My Name Was Matthew Blake Atkinson

in school, we learn about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. it's that pyramid where the needs on the bottom have to be met before the higher up needs can be attended to. at the bottom is food, shelter, water and rest. at the top is achieving one's full potential...living your best life. so, apply that in the time of Covid to our "christian" nation and to these words of Jesus, "whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." what's our reality in America right now? we have millions unemployed. millions facing homelessness. millions struggling to feed their families. 10s of millions are at the bottom of the Maslow's pyramid with more being added to that number every day. and why did that happen? because we refuse to contain the virus. in the early phases, we heard the phrases "shelter in place" and "flatten the curve" and a lot of us answered that call...for a few weeks. but then it becam...

 If Russian troops invaded us, we would all come together to defeat the enemy. But, the thing is…Russia has invaded us. This has been years in the making. Russian disinformation bots are all over our social media. Facebook won’t stop them, so fb has become a cesspool of bad information. We are living in the equivalent of a hostile Russian occupation…on our social media. And when something like Covid hits, it’s incredibly hard to overcome their weaponization of information. People share posts and opinions, not because they’re true, but because they read it on facebook and it fits either what they want to be true or what they’ve been brainwashed into believing is true. Russia can’t possibly be the bad guy. Trump’s friends with Putin. It’s those evil democrats, who have the nerve to try to save us from more Covid deaths, that are the real problem. Think how fucking insane that is. The company Trump keeps includes Putin, Jong-un, Bolsonaro, Erdogan and Mohammad Bin Salman. Th...

Shame on you America. I just went on a four and half mile walk because I gained the Covid 19, thought “this is great”, put on another 19 and then thought “fuck”. As I waddled around my neighborhood with my ironic covid moustache, 6 months long hair, cargo shorts and neil diamond t-shirt, I probably looked more like a person of interest and less like an exercise enthusiast. But, that’s one of my freedoms in America. I’m white, so I’m allowed to walk around. Black and brown people aren’t so lucky. As I huffed and puffed through my “workout”, I started thinking about the non-white people in the Migrant caravan. So, I just looked up the details . The one that got a lot of national attention two years ago started in San Pedro Sula, 3000 miles from our border. Think about that. Because of violence, poverty and politics, these people were willing to walk 3000 miles. 4.5 miles was about my limit today. At that pace, it would take me almost two years to walk 3000 miles. These peopl...

It’s been forever since I’ve written a proper blog, so forgive me if I sing out of tune. It honestly has been hard to essentially have my out/my biggest safety net/my way of getting myself back to good taken away from me during this pandemic. Writing no longer helps me feel sane. These days it just takes me into deeper darkness, because for months now, I’ve known that each new day will be worse than the last for the foreseeable future. Early on, I could see our current reality coming. You can’t play catch up with a pandemic. You can’t open too soon and just expect it to magically go away. Basic logic matters. Science matters. But, trump talked loudest. Fauci had to filter his message to fit trump’s narrative. And people want good news. People don’t want to stay home. People don’t want to assume the worst in a president who has given us every reason to assume the worst in him. and that’s a mistake. So, I called it that repeatedly on facebook and I think the general reaction was that...

This is the one that I haven’t wanted to write. The one that has fucked up my head all day and that’s been brewing in my brain for weeks. I’ve kind of alluded to it a few times, but let’s just piece it all together. We’re at least 90 days into the Covid crisis in the US. And the president has no plan. We’re first in cases. First in deaths. And the president has no plan. That’s by design, because he’s not on our side. Every day in his press conference he has some new, outrageous statement for people to get distracted by. He’s the “total authority”. Or “everything we did was right”. Yesterday he suggested injecting disinfectants or ultraviolet light into the body. He’s the court jester. Juggling insane lies and ridiculous claims. As long as our eyes are on the constantly moving balls, we aren’t focused on what really matters. And what matters is the president is running a for-profit pandemic. How much time has he spent grieving for those who have lostloved on...

“Because we won't all be here this time next year. So while you can take a picture of us.” Polaroid Picture by Frank Turner. That song got me tonight as I was cleaning. Matt, you don’t clean. Look bitch, okay yes…actually…you’re right. I don’t do a lot of things. Like, for example…six weeks ago i didn’t do something called getting mad at pandemics, but times have changed. And frank’s song made me realize that yet another reason that I’m mad at this invisible pandemic is because I usually get an indescribable feeling from writing about my normal mental problems. And I cannot seem to write myself out of this shit. The pandemic keeps growing and I really didn’t need my problems to be supersized. I could write all day, every day and the pandemic would still be winning and Trump would still be yelling, “I’m not the trauma. You’re the trauma.” at me and everyone else with a brain. But, worse than my first world problem “oh poor me, I can’t write to keep myself sane” is seei...