In 2018, I weighed more than 240lbs—possibly as much as 260! Late that year, I committed to being a healthy weight for my 6’ frame, aiming for the lower 180s. Through exercise and diet changes, I’m now generally sitting between 188 and 195—a number that feels great, even if not exactly what I targeted.

Doing this has been a part of thinking about what it means to be healthy—not just physically, but emotionally. American society is sadly very negative, but we see this negativity wrapped in messaging about “protecting our peace,” setting boundaries, and choosing positivity. And to be clear, these are definitionally good and I’m not criticizing being positive and/or having healthy boundaries!

But just like many things, there’s the actual definition and then there’s warped implementations brought about as components of ideology.

I am an optimistic, positive person, and I believe that is healthy. But I believe in a positivity rooted in understanding problems so that one can deal with them. I find positivity unsettling when it’s accomplished by setting up a fence or simply “choosing it” without addressing why something feels wrong.

In July, on my birthday (the 20th), I’ll be releasing an album called Overwhelmingly Positive with my “band” That Darn Racket. The title track’s narrator has faked positivity by sidestepping anything messy, painful, or real. What we are calling “toxic positivity” as a society is probably more accurately called avoidance; a fantasy of comfort built on running from what’s hard.

“I’ll fake it with a grin / And never let them in”

It can feel safe, even empowering, to claim one is doing well (or working to be). But avoidance isn’t health. It’s a defense mechanism—a way to shield ourselves from discomfort at the cost of connection and growth. And while it might protect us in the short term, it comes with long-term costs: isolation, stagnation, and a struggle to fully embrace both the good and the bad of our experiences.

“Healthy”

In the video for Overwhelmingly Positive, the narrator’s performative optimism escalates into nuclear-scale destruction. “Toxic positivity” builds pressure until it blows—a timer on a bomb—hurting ourselves and those around us.

This performance fools the person performing it as much as (often more than) their audience. Over time, the effort of maintaining the illusion weighs people down, keeping us stuck and disconnected. It builds pressure beneath the surface, creating problems that only grow harder to face.

The things I mentioned in the intro (”protecting our peace,” setting boundaries, and “choosing positivity”) are valuable—even essential—in the right context. But these things can become tools for performing health and used to avoid discomfort when stripped of their depth.

“Even when the night is long / I’ll find a way to hide this / while showing everyone a smile.”

Masking struggles with feigned happiness isolates us; it feels (maybe even is) safe in the short term but keeps us from developing and connecting with others.

American culture reinforces this illusion. It celebrates surface-level positivity, packaging it as a solution to deeper struggles. “Focus on the good,” we’re told. “Don’t dwell on negativity.” The message is clear: just keep going, keep smiling, and you’ll be fine.

For some, especially those who’ve spent their lives learning to “mask” not just to fit in but literally to function, this performance becomes second nature as a means of survival in complex social situations. Though I’m referring to autism and personal experience here and in the song, what I am talking about is ultimately universal.

For anyone, the cost of avoidance can be high—disconnection, exhaustion, and emotional distance (though I see potential for “unmasking” to be employed as another version of “positivity” in the sense I’m using it in this song).

“Self-Care”

Avoidance is seductive. It promises safety and relief, especially when conflict, discomfort, or vulnerability feel overwhelming. When we avoid difficult things, it can feel like we’re in control, like we’re protecting ourselves from unnecessary pain. And in some ways, we might be—at least for a while. The immediate payoff is real: avoidance quiets the voice of fear, offers a break from anxiety, and maybe even lets us feel temporarily untouchable.

To make matters worse, various mainstream ideologies also sell us avoidance as “self-care.” Social media is filled with posts urging us to cut people out of our lives, “focus on our own happiness,” or “not let negativity in.” These ideas sound appealing because they offer an easy out—a way to feel like we’re engaging in healthy “self-care” behaviors but sidestepping the work our issues require.

But this doesn’t protect us; it isolates us. To “make space” for oneself by pretending conflicts and issues don’t exist is to reject a fundamental part of human society: the need to navigate discomfort, confront challenges, and engage meaningfully with the messy realities of life. In order to live in this world, we have to interact with it—and that is often unpleasant.

But it’s not just the outside world; it’s ourselves.

By avoiding discomfort and conflict, we distance ourselves from the messy, unresolved parts of ourselves. Identity isn’t something we can construct in isolation; it forms through engagement—with people, experiences, and even the uncomfortable aspects of our past. Just because we do not acknowledge the past doesn’t mean it is not there.

We are the life we’ve led, and avoiding that is ultimately running from ourselves.

I’ve run from my past a great deal. A lot of my old comedy skits make me cringe. A lot of my old YouTube videos kind of suck. Reinventing ourselves can feel empowering, even necessary, after moments of pain. But if that reinvention comes from a place of avoidance, it becomes a new mask rather than a deeper truth (see potential “unmasking” misuse, which I noted because I am trying to make clear I have done this). That mask may keep us safe for a time, but it also distances us from others—and from the truths we need to face.

That is part of why I am going to start doing a 20-year career retrospective and put back up a lot of old videos. I’m going to watch them with people on stream, confront them, and embrace them. That is me, and whether I like it or not (and to be clear some of it is really good, too), and saying “I’m not that” is a lie, to myself more than anyone else. I am certainly better now than I was then, but it is because of then.

There’s a lot of things I wouldn’t do now… because I did them then! There’s a lot of things I do better now… because I fucked it up then! I learned from those things, and that’s great! That stuff might be uncomfortable to look back on, but erasing it is much worse.

If we don’t embrace the difficult things about ourselves—the contradictions, the regrets, the histories that feel too heavy to carry—what’s left? Who even is that person? Avoidance can make us believe that shedding these burdens will create a “cleaner” self, one free of the pain and hardship, but all it really does is leave us ungrounded, unsure of who we are. The more we cut off or compartmentalize, the more fragmented we become.

What do?

A lot of life is pain. I’ve been cast out of many social circles—for reasons both fair and ridiculous. I’ve been judged for many untrue things people thought about me and for my own stupid mistakes. I’ve been “canceled” numerous times. In fact, back in 2011, I was one of the original high-profile “cancel culture” stories, socially ruined for being catfished. It was spun as if I had “made up a girlfriend” to paint me as a creep. That story followed me for years, no matter how hard I tried to outrun it.

For most of my 30s, I tried to escape it. I told myself I could start over, rebuild from the ground up, and become the person I wanted to be. I convinced myself that if I just focused on now—eventually the past would fade. I thought I could evade the person I used to be, pretend the mess of my early life never happened, and move forward without addressing it.

It didn’t work. The past didn’t/doesn’t disappear. It wasn’t until I started talking about it openly that things began to change. When I stopped avoiding what had happened and started engaging, people began to see the humanity in me again.

Many probably still believe the characterization of me from the Gawker or Jezebel articles (though both are now seemingly gone, perhaps they realized how legally liable it makes them to print unfalsifiable things as proven true), but it seems to not matter much anymore. I don’t have any control over it either way.

Many others have decided to reckon with the idea that maybe the media didn’t care what was true for many other reasons, and I have come to experience re-evaluation from many (and I further thank all those who stood up for me when it wasn’t popular to as well).

I won’t tell you that I am an open book everywhere to everyone now; I will always think there is a lot of value in privacy. I don’t think that will ever change, but I have re-evaluated what exactly that means. Now I do more consideration of if/why I want to keep something to myself. I think I’ve gotten to be a lot better at sharing things that matter—with who it is appropriate to share them with. I’m never going to be perfect, but it’s better than it was and that’s really what matters.

Facing what’s hard isn’t easy, and it doesn’t mean charging into discomfort without preparation or support. It’s a process, one that begins by acknowledging what we’ve avoided and why. Sometimes that means allowing ourselves to feel anger, grief, or regret instead of running from them. Sometimes it means letting go of control and admitting that we don’t have the answers. And sometimes it means doing the work of rebuilding connections with others, even when it feels scary (and holy shit it is scary).

None of this feels good in the moment, but the long-term payoff is real. When we engage with the full spectrum of our experiences—the joyful, the painful, and everything in between—we build a deeper, more stable sense of self. We’re no longer running from our past; we’re incorporating it. We’re no longer hiding from the world; we’re learning to live in it, messy realities and all.

This song isn’t about rejecting peace or positivity, again I consider myself a very optimistic and happy person. I may come off cranky but honestly if I didn’t express that I don’t think I could be an optimistic and happy person. Also, I really like an appropriate amount of cranky.

Conclusion

Facing what’s hard doesn’t erase discomfort, but it changes our relationship to it. That’s really what Overwhelmingly Positive and its video are about. It’s not necessarily about solving the problem of avoidance (as I said in a previous post, I don’t believe in solutions, I believe in engagement), but about what happens when we don’t.

And that is (as I said earlier) how I find hope; acknowledging and understanding the problem so that I may properly address it when the time comes.

But AI videos are just shallow, no-effort bullshit, right?