LISTEN:

This website has existed for something like 12 years. That’s insane. In that time, dozens of strangers have reached out to me, sent me mail / packages / cash (???), invited me to weddings, comforted me when I was feeling sad, fed me when I was feeling hungry, housed me when I was just passing through, picked me up when I had no way of getting to where I needed to go, and on and on. I have befriended and become close with quite a few of those people. Some I talk to every day of my life. When I was traveling around the United States and Canada for six months earlier this year, I hung out and stayed with people I’d known from the internet but had never met in person till then, sometimes nearly a decade later. And see? Many years ago when I was still living in Portland, a woman from Belgium wrote me a mysterious email out of the blue . . . and this week I’m going to fly to Brussels and stay at her house and take care of her cats and chickens for her while she and her family are out of town. I mean?? That rules!

I get traffic from all the world . . . annually, people from over a hundred different cities in 70 different countries end up here for reasons I still do not know. Sometimes it’s people looking for a particular picture that I have posted, or else they looked up a quote from a book or movie I quoted here . . . but the rest, I don’t know where they come from! Essentially every website sucks now. I don’t know why anyone would look at any of them. And people don’t really have personal websites anymore like they used to, and so finding one is like reading graffiti on a back alley you discovered in outer space. It is like finding a sparkling oasis in a bleak desert wasteland. And every now and then, one among these strangers who fell ass-backwards into this place will write to me. Forgive me for sounding sentimental for a moment, but I love it when people do that because it’s so sincere and human. A stranger wanting to talk to me because they sense we would understand each other . . . it’s the good stuff! I have often been that stranger too. Every time it happens, it is like a Christmas present to me.

AND SO:

. . . I don’t know, if you haven’t already, send me an email! And even if you have! Just say anything! For god’s sake, just take a chance for once in your life!!! You never know when you might need someone to housesit and feed your animals! And I’m good at that!!

AGAIN:

HERE’S MY EMAIL ADDRESS!!!

Look at my corny ass making a little image specifically for this post. That’s my dumb ass checking the mail outside of my cute little house, don’t you know. In the real world, in the Here and Now, the sun will be up in like half an hour. I’m an insane fool. I gotta go to sleep. Good-bye for now . . . ! ☆彡