Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday again—this time the last Thursday in May of 2022—and so, of course, you know the drill.  Obviously*.

I’m back to writing on my laptop again.  Not carrying it around with me did absolutely nothing to relieve or improve my back pain; in fact, last week was, if anything, above average in terms of round-the-clock, low-grade** agony.  Given that, it seemed pointless to restrict myself to the phone, since it’s simply much easier to type using the laptop, and it doesn’t make my thumbs sore.  Also, it lets me write a bit faster.  Whether I write better or not is a question to which I have difficulty finding an answer.

It’s been an interesting week, with interesting not quite being used in the sense of the supposed Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times,” but not entirely separate from it as well.  On Tuesday evening, for instance, some disaster struck the signaling and dispatching system of the Tri-rail and other parts of the commuter rail and Amtrack system in south Florida, and all the signals and comms went down at once, apparently.  Anyway, there was no train to get home on Tuesday evening, the bus would’ve taken at least two hours, and I’m far too socially awkward to want to use Uber or the like.  Also, there’s really nothing at “home” that gives it an advantage over work, so I slept at the office.

It’s a strange moment when you realize that your existence is so empty that the only reason you would bother going to the house you live in to sleep is because it has a shower and a change of clothes.  I don’t even sleep on a bed at home because of my back—I sleep on a yoga mat now, which is much better for my back than any mattress (except the ones they use in jail/prison, ironically).  But the carpet at work is just as good.  It’s all kind of pathetic.

I was also a bit discombobulated on Tuesday morning—Tuesday was a heck of a day—because I was having real trouble with pain, even for me.  I forgot to post the latest section of Outlaw’s Mind until a bit later in the day than usual.  It was a loooong section, one that started well enough, but that ended in one of the most heart-wrenching scenes in the story.  At least, it was heart-wrenching to write.  I have no idea what it was like for anyone to read, or if anyone actually has read it or ever will.  Anyway, it’s a moment where Timothy finds himself trapped between his mother’s fears for him and his own fear of himself.  For him, at least—and for me, writing it, since it was not entirely a fictional thing—it was a dreadful, dreadful event.

Of course, I’ve been writing steadily on The Dark Fairy and the Desperado, which is coming along nicely.  Sometimes it’s good to do something that’s rather non-serious for a change, especially since I’ve written so much horror in recent times.  I even cranked out a decent amount yesterday morning—almost two thousand words—after I’d slept in the office.  Of course, I used my laptop then, since there would be no reason to use the phone unless I thought I wrote better with it, which I now suspect isn’t the case.

And if you’re wondering if there’s anything else going on in my life—there isn’t.  You’ve now read about pretty much everything of note that’s happened to me since my last blog post, and it’s debatable how noteworthy it is.  I haven’t done any new videos of me doing any music, for which I’m sure you’re all quite thankful.  I haven’t watched any new shows or movies, and I haven’t really read any new books that are worth talking about, though I do read something pretty much every day.  There’s really nothing in my life worth talking about, let alone living.

As Morpheus said, “Welcome to the desert of the real.”  Too bad one couldn’t be welcomed to the dessert of the real, right?  But desserts aren’t really very good for one, anyway, and are best kept in significant moderation or else they will become more detrimental than beneficial—a bad habit rather than a treat or a reward.

I hope all of you are doing at least a little better, or have lives at least a little more interesting—in the good sense, not the “Chinese curse” sense—than I.  Please take care of yourselves and of those around you, if you are fortunate enough to have people you love around you.  Try to be optimistic if you can, and please accept my apologies for making it that much more difficult by being such a downer all the time.  Hopefully, something will kill me soon, and you all won’t have to deal with me anymore.  I know it’ll be a relief to me.

TTFN

*i.e., it’s time for my weekly blog post.

**But high quality, if that could be the correct term.  It’s good at what it does, anyway, though what it does well is certainly not very nice.