Across the Siloverse

3 weeks ago 2

hullo,

We’re back much sooner than I expected and that’s a good thing!

If you haven’t checked out my poetry project little feelings in a little while, here’s an easy to press button for you to enjoy

Visit Little Feelings

I’m finally in a spot where I can share (and write about) what’s been going on in my life recently.

First, the bad.

My little brother Mark committed suicide back in July. It was sudden and unexpected. He struggled with a lot of things in his life. He was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy over a decade ago and, as a result of that and other personal issues, he battled a myriad of mental health problems and addiction for over a decade.

He didn’t let any of that stop him from helping others. He worked as an EMT, helped revitalize a ranch in central Texas, and spent the past 5 years working as a schoolteacher. After meeting with his principal while handling his affairs, it is painfully clear that Mark’s students and fellow teachers adored him.

In his last note to me, he shared he was proud that he died sober.

I’m really proud of him for that too.

I’m grieving in a lot of different ways right now and my poems will reflect that (specifically within the collection marked). He was the strongest person I’ve ever met and I miss him terribly.

If you’re curious about my brother, I talk about him in more detail on my podcast OK Banger. I’ll also be sharing a few in depth essays about him and my grieving process over on my blog Wysr in the coming weeks. Please subscribe if interested in that.

Next, the good.

My son Theodore AKA Teddy was born 5 weeks ago!

He’s healthy, hungry, and (mostly) happy. So is mama.

We’re keeping him off the internet as best we can so no photos are incoming, but I will share thoughts, reflections, and, of course, poems within little feelings and my other projects.

As you can imagine, the emotional whiplash is brutal right now.

I’m overjoyed and overwhelmed by fatherhood while also still actively processing my brother’s actual death as well as the infinite deaths of every conversation we’ll never get to have. My poetry has been a helpful outlet for dealing with some of this, but the grieving process is never as clean or as easy as you’d like it to be.

That said, I have made some meaningful progress despite all the chaos, so here are the latest updates for little feelings!

I added 12 new poems to the project, a new Spotlight entry, and also added another new collection. This one is called sun, shining sun.

Can you guess what it’s about? ╰‿╯

This batch is much more focused on the current season (Fall) and some of the parallels I’m pondering between my life’s circumstances and the outside around me.

Here’s one of the new poems from the new collection shining sun

It’s simple and liminal (just how I like it).

I hope it makes you feel something.

You can find the rest of the new poems right here.

The other big “strategic” change is the I have set up socials for little feelings across all the major platforms.

This is a big experiment for me in that it’s pretty vulnerable (for a lot of reasons) and, naturally, I am not quite sure what kind of posting will generate enough reach to be worth the effort of filming and editing and pushing out into the world.

I do think it’s worth trying and frankly I’ve seen so much low effort or unthoughtful art out there that I’d be mad at myself if I never got the gumption to share my work.

Please follow these accounts to support me aaaaand get more poems in your life:

Onto the nuts and bolts

Based on a user suggestion (thank you Christin), I added a small star to gently indicate new poems on the “all poems” page. I’ll update these after each newsletter pronouncement until I figure out a better way to mark these. It took a couple attempts to make it feel good. Here’s what to look out for.
I updated the Opengraph images for each of the LF blog updates so they at least look coherent for someone who has no idea what’s going on with the project
I also added a secret section to the site to make it easier for me to post to socials. If you add /heart to any URL you can see a differently formatted version of every poem with the heart motif flittering around as well as my digital signature. Check an example out here