Hello and good morning and all that blather.  It’s Thursday, so it’s time for my weekly blog post, though apart from brute habit I have a hard time finding good reasons to write it.

I finished the second edit-through of Extra Body earlier this week.  That’s not too impressive; I should’ve finished some time last week, but I’ve been going very slowly.  I have no excitement about finishing and publishing the story.  I honestly don’t really care.  I just have nothing better to do.

That’s been the case with pretty much everything these days.  I’ve been trying to find interest in things, but it’s been almost entirely unsuccessful.  I did stumble into some Facebook videos of various people doing drawings and paintings, and that got me interested in doing some of that, myself, so I did some doodling and sketching and stuff.  I even ordered some new pencils and pens and markers and cetera; but there’s a weird sort of desperation involved in these actions, which became evident to me when delivery of a couple of items was delayed and I was absurdly furious about it.

I’m angry most of the time nowadays.  It’s very annoying.

Anyway, I’ve done a few little drawings, including the ones I’m going to include below.  The first is a sketch of Cthulhu which I did on H. P. Lovecraft’s birthday (though I didn’t know it at the time).  I’ve enhanced it a bit, digitally, since it wasn’t finished, but anyway, that’s about as good as anything I’ve done in any sense, which is hardly saying much.

I also made a couple of other doodles, one of which I colored with pencils and the other of which I colored with some delayed-delivery markers (about which one of my internalized fits of rage took place).  I also printed out some old pictures of mine to practice coloring, but they’re only partially done, and I screwed up one by coloring another with it underneath, so the color bled through.  I guess I’ll share them here, for shits and giggles.

I’ve been fiddling on the guitar some, too, but I remain exceptionally mediocre, and I haven’t any urge to write new music.

I’ve taken a sort of impromptu break from studying any physics or mathematics, also.  I have no energy (nor momentum nor charge) for any of it.

Of course, a lot of this trouble surely is complicated by the persistent elevation of my chronic pain, though that’s at least begun to level off slightly‒whether from my personal interventions or from the natural rhythms of physical processes or some combination of the two, it’s difficult to say.  My sleep, on the other hand, seems to be steadily worsening over time.  Last night, for instance, I slept less than three hours.

Oh, I was also out sick Monday, after getting sick on Sunday a bit.  I didn’t really get much rest or benefit from my absence; being at the house is no more pleasant than being at the office*.  At least there’s more space at the office, and when no one else is there, it’s also much quieter.  Honestly, in some ways, jail and prison were both more pleasant than being at the house where I currently live.  Weirdly enough, I had a greater feeling of personal space when incarcerated than I have now, and I also felt like I was occasionally doing some good, since I helped several people get their GEDs and helped some guys who weren’t very good at writing send letters to their families.

At least I wasn’t both bored and distracted, and I had things to which to look forward‒including, ironically, the life I’m living now, though it is not at all what I had anticipated (for instance, I declined to stay with my Mom and Dad and sister because I wanted to be near my kids, but despite that, I haven’t seen either of my children in more than eleven years, now, by their choice).  Now, I’m basically just floating by myself through turbulent, greasy, polluted chop from day to day.

I’ve noticed a clear tendency for people who spend very much time with me for very long to decide that they don’t really want to be around me anymore.  I cannot blame them.  I’m a difficult, unpleasant person, and by nature I’m prone to profound darkness.  I try not to give in to that nature if I can help it**, and I try to be upbeat and positive or at least funny in my expressions and indulgences in gloom and pan-antipathy.  But it wears me out.

I don’t think I’m really capable of doing any good in the world anymore; I don’t have the energy or the drive for it.  And if I don’t want to indulge my nature as a Destroyer‒which I do want to indulge, but you know what I mean‒then I ought just to turn that tendency fully inward.

Anyway, that’s all that.  I don’t know what else to say, and more to the point, I don’t know why I should say or do anything else.  Sorry to be a bummer; it’s just who I am.  I hope you all have a good day, week, month and even year.  I can’t promise “I’ll be there for you”, but probably somebody will be.

TTFN

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*Especially when, as has been the case this week, we’ve had some chaos and stress involving the personal troubles of some of our long-time workers.

**This explains why one of my favorite lines from Doctor Who is when the eleventh Doctor, in a moment of terrifyingly cold anger, says, “Good men don’t need rules.  Today is not the day to find out why I have so many.”  There is a reason why I created a short-lived series of blog posts entitled My Heroes Have Always Been Villains.