It’s Monday again, unfortunately, and‒also unfortunately, certainly for you‒I am writing another blog post.  I thought that I had brought the mini lapcom back to the house with me on Friday, but apparently I didn’t do that.  I remember thinking about bringing it, but evidently that’s as far as I got.  I guess it’s not too important except for the fact that writing on the smartphone really seems to be exacerbating the arthropathy in my thumbs.

As far as I know, no one can tell any difference between my writing on the phone versus the computer anyway.  Maybe that shit’s all in my head, like all the rest of the shit of which my head is full.  Still, if I want my thumbs to recover, I should probably give myself a break from writing on the smartphone.

Of course, what I probably should do is stop wasting everyone’s time with this stupid blog.  I’m quite sure that some if not all of the people who read my posts do so out of politeness.  If I stop writing them, there will probably be a few people who will feel at least a small‒perhaps unnoticed but nevertheless real‒sense of relief.  I know that many of the things we all regularly do are pretty much pointless and are pursued out of a sense of duty or just politeness.

Not that I’m against politeness in general.  I have a few general attitudes toward things that I express as aphorisms, and two of them are:  Written language is the lifeblood of civilization, and courtesy is the lubricant of civilization.  But some things we are trained to think of as courtesy‒like where the utensils go in a place setting, or to greet other people with false* questions about their health and wellbeing‒are just customs, not really ways of avoiding abrasion in one’s interactions.

Anyway, the pointless that I’m making is, I suspect that not only am I doing something here that’s literally futile, it’s probably actually detrimental, as with so many of the things I do when I try to be positive.  I’m chewing up at least a little bit of my readers’ necessarily finite bandwidth, or RAM, or whatever metaphor you prefer, with my personal chaos.  I’m injecting negativity into the worldviews of anyone who reads my stuff seriously, and though I don’t think I’m wrong in my negative outlook, I know there are other perspectives that are more uplifting while nevertheless not being entirely delusional.

How’s that for a left-handed compliment?

Okay, well, what else do I have to say?  Not very much, I fear.  I am quite tempted just to stop doing this‒in case you can’t tell‒but not in order to free up my time or energy to write fiction or do music or art or anything creative.  I just sometimes feel that I ought to go quiet, just shut up and stop inflicting myself upon the world, in however small a way.  It’s often been the case that when I try to do good things, or creative things, in the long term it ends up blowing up in my and everyone else’s face(s).

If I just stop writing this‒if I just stop everything‒I wonder how long it would take for anyone really to notice.  I don’t ever seem to be good at getting attention when I’m hoping to do so.  Would the converse happen if I were to try not to get attention?  Or would it be more of the same?

Or am I, by speculating on such things, recognizing that I am trying to get attention by trying not to get attention, if that makes sense?

Who knows?  Who cares?  Why bother?

Not me.  I don’t know.  And I don’t have any good reason.

I hope you have a good day.

*I say “false” because, when people ask you how you’re doing or what have you, they don’t really want to know if you’re feeling any way but fine or great, and they certainly aren’t interested in hearing about any problems you might have, especially if you could actually use some help.