Since You Asked: Uncommon Advice from Cary Tennis Cary Tennis

It's been almost two years since I did a podcast here at the Since You Asked podcast station, and geez I've been paying Buzzsprout every month all this time, anyway, here in this rather casual talky-type podast there's a song, and I talk a little about my passion for music and songwriting and how it goes here in Castiglion Fiorentino. Not really a Since You Asked column, this is not that, it's more just a warmup. But once I get some Holiday Angst-type letters I'll do podcasts of my columns from those letters. That request for letters just went out this morning so we'll see how that goes. 
Feels good to be back in the podcaster's saddle!
ciao
ct
a dopo ...  
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May 12 to 22, this year, 2022, I will be hosting another of our fabulous writing workshops here in beautiful Castiglion Fiorentino at lovely Le Santucce. The Amherst Writers and Artists method we use in the workshops has been a godsend to thousands around the world who want to have a richer, fuller experience writing. Whether you write to sharpen and enlarge your experience of life or you do it for a living, this is a great way to boost your strength as a writer, to go deeper, to feel greater confidence, to build motivation and have a good time in Italy while you're doing it. 
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The moment  has come to tell our unvaccinated friends and relatives the truth: Their refusal to be vaccinated is killing people. It is morally wrong. The moment has come to get in their faces, to reveal ourselves passionately, how deeply we care about this, to plead, to beg, to negotiate, to use whatever strength we have left to do our part to help mankind stop this pandemic. 
Like it or not, each of us has a moral responsibility to speak out, to engage passionately with others, to try to turn the tide, to try to stop this awful pestilence, one person at a time, one conversation at a time, one vaccination at a time. 
So I made this podcast. 
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Today I respond to the below comment from someone who identifies himself as "Ugly hunchback," posted on last week's column, as though it were a question.  It expresses suffering for which I propose an antidote. The author of the comment was apparently alerted to this column by my 2006 Salon.com column on suicide which after 15 years still attracts fresh readers and comments as recent as April 2021.
I don't quote the whole comment here, only mainly the part that concerned me. The commenter says,
"I ask mankind — at least all who believe in Christ — to kneel down and ask Him what the point of this horrible world and existence is. We only exist because of a rather disgusting, wicked drive, a drive that has no place in Heaven or even a Platonic ideal sphere, as Andy Nowicki rightly noted in “Confessions of a Would-Be Wanker”.
A pipe dream, I know, God won’t answer. I rather see sex as a result and curse of the Fall. There is no better explanation. Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Weininger et al all understood that sex poses a deep existential problem. It is indeed “forbidden knowledge”, changing one’s outlook on existence forever and to 180 degrees.
* https://www.salon.com/2006/03/06/suicide_23/
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Hi Cary,
I have huge trust issues and it’s affecting my relationship with my partner of 3 years. My trust issues have stemmed from my childhood for many different reasons and to top it off, last year I found out my step dad had been abusing me.
My partner has never given me a reason to not trust him. He says he has his morals and knows deep down he has never done anything wrong. His dad cheated on his mum and he has a suspicion his ex cheated on him.
But there is something lingering over me and I am struggling to know whether to believe my partner or not. I have had suspicions about him and a girl from work. ... 
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In 2004 I was finishing up an article for Salon.com about George W. Bush and the upcoming presidential election, when I thought I was having a heart attack. I hit “send” and then I dialed 911. I called my wife from the ambulance. I spent the night in the hospital.
Tests showed I was not having a heart attack. I was having a panic attack. That whole episode got me thinking: Maybe I was a little too stressed out.
I needed to find a more humane approach to creativity, that would stress community. So I read Pat Schneider’s book Writing Alone and With Others.
By 2007 I was leading Amherst Writers and Artists style workshops, using the method describe in her book. And that kind of saved me. But I was still driven to write for publication and that meant finishing big projects, and putting pressure on myself.  So I came up with a workshop style that was a twist on the AWA method, and also borrowed from something I’d had experience with called Artists Anonymous, which was a 12 step knockoff. This workshop I created kept a humane foundation but it focused not on creating work in the present but focused on finishing writing projects and for that matter finishing all kinds of projects. 
I called it Finishing School. And it got results.  
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