Here I am again, at the train station, waiting for the train, writing a blog post on my smartphone.  I didn’t walk this time, because by yesterday afternoon, I was getting extra stiff and sore again, and that could well have been because I walked the 7 miles I walked yesterday in my hiking boots.  Ironically, they may well have been causing me more trouble when “hiking” longer distances.  It’s rather discouraging; I like those boots.

Today, I’m wearing the new shoes of my other type that were supposed to have arrived the day before but only got there yesterday during the day while I was at work.  I didn’t walk in them yet because I’m still in a bit of exacerbated pain.  I’ll physically rest for today, then walk again tomorrow.  The good thing is I seem to be mostly past any tendency to blister.  Thank goodness for small favors.

So, basically, the thing I look forward to‒practically the only thing‒is doing more walking.  I guess that’s a reasonably good thing as far as it goes; it’s better than looking forward only to one’s next martini or one’s next hit of heroin.  But it’s still pretty dissatisfying.  I really hate my life.  Everything stressed me out.  I’m tired.  I want simply to stop.

It doesn’t help that my coworker who shares some of my duties is still out of the office, though I don’t know if he will be out today (I hope not, since it’s payroll day).  What I mean is, he was out yesterday and Monday.  So, I got called in on Saturday and since then (actually, since Friday) have been doing more work than usual‒while in more pain than usual‒for the last 4 work days.  Even before that, I was already at the threshold of cashing it all in.  So, I’m not exactly working toward a more positive outlook.

There’s a defective announcement sign (that I wrote about the other day then deleted from the final draft of the day’s post) cycling away with a moderately distorted message obviously meant to be the same as all the other boards.  I recognize the similarity of its garbled stuff with the intended message.  If I knew the system and its programming, I could probably figure out what’s wrong and possibly even fix it.  But it will likely take the Tri Rail people a while to get to it.  Only yesterday did they apparently fix a malfunctioning check-in kiosk, the one I used to use regularly, that’s been just off, without power, for well over a month.

I guess all these things take effort and money, but it’s frustrating.  I look around at our society and see the deterioration of infrastructure, and the diminution of what little pride we seem to take in running things well.  Even with a reasonably well-rounded system like the Tri Rail, it seems the trains are late almost as often as they are on time.  And, indeed, my train was supposed to have arrived by now, but it has not, and there’s no sign of its light approaching.  On the tracking software website they offer, there’s not even any indication that the train is coming.

Okay, just now its light is becoming visible.  So it’s not too very late…only about 5 minutes.

I don’t understand how it happens that, when they make their own schedule, they can’t seem to keep to it even the majority of the time.  It’s like at work‒our hours have been the same for years, but people can’t seem to get them right.  Of course, it doesn’t help that the boss doesn’t enforce them, or apply any penalty for being late or for staying late.  I can’t understand it, and I don’t want to understand it.  Of course, everyone encounters unexpected things from time to time.  But if it happens regularly, frequently, then probably the person to whom it is happening is partly causing it.

I can’t, of course, hold it against my coworker that everyone in his household is sick‒including his one year old daughter.  It happens, and there is only so much people can do to avoid it.  But people who are late to work nearly every day are just getting up and/or leaving their houses too late.  The correction to this is obvious, and one should really be encouraged to enact it, rather than be indulged.

Oh, well, the world is shit, or at least the human world is.  And the average person is going to get more and more mentally lazy as LLMs and the like do more of their “thinking” for them.  I’m not convinced that these things in any sense actually think or create, but then again, there are plenty of humans who don’t convince me that they think.

I guess I can’t hold it against the computers.  They didn’t make themselves.  Neither did the humans, of course, but at least many of them have access to resources with which they could make themselves better.  The fact that, for the most part, they do not make themselves better I hold as a defect or failure on their part.

I can say what I want about them, in any case.  They don’t read, so they’re unlikely to ever encounter my criticism.

Well, that’s eight hundred plus words, now, so I’ll start drawing to a close.  I wish I could do that overall, honestly.  I wish I could just lay me down to sleep, as the old nursery rhyme prayer says.  And if I should die before I wake, well…that wouldn’t be so bad either.  It wouldn’t break my heart.  And I doubt it would break anyone else’s heart, though a handful of people might be temporarily slightly sad.  And people at work would be in a bit of extra stick for a while.  But for them, in that, I have only a little sympathy.

And the rest of the world can go to Hell, which is what it’s steadily doing to itself, anyway.