Yes, Its Getting Better All the Time

I was sitting at Egret Cafe and Dance Bar, still buzzing from a self-improvement podcast. The guest was one of those recognized thought leaders whose new personal-growth book was making the rounds and checking all the pop-culture boxes.

I felt inspired, ready to push beyond the limitations of the last decade and finally become the person I want to be.

But here’s the thing: I can’t do it alone. Self-improvement isn’t just about me. It’s about Princess Amy too. She’s the gatekeeper of my emotional state, controlling whether I feel motivated or terrified, whether I move forward or freeze.

As I savored the first sip of my cortado, her voice drifted up from the chaise lounge in my midbrain.

“I know exactly what you’re thinking, Goofball,” she said. “You got all pumped up listening to that podcast, and now you want me to cooperate with your self-improvement schemes so you can grow and engage and become your best self.”

She delivered those three words in a scoffing whine.

“I respect your optimism,” she said. “I really do. But self-improvement is a mousetrap with a really convincing cheese ad, and I’m not falling for it.”

“I haven’t made my pitch yet, Amy. You could at least hear me out.”

“Nope. I’m projecting your pitch. You’re very predictable, and I say that with affection and an unhealthy dose of exasperation.”

“Okay, fair. But, look, I want to actually be the person I know I could be. I’m fed up with getting halfway to the finish line.”

I took another sip of Jah's mercy because I didn’t know what else to do. Somehow, it felt like putting a period at the end of the sentence.

“That foamy brew is delish,” Amy said, reminding me that she shares all my experiences.

“I know everything about you, Cowboy. I literally live in your head, which is why I can tell you the truth,” she said gently, probably to distract me from the obvious disambiguation of living in my head and telling me the truth. 

“Any time you improve something, it doesn't make you feel better. You just discover five new ways you’re supposedly broken. You’re a Russian nesting doll, except every smaller doll contains a different flavor of anxiety.”

“I just want to finish the things I care about, Amy. I want to accomplish something. I want to stop treating my projects like hobbies that I’ll get to when Mercury isn’t retrograde.”

“You mean Crystal Cove,” Amy said. “The novel you’ve been ‘working on’ since the Pleistocene Ice Age.”

“No, not that; I’ve given up on writing a novel. I sometimes can't see to finish a fifteen-minute podcast.”

“I know,” Amy said, her tone softening. “But here’s what I’ve learned from my front-row seat in your nervous system: the moment you start making progress at something, you move the finish line farther away. Then you either go berserk with anxiety or have a full-blown manic episode. It’s like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, thinking it will help to avoid icebergs.”

“That’s a very specific reference.”

“You have very specific kinds of anxiety,” Amy said. “But look, I worry about you. I really do.”

This surprised me.

“Worry about me?”

“Of course. I’m you, and you’re me. That brings us to the fundamental problem. You want to push forward as if you’re training for the Self-Improvement Olympics. I want to keep you alive. Those are genuinely different goals.”

“But if I don’t push, nothing changes. We might be comfortable, but we don’t grow. We think we’re secure, but we’re really just collecting dust.”

“We’re staying alive,” Amy countered. “Which is somewhat overrated as a benefit, but it does have some perks. Accepting yourself as a work in progress, unfinished but not broken, is more honest than pretending you can hack your way to happiness with a vision board and affirmations.”

“Your voice is literally what makes me anxious, Amy, and now you’re telling me to accept things as they are. The irony is as thick as...”

“Don’t say it, Buddy Boy. I can’t take another one of your metaphors.”

“I’m not pretending that writing enough pages or meditating the right way will make me feel eternally fulfilled and happy,” I protested.

“It won’t,” Amy said. “You’ll feel tired, vaguely guilty, and convinced you’re doing it wrong, which is its own special hell.”

“So what’s your solution? Just... surrender?”

“I prefer strategic retreat. My solution is keeping you off social media before you turn it into evidence of your personal failure. Maybe we could simply enjoy everyday life without conducting a cost-benefit analysis in real time.”

“I want both,” I said. “Leisure time and the podcast.”

Amy went quiet.

“Okay,” she said finally. “You’re right, and I hate when you’re right, but we’ll never move forward if I’m constantly hitting the brakes. But we’ll never be okay if you’re always pushing the gas pedal to the floor.”

I was genuinely surprised—and a little nonplussed. I can’t remember the last time she seemed so supportive.

“So what does that look like? Practically speaking?”

“It means you keep pushing so we don’t calcify,” Amy said. “And I apply the brakes to stop you from working so hard that you need six months in bed to recover. We’re both trying to take care of you. We just use completely different playbooks.”

“That’s actually pretty wise," I said. "Although I’d like to renegotiate the 11:30 p.m. anxiety spirals. The ones that convince me I’ll spontaneously combust if I don’t get out of bed and check the front door.”

“Those are important midnight wellness checks,” she said. “Non-negotiable. But I’ll take your feedback under advisement. Remember, I'm the manager of the limbic system; I have four hundred million years of evolution behind me. I’ve learned a few things. And here’s what I know: I like you. Even when you drive me up the wall, which is most of the time.”

“I like you too,” I said. “Even at 11:30 p.m.”

“We’re on the same side,” she said. “A two-person operation that happens to occupy one body.”

“A team,” I said. “I like that.”

“Good,” she said. “Now finish that coffee while it’s warm. Those almond croissants are calling our names, and we're going to need the sugar.”

Monarch of Halloween

Welcome back, and thank you for helping me set an all-time record for monthly views. In September, The Journey recorded 408,759 views, our fifteenth consecutive month of record-breaking traffic. More than 90,000 people visited in a single day. It was incredible, and hard to believe, especially since I'd done nothing to trigger a viral event of that magnitude.

"Which is exactly why it happened," Amy said from her usual seat behind my left eyebrow. "Your strategy of doing nothing finally paid off. But pace yourself, Genome. Don't peak early."

"Fifteen months, Amy," I retorted. "That's hardly early."

"It is for you."

Now, I know your time is valuable, and your attention, like mine, has been diverted by the news that Apple TV is offering It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown free all weekend, October 17 and 18. We're not alone in our excitement. People lined up outside Starbucks before dawn to be the first on their block to own one of the new Snoopy cold cups, inspired by that same 1966 television classic. Somewhere, in some lonely javaporium, a barista has seen things.

As an aside, I'm not a fan of the horror motif that has dominated Halloween over the last decade. The official position of The Circular Journey is that the Peanuts franchise is Halloween's rightful monarch.

I say this as a man who receives a daily dose of dread from the princess. She's in the horror business, much like Stephen King. She can replay something I regret saying in 1994, or convince me that my front-left tire has critically low air pressure while I'm crossing the Cape Fear Bridge. She has turned my mind into a haunted house, which she prefers to call a "Fun House."

"Peanuts is the rightful monarch?" she asked when I finished the previous paragraph. "Fine, Bucko, but I'm Lucy. I hold the football, you try to kick it. That's our agreement."

But wait, I've jumped the rails again. I promised to get into the gist of this post without rambling. So, in that spirit, I'll quote Sean Carroll: "Let's go."

This morning, only minutes before I began writing this post, I was asleep in bed, wearing an expression that would have alerted a dream researcher that the Genome was deep inside a dream. Amy was off duty, which I mention only because she insists on clocking out at midnight and leaving me with whatever skeleton crew runs the subconscious. Then, in the interstitial space between sleep and waking, the Voice spoke to me.

"Reality is speculative," is what she said.

"Excuse me?" said Amy, who clearly wasn't clocked out as advertised. "Who is that? Is that a woman? Why is there someone in here who isn't me?"

"Go back to sleep, Amy. I've got this."

"I'll go back to sleep when you explain who's been moonlighting in my head. Hey! Show yourself, interloper. I'm in charge here."

Well, I ask you: what was I supposed to do with that? It's not as if I have a superpower or receive pronouncements like this every day. So I did the only thing I could think of. I wrote down what I remembered of the dream before it faded, while Amy muttered something about unionizing.

Here is the transcription of my handwritten notes:

October 17, 4:30 a.m.

Speculative reality: The word speculative means based on guesses, theories, or incomplete information rather than hard facts. Speculative fiction is a broad genre that departs from everyday realism. It asks, "What if?" by introducing supernatural, fantastical, or counterfactual elements into a narrative.

If reality is speculative, then our daily experiences are based on incomplete information and may be confusing, contradictory, or simply wrong. That certainly sums up my reality.

In the dream, I walked onto a baseball field from the far right-field corner. Even from that distance, I could clearly see a batter at the plate with a Louisville Slugger resting on his shoulder. He tossed a ball into the air and swung. The baseball arced high above the outfield and landed beyond the left-field fence.

I was awestruck because the field was at least twice the size of a regulation ballpark. The anomaly fit the idea of speculative reality, and the concept suddenly made sense: the oddball events I experience almost daily may be based on incomplete information. They seem wrong, or so improbable that they approach the impossible.

This dovetails nicely with the Voice's declaration. As for what it means in the larger sense, I'll be damned if I know. If you have any clues, leave a comment. I read them all.

Amy has asked me to make it perfectly clear that she is the only voice in my head. Anyone claiming otherwise is speculating based on incomplete information. Should the Voice return, Amy says she can take her place in line with everyone else and wait her turn for a Snoopy cup. She added that she'll be there holding the football.

A Tide In Affairs

I woke this morning to that old familiar feeling that I was about to explode. You're surely familiar with it. Your legs feel restless, eager to be up and moving. 

You feel that no matter what comes of it, you need to get out on the road and go somewhere; it doesn't matter where. Instead of caffeine, your thoughts turn to cruising down Ocean Highway with Whitney Houston singing I Will Always Love You. 

Lifetime Achievement Award

Beignet Lafayette

Do you remember... of course you do, we're not goldfish after all... that Dolly Parton wrote and first recorded that song? If you're also aware that Dolly Parton is the avatar of Shady Grove, my ancestral home, you might suspect that the old familiar feeling comes around like this only because the Ghost of Shady Grove wants to be remembered. 

The ghost I speak of isn't the spirit of someone long past. It is instead the spirit of all that was perfect in a small boy's life, now lost forever to the passage of time. The specter isn't to be feared unless an overwhelming homesickness and near-panic caused by thoughts of love lost forever are a concern. 

Facing the ghost requires a steeled resolve, if that's the term. And resolve, whether steeled, jellied, or crocheted, has recently been in short supply for the Genome. However, upon waking and remembering something Ms. Wonder once said, I decided to gather what little resolve I had and face the specter. The gag I mentioned goes something like this (I paraphrase, of course): 

There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. 

With the still-green memory of the first time I faced the ghost at the tender age of 5, I took the tide at the flood and, with a burst of resolve, threw back the duvet and sat up in bed to face the rainbow and claim the pot of gold. 

Oh, I'm sorry. I think I'm mixing metaphors, or whatever it is people do sometimes when facing difficulty. What I'm trying to say is that the spirit was indeed willing, but the flesh was weak. That one isn't one of Wonder's; I just heard it somewhere.

Sitting upright, as though ready to face the day, I wasn't surprised to find no pot of gold and no ghost. The anxiety I felt stemmed from the fact that Beignet, the unprecedented Cat of the Year winner for 7 years running, was not in bed next to me. I felt sorely incomplete and eager to be out on the open road, singing I Will Always Love You at full blast. 

Still, the small, quiet voice of reason reminded me of advice from my once-and-future martial arts master, Wen, the Eternally Surprised, who taught me that it's always wise to accept whatever life throws your way. 

"Don't make a drama of it," he said. "Make a musical comedy instead."

He never actually explained the methods one might use to turn a Hollywood drama into a Broadway musical, but I gathered it required sucking it up and getting on with it. Blogging is the only musical comedy I'm familiar with, and, as you know, I'm constantly looking for the bright spots in my days to share with you in The Circular Journey.

And so that brings us to the present moment, where I sit at Egret Cafe and Dance Bar, writing this post. I feel better now after crossing the Memorial Bridge and seeing Wilma's Downtown Business District spread along the Cape Fear River. Always inspiring and just a little exciting, with who knows what wonderful new opportunities waiting there?

By the time I motored into the Castle Street District, everything had been transformed. The birds that once seemed to be in an unending argument were singing as though spring were around the corner rather than fall, which, as we all know, is undoubtedly the case.

Though things came within a hair of falling apart this morning, the flame of fierce qigong never died, and I was able to extricate myself from the looney bin without a stain on my character. Almost no stain. Very little stain. No stains that won't come out in the wash.

What was the turning point? It's no secret. Music, blue skies, birdsong, and remembering what Beignet taught me about taking the tide at the flood. That's right. I first heard the phrase from Ms. Wonder's lips, but no matter who claims the copyright, Beignet always comes to mind when I think of it. So thanks, Ben. I needed that.

And so, my friends, there you have another little episode in the closing quarter of the 2026 season of The Circular Journey. The details of the episode, which my biographers will probably call Down the Waterspout at Midnight, may not be perfectly clear to you, only because they aren't clear to me. 

Memories play a larger role in my salvation than I mention on these pages. Sometimes memories are all we have to rely on, but that's all I'm going to say about it for now. I'll wrap up by saying that it's good to be home again. It is so true what they say: there's no place like it.

Roll the credits!

Still Crazy After all These Years

There are mornings when the universe aligns with such alarming clarity that a man knows, with the bone-deep certainty of someone who has given the matter far too much thought, exactly what he was put on this earth to do.

This very morning was one of those.

I entered Egret Cafe and Dance Bar with my earbuds in, singing along to a song I won't name because naming it invites commentary. The point is, I was enjoying it when my internal auditor’s voice, that’s Princess Amy, cut through the music with the surgical precision of a laser aimed directly at my dignity.

"People are staring," she said.

"Let them stare," I replied, with the serene detachment of a man at peace with his morning.

"Your earbuds aren't plugged in, Duffel Bag."

I looked down. She was right, of course. The cable jack was dangling freely, in a state of cheerful, absolute abandon from the device it was meant to serve.

"But I can still hear the song crystal clear," I offered.

"You can hear it because you know the lyrics by heart. That's your imagination you hear. What everyone else hears is you."

I processed this information, surveyed the pained expressions of nearby patrons, and decided the only dignified response was to pivot briskly and pretend nothing unusual had transpired. It’s a technique refined over a lifetime of practice.

"Never mind that," I said, plugging the jack in with the unhurried calm of someone who had nothing to be embarrassed about and who intended to rely on stout denial if anyone asked questions. 

"I have news. Significant news. I’ve found my 2026 initiative."

"You and your initiatives."

"Don't scoff."

"Fine," she said, using the tone reserved for holding a scoff in tactical reserve. "Where did you actually go, anyway?"

"The distinction is purely academic.”

“You went to Ocean Isle, didn’t you? You always go there when thirsting for a vision.”

The point is, I’m back, and I’ve found my purpose. Are you ready for this?"

"Probably not, but let’s have it."

I leaned forward, striking the pose of a man about to deliver a statement that demands physical gravitas.

"I’m going to become a bounty hunter."

A heavy silence followed.

"A bounty hunter," Amy repeated flatly.

"A bond enforcement agent, if you prefer the technical term. Though 'bounty hunter' has a certain sort of, oh, I don’t know—"

"I’ve warned you," she interrupted. “I’ve warned you so many times about that imagination of yours. I told you that one day it would carry you right over the edge, and now here we are, free-falling."

"I haven't come close to the edge of anything. I’ve done the research."

"You probably watched a movie."

"I read thirty-two novels," I said, drawing myself up. "The complete Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich. Thirty-two, Amy. That’s  a substantial body of professional literature."

"Those are fiction."

"They are extensively researched fiction, written by someone who clearly knows the trade. And furthermore…" I raised a finger to signal my knockout point. "I’ve  nearly finished the entire run of Teenage Bounty Hunters."

"That's a television show," she said. “A series that lasted only one season."

"It deserved a second!” I said with considerable heat because I'm still extremely miffed that Netflix cancelled the show. “I’m certain the pandemic is the cause of its short run," I said. "The timing alone—"

"The timing had nothing to do with it, and you know it."

"The point," I pressed on, maintaining the momentum of a man fully committed to his vision, "is that if teenagers can do it, I can do it. That’s an entirely reasonable position."

"It is an absurd position."

"There's no licensing exam, Amy! No formal qualifications required. It is something a person can simply decide to be."

"And yet," Amy said, "even though there are no obstacles to becoming one, most people don't."

"Most people haven't read thirty-two books on the subject."

When she spoke again, her voice carried the quiet sympathy reserved for someone delivering bad news to the hopelessly optimistic.

"Genome," she said, "the Universe may well be leading you by the hand. I’m just suggesting you might want to ask where it's leading before you have to explain yourself to a judge."

I paused there to muse on her words because I was genuinely charmed by the whole exchange. This is what Amy does, and she does it magnificently: she engages every debate with the same fierce, loyal, completely unreasonable opposition, as though the quality of her resistance is itself a form of love. I've come to treasure it, even when I have absolutely no intention of changing course.

I sat with that for a moment, observing the morning rhythms of the coffee shop: the barista, the patrons who had just witnessed my live unplugged performance, and I pondered destiny, initiative, and the thirty-two paperbacks currently stuffed into my nightstand.

"That's a fair point," I admitted.

"It's the only point," she said. "But I appreciate you acknowledging it."

I inserted the earbuds and Dolly Parton’s "9 to 5" was playing. The song speaks volumes and, if I know anything about manifest destiny, it fully vindicates my strategy.

There are mornings when the universe aligns with perfect clarity, and there are afternoons when it plays reruns of Jack Parr's Tonight Show. I've decided to trust mornings. After all, a man who can sing an entire song with his earbuds unplugged has already proven he can perform without a net. 

My 2026 initiative needs no further research. Stephanie Plum managed just fine, and if she explained herself to a judge more than a few times. That's a detail best saved for volume thirty-three.

Mindfleet Contagion

The dashboard metrics spiked in June of 2025, about one week after posting the first episode of Mindspace: Into the Melancholy Nebula. In my line of work, a sudden steep incline on a traffic chart usually means one of two things: a server script has gone rogue and is trapped in an infinite loop, or a botnet in Eastern Europe has developed an inexplicable, burning passion for my vintage vocabulary.

I waited for the page to freeze or the blog to crash. Neither happened. The number of viewers just kept rising, with the calm indifference of a tide with no particular place to go.

Naturally, an investigation was required. Why had all of you suddenly decided to congregate inside The Circular Journey Cafe? The forensic analysis confirmed the numbers were clean. It marked an organic, honest-to-goodness surge of actual human eyeballs. Viewers became followers. Followers became a real audience. Writing into the digital void is the accepted standard formula, but having the void respond with enthusiasm is a joyful plot twist that exceeded my expectations.

To those of you who hit the subscribe button, forwarded a link, or simply lingered long enough to finish a paragraph, I am over-the-top grateful. Thank you.

The Viral Spike

The analytic evidence points to episodes having a few recurring themes that seem to have done the heavy lifting. Here is how the numbers broke down, and the storylines that prompted the universe to ratchet up the viewer response.

The Captain’s Stardate Log

A massive portion of the new crowd arrived because of Captain Amy, the highly critical, easily alarmed commander of my internal mindship, the FMS Coastal Voyager. Amy is tasked with leading a volatile crew of Mindfleet Academy officers through the roiling emotional storms of the Melancholy Nebula. Think of this series as a mashup of the original Star Trek television series and Pixar's animated movie, Inside Out, and filtered through the sensibility of someone who has read far too much and slept far too little.

In a perfectly neuro-stable universe, the amygdala, that almond-shaped cluster of brain cells responsible for threat assessment, is supposed to maintain calm during emotional turbulence. Amy’s preferred protocol, however, is to bypass the logic gates entirely and open fire with emotional phasers on full scatter-shot.

Apparently, a remarkable number of you deeply identify with having a reactionary commander shrieking unhelpful, panicked orders from the command console while the ship-wide alert system flashes pink. Why pink? Because Amy decided it was a far more psychologically catastrophic color for an emergency than conventional red. None of the other bridge officers were consulted.

The Amazing Ms. Wonder

Then there is Ms. Wonder who maintains the calm, unflappable anchor of reason, logic, and absolute level-headedness to every crisis Amy touches. When the Captain screams Abandon ship!, Wonder quietly materializes and solves the problem.

She is, in every meaningful sense, the Jeeves to my utterly bewildered Bertie Wooster. She extracts me from whatever existential tight spot Amy drags me into and restores order with the composed efficiency of someone who has never once lost her car keys.

A legion of you came, and stayed, simply to watch her effortlessly clear the structural wreckage left behind by the rest of the internal crew.

Some of you, I suspect, are lingering in the comments section hoping to get the secret recipe for her magical restorative elixir. I am reasonably certain it contains Blenheim's ginger ale, a dash of citrus, and something else that cannot legally be named in a public forum.

Whimsical Wilmawood Logistics

You clearly enjoy the misadventures that Amy and I fall into while traipsing around Hollywood East, whether we’re hunting for production crews filming The Summer I Turned Pretty or blindly submitting to the low-to-the-ground chaos of a GPS that has made very different plans for our afternoon.

In my ongoing effort to satisfy your appetite for this particular brand of local mayhem, I’ve learned a profound literary truth: a rogue, stowaway ferret named Reginald is the ultimate narrative hook. If you are ever struggling to hold a reader's attention, just add a ferret. Amy says it “ups the stakes,” and I’m telling you, it works every time.

Addendum

This blog has always been an exercise in looking at the mundane through a slightly warped lens. Knowing that this particular cocktail exploring neurodivergent life, through observational irony, and creative non-fiction has actually found a permanent home in your inbox makes the late nights, the existential parsing, and the extra coffee entirely worth it.

The surge is organic. My gratitude is immense. The journey remains circular, and as Amy would say while white-knuckling the armrests of her captain’s chair, we’re just getting started. Engage!