Hello and good morning.

It’s Thursday, so it’s time for my traditional-format, “weekly” blog post, which is not terribly different from my other daily ones anymore.  I’ve just been doing it longer.

It’s the first day of Passover (Pesach) and I ought not—if I were observant, anyway—go to work today.  But the fact is, I am sitting here at the bus stop, way too early for the bus to arrive, and writing this blog post, because I want to continue to give my knee and ankles and feet a relative bit of morning rest.

Yesterday’s plan worked quite well, foot-wise.  I walked back to the house from the train station, making my day’s tally only about eight miles of walking total, and my feet and my knee felt comparatively good by the end of the day.  This may be because the new shoes I was wearing turned out to be particularly good for my feet and my walking style*, but I figured one more bus stop morning shouldn’t be too bad, even if I wear a different pair of shoes.

I took delivery of my new bicycle seat yesterday.  It seems nice, and it may perhaps be less tempting to thieves than my other one was.  Anyway, the seat post will be arriving today, if all goes according to Amazon’s stated intention, and so with a little luck—assuming I have the will and energy to do anything at all—I will be riding the bike to the train tomorrow.  If I do, when I do, I will thread the steel cable that is part of my lock through the base of the seat as well as around the bike rack, so that it will not be stealable without serious tools and/or time.

I noticed last week that riding the bike seems to be better for my flexibility than walking is, in the sense that it’s easier to bend down and or squat when necessary after riding than it is with long walking.  I’m not sure why that is.  Maybe it’s just that riding works the quads so much that they’re well-conditioned for squatting.  I don’t know.  I don’t suppose it matters.

I really hope things will go okay with the bike seat and seat post, because I would like to use the bike this weekend to go for a longer distance meander on Saturday and/or Sunday.  That twelve mile accidental walk I took a few months ago would be a fairly minor trip on the bike.  I could even, in principle, go to a mall or something—though I think I would not go to a mall on a Saturday no matter what, since there tend to be far too many people in such places on weekends.  Sunday, being Easter, might be better, but I need to do my laundry on Sunday.

Holy schlamoley, this blog has become really boring, hasn’t it?  I don’t even know what I’m trying to accomplish with it anymore.  Then again, I don’t know what I’m trying to accomplish with anything anymore.  “Nothing much” is the probable answer.

At the office, I took my black Strat and tucked it away behind the partition beside my desk, along with its cord and the little practice amp I have always used when playing at the office.  This makes a little more space for me.  No one has noticed its absence, but I guess that shouldn’t be too surprising.  It’s not really relevant to anyone but me, and—obviously—its relevance to me has all but vanished.

I really wish I had the energy or the will or the wherewithal to go somewhere, to do something, to visit someone, but I don’t.  I probably won’t even go for that longish ride on the bike this Saturday, even though it’s in my head that I would enjoy doing it.  I would be inclined to walk longer distances, but the fact that I keep having trouble with my knee and ankles—and the chronic pain in my back—makes that difficult.  Also, I just feel mentally tired, probably as part of my chronic depression, since I’m obviously physically up to the challenge—as witness, I consider yesterday’s total of eight miles to be comparatively light walking.

A person who used to work with me, and about whom I hear via another coworker, had a heart attack last week, apparently.  He’s only a year or two older than I am, but he has had an unhealthy lifestyle, so it’s not too terribly surprising, though I say it as shouldn’t, perhaps.  Anyway, it was apparently fairly serious (even as heart attacks go), but I have to admit to feeling just a little bit of envy, laced with a bit of irony.  He probably does not like the fact that he had a heart attack and will be going through rehab and everything, but for me, one of the big advantages of a major illness or injury or whatever would be simply not having to keep going.

I can’t just lie around on my own.  I don’t do leisure time well.  I can’t just relax—I always feel a sense of urgency, of stress, the idea that I really ought to be doing something, that there are responsibilities I must meet, something like that, some feeling of ill-ease that prods at me, like trying to sit on a cactus.

This hearkens back to the topic of yesterday’s post, I guess, and Sisyphus.  I am the source of my own forced labor, it seems, to the extent that any one, local thing can be ascribed that responsibility.  I just wish I were able to rest without guilt and anxiety about the fact that I’m resting.  I want to be able to let go, to be empty.  I’m not asking for joy or euphoria or eudaimonia.  I’d like just to have a bit of oblivion.

I don’t know what to do.  I keep playing with the idea of doing audio recordings for a bit, especially when I happen to be listening to a podcast or something, but so far I haven’t gotten the gumption up to do it.  I don’t know.

Oh, well.  To those of you who are observant, or celebrate it, or whatever, I say, “Chag Pesach Sameach”.  Many of the rest of you will celebrate “Good Friday”** tomorrow, and Easter this Sunday.  I hope you all have a nice holiday weekend, if it is a holiday weekend for you, and that in any case, you have a nice weekend no matter what.  I wish you nothing but the best.

My best wishes aren’t worth much, but they are sincere, at least.

TTFN

*Are there styles of walking, like the kung fu styles in movies and things like that?  If so, would they be named after animals?  I think mine would be something a bit ungainly.  Not quite “penguin”, maybe, but perhaps “pangolin”, though of course, I walk on two legs, not on four.  Anyway, no one has ever been struck by the beauty of my gait.

**A day on which ones is crucified doesn’t seem like it would be a good Friday to me, but what do I know?