I’m not dead yet. Dead people don’t type. But physically I’m a fraction of the man I was two weeks ago, and that man wasn’t much.

Walking is very difficult, I’m always exhausted, sometimes not quite lucid, etc. I was able to wangle a quick doctor’s appointment, but they don’t know what it is that’s got me, and only offer a long list of what it isn’t. Since I’m poor and uninsured, several MDs in white coats aren’t going to huddle together to find the perfect prescription or operation to put me together again.

Nobody’s said it in so many words, but it seems likely that this is the way things will be for the rest of my life, which won’t be long. But I’m still enjoying myself. Masturbated just this morning, and I certainly won’t pull my own plug when I can pull my own willy.

Facts are facts, though: I could topple and croak at any moment, so it’s time to write my obituary.

Holland’s the name, Doug Holland. My life included no accomplishments to speak of, certainly no career, and thankfully no children. Never made a headline, even once. I have lived as almost literally a nobody.

This site won’t be the same without me, but only in the sense that there will be no further updates. Other than that, the world will be unchanged, and I will be completely forgotten after I’m gone, and soon. The few people who know me are old, like me, so I give it ten years max, before my name is never mentioned again.

And I’m at peace with that. One man can make a difference, but I’ve never been that man. There’ve been billions of dead humans since we evolved from the apes, and we only know the names of, what, a few hundred? We’re all destined to be forgotten.

♦ ♦ ♦

As for my existence while I was alive, if you read this blog, you know the boring story, but old people tend to repeat themselves, so here it is again.

Fate gave me good parents, and a family that was (and remains) white, Christian, middle class, and ordinary. We’re all a little eccentric or have a deep, dark secret everyone else in the family knows but none of us ever talk about. My mom, siblings, nieces and nephews all get on my nerves, but that’s family and that’s being human. Everyone gets on my nerves, ‘cuz I’m a grumpy old coot. But they’re basically good people, my family. All my mistakes in life were my own.

Perhaps from the moment I squirted out but definitely from the first day of kindergarten, I felt different and aloof from my peers. I tried to fit in, but I was a weirdo, teased and mocked and beaten up. In the neighborhood and at Sunday School I found a few friends, but all through school the closest to friends were non-enemies — the kids who didn’t tease, mock, or beat me up, and I still appreciate that, thanks.

I never made trouble, rarely made noise, but the structure of sitting at little desks and listening to lectures never whet my appetite for learning. I did my work and learned the basics of readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmatic, because it interested me, but when the topic didn’t interest me — hello, algebra — I made no effort. After about 7th grade, when teachers had long since taught the basics, nothing in school interested me except getting out.

I skipped a lot, then more than a lot, and dropped out in 11th grade. My only regret about quitting school, then and now, is that I should’ve dropped out in 10th grade, which was the earliest it was legally allowed. Whyever did I waste that extra year?

My parents told me I’d end up a ditch-digger, but that’s sweaty labor and I never liked sweating. Instead I did office work, sitting at little desks all day again, same as school but without the lectures. For 50 years, in a dozen different businesses and industries, I sent the bills and prepped the reports. It was never interesting, but always steady work.

Pretending to be an adult in my 20s, I had a job, a few friends, an apartment, a car — all the American accouterments. Had a ladyfriend for a few years, but when she kissed me goodbye, I was alone again.

To be clear, I never minded being alone. Solitude is my natural state. But the monotony got to me — working a lousy data entry job, going to movies and ball games with a few friends whose lives were as uninteresting as mine. I wanted something not quite so predictable, so after dreaming about it for years, I packed my van and drove off into the sunset. Destination? Anywhere but Seattle, my home town. ‘Elsewhere’ was the only specific to my plan.

Same as quitting school, my only regret then and now is that I should’ve run away sooner. Too many years were wasted, quietly dissatisfied with life but fearful of making a major leap, when in retrospect the only truly terrifying thing is how close I came to living an entire life people expected of me.

Luck landed me In San Francisco in the 1990s, a misfit adrift in a city where misfits were the norm. Mom thought I must’ve gone gay, because why else would a young man run to San Francisco? No, Mom, I’m straight, just weird.

Being surrounded by half a million other weirdos — straight, gay, poly, trans, immigrant, extravagant, hippie, stoner, Marxist, whatever — made me more comfortable, not more awkward. It was a revelation and a cliché — in San Francisco, I finally became comfortable with myself.

Zines were the literature of the counterculture in the ’90s, and I loved reading zines. I’d always enjoyed writing, too, so why not write a zine? As I started gaining the San Francisco Enlightenment, the acceptance of who I am, I wrote and photocopied and mailed out a daily diary, called Pathetic Life. It was cathartic to be myself on paper, and the zine surprised me by becoming popular (by zine standards). It’s the only tiny ripple I ever made in the world, the only thing anyone outside a few friends and family might remember about Doug Holland. It’s probably what brought you to this page on the internet.

Best by far, my zine connected me to Stephanie, a woman in Wisconsin whose life trajectory had been similar to mine. She’d been raised in a white, Christian, middle class & ordinary family full of basically good people. Unlike me, she was smart and good at school and went on to college, but she wanted something other than ordinary from life. She wrote her own zine, Crawfish, which was like a sketch comedy show on paper, and genuinely funny. I liked it, and we traded zines and letters, and fell in love by mail.

She joined me in San Francisco, but the city was morphing into a place financially impossible for people who aren’t rich, and after a few years she missed the weather and people of the Midwest. I didn’t care where I was, long as I was with her, so we resettled in Madison, Wisconsin, where Stephanie had gone to college.

Madison is San Francisco on a much smaller and more affordable scale, and both of us loved it there. We did everything in the city and the surrounding cowlands, and those were the best years for both of us.

I’m teary-eyed even before typing the rest of our story, but happily ever after always comes to an end. The dice rolled wrong, and Steph’s kidneys began to fail. One complication led to another, and her last several years were in a wheelchair, but we continued having a blast whenever we weren’t in a doctor’s office. We had weekend getaways and film festivals, picnics and happy days and nights across several counties. My happiest snapshot (though there wasn’t actually a photo) is Steph & I at the Milwaukee Zoo, me running full speed while pushing her wheelchair, her sitting down of course, laughing and waving her arms in the air like she was riding a rollercoaster.

A final damned complication took her away in 2018. I should’ve gone with her, but didn’t have the courage to make that commitment, so I’ve tried to make the best of things without her. There’ve been a few smiles and laughs, but I’ve never stopped missing her. Measured in years, Stephanie was about ⅓ of my life. Measured in heart and happiness, she was 98% of it.

Nobody else I really knew or cared about was in Madison, so after a few years alone I moved back to Seattle, hoping to reconnect with my family. We’ve shared laughs and hugs, and they’re my people. I’m glad I returned to my home town for the final curtain-drop, but we’re not close, and I have remained myself — alone and aloof. And now, I’ll die alone.

My first 30-plus years were spent trying to be what other people wanted me to be, which was frustrating. My last 30-plus years were a joyous refusal of such stupidity, and if it ends tonight, I won’t complain.

♦ ♦ ♦

What I’ve learned is that there is no god, and almost everything we’re told to believe is a lie. Laziness is a virtue, billionaires should be taxed until they’re millionaires, and there’s no purpose to life beyond helping others through it, if you can.

What I’d say to anyone who happens upon this page is, if there’s something you want to do, do it. Someplace you want to go? Go. If nothing’s holding you back but your own hesitation, sweet jeebers what a tragedy. Snap out of it and live your life.

I’ve lived mine. To anyone else, it would look empty and ridiculous: I disappeared for decades, and never talked much about where I’d gone and what I’d done. At the end, I lived alone in a messy room, watching old movies and surfing the net, turning down most invitations, and regretting the few accepted. I never got drunk, rarely got high, and the only thing I’m proud of is, halfway through my life I stopped pretending to be normal.

“What a boring old man,” you’ll say, and you’re right, but it’s been so much fun. It’s disappointing that I won’t get to celebrate Donald Trump’s death, and embarrassing that I won’t get my room cleaned before vacating the planetary premises, but other than that, it’s been a swell time and I leave with near zero regrets.

To my family, I ask (again) for no funeral, cremation instead, and then please pour my ashes into my wife’s urn, so we’ll be ashes to ashes, dust to dust together. What happens to that shared urn is of no matter to me; drop it in the trash or sink it in the ocean, it doesn’t matter, long as Steph & I are inside it together.

But the Hollands have never quite understood me, so odds are they’ll disregard my wishes, and have a gaudy funeral before burying me near my dad’s plot. Oh, well.

Doug was here, and now he’s not. Thanks, Mom & Dad, thanks anyone who’s reading this, and especially thanks, Stephanie. And now, turn out the lights.

10/27/2025