and blathered about this myself a few months ago, in a piece about creative momentum. Once you get moving, I said, continuing to move is easy. And I was right. That’s some smart thinking, Me of the Past. And yet…

And yet.

And fucking yet.

The reason I – and people far more talented and successful than I – repeat this assertion so much is (hard as this may be to believe) we tend to forget it a lot. No, seriously. After the apparently mandatory mental illnesses that come with a creative temperament, the second most irritating thing is this tendency to completely forget that only one thing in life can truly bring us joy and fulfillment. Somehow, unlike so many other people on this planet, we’ve actually worked out what we’re here for – or at least, we’ve found activities that make us feel like we have. (This is neither the time nor the place to get metaphysical about this. Suffice it to say that making things scratches a brain-itch that nothing else can.) But the curse that comes along with this blessing is the Memento-like arrangement we have with our own brains. Every morning we wake up with a clean slate and we have to teach ourselves all over again that writing is what makes us happy. Because our natural tendency is to avoid writing at all costs, and therefore be miserable.

Naturally, I don’t speak for all writers here. Some people are well-adjusted, and the whole “write for a specific duration of time each day” thing comes naturally to them. But there’s a certain sub-section of us for whom productivity is a daily struggle. Most people I know, I am sad to say, lose this battle regularly. If I had a nickel every time a friend said they were starting some new project that then never surfaced or (even worse, somehow) only produced a small amount of content… well, I’d have a lot of nickels. And have you tried spending nickels in this economy? They’re worthless.

I do not mean to belittle my creative friends by pointing this out. What I mean to do is point out that the reason abandoned blogs and podcasts with one episode really bothers me is this: there, but for the grace of the self-loathing that motivates me, go I. I’m one shiny object away from joining them in the ranks of the unproductive, and I live every day in fear that that shiny object will finally pull me away from everything I’ve struggled to build over the years. (And with my luck, it’ll be a fucking nickel.)

As I’ve said before, I cannot speak to the quality of my work. It’s impossible for me to be truly objective about that. But one of the things I’m proudest of in my life is the quantity of things I’ve produced – over 150 podcasts, six issues of a comic, two published books, a couple of video games, et. al ad nauseam. I’m intensely pleased that I’ve managed to produce more-or-less everything I’ve ever set out to produce. (Shut up about the novel – I’m working on it, I promise.)

But regardless of all that – regardless of the years I’ve spent working in every medium I’ve ever wanted to work in, regardless of my overall feeling that I’m a better writer now than I was 20 years ago – every morning, I face the same mental quandary I faced when I was 16. I can spend my downtime screwing around, watching TV, playing video games or whatever else it is people do… or I can stop telling people I’m a writer and fucking write something. I chose poorly at 16. At 36, I’ve developed elaborate workarounds for the situation, but it hasn’t gone away. No matter how much I create, it always comes down to that simple binary choice, every single day: I can write, or I can waste time.

So, yeah. I’ve been writing lately.

Today marks ten years since Douglas Adams died.

I don’t really get upset like most people seem to over famous people dying. People die. It’s an unpleasant, but inevitable fact of mortal existence. I don’t know these people personally, so I try to be honest with myself and recognize the emotions for what they are: I’m not so much sad that this person I’ve never met is gone; I’m sad because they provided me with something I enjoyed and now I can’t have that anymore. (Futurama put this into words better than I ever could in an episode in which Bender believed that Fry had died and reacted with “now who will make Bender waffles the way he likes them?”)

Here’s the thing about Douglas Adams, though: he was unquestionably one of the most brilliant and talented comedy writers of my lifetime. In terms of the sort of thing I want to do with my creative career (such as it is), he was as close to a role model as a man gets. People tend to dismiss “the classics” after awhile – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy routinely makes the requisite “lists of nerd things that are great,” and people just accept that as read now. Often without actually reading the thing. It was an amazing book, channeling that absurd Python sensibility through a cultural pathway that few people truly had the vision to see as inevitable: nerd culture.

He was an actual visionary, in addition to being quite clever, funny and (as every account of the man must inevitably mention) very tall. But he was also profoundly, mind-bogglingly, utterly and uselessly lazy. He famously hated writing, and many pithy quotes are attributed to him that reflect this. (“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they sail past,” is one.) I recently read a biography of Adams that made me realize just how little of his life was spent actually making things, especially when directly compared to the amount of time he spent actively avoiding the making of things. It’s not that he was one of those authors who agonizes over every word. Or one of those George R. R. Martin types who plans huge epics which lead impatient fans to demand the next thousand-page tome right now. No, by his own admission, Adams just didn’t like writing very much. More than one of the later Hitchhikers books was literally written in a weekend as he faced a publisher who had forgone deadlines and presented him with an ultimatum.

So, when he died in May of 2001, what I felt was not sadness. As I said, I never knew the guy. And my usual “I’m sad because there will be no more books” sentiment didn’t fit either, because the last book he’d published prior to this point was the pretty much universally disappointing fifth Hitchhiker’s book, Mostly Harmless in 1992. Nine. Years. Before.

I wasn’t sad when he died. I was angry. How could a man be born (blessed, if you prefer; but Adams, a vocal atheist, would not) with so much talent and do so little with it? Yes, of course it was a tragedy that the man was dead at 49. But the real tragedy, to me, was that he hadn’t produced a single thing with that beautiful brain of his for nearly a decade. Were I prone to flights of metaphysical fancy (which I am not; Adams helped inspire a similar level of atheism in me), I would say that he almost deserved to die for wasting all that talent.

No, I don’t mean that. This is my anger talking. Adams was a true inspiration to me, and he didn’t care. Not about me personally, but about any of it. He was content to be so goddamned brilliant and just coast around not using that brilliance. Had he lived to eighty or ninety, I wonder if we would have gotten any more books out of it. I think probably not.

I realize he (nor any other writer, performer, entertainer or artist) owes me nothing. He is a human, prone to human whims and failings and if he chooses never to write another book in his (tragically short) life, this is, of course, his prerogative. My anger – like all grief, no matter what form it takes – is selfish. He was the first writer who really made me feel like I could do something special and unique and amazing with words; the first person who ever made me realize that my nerdish ways and desire to make people laugh were not mutually exclusive. He made me realize that it was sexy to be smart, that it was cool to be funny and that it was the highest of aspirations to be both.

Adams’ death was, for me, the loss of a role model. In terms of the me that exists entirely to make things (as opposed to the other versions of myself I carry around in my brain), he was, I suppose, a father figure. Which gives this a whole weird Freudian spin that I never really intended, but listen: sometimes a role model is just a role model. Only in the years following his death did I realize that he was a horrible choice for the job. But you don’t exactly get to choose who stimulates your brain in the formative years of your intellect, and in a way, his death forced me to move on from anger to a weird sort of inspiration.

I will never, never possess a measurable fraction of the talent he had. But I sure as hell can work harder with the talent I do have, so that I don’t die with a thousand untold stories. Even now, ten years later, I look at a man who would rather take thirty baths than write a book and it makes me angry. I’m only just now starting to realize that this anger might actually be a good thing.

In life, Douglas Adams made me want to be a better writer. In death, he makes me want to silence that voice that says “just one more sandwich, a quick check of my e-mail and maybe five minutes on Twitter and I’ll get started.” I’ve always held a certain disdain for those people who claim to be writers and have never written a word in their lives, but the death of my first creative hero put a finer point on it. “Don’t panic,” a million people flippantly quote from a book they quite possibly have never read. But really, by avoiding the making of things – the only thing that gives people like us a feeling of fulfillment in life – isn’t that exactly what they’re doing? Wasn’t Adams just panicking a little, every time he let a deadline whoosh past?

So, in a way, while I’m sorry he’s gone, I’m happy for the cautionary tale his death provided. Had Arthur Dent been truly based on his creator, he would have probably remained defiantly in the bath while the world ended around him. Personally, I’d rather brave the odds, stick out my thumb and end this essay on a tortured, awful Hitchhiker’s reference. Hey, at least I finished the damned thing.

A rare serious thought: the most powerful abstract force in my adult life is not inspiration. It’s not idealism. It isn’t even love. It’s inertia.

Inertia, you will recall from your basic elementary school science lessons, is the tendency for objects in motion to stay in motion and objects at rest to remain at rest, unless acted upon by an outside force. (Pardon the hackery of reminding you of that — I’m going somewhere with this.) What this means in my actual life is, when I lie around on my fat ass, I am inclined to want to always lie around on my fat ass. But if I actually get up and do things, a sort of productive momentum is created and I want to do more things. You’d think I’d get tired out, going from zero projects to one project. But you’d be wrong. Apparently I have two settings: no projects or all the projects. And, if you follow my output with any regularity, I think you can guess which setting I’m at right now.

I define myself by what I do — by what I can tangibly hold up in front of my face at the end of a given week and say “I made these things. They didn’t exist before I made them, and now they do exist.” Ideally they’ll be things other people want to see, and things I am proud to show off. But those thoughts don’t enter into the early parts of the process. First, you run. Then you eventually figure out how to stop falling.

Internet celebrity Merlin Mann has been utterly kicking ass lately with a series of essays intended to inspire people who don’t feel like they do enough. He seems genuinely frustrated by the dearth of “productivity software” (expensive widgets that clear your screen of distractions) and, somewhat ironically (though the irony does not escape him) self-help advice. His main advice: “first, care.” If it matters enough to you, you will find the time and you will do it. Because it’s important. Because you can’t not do it. Yes, Merlin. Yes. Fucking exactly.

Occasionally people ask me how I get so much done. (Regularly completing projects is the only actual talent I will cop to having — I do it better than just about anyone I know.) The secret is no secret at all: I do it because I want to do it. I want it more than I want a career or a social life. Ideally, it will not happen at the expense of these things, but that is the priority I place on creative productivity. It matters. More than nearly anything else in my life. (I had to throw that “nearly” in there because, hey — my wife matters more. And my family, a few close friends and my dog. But that’s it. Honestly.)

I could be making a lot of money at this point in my life. This is not some fanciful “what if?” scenario — it’s a fact. I had a very promising career in a very technical and very lucrative field a few years ago. I enjoyed doing it. But it didn’t leave me the time or the mental energy to do what mattered to me. So I stopped doing it. Now I’m in a job (note: not a career) that pays substantially less. I also enjoy this job. I like it more because it allows me the time to write novels and record podcasts and videos and make video games and make comics and do whatever else tickles my ever-expanding fancy. (Note: do not try to picture my expanding fancy. It can only end badly.)

Five years ago I was making a lot of money, but I was deeply unsatisfied. Today I am living well below the poverty line, but I’m feeling more fulfilled than I ever have. Because I’m doing things. And the more I do, the more I want to do. It’s an amazing feeling.

About a year ago, a very old and very dear friend of mine sat down and recorded a conversation we had on this very subject. During that conversation, we hashed out an argument we’d been having for over two decades: is it better to do things right or fast? My opinion was, as I stated above, the thing about running and falling. My friend, who is immensely talented — far more talented than I will ever be — takes the “measure twice, cut once” approach. If it’s worth doing, he argues, it’s worth doing well. And it’s not an invalid argument. But I think it’s important to note that, a year later, this recording is still sitting on his hard drive someplace. I’m not saying my way is better — honestly. But being able to look at the enormous volume of work I’ve produced in that year, even if every one of them is truly horrible, is a lot more important to me than having produced one or two perfect and flawless things.

It’s not just important. It’s the most important. I don’t ever want to lose the incredible feeling of accomplishment and inspiration I feel right now. The trick is to never stop moving. Never.

Adjacent to my apartment complex is a bowling alley.

Actually, they call it a casino. I guess it’s owned by Indians. I’m not really sure how that works, but those things seem to be all over the place around here. As far as I can tell, it’s a bowling alley on a normal street corner, but they call it a casino on account of some card tables upstairs. I’ve been to Vegas and I’ve been to Atlantic City, and this joint does not fit my standard definition of “casino.” I mean, there’s nary a blinking light or plentiful buffet to be found. But I’ll come back to that place in a minute.

Since moving to Seattle, I have attempted to get myself in shape by riding my bicycle. The city, after all, has a reputation for being very bike-friendly, and since we don’t have the humidity or sinus-crushing pollen that kept me from venturing outdoors back on the east coast, I figured I’d give it a shot.

What many people don’t realize — okay, I don’t know how many people don’t, but I didn’t — is that Seattle is in the mountains. It’s very hilly here. So while there may be better accomodations for bikes on the roads and in the many public parks, the fact is that you have to be pretty serious about biking to take advantage of it. By that, I mean you have to be able to handle incredibly steep hills without collapsing in a sweaty, wheezing heap of blubber. I’m not quite there yet. Maybe I can get there someday, but that day is not today.

My grandmother actually got me a pretty nice bike rack for Christmas a couple of years ago, but the best efforts of me and at least three other people (one of whom holds a Masters degree in Automotive Bike Rack Studies from MIT) were unable to get the thing attached safely to my vehicle. So carting the thing to a flat area also doesn’t seem to be an option at this point, unless I want to disassemble and reassemble the thing each morning, like a Marine would do with his rifle. Again, maybe someday I’ll be ready for that level of commitment. But I’m still just at the beginner phase here, like I said.

So that brings me back to this bowling alley. Casino. Whatever.

I noticed that they had a nice, flat parking lot that tended to be empty in the early hours of the morning. I took my car over and drove a complete circle and discovered that it’s exactly a tenth of a mile around — perfect for measured laps on the ol’ $50 Target bike. So, following a recent trip back home to Maryland (during which my family not-very-graciously informed me that I was approaching Orson Welles levels of girth), I felt sufficiently shamed into finally beginning an exercise regimen. I headed to the parking lot on a mostly-daily basis and I started small, with 10 laps (a mile).

I eventually worked myself up to 20 laps before I got distracted and stopped. It’s not that it was too hard, it’s just that I distract easily. I must have seen a shiny object. Or, more likely, it rained one morning, breaking my routine and causing me to direct my attention elsewhere, ultimately forgetting I even had one in the first place. Hey, it’s not easy living inside this skull, all right?

A month or so passes and I realize I need to get back on it. So I climb on the bike and head for the parking lot…

…only to find that the gap in the fence that used to allow me access to it has now been blocked with a concrete post. Pedestrians can still navigate their way around, but it’s no go for the likes of me and my bicycle.

There must be some reason why they chose to put this post there, and I’m trying really hard to think of one that doesn’t point to them being jerks who want me to fail. Or at least, you know, not wanting me to lurk around their parking lot. Because, you know, the parking lot of a bowling alley/casino is a hopping place at 7AM. I might scare away customers.

The only other thing that really makes sense is Red Man’s Revenge. I encroached on their land and their natural cultural instinct was to retaliate. And you know, I think I could probably live with that explanation, except for the fact that every time I’ve stuck my head into Nameless Casino, it’s been populated entirely with elderly Russians. So, I suppose the real question is: why does the Russian mob want me to stay fat? Who benefits?

If you have a Wii (or one of them non-Mac computers) and you’re a fan of Strong Bad (or indeed, simply a fan of adventure games and good jokes), I urge you to check out the first (of several) episode of the new Wiiware game, out today. I’d be excited for this thing anyway, but the project lead is none other than Mark Darin, my friend of nearly 20 years, founder of Pinhead Games and just all-around talented mama jama. Mark parlayed the experience and success of Pinhead into an actual paying gig with Telltale Games (who have also resurrected the Sam and Max license from a decade and a half of development hell and recently announced a Wallace and Gromit project).

Mark, I’ve never been more simultaneously proud and jealous of anyone in my life. Now quit screwing around with my internet idols and get to work on that script for the third Nick Bounty game I wrote.

A bit later: I’m in the credits! I got listed in the “special thanks” bit near the end. I tried to take a picture; my lousy photographic skills make it look more like SAMBO than AALGAR. But trust me: I’m there. You’ll just have to beat the entire game to see for yourself.

Apparently I’m an extraterrestrial. Who knew.

In the produce section of my local grocery store the other day, I found a mixed bag of apples and oranges. Despite this serious and quite literal detriment to my analogy-making abilities*, I thought this was a really handy idea for me, the oft-undecided consumer of tree-based food. Plus…

My political beliefs generally lean toward “smaller government, fewer silly rules,” but I can’t deny the critical importance of Federal Extra Fanciness Standards. We can’t just let any old product call itself “extra fancy.” That way lies total anarchy. We are still, after all, the United States of America. And its nice to see that there are still some important areas in which we can lead by example. Have you seen what passes for “extra fancy” in Mexico? Shameful. Positively shameful.

Even better: this particular bag of mixed fruit doesn’t even bear the words “extra fancy” anywhere on it beyond that label. They’re just letting us know that, yeah, they could toss around that phrase without fear of legal repercussions, but they choose not to.

And thus, a new personal mantra is born: “greater regulation in our adjectives; more humility in our fruit packaging.” I think that’s a notion we can all get behind — even in an election year.

* I suppose from now on, I’ll have to modify the expression to something like “we’re talking a bag of apples and oranges and a bag of pears and peaches here.”

This was on the front page of Sci Fi Channel’s website. They seem proud of this for some reason.

Thanks to Ed for showing me the rather fucked-up (but hilarious) trailer to the (probably non-existent) romantic comedy Wheels.