Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday, and so of course it’s time for my weekly blog post.

I’ve thought from time to time about writing some supplemental posts during the rest of the week as well‒usually on Mondays, before the restless days take all my energy* away‒but so far it hasn’t happened.  Instead I let myself be distracted by silly, stupid things during the week, when I could be learning new physics or mathematics or computer science or any of a number of other rewarding subjects.

A big part of what drains my energy, of course, is pain.  That hasn’t been significantly better this week than last week, despite various attempted modifications and medications and interventions and so on.  Of course, it’s hard to make oneself do significant extra exercise when one is already exhausted and depressed and it’s ridiculously hot and muggy out.  I don’t exaggerate when I say that just standing still outside for a few minutes leaves me dripping with sweat‒sweat that does very little to cool me down.

This is why the heat index is so often well above 100 down here; since one’s bodily cooling functions don’t work adequately in this environment, exposure to the outside, humid air actually just raises one’s temperature.

I think if someone systematically sabotaged the air conditioning industry or all the AC units on a massive scale, one would depopulate much of Florida.  In a desert, if one has copious amounts of water, one can tolerate seemingly more-oppressive heat because one’s sweat-evaporation systems work optimally in dry air, and humans have an unparalleled ability to regulate heat by sweating.  But in Florida, the air is already saturated with water, so one’s sweat doesn’t evaporate**, thus it carries away almost no heat.  Without air conditioning, much of Florida would soon be deadly to much of the human population.

As always, I’m trying various interventions to decrease my pain.  I’m currently working on an attempt at pretty radical weight loss.  I really have to do it; there’s reason to think that losing a good deal of weight may help my pain.  If it doesn’t, I’m going to have to check out soon; I can’t keep going like this.  It’s not as though I have any good (or at least strong) reasons to stay alive.  And my loss would certainly not have any significant impact.  I know this because my presence doesn’t have any significant impact.

Anyway…

I’m almost through the second edit of Extra Body, and I’m successfully tightening it up as I go along.  It’s a relatively lighthearted (and fun?) story, and this is unlike most of my stories, as you know.

Actually, do you know?  How many of the readers of this blog (not counting my sister; I already know she’s read my stuff) have actually read a single one of my stories?  I’m curious.  This blog originated as an attempt to promote my fiction writing, but like most things I undertake that matter to me, I fear it has utterly failed in its purpose.  Let me know, please, if I’m wrong about this.

Speaking of my other, non-cheerful stories, I was thinking, if a miracle occurs and I can find the will to go on living and to continue writing, I want to slightly rework and then finish Outlaw’s Mind.  That’s another one of my works that was intended as a short story, but has grown to become what is really a novel already.  I like the main character and the situations and the mythos of what’s happening to him, and it would be good to finish it.  But I would eliminate the “cold open” portion, which was originally thought to be a prelude to the end of the story, because I don’t think that’s how I want it to end, now.  Timothy and his situation have become much more interesting than the original idea.

I’m not optimistic about that ever happening, of course.  Too many things have to go right for that to pan out, and it’s been quite a long time since I’ve been any good at making things go right for myself.  A big part of the problem is that I basically hate myself.  Which is curious, because there are things that I honestly like about myself, I just don’t seem to love me.  It’s a bit like the reverse of that old song, You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me, with my version beginning “I don’t dislike you, but I hate you.”

It’s weird.  I occasionally try to do auto-suggestion via a sort of mantra*** such as “I love my life and I love myself” or even just “I love myself.”  Some people talk as if self-love is normal (and even perilous:  “the all-natural opiate”), but it’s never been normal for me.  When I try my mental internal suggestion tactics, I can feel that they might be useful and even beneficial, but my figurative tongue soon dries up and goes into spasm‒it honestly is very mentally uncomfortable‒because I can’t easily even pretend to love myself.  As I said, it’s weird.

Returning to potential stories:  of course, there’s also HELIOS waiting in the wings, and the sequels to Mark Red, and DFandD, and my long-awaited Changeling in a Shadow World.  For a long time, I’ve even toyed with the idea of a sequel to The Vagabond, an idea that appeals partly because its title would be The Grey Pilgrim.

If I were able to write full time, I could write new stuff in the morning and edit other stuff in the afternoon and even possibly throw in near-daily blog posts, and I could still study various subjects in my spare time.  Also, I would have world peace and live in a house made out of never-melting, never diminishing ice cream, and would have a superhuman, immortal physique that doesn’t require exercise to maintain.

And a pony.  I want a pony.  It’s not that I particularly like ponies, though I don’t mind them; that’s just what one is supposed to wish for when making wishes that will not be achieved.

Okay, that’s enough for now.  I hope you all have as good a day as that for which you can reasonably wish.  Why not?  No one’s really keeping score.  You can have as many good days as humanly possible and it’s not as though you’ll be building up any kind of bullshit “karmic” debt.  Indeed, people having good days tend to do good things, so if anything, by having a good day, you’ll probably make the world a slightly better place by almost any reasonable measure.  So, get to it.

TTFN

*Perhaps it’s a disorder of what they now call “executive function”.

**This has to do with the physics of diffusion across concentration gradients, and it is constrained by physical and mathematical law, including the second law of thermodynamics.

***As long as I can remember, I’ve always tended to have either some phrase or verse or song or whatever playing through my head repetitively whenever I’m mentally idle‒such as if I’m walking somewhere‒so I harness that and try to give myself useful sentences to repeat, geared toward self-improvement.  I’ve been doing this at least since junior high school.