I used to maintain this blog with one to six posts per month, but my last post was September 2020 and I’d been flaky since late spring. There’s a reason for that, albeit not a super-compelling one. The pandemic and its associated drama affected me as much as anyone, and it’s only been in the last few months that I’ve been comfortable closing the door on one chapter of my life — running mid-2016 until late-2021 — and moving definitively into the next one. 

Oh, and a blessed Christmas to you and your family. I write this post on Christmas Day, with coffee at hand, classical Christmas music softly playing, the cats docile, and some myrrh incense burning near the window. My family routines were “mostly normal” this year and I hope they’re “fully normal” next year. May you each find some measure of joy this holiday season.

This’ll be a massive update, so buckle up and grab the extra-large-sized beverage of your choice. As usual, subjects aren’t presented in any particular order.

Health and Well-Being. After re-reading my recent posts, I think I was a bit inconsistent with how I characterized my run-in with the coronavirus — mostly to avoid in-the-moment questions or swoop-ins from readers. Here’s how it all ended up going down. First, I contracted Covid-19 (we think; tests weren’t available at the time) in early March 2020. I had come back from the lovely Bonaire diving trip with my friends Jen and Dave and then a few days later: wham. Much of March and April were pretty much lost; I was able to basically sit at my desk and do my contract editing job, but not much else. Exhaustion was pervasive and I had an entire week where my nights were interrupted by high nocturnal fevers and shortness of breath. I never experienced the loss of smell or taste, but virtually every other box was checked. From the beginning of May, when the worst of it has passed, until probably mid-to-late January 2021, I wasn’t quite right. Whether you call it Long Covid or just some lingering malaise, it came and went in fortnightly spurts. I’d enjoy roughly two weeks where everything was right as rain followed by a fortnight of exhaustion and mental fog. During this period, my weight yo-yoed like a sixth grader on the playground. But by late winter, I have consistently felt fine. I’ve been symptom-free since February, and now I sit comfortably in the “double vaxxed and boosted” category.

Ironically, despite the excellent “no sickness” theme of 2021, I’m writing this while battling a mid-grade sinus infection (thanks, dry winter!). I also had a bout of norovirus that first manifested itself on my return flight from Las Vegas this past summer. I am still apologetic to Delta Air Lines for not anticipating that gross liquid sludge would spew from my body from both ends simultaneously a mere 20 minutes out from landing. At least I managed to close the lav door one millisecond before the eruption.

Gillikin & Associates. Contract work over the last two years has been — well, inconsistent. I started 2020 with a full-time contract-but-W2 assignment performing content renovation for Dotdash. That contract expired in July. In that peak-of-pandemic period, the employment outlook was double-plus ungood. I acquired another contract gig, for blog-article writing in the tech sector, but it didn’t come within a country mile of paying all the bills. The enhanced unemployment benefits of that period saved me from an ignoble return to the metaphorical “mom’s basement.” By Memorial Day 2021, I landed an analytics-consulting contract thanks to my friend Patrick, and then a curriculum-development contract with a university thanks to my friend Andrew. What had been famine turned into feast, and the second half of 2021 has been one of the most financially well-performing periods of my entire life, with no signs of impending abatement. When you bring in enough revenue that you have to actually put yourself on payroll and provide yourself benefits, you know something is going well. May it persist!

Lakeshore Literary. When we shut down Caffeinated Press in December 2019, it was with some degree of both relief and disappointment. Relief, insofar as a business that didn’t grow quite right was finally allowed to slip gently into the night. Disappointment, insofar as part of the hope and promise of local literary excellence suffered because of the well-intended peculiarities of our business model. I launched a business structure for Lakeshore Literary — a successor company, but without the complexity of business partners — in early 2020 but apart from publishing my friend Lisa’s college-success textbook, it didn’t do anything. That is now changing. My colleague Garrett and I are co-editing a new triennial literary journal, The Lakeshore Review, and I’m re-doing the small press thing, as a part-time one-man shop. Significantly, it’s going to include retail: I’m planning for roughly 250 linear feet of shelf space to play with, to open a hyper niche bookstore focused on literary journals, small-press titles, and strictly curated self-published works. No general-catalog stuff. Plus, cafe seating, coffee and tea, and packaged snacks. Things get moving as of January 3. More about that in the next paragraph.

The L&G Center. The biggest news of Q4 is The L&G Center. It’s a 2,800-square-foot office space located near the intersection of 44th Street and Burlingame Avenue in Wyoming, Mich. My business partner Allison and I co-lease the building through an LLC formed solely to address our real-estate arrangement. I run G&A and Lakeshore Literary out of it; she runs her own business, Fourth Form Martial Arts Studio, out of it as well. The 1,200-square-foot front space is a mix of literary retail and cafe (15′ x 30′), plus an open studio that serves as the karate dojo or for special events (like poetry readings). We make the space available for rent if the situation feels right. The “dojo side” (which is roughly 25′ x 30′) when used as an events space can hold, we think, roughly 80 people auditorium-style or 48 people seated four to a six-foot table. With three generous storage rooms, funky cantilevered cabinetry, two ensuite restrooms, a kitchen, a skylight, a large conference room, and private offices for me and Allison, it’s a comfortable location that we rented for a steal. But it was a steal because we needed to replace the 30-year-old carpet, repaint everything, and perform non-trivial interior maintenance on our dime. We leased the space in mid-September and will enjoy our grand opening on January 3. It’s got a bit of an industrial/rustic feel to it, yet it’s a great multipurpose space with plenty of parking and easy access to US-131, M-6, and I-196.

Karate. So why, pray tell, did we start The L&G Center? Blame karate. 🙂 In November 2020, in the throes of National Novel Writing Month, I connected with a writer named Allison who, as fate would have it, I had met before — in karate class, ca. 2007-2008. She was a shy wisp of a blonde teenager at the time, but she ended up becoming a fierce, whipcrack-smart woman whose favorite word directed at me is a poorly considered “Veto.” When I studied karate in those days, it was at East West Karate Center. It turns out, East West persisted until the pandemic killed it off. One of the sixth-degree black belts rented space at a gym in Dorr, Mich., for twice-weekly informal karate and weapons classes. Allison encouraged me to go to those classes, and I did. I reconnected with so many folks I remembered from those long-ago days. In July, Allison and Muhamet tested for higher-degree black belts. Then in August we had a karate pool-slash-whiskey-sampling party and the subject of moving out of that tiny rented gym arose. I mentioned I was looking for office space, the group had convinced Allison to start a dojo again to replace East West — and six weeks later, we took possession of The L&G Center and she founded Fourth Form. I am the dojo’s most senior kyu student, anticipating black belt testing in the summer of 2022. We’ve welcomed back some of the old East West students and even a few new ones. It’s an exciting time, and my Kent County-based peeps should strongly consider coming to the dojo’s hard launch and karate demonstration at 6p on Monday, January 3. (We’re at 1590 44th St SW, Wyoming MI, 49509.)

Writing. I’ve made minor progress across several projects, but nothing to speak of. I’m focusing next week on my project list, to see if a bit of sorting and prioritizing will make things easier to execute. I think I’m leaning toward spending the entire year drafting The Bear of Rosebriar Creek, which is a literary novel featuring four broken main characters who each find a measure of healing during a community’s panic over a man-killing bear. I’ve been noodling over this story for years but haven’t had the cojones to tackle it. Until now, I guess. No promises.

The Great Outdoors. I haven’t done any scuba diving since Bonaire, nor have I yet resumed flying lessons, but I have done some hiking. Twice this year — once with my brother, and once with my friend Scott — I trekked to the northern tip of the Lower Peninsula for overnight hiking adventures. Scott and I did a section of the North Country Trail between the Fife Lake Loop and Hodenpyl Dam; Brian and I did two nights at Round Lake State Forest Campground. Both trips were “car camping” with day hikes. Scott made delicious food near our campsite overlooking the Manistee River while Brian made delicious food while we hammocked in a hurricane. I also went on a few night walks at Millennium Park. Just me, my headlamp, the critters, and a few meth addicts scurrying through the underbrush.

Faith Formation. I’ve been more active at church lately. I’m a member of the Communications Apostolate, which is a fancy way of saying that I’m part of the volunteer team that prepared our parish’s annual report and helped pull off our “renewal of fidelity” annual commitment program. Sacred Heart is a parish where stewardship is a four-letter word — an approach I find most refreshing. We had a pastor transition this summer; the Rev. Robert Sirico was granted senior priest (i.e., retired) status and the Rev. Ron Floyd was appointed as canonical administrator. I moved to Sacred Heart for Sirico but I’m staying for Floyd. It’s a vibrant, intellectual, humble community with rich worship and a spirit of service. I miss my old friends at St. Anthony but spiritually, the trade was worth it. 

Intellectual Formation. This topic could be a blog post in its own right, but I’ll keep it brief-ish. I started 2020 working full-time as a contract editor for Dotdash, and all the while, I spent countless hundreds of hours background-watching lectures and podcasts on YouTube while I worked. I mostly stopped reading books and flipped to consuming videos over much of 2020. I absorbed such treasures as Jordan B. Peterson’s extended series about the book of Genesis, Joe Rogan’s shows, the Dark Horse Podcast livestreams with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, and countless other bits of content from the center-right and the non-woke left. Early on, I became enamored with the “Intellectual Dark Web,” but eventually the luster dimmed. Stuff like Weinstein getting on the Ivermectin train and Peterson’s extended illness changed the nature of the beast. Toward the end of 2020 I eventually stopped watching YouTube videos and moved back to a beefier podcast roster, augmented by much more reading.

On the podcast front, I’ve found that tend to not miss many episodes of Sway, Pivot, and Your Undivided Attention (tech-focused); Blocked & Reported and Useful Idiots (media criticism); Left Right & Center, Checks and Balances, and The Argument (bipartisan/centrist issues-focused); Action Unwind, New Discourses, Three Martini Lunch, The Editors, and Mad Dogs & Englishmen (conservative-leaning politics); and FiveThirtyEight Politics, Slate Political Gabfest, The Ezra Klein Show, and The Weeds (left-leaning politics). Fitting imperfectly into the mix are The Glenn Show, Conversations with Coleman, and Honestly with Bari Weiss, each of which comes from an anti-woke center-left perspective. Atop that listening, I subscribe to National Review and have been working through a slush pile of books. Currently on the table: The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect by Judea Pearl and Dana Mackenzie, The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die by Niall Ferguson, and Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals by Tyler Cowen.

I’ve always positioned myself as something of a center-right thinker, although the Hidden Tribes report doesn’t really capture me very well. A lot of the strident, populist, more authoritarian streams of conservatism strike me as both silly and sinister, but the progressive left seems morally bankrupt and incapable of engaging the world outside its bubble. One of the take-aways from my podcasts is that when I disagree with the content of a particular episode, when the podcast hails from the right I tend to disagree on specifics of policy, whereas when I disagree with the content from a left-leaning episode, my frustration sources from the content presenting a caricature of the world. Too many straw men, too little understanding of countervailing arguments. I think that’s why I could never actually be a “man of the left” even if I’m sympathetic to some of the arguments and positions from that worldview.

If you ask where my head’s at and how it’s changed in the last 24 months, I’d distil it to this: I have less confidence in the integrity of the media and less confidence in political leaders to successfully navigate complex problems sourced from several unrelated input streams. I think the fringes of the left and the right are increasingly indistinguishable in their lunacy and their nihilism and that social platforms make this problem several orders of magnitude worse. Enlightenment liberalism (aka “David Frenchism“) is a noble framework worth protecting from integralists, socialists, and all the ne’er-do-wells in between. I’m paying more attention to disciplines like evolutionary biology and econometrics than I used to, and I appreciate how those disciplines help to undermine the superstructure of Critical Theory. And I see that in the absence of a real God to worship, people build destructive religion-like cults out of squishy nonsense like Q-Anon or antiracism. 

Political Engagement. I ran for office again in 2020, for county commission. For the second time, I was persuaded to run in this D+1,000,000 district in the heart of south-central Kent County. The upside was that I returned as a statutory member to the Kent County Republican Executive Committee.

For the 2020 election, I was the sole GOP challenger for the Absentee Voter Counting Board for the City of Kentwood, Mich. I spent 20 hours on-site at Kentwood City Hall, watching the opening and tabulation of countless thousands of absentee ballots. Kentwood even used Dominion machines! And you know what? I saw zero evidence of voter fraud. The loudest voices proclaiming The Big Lie come from people with literally no understanding of how votes are counted and audited — a fact that the shitshow of a “forensic audit” in Arizona proved beyond all reasonable doubt. As I look to candidates for state and local government in Michigan, the first thing I look for are two disqualifiers. Are they invoking the “America First” dog whistle? Are they in favor of a “full forensic audit?” If yes to either, they’re automatically disqualified as far as I’m concerned. As the debacle of the Senate elections in Georgia and the success of the Virigina gubernatorial elections attest, competent-and-sane Republicans will win while voices undermining the legitimacy of the election process will not.

Frankly, I’d rather win than fraternize with the liars and grifters who can’t get past their loss in 2020.

Social Media. Those of you with eyes to see and ears to hear will likely know that I’ve been off social media for most of the last two years. That’s not an accident, and it’s probably not going to be meaningfully changed. I am now convinced that Facebook is a force for evil in the world, and that Twitter has done more to pollute the body politic than any single other factor. I am not in a “delete my accounts” mode because I have businesses to run; I will probably occasionally throw things out there, but also never bother to check feeds or notifications. Increasingly, I’m turning to tools like blogs and Discord for communication and community. 

Winnie_Bot. I’m one of three “core” members of a project team for an open-source Discord bot called Winnie. Winnie_Bot tracks word sprints, goals, and related activities. In addition to serving as the project PM, I was also the translator of Winnie_Bot into Latin and I helped shape the core model for the bot’s database. Our product owner — Dawn, from Melbourne — and lead developer — Katie, from Ohio — have been a delight, and the community has been a big part of our success. That said, our go-live goal of October was sorely missed, at first by a little, and then by a lot. We’re making a lot of changes to the bot to conform to some Discord-specific changes that will take effect in April. We suspect that come 4/1, we might be the only bot left standing in this space. So we’re taking the time to get it right. It’s been a fair amount of work, especially in October and November, but it’s been fun.

National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo 2021 came and went. I spent it as a Municipal Liaison for the OCGR region (Ottawa County-Grand Rapids). I was co-ML with my friend Mel. It was a virtual-only year again, and it showed. Participation and interest were significantly lower. I wrote hardly anything, but then again, I was focused more on Winnie than writing. 

GRWT. The Grand River Writing Tribe diversified at the beginning of 2020. We split into three groups. One, the oh-so-cleverly named “OG Tribe,” contains most of the original cast of characters. The new in-person group, informally named “Bob’s Bitch Lasagna” for Reasons, is also doing well. Then “Group V” — the virtual group — consists of folks from across eastern North America. It’s great to be part of these groups; I’ve learned a lot.

Committee on Professional Ethics. I’m beginning my third year as a member of the Committee on Professional Ethics of the American Statistical Association. Over 2021, CoPE engaged what amounted to a 10-full-month exercise in rewriting our ethical guidelines for the practice of statistics. The process required weekly two-hour Zoom meetings, interspersed with periods of more intense work on a person-by-person basis. I was a member of the Working Group for the revision and was accountable for leading discussion around the revisions of two of the existing principles. We collectively wrapped that work by Halloween, and we’ve since learned that the ASA Board of Directors was satisfied with the work with very little requests for subsequent revision. I have been tasked with leading a similar workgroup in 2022 related to a framework for the application of these guidelines on an institutional basis. It’s gratifying to put my ethics degree to practical use.

Relationships. I think I’ve done mostly OK in maintaining relationships during the pandemic. In some ways, my immediate family got a bit closer, even as the extended family became more — well, extended. I saw my grandmother for the first time in 20 months on Thursday. I see Tony and Jen occasionally and we did enjoy an overnight karaoke party at Dimondale Manor with PPQ and The Good Doctor over the summer. I don’t feel as if I’ve lost friends, although I do think that I’ve lost a degree of connection to the folks from the extended podcasting community.

Travel. Since the beginning of the pandemic I’ve traveled twice and received an out-of-town visitor once. In late June 2021, I attended the 360 Vegas Vacation in Las Vegas, in that sweet spot between lockdown periods: Apart from the airports, you’d have forgotten that it was a pandemic, in those pre-Delta days when all the infection lines were crashing and vaccination rates were shooting up. Then this autumn, Roux from Denton flew to Michigan. He and I spent one night at an Airbnb in Windsor, Ontario, then he spent two nights in Grand Rapids. It was good to see Roux as well as the ol’ standbys from the podcast community.

Podcasting. All my grand plans for Vice Lounge and Diction Dude were skewered by the hell that was 2020. I had a great talk with some folks in Las Vegas about VLO, including Tim of The Bettor Life, and I am planning on bringing VLO back in 2022. The format will be a bit different and I’m making changes to a bunch of stuff (no Patreon, less social media, but more stuff like livestreams and community on Discord). It’s on the docket for January, although I reserve the right to bump it as things settle down at The L&G Center after our grand opening.

Cats. Murphy and Fiona d’Cat are both doing well. As is Kali d’Cat, the outdoors-dwelling sweetie. I have since discovered that Kali was a TNR kitty (trap, neuter, release). She is super affectionate, a bit skittish, and clever as hell. She also picks-and-chooses when she gets violent with the other larger mammals that approach her food dish. Most of the time, she lets the raccoons and opossums eat away, but every now and then holds her ground. She doesn’t like being picked up, but she does enjoy belly rubs — right up until the second she doesn’t. (He says, with a scratched right hand.) She lives on my back porch and has no real interest in coming inside. I have given her a cardboard box with a heating pad that’s on all winter long. The pad quickly heats to something like 95F when pressure is applied to it. She figured out the box/pad thing in a hurry and spends most of her time there when it’s cold.

OK, all for now. I’ll work on getting back on a regular schedule for 2022. Until then, I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy nude new year.