Recently, I had to have my credit checked and historically this would cause me to sink into a dark and panicked place, that I would occasionally be reminded of every time I would get rejected for an apartment rental application or, on real bottom-scraping occasion, not approved to purchase Pearl Jam tickets through a high-interest credit card which advertised itself as the perfect card for adults trying to rebuild their credit.

​I knew my credit rating would be different today—I didn’t know how different, since I still owe people money, including the IRS, and I still have some student loan payments left. But in the ten-ish years I have stopped drinking and drugs, in the ten-ish years I have aligned myself with a spiritual program which forces me to no longer think of myself as the most important person on the planet, I have, in many aspects of my once messy life, gotten my shit together.

My credit rating was well below 600 at its post-Gawker trial nadir in 2016. Obviously, I didn’t care about it that much then because there wasn’t anything I could do in the immediate aftermath to fix that. I did a little freelance here and there, but mostly lived off of my family and friends for the first two years as all the loose ends were tied up. Once my part of the case was settled and TSB income became consistent, I began, in earnest, to try to knock down my debt.

Little by little, one auto-pay at a time, the insurmountable became reasonable, and today, as of last Thursday, I received an email from my bank to let me know my credit rating had recently changed from “Good” to “Excellent,” as a result of finally paying off a dumb Apple card. Huh.

As much as it's exciting news, I realize that the main benefit is that it provides me opportunities go out and borrow more money to fuck up my life again in this vile, predatory, classist system. And, even though I’m now extremely qualified to do so, I don’t plan on leasing a mid-sized fishing boat, not this year at least.

But it’s important for people in recovery to take a moment to see this as one of those tiny miracles that come from tiny actions.

One of the most humiliating and lowest moments of my life was when this AP wire story about the $25 in punitive damages the jury awarded Hulk Hogan, in addition to the other $115 million. This story included a deeply humiliating financial breakdown of the defendants.

​”During brief closing arguments Monday, Hogan’s lawyer Kenneth Turkel said Gawker Media’s gross revenues in 2015 were $48.7 million and that founder Nick Denton has a total of $121 million, including a $3.6 million Manhattan condo. Gawker Media is worth $83 million, the lawyers said.

Daulerio, the editor, has no assets, the lawyers said. They said Daulerio has $27,000 in student loan debt.”

The day after that verdict, The New York Post interviewed the jurors to find out why they gave such a record-breaking award and if they’d considered anything different. It turns out —yes—they wanted to add millions to it in order to punish Gawker and Nick Denton even more. As for me, well:

“We probably would have hit A.J. harder, but we just didn’t think you could get blood out of a rock," juror Robin Young told the New York Post. 

Anyway, thank you to everyone who supported The Small Bow, both financially and otherwise. You gave this rock some blood.