Things got dark, medicine got weird, and I was starting to come off the rails.

It was mostly fun, being betamax3000. Back in the Day. I was pushing my creative boundaries and enjoying the Althouse Experience. Bob Dylan Robot, etc etc. Still happy with some of what I wrote, chagrined by some others of course. I sort of bounced off the walls, really. And the years of Title Case: yeah, maybe I could have done without that. But not wasted time, I believe.

Perhaps the rose-colored glasses of memory, but I believe that it was one of the many Althouse Golden Ages. We are in another one now. Probably what the Table of Contents would call 'The Post-Retirement Years'.

After a while I began to feel like I was willingly putting myself in a box. I then would extricate myself from that box, and wind up in another. It didn't matter much at the time: I was an Escape Artist.

Then the fire went out. I was having what the doctor referred to as suicidal ideation. Things got dark, medicine got weird, and I was starting to come off the rails. I have since made peace with these thoughts, and treat them as the occasional storm that passes through. The occasional tree gets blown over, sometimes. Anyway: Alive and Kicking, as the old Simple Minds song went -- that one with the overly loud drums and overly emotive voice, as was the style of the time.

As for 'james james': when I was a kid, another kid named James moved into the neighborhood. People would distinguish by saying James or James-James, meaning the first one. I was James-James.

That is not a true story, but it will suffice.

betamax3000 was here.

james james is here.



-jj

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