Hi.
I am still a human being with flesh, bones, and knees that have begun to make this eerie creaking noise when I stand too quickly or think of the number "30" for too long. I haven't exactly been active on this website in something like 9 years and I haven't even attempted to post anything since 2018, apparently. The time really does fly.
You'll have to excuse the lazier format of this update compared to some of my older posts. I'd like to go truly balls to the wall with modern illustrations and really just rock everyone's socks with how much I've improved all around in the past decade but I'm currently without my drawing tablet and life has been as ever fucked.
As I'm 80% sure I've mentioned in the past but am too lazy to scroll down and confirm, I was in a pretty gosh dang serious relationship for a while there. That was pretty cool. We're no longer together because she died tragically of hypothermia but we had two sons, moved around for a while, and all kinds of crazy shit one person can do in the span of 9 years without the crippling pressure and righteous authority of blog moderation to distract yourself.
The truth is, I have so much to tell you. So much has happened in these years that I don't know where to begin and none of it is small fish. At least not in the context of you reading a literal blog where I talk about my life.
So where do I begin? Do I talk about her? I'd rather not.
Do I talk about the actual lives I've brought into this world with their own hobbies, interests, and identities separate from either me or her? I could.
Do I tell you how I'm currently on HRT and have come out as transgender since my last post?
Actually sitting here and seeing the words on this website of all places slowly fill out in front of me as I write them is surreal and more than a little whelming. I have developed such a fear of touching the TCK name at all in this lost notion that I have to have something really crisp and quality to justify blowing the dust off. TCK is so important to me even after all these years even if it has evolved beyond this blog in my mind. I want to publish under TrenchCoatKidd some day, whether it's comics, movies, whatever the hell I end up doing with my life.
In fact I think I've talked myself into what I want to address in today's topic: What the hell is it that I want to do? A poetic place to break that down, I think. I've spent a decade not really moving an inch only to recently come to accept that I don't need to go anywhere. I want to write, I am a writer at heart and the hilarious thing is I knew that way back when I started this. That's WHY I started this. I've been so lost and disoriented in my own mind, my own mental health and insecurities. I've been clawing and begging for an answer or epiphany of some kind when I now believe the answer all along is to just ignore the fucking question and move on. I'm never gonna 'cure' being myself, I'm never gonna wrap myself in this metaphorical cocoon I've imagined and emerge as this fictional, romanticized version of myself without flaws. I am Levi. Or Lex, Heidi, whatever you want to call me. I don't really care.
This post itself is an ironic little microcosm of my new approach to things. I don't really know what to say, I don't feel like I've "justified" a new post under the TCK name, and every part of me is screaming to STOP what I'm doing and begin overthinking. Yet here I am, writing. Right now. I'm doing it as the words show up. This is crazy!
I have so many ideas for stories and projects I want to do and more than a couple of them are really unique and interesting if you ask me but none of them have gotten anywhere. Because I don't sit down and WRITE.
I have a science fiction comic I came up with actually around 2013 when this blog was still a thing I did, it's evolved and become so complex and experimental and beautiful (in my mind) that I can't wait to see what it turns into. I liken it to "sci-fi Lord of the Flies" and it's basically my baby.
I have an indie horror movie I have decided to make my main priority right now. I don't want to say too much about it because the nature of the story is very 'twisty' and mysterious, so it's a difficult plot to pitch without giving away the meat of it early. Suffice to say at a glance it's your fairly safe ghost tale, a woman is being haunted by an aggressive spirit. Suffice it to also say, things end up being a lot less cut and dry than that as she discovers why it's happening and what the Specter's true motives are throughout the film.
I have a dark comedy called "How To Kill The Devil" (I'm willing to name drop this one apparently) that I REALLY want to be a low budget flick. Not even because I am inherently and perpetually poor, but I love the idea of vaguely shitty practical effects for it and embracing a rough-around-the-edges 'fun' tone for the story. I have also considered reimagining it as a Stephen King influenced trilogy of novels. The simplest way to put it is that I'm willing to make it a Stephen King book but I'd really like to make it as a Sam Raimi film. If you're unfamiliar with either of those names then you won't get my point but this train stops for no one and we're moving on.
Throw in little filler writing here and there I want to do like this blog itself, journaling privately, fan fiction (looking at you, Saw franchise), and using online "writing prompts" to just get some practice in. All this is a long winded way at arriving at the point that I like to talk and I wanna talk at the world through writing. I have way more than enough to keep me busy, to such an extent that it feels like there's not enough time in the day to do it all.
Imagine if I did, though? Imagine if I did do the 'clear' BZZZT thing on this blog and bring it back to life.
The age of 17 is the best time of my life as far as pride directly in myself and the things I was doing. Back when I was really running this blog, I was writing a spinoff cartoon based on the little toon characters from this blog, hell I even wrote a comedy movie I was gonna make with my buddy Watson!
Defibrillator is what I was thinking of earlier, by the way. I lost the word.
I've wanted to make movies for such a long time but for some reason had just convinced myself my time was over. That's a theme I've noticed in the past 10 years, this resigned acceptance to miserable fates as early as 20 years old like I'm locked in for life. I remember working at a job I DESPISED when Sam got pregnant with our first kid and I convinced myself I had to buckle down even harder and accept that joy was something of the past. I gained 100 pounds, developed a drinking problem, anxiety that I'm dealing with to this day, and was fired anyway! While I'm all for challenging yourself and definitely understand wanting to do right by your family, beating myself down with this idea that I had no place for happiness in my life did no one any favors. And look where it led me. If I could go back and tell 21 year old me that 7 years later I'd no longer be working at that job, I'm not even in that relationship at all anymore, and the kids are fine it'd blow his mind. It'd probably also destroy him. Yet all these years later, none of it REALLY mattered much. My son got fed and I'm still alive and in a new chapter now and for the most part decisions I agonized over during that miserable time in my life don't really leave much ripples in my current day anymore.
After getting fired from that job my next self flagellation of "I need to completely tear up and rebuild my life and FIX myself" after was probably when I moved to Washington state. Moving itself isn't such a terrible thing, but I think the somewhat theatrical mentality of my home being a thing of the PAST and I have to run away, start over, build a new chapter etc. was another instance of searching for answers I'd never find. Moving is cool and new chapters are great, but it wasn't what I was needing to do.
After Washington we moved back home and tried to begin our suburban life working 9 to 5's and raising 2 kids. This is when things really began to end for us and where, if I could do it all again, I'd have ended the relationship. This would be about 2018/2019. I won't say too much out of respect for my ex's privacy, but take my word for it that we dragged out what should have been a hasty end for years longer than we should have. I think the writing was on the wall 5 years ago but we kept hoping one day we'd just accidentally be happy again. We were not.
That's a pretty good example of what I do, I think. I end up in a job I can't stand and destroy my mental health for years to come, tolerating the place way longer than I should. I couldn't fix the problems or leave my relationship and tolerated it way longer than I should. Next thing I know, years have passed. And all I can really remember from the past 10 years is long stretches of being unhappy and doing nothing about it. That's the kicker, I wouldn't work on it. I wouldn't even really consider it. I'd just think it'd get better one day?
That's not even true. I didn't think it would ever get better. I didn't really believe better was possible anymore. I've thought for a long time that I'm a failure, I became so depressed and put on so much weight, buried myself in a bottle. I wasted my 20's, objectively. I kept thinking maybe some grand gesture would break me into place, like going and being trained by monks. I actually considered that multiple times, going away to some foreign country and living in a temple for a while to be taught how to find peace. That's the dramatic, intense level of desperate I'd become just to feel acceptable when I wake up in the morning.
I feel acceptable now, by the way. We'll get to that.
But that's how I spent my life in my 20's. I just sat in the muck and the filth with my arms crossed and complained that I have muck and filth all over me. I'd completely quit writing and working on my art (other than the occasional burst of drawing here and there), I'd began consuming nothing but garbage food and alcohol, I'd work jobs I hate all day, argue with a woman I really did care about all night, and try to spend as much of the inbetween time as possible drunk off my ass. And my life wasn't even that bad, I just didn't do anything. I was wasting my life and counting down the minutes until the next day where I'd do the same damn thing. Like, let's pick a random age. 24. I am SWEATING to think of something I did when I was 24. I think that's when I worked at Papa John's. That was an okay time, I guess.
I was a miserable fucking person, have we established that? Are we all on the same page that I felt pretty fucking shitty about myself and something inside of me was boiling? Great. Because everything fell apart. Lost all the jobs I'd had obviously, lost the relationship that had been the whole POINT of my life for the past decade, my Mom and I are no longer on speaking terms and likely never will be, my Dad's side of the family are all on the verge of killing each other. Like in every direction, my life fell apart in front of me almost all at once. Some of it was my own fault because of the ball of contemptuous misery I'd crafted myself into.
Skipping to the point, I do think I eventually found the answers once the dust settled. My theory is that the answer was to just stop asking the fucking questions. The answer isn't to go burn down my whole life and start over in some monk temple learning the ways of the stick. It's not for me, anyway. I think the whole time it was as simple as "Shut the fuck up."
"Shut the fuck up, Levi."
And I don't mean to be self deprecating but honestly just calm down, yeah? Quit stressing over how I'm gonna fix it all, what stars I need to align and just do what makes me happy and the chances are decent I'll just fucking be happy one day. I've known I want to be trans since I was 17, so I came out. Alcohol was causing me problems, so I'm now 7 months completely sober. Writing makes me feel good about myself, so here I am writing at you. If anyone is listening. Is anyone listening? I just picture myself saying this into the void and I'm fine with that. It's kind of just occurring to me that people might actually read this.
I'm gonna go on a weird tangent but I swear this circles back around to whatever our main theme here is.
So I really like the movie Clerks 2
No, no. Just bear with me.
Kevin Smith and Clerks was what initially got me interested in film making. Way before I fell in love with the Saw franchise and attempted to amputate my foot. Something about the incredibly indie feel of Kevin's movies at the time made me acutely aware for the first time (since I was like 11 or 12) that these movies were actually MADE. Human beings were using cameras and scripts and crafting these movies.
Eventually Clerks 2 came out and I fell in love with it. I still love the hell out of Clerks 2, and it was the first time I was REALLY taking the development of a movie in. I was thinking about the soundtrack used, the continuity from other movies, the casting choices, etc. It was the first movie I was really watching as a project and not just getting immersed in it. That sounds bad, right? Clerks 2 was the first time I wasn't completely immersing myself in the story and seeing it as fake. I swear it's a good thing to me and sort of kickstarted the more creative, art project oriented perspective I look at things with now.
I probably wouldn't have gotten to Rocko and Jake if I didn't watch Clerks 2 the way that I had. And say what you will, I loved Rocko and Jake.
All of this is arriving at a turning point I eventually reached after my divorce. We were technically like common law only but we had 2 kids and a house etc so it felt like a divorce. It's my life and my ex girlfriend who died tragically of hypothermia in 2008 and I'll do what I fucking please. Anyway, as you'd expect from a divorce after 10 years, I began self reflecting. Finding myself. To my surprise, this didn't come in the form of that cocoon I'd been wanting for so long. Quite the opposite, it's been something of a regression? But a nice one. I'm thinking and feeling so many thoughts and feelings that I'd practically forgotten in my time with Samantha. My passion for writing, my love of horror movies, all of this shit that made me feel nothing lately are starting to be fun again. And that's the biggest difference, things are FUN again. I didn't realize how much fun I wasn't fucking having until recently.
The best way I can describe the difference is that when I'd watch a movie last year it was to drown out the thoughts and kill 2 hours. When I watch a movie now it's because I thought it looked like fun. I've fallen in love with Saw again (in a healthy way this time, for my old school readers! I promise.) I feel so nostalgic for writing, I have no one left in my life that makes me unhappy, I'm sober and healthier. In this transition I eventually stumbled across Clerks 3 I couldn't previously get motivated to watch. Now with my new "fuck it, I'm gonna enjoy my evening" approach to life I thought 'oh what a treat' and put it on.
This is where I reached the big lesson from all of this. It wasn't the divorce or falling out with my whole family. Nah, in spectacularly 'me' fashion, it was Clerks 3.
Spoiler warning as well as a disclaimer that I don't think Clerks 3 was a masterpiece but it felt like the movie I needed to see.
The movie revolves primarily around my favorite character, Randall, having a heart attack and ending up in the hospital. Faced with his own mortality and aging, he realizes he's lived his whole life around movies. He thinks about movies constantly, watches movies constantly, talks about them with Dante, etc. It's what gets him out of bed every day, but he's never dipped his own hand into that world. Randall never made a movie.
Just like I've never actually MADE one of my million projects.
2023 has been a perfect domino effect of events that I was in desperate need of. As I slowly inched my way back into taking shit easier, enjoying being alive, and having more fun in the moment it was almost like fate decided I was ready for the next big message. I need to write again. I need to "make my movie" and I don't want to have to go through a heart attack to start doing it. This feels particularly poignant for me that Clerks was the series that got me interested in making movies. Then out of nowhere, the actual plot of the third one is to stop being a pussy and do what makes you happy because our time is limited. Like an old part of my life came back at the perfect time to tell me to be me again.
So one thing is for certain, I write again. I watch movies, I have fun, and I write. I don't know how much of it is going to actually be good but I'm here aren't I? I'm closer to 'good writing' than I was getting drunk and hoping I'll die. I'll only improve. So I'm gonna do it. And do it. And do it. Until I wind up with something to be proud of eventually.
I hope to see you there.
