(Borat Voice) My Wife, the Happy Place's Unsung Hero — It Turns Out the Naming Rights! Membership Option Was For Real and Someone Is Now Five Hundred Bucks Poorer Presents Nat

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It sure feels like the world has dramatically fallen apart over the course of the last month and a half. The Coronavirus has seemingly changed everything, overnight, and not for the better. Unemployment has skyrocketed, another Great Depression seems inevitable and the death count for the pandemic is forever climbing. We have no idea how long this terrible plague will last, or what our world will look like when it’s over.

As a small businessman who was just barely getting by financially before this disaster hit, and whose livelihood is dependent overwhelmingly upon pledges to my tiny, labor of love website and royalties from my self-published book, The Weird Accordion to Al, I naturally assumed that I would take a massive hit financially and professionally, along with seemingly every one else in the world.

Instead, something unexpected and wonderful happened: rather than tanking, Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place and The Weird Accordion to Al book have only gotten stronger.

Before the virus, I could count on losing ten to fifteen patrons every month but in the last month and a half I’ve gained as many new followers as I have lost. That’s partially because I’ve been publishing more regularly than I have in years. It also does not hurt that in the last two months I’ve published twenty patron-exclusive pieces in the form of 13 The Weird Al Show re-caps and 7 articles (and counting) on the fifth season of Comedy Bang! Bang!, when “Weird Al” Yankovic, the site’s patron saint, took over as band-leader/sidekick for Kid Cudi.

For me, EVERY September 15th is Wife Appreciation Day!

How have I been able to remain so prolific and consistent with my two exceedingly loud children at home all the time? My hearty Midwestern work ethic certainly has something to do with it, as does a fear of failure, poverty and irrelevance rooted in a traumatic childhood.

But a lot of the credit for this website not only functioning but thriving at a time when so much in our society has shut down completely or operates at a reduced capacity belongs to my wife.

I’ve tried to be as present and involved a father as possible but in order for this website to be able to flourish I need time and space and a modicum of privacy to do the things necessary to keep it going, like watch movies like Joker or The Osterman Weekend that I obviously cannot watch with my five year old or toddler and that my wife is also deeply uninterested in seeing.

My wife gives me that time and that space because she knows how important my work is to me, how it keeps me sane and productive and happy in addition to also paying the bills. It may not be the sexiest thing in the world, but my wife shows me how she loves and appreciates me by giving me time and space to work. In turn I show her how much I love and appreciate her by being as productive and self-disciplined as possible, by making the most out of the hours I’m able to carve out for work every day.

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Of course it certainly does not hurt that my wife is a teacher by trade, and an extraordinary one at that, with post-graduate degrees in Social Work and Teaching from Brown and the University of Chicago, so she is uniquely qualified to keep our two wild little boys occupied and engaged during this unprecedented calamity, when they are legally and morally forbidden from doing many of the things that make them happy, like hanging out with their friends and going to school.

My wife is the unsung hero of Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place. Without her, it could not function. Nor could I. So I just want to thank her for everything, and yes, she did give me the time and space to write this blog post praising her extensively. The only way we’re going to get through this thing with our sanity, our wits and our senses of humor intact is by sticking together, on an individual and collective level, and I am blessed to have a partner who lets me be my best self in part by empowering me to do the work that I love for an audience that gets me and has stuck with me especially during the hard times.