I don’t like Sunday nights. Most of them, anyway. It’s the time you’re most likely to have a heart attack. Look it up, don’t trust me to tell you the truth. Trust , but verify, people. And this post was going to be me bitching and moaning about how those Sunday nights sucked, and Monday mornings are awful, and on and on and on. And I realized, I needed to go down to the crossroads again.

People talk about the crossroads as this gigantic place, where you decided your ultimate fate. This piece is about what I’ve come to realize about the crossroads. One of them is that you never get one trip down there. There is no one decision that makes your life go down a certain way. I wish it was that easy. That you could go back, flip one switch and everything would be easy as pie.

But it never is, really? It’s why Robert Johnson’s song about them resonates so loudly with some of us. Some of you are lucky You only have to visit the crossroads every so often. Hell, some of you only have to visit every few years. Me? I go every damn day.

For me, every day is a visit to the crossroads. And every day, no matter how good, I’m going to go see the crossroads. In my mind, it looks like the intersection of the main roads in Stull, Kansas. Go look, shudder and come back. That place is even creepier in person. And who’s waiting for me there? Not the Devil. He doesn’t exist on my world. The only devils are in my skull. I call them the brain weasels. They are at the crossroads every day. They have soothing voices that are brittle and cloying. Telling me how I’ve failed, and how I’ll never do anything of substance. I could tell you who they sound exactly like, but I don’t know you well enough to tell you. Every time I go down there, I bargain for my soul. If I lose, I’m in survival mode afterwards. I’m numb, barely alive. It’s like they take my soul away.

Sunday nights are some of the worst crossroads times. That, and about 230 in the morning, if I’m alone. But about six months ago, I discovered a secret:I don’t have to go there if I don’t want to.

It shook me, and still shakes me. You don’t have to meet your inner demons. The laws and contracts you’ve made up to agree to meet them? They’re just that:figments of imagination, just like the weasels themselves.

So this Monday morning and Sunday night, don’t go to the crossroads. Don’t meet the Buddha on the road and kill him. Choose joy. Choose life, like the old shirts used to say. Embrace the ideas of pronoia, that the universe is out to give you good things. The world wants you to be miserable and cowering, hiding away, numbing yourself . At least capitalism does. It requires you to need things so it can sell them to you. Being happy is the enemy of mass consumption. Go for a walk, and touch some grass. And when the crossroad shows up on your path, you’ll know which way to turn. And it won’t be the one to lead you to despair.

No song lyric guesses this post, just a heartfelt thanks to the people who are showing me better ways to be. I’ll thank them personally in private, but they know who they are. Good night, and fuck the brain weasels.