Excuse MY Christmas!

Since 2011, I've been receiving emails from all of you on all sorts of topics and for all sorts of reasons. Some of the emails contain photos of you wearing Snuggies. Some of them include links to important pictures of terrifying chickens. Often they are even thoughtful responses (or criticisms) to something we've talked about on It Just Gets Stranger or Strangerville.

I love your emails. They have been wildly important to me so many times over the years. There was one time where an email I received from the Strangerverse was especially impactful in both a hilarious and deeply meaningful way. 

For the past few years I've been meaning to produce a Strangerville segment about that email. I finally got it done. #amazing #GreatFollowThrough. 

Please check out this week's Strangerville. I've also included a snippet below from today's story. I think this is called a teaser? Is this a teaser? Netflix should hire me.

For the non-podcast savvy folks who don't use Spotify or any podcast apps on your phone, you may play it here:

Pictures from my Phone & Weekly Distractions

Two days ago I got on a flight and I was seated next to a middle aged man who AND I'M NOT JUDGING seemed a little cranky. I'm not judging because planes. Planes are terrible. I get it. I'm usually in a bad mood, too. But I smile through the tears so people mostly don't know it.

Anyway, after we were seated for a minute or two he suddenly extended his hand in my direction and I don't know. I don't know why. But I immediately thought, "well this jolly man wants to make my acquaintance!" and the next thing I knew I was shaking the hand of a cranky seatmate who was absolutely not intending to shake my hand but instead was just reaching for his seat belt.

AND I HAD TO SIT NEXT TO HIM FOR THE NEXT ONE HOUR AND TEN MINUTES.

And now, your Pictures & Distractions:

The Only Footprints I Shall Leave

I walked out onto the beach. It was sunny, already pretty warm even though it was only 9:30 AM. There aren't waves in the water in Palau. Not really. The coral reef extends miles outward and hugs the body of islands. The water at the islands' edges is calm. Quiet. Shallow. Warm.

The beach was mostly empty. A Japanese tourist was slowly slapping his fins in the water, his face down, beads of saltwater shooting out of his snorkel as he blew to clear it out. Twenty feet from him a man in a speedo tried to get his toddler to float on his back. "Maladyets," he congratulated the boy. Russian.

I was wearing pants and a white t-shirt. My only clean clothes. This was our last morning in Palau.

I stopped, my feet dipped in the water, and looked out at a small island two miles away, just off a little to the right. No more than 20 square feet, the island used to be the home of one single palm tree that leaned a little to the left. I used to sit on this same beach and stare at that island and that one palm tree. It used to calm me for some reason. The palm tree is now gone. I don't know what happened to it.

The last time I had a last day in Palau was in 2013. I spent some time alone then as well. I was a little more frantic that day. I worked in my office until the night before moving back to the U.S. I spent my final hours wrapping up my personal life. I had underestimated how long it would take to clean out my large apartment and ship some boxes home.

Cookie Present

I booked a tour with a Japanese company several weeks ago to go see Kayangel, which is the northernmost island in Palau. I had never been, but heard it's beautiful. Palau is made up of hundreds of small islands and although I saw quite a lot while I lived here, there are still many places I need to explore.

The Japanese company was the only one I could find that travels to Kayangel. A friend told me several years ago to avoid booking anything through them if I could help it because no one with the company really speaks English so it's difficult for English speakers to coordinate any excursions.

I went for it anyway. The website was lovely. It contained some basic English translation, including, mysteriously and in large red letters: "PRIVILEGES: Booking and receive cookie present!"

Obviously once I saw that I had to make some arrangements. I emailed them--something short and simple. "We would like to go to Kayangel. There are 3 of us."

They wrote back: "Yes Kayangel. You are thank you."

It felt a lot like when the aliens and Amy Adams tried to communicate with one another in Arrival.

Worlds Collide

Palau is so much more beautiful than I remembered. I knew it was breathtaking. At least, that's how I described it when people asked. But coming back here and waking up to the calm reefed waters dotted with vibrant green jungled islands in every direction has caught me a little off guard.

The place is calmer--happier than I remembered it, too. I know a lot of that probably has to do with the eyes through which I'm viewing it now. I'm not totally surprised by this. When I returned to Ukraine a few years after living there I had a similar experience. The revisit softened some of the rougher edges that clung to every ounce of nostalgia. I think there's something about seeing a place that didn't kill me and realizing that all that's really left beyond that are some sweet memories and scars I wear with pride.

Skylar thinks Palau is lovely. He has joked a few times about moving here with me. Since he only weighs around 30 pounds and is perpetually shivering, the equatorial heat and suffocating humidity is more like a welcome warm blanket on a holiday sleigh ride for him. But also, he has devoured the hiking to waterfalls and kayaking through dramatic island canyons to find secluded blue bays for snorkeling.

The other day we went on an all-day tour where we swam with dozens of sharks, hung out on a remote white-sand beach and then snorkeled in Jellyfish Lake.

The Land of Coconuts

Alii, from the land of coconuts.

It feels weird to be able to say that again.

It's still hot in Palau. Still humid enough that walking feels more like swimming and I keep letting myself get surprised when I pull new clothes out of the drawer and find out they are a little wet.

We've been in Palau for two full days now, staying in a resort just half a mile down the road from my old apartment, which looks exactly as I remembered it. Most of the island does, actually. Including the Stormtrooper (my old car) which we happened to park right next to last night at a restaurant. The poor thing has probably changed hands six times since it was my own baby. It's currently hauling a new slightly-panicked white person who is too uptight to understand why nothing seems to start or end at any particular time in this place.

Returning to Palau is fun, but attempting to see old friends is a challenge. The internet situation in this country has hardly improved since 2013. Most people don't have consistent access to it, and when they do, sites like Facebook and Gmail load so slowly that it's common to give up on them altogether. So leading up to this trip I attempted in vain to get in touch with anyone I thought might still be on the island.

He'll Love Palau

A high energy version of "Walkin' in a Winter Wonderland" is blasting through a not-so-bad sound system embedded in the airport ceiling. It's New Year's Day. I think the clock struck midnight in Salt Lake City about twenty minutes ago. I may be wrong about that. I've been disoriented since Christmas. I'm not sure I could guess the day of the week right now.

My sister just commented that the sky outside looks like a painting. A group of Filipino teenagers are posing for group selfies ten feet from me--not a single photo has achieved unanimous consent. It's fine. They have 90 minutes until our flight leaves.

I'm in Guam. The last time I sat in these seats--these exact seats, if my memory is correct--I plucked out a blog post on this site using a much heavier laptop that had a battery that kept falling out. This was almost exactly seven years ago to the day. I had gone on a weekend trip to Guam. Daniel needed to take a test for a grad school program he was thinking of pursuing and the closest place where it was proctored was this slightly bigger island two hours away.

I went with him because I desperately needed to get out of Palau, where I had been living for about four months at that point. This was near my rockest of rock bottoms. At that time I was waking up every morning, my sheets drenched in sweat, geckos skittering across the walls, piles of laundry molding and mildewing because I hadn't quite figured out yet how to properly store them by spreading them out on flat surfaces to prevent this.

Have you ever let yourself quit something?

We're leaving for Palau in a few weeks and that is feeling very surreal to me.

I've started trying to make plans for some activities while we're there. Snorkeling, kayaking, hiking, etc. 

Palau is known for its scuba diving. People come from all over the world to dive there. I've heard from divers that it is considered by a lot of people to be the best place in the world to dive.

I got scuba certified a few weeks after I moved to Palau in 2012. It was a no-brainer. Almost immediately after arriving in the country I was pushed to get certified so I could start going on weekend diving trips.

And I went. I went diving at least a couple times a month. We saw some impressive stuff. I can see why people love doing it.

But, y'all. 

I'm going to whisper this next part to you so you know I'm treating this like a possibly controversial confession: I don't love scuba diving.

Return to Palau

I returned to the United States of God Bless America from Palau just over six years ago WHAT HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE.

I've been thinking about Palau a lot lately because I'm going back there next month. I think I forgot to tell you that. Sorry. You deserved to know.

For anyone new to Stranger since 2013, I used to live in a county called Palau for work. It's a tropical island nation in the equatorial Pacific and the specific island I lived on was one-square-mile. Also Stranger used to be a Satanic cult and like half the people who were reading this site are in prison now because of things I got them to do through subliminal messaging, like post hundreds of comments on TMZ about how I was dating Britney Spears. So it's probably good you missed some of that. Our current cult is much more docile.

I haven't been back to Palau since 2013. I actually had not planned to go back anytime soon. I thought maybe once Sky was done with medical school and we had finished raising our children and retired and had dementia and I couldn't remember what it was like to live there, maybe we would head back to see some sea turtles.

But one of Skylar's closest friends from college grew up in a place called Saipan, which is "near" Palau (nothing is near Palau) and she's getting married there next month. Sky wanted to try to go to this wedding even though it's 19 light years away.

To Be Seen

I kept myself busy throughout my life as a coping mechanism. If I was too busy to stop and think, I would be too busy to be afraid. If I was too busy to stop and think, I would be too busy to suffocate from my cognitive dissonance. If I was too busy to stop and think, I would be too busy to have to grapple with being gay.

So I absorbed myself in dozens of hobbies and I signed up for everything. In high school I ran cross country and track & field, I sang (badly) in the school choir, I went to every school activity, and I packed my life with social events--as many as I could find.

In college I took a full class load and worked sometimes as many as three jobs at once. "I like being busy," I would tell people when they asked me how I had the energy to do everything I was doing.

The truth was I didn't like being that busy. I didn't like having a plate so full of tasks, many I didn't really enjoy doing, that I constantly felt overwhelmed. I didn't like not sleeping. It was stressful. But I was terrified of the alternative.

I would watch my friends guard their free time and I would feel jealous of them. Then I'd watch them get married and slip away. So I would make myself even busier, busy enough that I wouldn't have time to think about what my future looked like.

Life is Always Sunny in Palau

For Strangerville this week I decided to share a story about Palau. The written version of the story may be found below. Please enjoy. And also, don't forget to grab your tickets to Strangerville Live, July 12. Meg has decided to tell a story. Please come sit on the front row and clap really enthusiastically. Grab tickets here.

This time in Strangerville, Meg and Eli talk their weird phobias, Eli shares a story about what moving to “paradise” really looks like, and then there’s an unexpected therapy session for which we don’t apologize.

Story

Life is Always Sunny in Palau, by Eli McCann (including the cruddy music)

Production by Eli McCann & Meg Walter

Audio Playe

Fear of Failure

Years ago, when I was living in Palau, I decided to try to write a book. It was a good time to make a first attempt because there are, let's see, multiply by the integer, carry the one, subtract Oprah, 112 hours in a day when you live on a one-square-mile island in a country of 22,000 people on the equator.

Even more, there are only nine things to do in Palau. Five of those involve coming in close contact with sea snakes and the other four are eating.

And you people thought I couldn't do math.

I think I became a much better writer during that year. Typing out 95,000 words will do that. But I was young, and pretty dumb, and moderately to severely depressed, so I really didn't know what I was doing.

By the time I moved back to the United States of God Bless Sea Snakeless America, I didn't really know what to do with those 95,000 words. I did some research about how to get a book published, and I even contacted some people who were kind enough to give me feedback and advice. But that whole process was incredibly daunting and intimidating. So I just sort of walked away from it without really trying very hard.

Cringe

A few years ago I was talking to my childhood best friend Sam's dad because he had stopped by Bob and Cathie's house for some reason. This was right before I moved to Palau and he was asking me what my job was going to be like in that country.

We talked for a while. And the conversation naturally moved to what I would do after Palau. I was telling him about how I would likely look for a job in the Salt Lake area but I wasn't sure, exactly, and that I hoped to find a good job before my contract in Palau ended.

We talked about those plans to look for a job in Salt Lake City for a while. I had expressed worry about not being able to find work. And then he said, "well, do you have any good contacts that could help you?"

And I said the following:

"Um . . . actually I don't wear contacts. I mean, I have these glasses, but my prescription is super weak. I don't really need them. But I like wearing them because I think they make me look smart hahahaha. I don't think I could ever wear contacts. It would be hard for me to stick something into my eyes."

Seaweed

The water moved in and out. Slowly. Methodically. Miles of coral reef prevented it from forming enough critical mass to make waves. The sun was dropping down, settling into an oceanic horizon. A tiny island with one palm tree appeared only as silhouette courtesy of the sun's back-lighting.

Suddenly something grabbed my wrist, pulling hard. I didn't look down at it because I thought I wasn't supposed to stop looking at the island's silhouette.

It was a dream. But I didn't know it.

I was back in Palau on a familiar beach.

One that was always somehow simultaneously calming and lonely.

The water moved in and out.

I resisted the pull from whatever had caught hold of my wrist, continuing to stare at the island's silhouette, watching the one palm tree lean and move a little. There was something else on the island and that's why I was watching it. If I looked away, even for a moment, that something would get washed away by the water.

The Year Of

When I was sitting in my office in the hot tropics with ants literally crawling on my feet in February of 2013, I started having a panic attack. It wasn't my first within the four moldy walls that surrounded my tiny space that had about twice the amount of furniture crammed into it than it should have had.

Me, in my office.

A Binder of Documents

I poured over a binder of documents that if presented carefully should have helped someone in court. It was late, and I was tired. But it didn't matter.

The contention of litigation didn't care that I was tired.

Fighting.

That's what people do.

They spend their time just fighting each other. Sometimes over petty things. Sometimes over significant things.

And I get involved because they ask me to.

I went to law school in 2008 with this eternal optimism that if I worked myself to exhaustion, I could be good at this, and one day I could actually help people stop fighting and find peace.

Was that naive?

Part of me wants to insist it wasn't. Because if it was naive, that might mean that the calloused lawyers who make people hate lawyers are winning. But part of me wants to admit that it was naive. Because letting go of that optimism feels a little like relief.

Hard Conversations

For the last couple of years I've been silently obsessing over something about which I have been unable to come to a conclusion.

I don't love conflict. I'm usually a peacemaker. I'm not bad at dealing with conflict, but I don't like what it does to me. If I have a dispute with someone over something that really matters to me, it is usually difficult for me to get it out of my mind until that dispute is resolved.

What this means is that I tend to keep frustrations to myself in order to avoid rocking the boat.

Good thing I didn't decide to go into a career where people sometimes have disagreements!

Oh wait.

When it comes to representing other people's interests, I buck up and deal with the contention, even if it does have a negative effect on me.

I hadn't realized how damaging this flaw can be until a few years ago. By the time I was leaving Palau, my relationship with Daniel had completely soured. There were a lot of reasons for that, some of which I've talked about here before. But as I unpacked that complicated year over the next many months, I came to realize that a big reason things became so unnecessarily toxic was because I had clammed up and completely avoided being real with Daniel.

Pioneer Day Marathon

Yesterday was Pioneer Day and Tami's birthday so obviously Tami and I did our favorite activity--the one that brought about her existence--and ran the Pioneer Day marathon.

A few things you should know about this experience:

1. I, Eli Whittletown McCann, have gained nearly 30 pounds since November ("What!? You look so fit and beautiful!" stop it you guys).

2. I signed up for this race a few months ago, thinking that having one on the calendar would, oh, I don't know, motivate me to change my life.

3. There were exactly two pairs of pants left in my house that I was still able to button up. Notice I said "were." On Sunday, a button violently popped off of one of those two pairs when I bent over to pick up a piece of fried chicken that I was 10-second-ruling from the floor STOP JUDGING ME.

4. Be ye warned, oh ye little ones, when you turn 33 you are no longer able to eat and behave however you want and anticipate absolutely zero repercussions.

Natalie's Tinder

Almost exactly four years ago, I was hitting my low point in The Land of Coconuts. How it has been four years since I was living in Palau makes no sense to me but it does mean that you people are getting super old and I hope you've been saving for retirement and getting all of your colonoscopies. Also, prune juice.

I met some amazing people while I was in Palau. People who deserve to have entire galaxies named after them for how supportive and wonderful they were to me during that time when I was experiencing Island Ebola. (I call it "Island Ebola" because "Island Fever" is far too inept a phrase to explain the emotional explosive diarrhea).

No exception was my friend Natalie, whom I met on a boat one day. Natalie and I formed an immediate bond because she was experiencing her own isolation trauma. Except she had much more reason for it. Natalie was a Peace Corp volunteer and she was sequestered to a very small jungle village that was so tiny and isolated that she used to refer to the town I lived in as "The City."

My town had 10,000 people living in it. 200, if you only count people who regularly wore shoes.

Return of the Ants

I lived a nightmare recently.

You guys. ANTS.

Some of you are old enough to remember that this isn't my first foray into ant-tastrophe. Daniel and I participated in World War III with the creatures in Palau three years ago.

So when I saw a small bundle of ants crawling through my kitchen recently like they owned the place, I was all like, "this isn't my first rodeo." So I killed them with my bare hands like a man without a conscience and then I ate cheese with those same unwashed hands because this is America and I can do whatever I want here without any consequences.

Well the next day I saw a new gaggle of them in the same spot, but this time they looked pissed. Like how a gang looks after one of its own gets shot.

NOT THAT WE KNOW WHAT GANGS ARE, CATHIE!

So I killed those ones, too. With my same old bare hands. I ate more cheese. Everything was fine.