The Year Of

I explain this every year but some of you are forgetful and some of you are new and I love the sound of my own voice, so I'm going to explain it again. 

I don't do new year's resolutions because they suck and I'm edgy and like to rebel against societal norms. I used to do resolutions. But then on January 2nd I would swiftly break every single one of them with reckless abandon. Then I'd be like "welp. I guess that didn't work out. There's always next year." And then I'd continue being the colossal suckface you all know and love. 

Then in 2013 I was in Palau and I was deeply depressed. The new year had started. I had been suffering from a state of mental fog and I was in the pits of despair, feeling trapped and hopeless. One day while sitting in my office I just had this epiphany—it was basically that I was the only person who could change my situation and so if I didn't want to keep feeling the way I was, I needed to do something about it. After some introspection, I decided that a lot of my struggles stemmed from an attitude problem. I had fully decided that my life was a sad one, and I was viewing each day from the perspective of defeat.

2020

It was June. I went for a run around my city. This was a Saturday and it had been a very hard week in the exact middle of a very hard year for all of us. Riots had broken out across the United States after George Floyd was killed. People were upset everywhere. We were all heartsick. 

The Urge To Be Happy

I'm sitting at my kitchen table. The fire is going. Duncan is perched in front of the front door staring out at a snow storm. Skylar is in the kitchen unloading the dishwasher and quietly singing something to himself. Taylor Swift? I don't know. It's probably Taylor Swift.

We walked around the neighborhood this morning to get coffee and breakfast. As we walked, we talked about our favorite Nevada memes from this week. Like this one:

Anniversary

Tomorrow is my and Skylar's one-year wedding anniversary what how is that possible you look so young STOP IT YOU GUYS.

What a wild first year of marriage this was. So many unpredictable left turns. I mean, I assumed when we got married last September that our next twelve months would include a worldwide pandemic, a near economic collapse, an earthquake, and a mountain hurricane, but I didn't think we'd also have to process all that news about Meghan and Harry.

In twelve months we've faced more together in some ways than I would have expected to deal with in a decade. I feel so fortunate that he's the person I've had to navigate all of this with. 

People commonly talk about how you can tell a couple is about to break up when they start gushing about one another on social media. Something compels relationships in crisis to engage in full denial in this way. Sometimes when I start to write something nice about Skylar he'll say to me, "people are going to think we're about to get divorced if you publish that."

Whatever. I can't help myself. I adore that man.

Skylar makes everything better. He makes everyone better. I don't know how he does it. You meet him and suddenly you're just a better person for it. 

Teacher's Pet

I'm a few weeks into this new semester with my First Amendment class at the law school down the street and reader, let me tell you: teaching a class is so weird in These Uncertain Unprecedented Times We're All In This Together.

My university made the decision to require that around 60% of all classes be offered exclusively online this semester. The rest of the classes are taught both in person and over Zoom (for anyone who has symptoms or is otherwise uncomfortable meeting in a group).

The school has some really strict measures in place to keep in-person classes as safe as possible. For example, there is only one class in the building at a time. They also have seats blocked off so students have to sit 6 or more feet apart. Everyone has to wear masks. Everyone is supposed to wipe down their areas before and after. Everyone is supposed to leave the building as soon as class ends.

The school asked me if I was comfortable teaching in person and I said I was because I don't believe in science I'M KIDDING DON'T EMAIL ME. I thought the measures sounded good enough that I wouldn't feel at great risk. Also, I haven't left my house since The Year Of Our Lord Eleventy and I'm starting to lose my mind greatly so I thought it would probably be good for me to have two events a week where I see 14 other humans.

But oh boy. Let me tell you something. It is a challenge to teach to a large mostly-empty room of spread-out people, in a mask, and simultaneously minding the Zoom screen of students at home. 

This New Step of Covid

When The Great Covid began earlier this year I was one of those people who was constantly telling you that actually we really had a lot to learn from this experience and "in a way" it was totally valuable and shouldn't we be kind of grateful that we had to slow down?

Then some months passed and suddenly I found myself screaming in my mind and becoming willing to kill for movie theater popcorn.

Ok, not totally. I still feel those early things about sunshine and rainbows. But the working from home all day every day business has started to wear on me in a way I had not previously anticipated.

When we started all of this, Sky was in regular classes at school and since The Whole World got canceled starting March, he was suddenly sent home, just like I was. So we'd both work from the house every day together, occasionally yelling to each other from neighboring rooms "WHY ARE YOU SO FREAKING LOUD."

Duncan would wander between us, sometimes happy for the company but usually looking more annoyed that we were disrupting his all-day nap, which, to be fair, would be an important part of my schedule as well if I had no bills, someone fed me every meal, and I got to poop outside without shame YES I THINK THAT SOUNDS LIBERATING DON'T @ ME.

So, things were fine and well. I felt like I was sequestered with my family, checking the news and worrying, but at least having someone to worry with.

When did we get old?

I started teaching a class at the law school down the street from my house last fall. It's a First Amendment class. We read a bunch of cases from the Supreme Court and then we discuss them together. I really loved teaching it last year. I felt like I was getting together twice a week to hang out with my peers and debate some really fascinating issues. 

But y'all.

I don't know. I guess I still think of myself as being the same age as the average law student. 

We were talking about the Newdow case, which is the Pledge of Allegiance case from 2004 where everyone was fighting about kids saying the Pledge at school and the words "under God," etc. We were discussing this idea that a lot of people have argued over the years in First Amendment/religion cases that some things are just so steeped in tradition and so ceremonial that they aren't really a religious act anymore. Nobody really thinks, for example, they are engaging in a religious act when they use money, even though the money says "in God we trust" on it.

So we were talking about this argument in the context of the Pledge--that people never really thought about the words "under God" when they were saying the Pledge before this case/debate happened in 2004. And I was trying to make the point that ironically, this case actually flipped that around because we all started talking about it. I said something like, "if your experience was like mine, before 2004 you probably never really thought about those words at all. Now, every time a group at a rodeo says the Pledge they almost militantly yell that part. So this case actually weakened that argument that the words are only ceremonial."

Excuse MY Christmas!

Since 2011, I've been receiving emails from all of you on all sorts of topics and for all sorts of reasons. Some of the emails contain photos of you wearing Snuggies. Some of them include links to important pictures of terrifying chickens. Often they are even thoughtful responses (or criticisms) to something we've talked about on It Just Gets Stranger or Strangerville.

I love your emails. They have been wildly important to me so many times over the years. There was one time where an email I received from the Strangerverse was especially impactful in both a hilarious and deeply meaningful way. 

For the past few years I've been meaning to produce a Strangerville segment about that email. I finally got it done. #amazing #GreatFollowThrough. 

Please check out this week's Strangerville. I've also included a snippet below from today's story. I think this is called a teaser? Is this a teaser? Netflix should hire me.

For the non-podcast savvy folks who don't use Spotify or any podcast apps on your phone, you may play it here:

The Thing About 2020

I have two friends who tested positive for the Rona recently. I won't say their names here because of HIPPO or whatever. I don't know. I don't really know anything about law.

The point is, this was kind of shocking because these two friends live together and they've been sequestered in their house since just before the war; they've been taking social distancing very seriously and they have jobs that have allowed them to work from home. Neverthenotwithstanding, they were marked with the great 2020 curse.

They were fortunate because their symptoms were never really all that bad. Just coughs and fatigue. But the thing is--no matter how bad your Rona is, you really have to turn yourself into a pariah because you aren't any less contagious. Apparently. I don't really know that either. Because science.

Knowing this, Skylar and I offered to deliver groceries and so forth but these friends are good pioneer women with eleventy decades of food storage so they were actually pretty prepared. But after a week of this they thought of one thing they could use so I picked it up at the store and took it to their house.

They were sitting out on the front porch, feeling not too bad. I stood out on the sidewalk and chatted with them for a while, a full 30 feet away. I didn't touch anything. I even left the groceries on the sidewalk for them to come out and pick up after I left.

I know that I didn't get coronavirus from them. I know this. It's honestly impossible. If I somehow got sick from that, we are all doomed.

Around the Campfire, With You

Obviously it's been a rough week in the U.S. I've spent the last couple of days writing something about all of it (and stewing over what to say). I'll share that in the next day or two. I'm positive it won't be perfect. I've grappled with what to say. I feel horrified about the violence and injustice black people in my country and community have had to endure. I have felt like it would be worse for me to say nothing than to drop some imperfect words. I may be wrong about that.

I hope you are all staying safe, in all of your corners of the world. I love you.

It's been a strange year, and not really in the ways we usually prefer. But we'll be carrying on in Strangerville, where stories matter, because they make us laugh, grow, understand, and connect. I can never thank you all enough for helping me understand and appreciate that through your support and interaction on this incredibly stupid website hosted by an extremely outdated platform for the past 12 years.

When I write here or produce stories from you I like to imagine we've all gathered around a little fire in a small group of trees, off in some corner of a quiet forest somewhere. The burning wood crackles. We're sipping hot cocoa, or whatever you prefer. We're huddled close together in warm blankets. Someone is holding a flashlight and pulling us in with their account of something funny or sad or whatever exists between or around those two feelings. We never want the story to end because that space—that atmosphere that the sometimes-exaggerated but always meaningful details create—is home for us. A place where we are at peace together because we are together.

A Time a Lawyer Taught Me Something

Over the weekend I shared a story on Twitter about an experience I had early in my career with an opposing attorney.

Here's the Tweet thread.

People frequently crap on lawyers (often for good reason) so here's my story--one I've never shared before:

I was in my first couple years of practice and had taken on a pro bono civil rights case. I was super nervous but excited to do it. I had a big hearing coming up.

— Eli McCann (@EliMcCann) May 9, 2020

For easier reading, here's the text of the story:

People frequently crap on lawyers (often for good reason) so here's my story--one I've never shared before: I was in my first couple years of practice and had taken on a pro bono civil rights case. I was super nervous but excited to do it. I had a big hearing coming up.

Obvious, Even

I just came across a picture in my phone from 2015. It's the first picture I ever took with Skylar.

We had met in person for the first time just the day before this. I had flown to Cleveland to go to a wedding with him. I thought I was being crazy. I've told that whole story before.

I felt like a crazy person for trekking halfway across the country to meet up with an internet stranger, but I convinced myself this would make a fun story no matter how it turned out. I felt like when I looked back much later in my life I would probably regret not taking chances like this and being a little more spontaneous while I was young and single. There was very little chance that I would later regret having done this. I mean, if it went bad enough, I would just be murdered and therefore not really able to regret anything at all.

This Supposed End of the World

On Friday night Skylar started having a meltdown.

To give you some perspective, his meltdowns don't look like mine. Mine are like the Chernobyl disaster. His are more of a "I've slightly burned the crust."

But since he has them so infrequently, they are very unsettling when they do happen.

I was recently trying to explain to some coworkers what it's like to live with him. He's unlike anyone I've ever met. Somehow simultaneously productive and accomplished while also blissfully unaware. "He's the only perfectly calm and easygoing person I've ever met who is completely frozen by crisis," I said.

We're lucky that we're different in this way. I'm a constant stress case. Every muscle in my body has been constantly flexed since at least 2008. His daily energy, on the other hand, is very much like those old Mickey Mouse cartoons back when he looked much creepier, but was usually seen briskly walking, his arms swinging in front of him in enthusiastic propulsion, a chipper whistle coming from his puckered lips.

The BYU Honor Code

Hi, Strangers. We're self-quarantining at my house since the whole world is exploding. Bob and Cathie called me yesterday to tell me church was canceled. They sounded so alive. Then they read multiple memes about the Coronavirus they had found on Facebook and giggled into the phone.

Skylar, Duncan, and I are taking turns sharing our one Snuggie between the three of us. How, after all these years, do I still only have the one Snuggie? I should have started a collection by now.

Anyway, I wrote a thing for The Beehive about being gay at BYU in 2008. There's been a lot of discussion of the topic in recent weeks--lot's of fighting about the Honor Code and LGBTQ people. I've mostly avoided letting myself get angry, because I don't know if that would be productive for me and plus I don't have time to be angry because eating and TV.

I felt like I needed to share a perspective on this that I think is maybe getting a little lost amid the technical details, so that's what I did. I would love it if you would check it out here and give it some thought.

Love you all. Stay safe.

1+1=Furrrever, even when we're quarantined.

~It Just Gets Stranger

Forever?

A few years ago I started having ongoing debates with a friend about whether the existence of an afterlife is scarier or less scary than there being no afterlife. She was devoutly religious--Mormon--but she said about once a year she would wake up in a panic, thinking "OMG what if I'm totally wrong and there is no God!?"

She said she has to force herself not to think about this possibility because it freaks her out so much. As she was telling me this I started laughing, because apparently I'm insensitive in the face of another person's most terrifying vulnerability.

Really, though, I found it so funny because my whole life I have literally had the exact inverse of this fear. When I was a kid I went through this phase for about a year where the thought of living forever kept me up at night.

"What will I even do, forever?" I remember thinking. "Eventually I'll run out of TV shows to watch."

I got to a point that I had to force myself to stop thinking about this because it was not productive.

I told this friend that I could not relate to her fear because what she's essentially contemplating is the possibility of a thing you can never possibly confirm. Because the only way to find out there is no afterlife is to die and cease to exist, but if you cease to exist you can't know, well, anything. Because you no longer exist.

Children

One thing they don't tell you when you choose to be gay is that family planning is going to be complicated.

No one told me that. When they sat me down to unveil the gay agenda, Judy and Liza basically only focused on outfits and sass. Not a single warning about how frustrating it would be to visit so many houses without permission to completely remodel them.

And not a word about how hard it would be to not have children.

From time to time I see friends with infertility problems write about the struggle online. It breaks my heart. I feel so sad for anyone who struggles to bring children into this world when they really want to, or to find children in this world when they really want to.

I know that's a sensitive subject. I know we're supposed to tread lightly on that subject. I know as a dude I'm not supposed to fully understand the devastation a woman who wants to get pregnant experiences when she can't get pregnant.

I wouldn't want, for a second, to pretend I understand anyone's experience in this area besides my own. If you're going through this heartache, I'm sorry. I love you. And, actually, I take it back. I do sort of understand.

The Only Footprints I Shall Leave

I walked out onto the beach. It was sunny, already pretty warm even though it was only 9:30 AM. There aren't waves in the water in Palau. Not really. The coral reef extends miles outward and hugs the body of islands. The water at the islands' edges is calm. Quiet. Shallow. Warm.

The beach was mostly empty. A Japanese tourist was slowly slapping his fins in the water, his face down, beads of saltwater shooting out of his snorkel as he blew to clear it out. Twenty feet from him a man in a speedo tried to get his toddler to float on his back. "Maladyets," he congratulated the boy. Russian.

I was wearing pants and a white t-shirt. My only clean clothes. This was our last morning in Palau.

I stopped, my feet dipped in the water, and looked out at a small island two miles away, just off a little to the right. No more than 20 square feet, the island used to be the home of one single palm tree that leaned a little to the left. I used to sit on this same beach and stare at that island and that one palm tree. It used to calm me for some reason. The palm tree is now gone. I don't know what happened to it.

The last time I had a last day in Palau was in 2013. I spent some time alone then as well. I was a little more frantic that day. I worked in my office until the night before moving back to the U.S. I spent my final hours wrapping up my personal life. I had underestimated how long it would take to clean out my large apartment and ship some boxes home.

The Year Of

We flew into Salt Lake City a few hours ago and I'm trying desperately not to fall asleep until at least 9:00 PM. I don't think I've really slept for about 30 hours. At the moment it feels like a Biblical miracle that my brain has been able to conjure up enough unique words to write these sentences so far.

Am I a saint now? Is that how that works?

I don't have the capacity to write what I want to write about leaving Palau, so I'll save that for next week. Instead I want to tell you about my theme for 2020, and I want to hear yours as well (or whatever resolutions/goals you have).

I started doing the yearly themes when I was living in Palau at the beginning of 2013. I had always been a resolutions person, even though those typically went as well for me as they do for most people. Determination and dedication, for a few weeks. Then a falter and total abandonment.

In Palau I was really struggling, and I realized that I needed, desperately, to change something. At the time I believed a huge part of my problem was an attitude issue. I was very much in the depths of despair and flailing in my Palauan life. So one afternoon while sitting in my little suffocating office I decided to make a concerted effort to stop thinking of that office as suffocating.

He'll Love Palau

A high energy version of "Walkin' in a Winter Wonderland" is blasting through a not-so-bad sound system embedded in the airport ceiling. It's New Year's Day. I think the clock struck midnight in Salt Lake City about twenty minutes ago. I may be wrong about that. I've been disoriented since Christmas. I'm not sure I could guess the day of the week right now.

My sister just commented that the sky outside looks like a painting. A group of Filipino teenagers are posing for group selfies ten feet from me--not a single photo has achieved unanimous consent. It's fine. They have 90 minutes until our flight leaves.

I'm in Guam. The last time I sat in these seats--these exact seats, if my memory is correct--I plucked out a blog post on this site using a much heavier laptop that had a battery that kept falling out. This was almost exactly seven years ago to the day. I had gone on a weekend trip to Guam. Daniel needed to take a test for a grad school program he was thinking of pursuing and the closest place where it was proctored was this slightly bigger island two hours away.

I went with him because I desperately needed to get out of Palau, where I had been living for about four months at that point. This was near my rockest of rock bottoms. At that time I was waking up every morning, my sheets drenched in sweat, geckos skittering across the walls, piles of laundry molding and mildewing because I hadn't quite figured out yet how to properly store them by spreading them out on flat surfaces to prevent this.

2019

Every year when I write my year-end post I try to think about what made the last twelve months "good." There certainly have been years in which that task was harder than others; but even then, I can usually think of a reason the year was valuable. I learned something and became a stronger person, for example.

I'm proud of those times, of course. We become the best versions of ourselves because of storms, not naps. But I have to say it really was wonderful that in 2019 I got to just breathe a little. I kept myself busy, yes. I got stressed from work from time-to-time. But this really was just such a lovely year for me. I'm sorry if it wasn't for you. I know how that is, and I don't mean to brag now.