Some notes on my recent absence / YNR's future...

I've been sick (and busy)

Howdy drongoloids!

The crushing weight of Catholic-adjacent guilt has finally toppled down on me, leaving me lookin’ like a can of Pasito in my uncle’s old tinny crusher. I know I have not been keeping up with my substack duties much this past couple of months, and I thought it’s time I finally tell yaz why. There’s a few simple reasons, really.

1. I have bipolar.

This is encompasses most of it, honestly. I’ve written about my travails with the swing-states elsewhere, often, and at some length, and though I try to avoid the Truama4Content mines as much as I can these days, the reality is, I still live with this werewolf’s curse of a “mental illness.”

Bipolar makes it tricky to do things consistently (relationships, jobs, religious zealotry, interest in Evel Knievel etc), and a newsletter is no exception.

I got COVID a few months ago, was bed ridden for almost two weeks, and this was followed by a very bad flu, that also had me bedridden for another week. I had been running pretty manic for the first part of the year (as per usual, summer always sets one off) and crashed pretty hard with this bout of bed-bound chest rattling coughing fits. I also stopped taking my medication, as there wasn’t much point in doing so while unable to do much of anything (a classic mistake I love to make).

Then I got fired/quit my awful disability support job (these guys are SO loud!!!), and that was a tad, uhh, destabilising, as much as I hated that gig.

Then the book came out (buy NOCK LOOSE). Mania is a lot of things, but at its ‘best’ it is feeling like a Golden God Boy Genius put on this Earth to translate the whispers of the unseen eternals unto ye untapped pleboids. Its fire (in my case) is easily stoked by 1) attention 2) praise 3) success. Nock Loose has garnered me a fair amount of all three, and I could/can feel the rave reviews and the fawning crowds at the book launches tipping me into mania — a mania I am still riding, if managing.

Either way, it can feel a bit like surfing bareback on a galloping Shadowfax, so a lot of attention and energy goes into holding on for dear life, which leaves little attention or energy left over for this substack.

So, I’m sorry for my waywardness. I have booked a lobotomy and will return to regular posting as soon as my frontal lobe is scraped clean by The Good Doctor.

2. Book Tour

I’ve been on a self-funded book tour this past month, launching Nock Loose in Sydney and Melbourne. I tend to lose track of my responsibilities when I’m not home in my Hobbit hole (god sorry for all the lotr metaphors, I have been doing this character called “Transphobic Gandalf” and it must have bubbled things up), and the lack of a decent workspace these past three weeks has made it hard for me to sit down and write.

This, coupled with the mania (which also goes wild whenever I’m on the road), has meant I’ve been largely unable to get any work done this month. I’ll be in a nice-enough hotel as of tomorrow, it has a nice desk, and I’m looking forward to getting back to it.

3. Substack bums me out

I’m writing more on this soon, but I find this forum deeply depressing. It’s mainly the timeline posts, and the sort of pick-me vibe of the Hermione Granger types who post those awful updates about wanting to write while never writing. I wouldn’t mind this so much if they have bipolar, but they’re seemingly just boring sane types hamstrung by their fundamental basicitude. That’s fine, I just wish they’d fuck-off and or shut up.

I also just miss existing as a freelance writer in a healthy-ish (well, compared to now) media ecosystem where my years of hard work and talent and ability meant I could easily make a living writing about politics and culture for well read and respected publications. That’s all over now it seems, which is a bummer, seeing as I pissed away so much of my life on that farce. Ah well!

Anyway….

YNR will return to its regular programming real soon. This week, hopefully. I’m home as of the 25th, and once settled, it’ll be much easier for me to fire defamatory takes on Australian politics and culture off.

So again, sorry for being a slacker, and especially sorry to my paid subscribers, who no doubt are missing their weekly YEAHS & NAHS.

On that note, one way to help keep me relatively sane is to become a paying subscriber to YNR. My goal is to eventually have this place be my main source of income. Every little bit helps my unemployed manic-ass rn. Do you know how expensive mania is? Having absolutely no self control leads to you buying a lot of things you do not need, I tell you h’wut.

Anyway, cheers for being patient with me. Love yaz.

Patrick