Jim Stitzel
Jack-of-All-Trades, Master of WordsExcerpts from Life
Of Gods versus Deities
I blame it on my evangelical roots, but as I contemplate my own spirituality and its glacial slide toward paganism, there’s a significant portion of my mind that wants to create a distinction between a god versus a deity. I mean, I get it: deity is just another word...
Anxiety As a Factor of Gaming
I haven't done any kind of gaming or streaming to Twitch over the last 10 days. It's the longest hiatus I've taken since I started gaming again at the beginning of January. Up until recently, I played something -- usually either Destiny 2 or ARC Raiders -- almost...
Sleep, and the Struggle Thereof
I slept five hours last night. I was expecting seven, but of course my anxiety had other ideas. Do you know what it’s like to wake up in the wee hours of the morning, not yet fully awake but just semi-comatose enough to know that something isn’t right? You hear...
Fiction
Stormy Weather
The wind howls outside my bedroom window. A tree branch, swaying in the wind, raps against the glass, tck tcking in an irregular rhythm. There are voices in that tempest, voices that I can just barely make out. They speak to me of times long past, of errors made and...
Critter
I have a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach. That's where it lives. The critter, if you can call it that. It burrowed into my torso, and it took up residence there. All I can see of it is its mouth, sticking out of my abdomen, and it is insatiably hungry. I...
Crow
The crow talks to me. It sits on the road sign, with its black eyes, its black beak, and its black feathers, and it speaks to me. I don’t understand the words — they’re in bird, of course. But the words come, all the same. They take up space inside my mind,...