It’s Friday.  This week, that means that I have the next two days off work.  I wish I had something fun to do tomorrow or Sunday, but really, my only goal is getting my laundry done on Sunday morning and trying to get a little bit of extra sleep if I can.

I don’t have any friends with whom to do anything fun, and I don’t want to try to achieve anything interesting or useful with anyone.  And if someone were to surprise me with anything other than, for instance, a trip to some kind of inpatient psychiatric facility (pre-paid), I would not be terribly happy about it, though I guess if it were someone I haven’t seen in a long time I might be happy, depending on who the person is.  But that’s not going to happen, anyway.  Actually, neither of those things is going to happen.  As far as I can see, I’m just going to continue as before.

I guess it’s somewhat noteworthy that this is the last day of June in 2023.  Tomorrow begins a new month, the month of Julius Caesar, huzzah (If June had 31 days, then July would begin on Sunday, and we would have a Friday the 13^th in July, but alas, this is not to be).  Rent and power and water and other bills are all coming due.  I don’t really care about all that.  It’s not like I have anything else to do with my money, other than get new Kindle books or what have you.

Even that’s getting harder as time passes.  There just aren’t really any new books in which I’m interested.  I still can’t seem to read any new fiction—or old fiction for that matter, not even my old favorites.  There are no shows I want to watch, and no shows that I really want to rewatch, and very few movies.

I suppose I wouldn’t mind seeing The Guardians of the Galaxy 3, but I don’t want to tempt myself with movie theater popcorn and whatnot.  Going to the movies and not getting popcorn and maybe Goobers and such would just feel terribly sad, quite apart from going alone.  Anyway, I’m trying to avoid such foods.  They tend to make my overall energy and health feel worse, and that’s not something I need, obviously.

I rather wish I had been familiar with Uber and Lyft on that first weekend, when I was considering going to the theater to see GotG, and before I had made my current dietary changes.  At that time, I meant to ride my bike there.  However, I had increasing trouble with my back when using my bike, and then the front tire went flat and everything, and now it’s just sitting there upside down under the overhang, a little way outside my door.  It was yet another waste of money and time and effort.  And it’s too far to walk to any theater to see the movie without arriving sweaty and gross—and, again, right now I’m avoiding movie theater type foods.

I was thinking of walking to the train this morning, but I’m really not up to it.  I’m getting a better handle on shoes for walking—or, technically, boots in this case—at least, and I now have three pairs of identical black lightweight hiking boots, which are good for the ankle support and for the general feeling of having my feet in armor.

But walking is a bit unpleasant just because it’s so very hot and humid right now in south Florida.  This probably comes as no surprise to anyone out there.

I regret coming to Florida, to be honest, though I think the state is quite beautiful, physically, in a great many ways.  I like all the plants and the reptiles and birds and amphibians, and even some of the arthropods (I like spiders, and dragonflies are also very nifty).  But most of the worst things that have happened in my entire life have happened since I’ve come here.

Not to say that there aren’t compensations, of course.  My daughter was born in Florida, and I wouldn’t change her existence or nature for anything.  But it would have been nice, once she was born, to have gone back north.  Imagine if my kids had been able to be in White Plains (where I lived before moving to Florida) and so had been able to go to one of the best public school systems around.

Actually, they’ve both done quite well with respect to their education, as they desire it, and maybe the added pressure of being in a more competitive system would have been unpleasant.  I don’t know.

Anyway, the past is done, so it’s pointless to dwell on changes to it.  And I cannot change the present, obviously, since it’s actually already happened/happening in each given moment.  And the best anyone can do is try to steer toward preferred futures, but it may be, as a matter of physical law, that the future is set and inevitable and/or partially random and unpredictable.

As far as the experience of limited minds and beings such as we are, though, the future feels like something over which we have at least some degree of control, or at least through which we have some ability to steer.  It’s limited steering, of course.  It’s not as if we were in a car and driving; it’s not even as though we’re in a sailboat with a rudder.  It’s more as if we’re surfing, and if we do it as skillfully as we can, we might be able to surf in the direction we more or less would prefer to go.

Me, I think those reefs up ahead look inviting.  There are lots of sharks in the surrounding waters, too.  It would at least be a bit exciting, though perhaps painful and frightening at the time, to go there.  Then again, there’s also that whirlpool over yonder; that might be interesting, too, and probably a bit quicker.

I’m not much of a surfer, however, even metaphorically (non-metaphorically, I’m not a surfer at all).  I don’t think I’m surfing on the chaos of reality anymore, anyway, and I don’t think I have been for a long time.  I think I’m just treading water.  And it’s not as though I can just build myself a surf board, or a raft, or a boat or a ship, or anything else, out of the water in which I’m floundering.  And there are no vessels on the (admittedly quite limited*) horizon (though I do keep trying to send up flares).  So, I’m kind of just stuck here, treading away, until I finally tire out and go under.  I don’t know what else to do, but I’m already terribly fatigued.  I guess it’s “good” that the ocean water is salty**, or else it would be harder work to stay afloat.  Or maybe it would be better if it weren’t, so I could tire out more quickly and just have everything done.

Anyway, that’s enough of all that.  I’m sorry, it’s not an interesting blog post.  I think I’ll head out now.  Maybe I’ll get an Uber or Lyft to the train station.  I feel too lazy even for the bus.  We’ll see.

Have a good weekend, please, if you’re able.  If you’re with friends and family, for goodness sake, don’t take them for granted.  Not that you probably do.  Anyway, thanks for reading.

*I say this because, if one were treading water, one’s head would only be a foot or so above sea level, and so the horizon is very short, being a function of the height above the surface and the radius of the Earth.  Thus, as your height above the surface goes to infinity, your horizon asymptotically approaches half of the planet, though of course you would be having trouble with the limits of angular resolution and the amount of light dropping off as the distance squared and so on.  If the Earth were flat—which it is not—the horizon, even from a foot above the ocean, would be indefinitely large, limited only by structures that got in the way, and any haziness that attenuates light.  If the Earth were flat, then from the top of Mount Everest, with a good enough telescope, you could see everywhere on the planet.  You can’t, of course.  The world is round.  This has been understood for thousands of years, contrary to popular conceptions about the ignorance of people in the past.  Eratosthenes knew it 2200 years ago, and even used clever geometry to measure the Earth’s circumference, to within a few percent of the modern best measurement.

**Oh, by the way, did you see the recent reports about the shifting of Earth’s axis (a very small one, but real and measurable) that’s been caused by redistribution both from melting of glaciers and from the extensive pumping of ground water and the redistribution of that and the glacier water into the ocean?  It’s interesting that I was just talking about the changing angular momentum of the Earth by such things shortly before that report came out.  It makes me feel almost clever, though I did have a bit of a self-deprecating (though far from unhappy) head-slap moment when they mentioned the changes due to depletion and redistribution of ground water.  That had not occurred to me.  It’s always nice to have new facts and notions pointed out that make such sense.