It’s the first Monday of December in 2024‒December 2nd, specifically, meaning that the 1st fell on a Sunday, which means that there will be a Friday the 13th in this month*‒and I thought I would write a brief blog post for the day.  I don’t know if anyone was hoping for that, but it’s happening.

It’s relatively cool down here for south Florida; it was 55 degrees Fahrenheit when I left the house, which is, let’s see…(55-32) * 5/9, so 23 * 5/9, so 115/9, so just under 13 degrees Centigrade/Celsius.  That’s also about 286 Kelvin, but the Kelvin scale is a bit inconvenient for most day-to-day temperature readings.

I could’ve just looked all that up online, but I think it’s good for the mind, and for people in general, to know and remember (and apply) the conversion between Celsius and Fahrenheit, even if only for the mental exercise.  If we turn everything over to apps and computers, then eventually no one (or at least very few people) will even remember what such things mean or where they come from, or why.

Anyway, it’s something with which to keep one’s mind occupied.

There’s not much for me to do or to say, anymore.  I’m just killing time while waiting for time to kill me, so to speak.  That’s all I see myself doing from now on.  I have no goals or hopes or dreams or anything.  I don’t expect that I’ll ever see my kids again, or that I’ll ever see any of my other family and/or friends, or that I’ll make any new friends, let alone any kind of “new family”.

I’m not cut out for meeting new people or making new friends on my own.  I never have been.  All my old friends were people I knew from school‒junior high, high school, university, medical school, residency, all that.  I’m basically alone, and I think I will be for the rest of my life‒which hopefully won’t be very long, because it’s really quite pointless and stupid, and I’m pointless and stupid, and so is the world as a whole.

Hopefully, some day soon I’ll be able to say to you all, “this is my last ever blog post”, because it will be one of my last ever anything.  I’m so tired, and I’m stressed, and I’m in pain, and I’m depressed, and I can’t sleep for shit, and above all, I’m alone.  I’m sick of just about everything that I do, and I’m very much sick of myself.

And, frankly, the world as a whole, the universe as a whole, is just irritating and stupid and such a waste of potential.  There’s no point to any of it, and it’s not even headed in any kind of positive direction.

As Yeats wrote, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / are full of passionate intensity”.  I suspect that’s just the nature of things, since passionate intensity tends to be the habit of those with a dogmatic turn of mind, and those tend to be the people who do the most damage, who commit the most destruction:  precisely the people who believe that they are right, that they know what’s morally right, and that belief gives them carte blanche to do what they claim to think is right and fumigates all their deeds from any possibility of wrongdoing (in their own heads, at least).

Dogmatic thinking tends to be profoundly dangerous and destructive.  “Certainty” kills.  That’s why I say, “Spay and neuter your dogmas.”  We don’t need or want them to spread and reproduce.

Anyway, that’s enough for today, enough for a lifetime, enough for eternity, whatever.  I hope you all have a pretty good week and month and so on, or even better than pretty good, if possible.

*If you stop and think about it, this will almost certainly be obvious, since the 2nd week of such a month will run, Sunday through Saturday on the 8th through the 14th, which means the 13th is a Friday.