Here and there, in posts related to 9/11 in varying degrees, I have written in small doses about my life in the hours just before and after the attacks of that awful day. While some who know me like to joke about my almost complete lack of emotion, it’s emotion that has prevented me from fully expressing myself with regards to the two most shocking events in my lifetime: witnessing the destruction in New Orleans’ 9th Ward one year after Katrina, and 9/11 itself. While walking the 9th Ward, I realized that anger was compromising my photography, more or less the same dynamic at work when I try to write about how drastically my life changed on 9/11. It’s possible that someday I will be granted the clarity to properly tell my story, but until then, Jamie has brought some people together to do just that at The Before Project.

99% of posts here are deliberately non-personal as our mission is to effect change on our broken political system. I haven’t yet linked to the Before Project here because the stories are by nature personal. But five years down the road, these stories make plain the fact that we have all lost something at the hands of an administration dead set on keeping us in fear.

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Coincidentally, in the truest sense of the word, 9/11 has another meaning to me. This is another issue rarely discussed here (mostly due to the fact that the trolls love to use it against me for some reason), but after a particularly bad bender, September 11, 1998 was the day I decided that I was powerless over drugs and alcohol and took my ass to AA. Today marks 8 years of sobriety.

Earlier this year, Clerks (and more importantly Mallrats) director Kevin Smith posted the nine-part story (1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9) of Jay’s (actor Jason Mewes) struggle toward his own sobriety.

These two subjects have more than a date in common. To get sober, one must be brutally honest with oneself. The same goes for pulling this country’s head out of its ass. No time like the present.