Josh Czuba

A story told through a series of uncomfortable phone conversations. To read the full written story, there's a PDF you can download at the bottom of this post. Hope you enjoy :)

I have not slept in three and a half weeks. That’s 25 days and 25 nights. 600 hours, almost. Maybe it’s been longer than that. I don’t know. What I do know is I am well past the current world record. No need to congratulate me. I am approaching the upper limit of sleeplessness the human mind can handle before it expires. Expires, as in: dies. I’ve got just under an hour til the lights flicker off...

When I was a kid in school there was a boy I knew who disappeared off the face of the earth and to this day no one knows where he went. He was the only child of the Leavitt family. They used to live in this town. Before you moved here. The kid’s name was Eric. We weren’t good friends but we’d said hello a couple times. He didn’t disappear the way you think of people disappearing. He wasn’t kidnapp...

It started when I was a kid. I stole matches from the kitchen junk drawer. Birthday candles. Anything with a fuse. I gathered bundles of dry twigs from the yard and kept them in a locked toy chest under my bed. I stood on my tippy toes to take the kitchen lighter from its place in the world. Just to hold it in my hands for a minute. My parents told me cut it out, quit it, and I did for a while. I...

The cycle of self improvement and self destruction has kept me trapped for years. I'm only now learning to let go of the strict, black and white duality of "locking in," and "falling off," in pursuit of a more sustainable personal narrative that keeps me connected to meaningful activities consistently. I hope you find this helpful.