Hello and good morning.

It’s Thursday, and so this is the second day of my planned new habit of writing posts on Tuesdays and Thursdays and every other Saturday.  I don’t know how that pattern might affect my readership.  Maybe it will lead to fewer people reading my stuff because it will be coming out less often.  Maybe it will lead to an increase in readership because it will be a comparatively scarce resource, and that fact will both make people want to see it when it’s available and will make it less of a burden for people to commit to following it.  Possibly, it will have no appreciable affect whatsoever, and any changes that happen will be related to other variables entirely.

It seems most likely that it will be some messy combination of those three broad categories.

I did some writing on Extra Body yesterday, which was the plan, even though I had slept very poorly and had to catch up on some things at work, for which I hadn’t been able to summon the energy on Tuesday.  After my relatively upbeat morning post on Tuesday, I’m afraid my energy and my mood really crashed, and it’s very unclear to me why it happened, other than the rather broad and general global tendency on my part that makes me prone to such things.

While that is indeed a good description of aspects of my nature, it isn’t a very satisfying explanation for why things happen in specific ways on specific days, and it doesn’t allow me to make any choices about what actions to take based upon it.  As Eliezer Yudkowsky might put it, it doesn’t let me squeeze the future into any particular path, so it’s not useful.

Anyway, it was a very rough day, and several times just sitting in the office, I grappled with the urge to start crying, and several times I thought‒out loud in my head, as it were‒the words, “Somebody, please, help me.”  Of course, no one could hear my thoughts, so no one did offer any help.  It was a general, global request, or plea, anyway, not one specific to that day or time.

Getting back to writing fiction, though:  I wrote well over 1500 words, which was a little over two pages in the format I have now on Word, which I think is perhaps different than it used to be.  I don’t recall 750 words per page being usual, but maybe it was.

I had forgotten, I must admit, how much more relaxed it can be to write one’s pages for the day and not be expected to publish them that same day, in contrast to what I do when writing this blog.  I simply wrote a couple of pages of the story, and I could have written more, and then I was done with that writing for the day.  Sure, I’ll need to come back to it and edit it later‒I’ll do that a lot.  But on any given day, the process has a sense of relatively pain-free closure.

I even puttered around on the guitar for a few minutes after that, as a sort of nostalgic indulgence.  I used to do that most every day after I finished my three to four pages of draft writing.

With the blog, writing and then editing and then posting and sharing and all takes up much more time, and it seems to be more enervating.  No offense intended.  Maybe it’s a bit like drawing a daily comic strip, but drawing and releasing it on the day, every day.  That could be done, in the modern world, but I don’t think many comic strip creators would like it, and I think it would probably burn them out before long.

Still, at least people seem to read my blog.  If we compiled every individual instance of a single person reading any one of my fiction works‒meaning if someone has read three of my works, that counts as 3 instances‒you might have fewer instances than the number of people who at least look at my blog on any given day.  Certainly the number of people who have bought my books isn’t even within an order of magnitude of the people who subscribe to my blog.

Either way, I guess it doesn’t make much difference in the long run.  All these moments (and words) will be lost in time like tears in the rain, as Roy Baty said.

I did walk to the train this morning, though I did not do so yesterday, fearing the time loss it would entail.  That lack of exercise didn’t help or hinder my mood as far as I can tell, but it was probably good for my recovery, because today was easier.  I mean to keep doing this, as I’ve said, and eventually to add the walk back to the house as well.  It’s good for my health, it makes me “stronger”, and it gives me time to listen to educational podcasts and audible books on science and related topics.  I may even‒since there is no Audible version available‒read aloud and record Quantum Field Theory, As Simply As Possible for myself so that I can listen to it later.  Just the reading will likely get the concepts into my head well, and then relistening will cement them.

If that works, I may do it with other deep books that don’t have Audible versions.  I remember there used to be a service called “recording for the blind”, for which I briefly volunteered as a proof-listener, that provided audio textbooks for those who cannot see, and for which there are no braille versions (surely the supermajority of textbooks).

Anyway, that’s enough for now.  I have things I want to do, and I have an appointment this morning for an irritating, bureaucratic process that I have to do, or at least that will make certain other things simpler.  Just the prospect of it fills me with paranoia and stress.  I hope you have a good day.  And, since I am working this weekend, I expect to write a post on Saturday.

TTFN