Here we all are on another Wednesday, the middle day of the “traditional” modern work week.  This week, it’s also the middle of my work week; I do not work on this Saturday*.

I’m going to try to keep this post a bit short, just to see if I can conserve some personal energy.  I’m very tired, but somehow that rarely seems to prevent me from continuing to drive myself into the ground.  I did have a slightly better sleep last night than the previous few nights, which is relatively nice but still inadequate.

Also, though yesterday morning had relatively low amounts of pain**, at least for me, starting in mid-afternoon, it flared severely, especially on my right side/hip/knee/ankle and back.  I also had some neuropathic trouble with my left hand, but I think that was unrelated, and was likely due to an arthropod bite.

So, that all made the day quite frustrating; it followed something of the pattern of the “peak-end rule” as first described relating to old school colonoscopies, but it occurred in the reverse of the desired approach for colonoscopies without conscious sedation.  This would be expected to discourage someone from wanting to do another one, whether it be a colonoscopy or just another day.

Alas, I have relatively few options when it comes to “not wanting to do another one”.  There are only a few available ways to avoid another day.  One is to remain unconscious throughout that day, but remaining unconscious is something with which I seem to have difficulty.  The other form of evasive action is more drastic.  It remains, as always, an option.

Anyway, as I said, I mean to try to keep this short today, though I’ve intended that before and have failed many times.  Still, I’m very mentally fatigued at the moment, so I might find it relatively easy to keep things to reasonable lengths.

On an unrelated note, I’ve been thinking of doing some recordings of my writings again, like I did for several of my short stories and for the first several chapters of The Chasm and the Collision.  I would probably start with the next CatC chapter, but before doing that, it would be nice to know whether anyone out there has listened to any of my audio, whether on YouTube or here.

It’s a relatively large amount of work to read a chapter out loud and to edit the audio (and to make it into a “video”).  I enjoy it, to some degree, but a large part of that enjoyment depends upon the expectation that someone might listen to it and enjoy it themselves.  In an amazing, almost impossible world, someone might even tell me that they liked it (if they liked it).

A trouble I have, and which I have had for a long time, is that people will compliment me (from time to time) for certain things, but mainly for things that are easy for me and not terribly important to me.  Whereas the things that do feel personal to me, my creative output‒the rare things that have to do with me about which I feel good‒mostly don’t even get noticed.

Say whatever else you might*** about my ex-wife, she honestly liked and praised my music playing and writing (and singing), my drawing/painting, my sculpting (rare though it was), and most particularly, my fiction.  Even when she was pissed at me, she would not denigrate nor allow the denigration of my creative and intellectual output.

No one else in my life, before or since, has been as supportive in that way as she and her family, though of course others (e.g., my own family) have far surpassed that in relative and absolute terms in different ways.  My family, including myself, have difficulty with praise and emotional expressiveness, at least in direct communication.  Heck, in my family, we’re probably all on the spectrum at some level, so it’s neither surprising nor deliberate nor unkind if we have a difficult time showing (and frequently, knowing) how we feel.

Okay, that’s enough.  I suspect this has been quite boring for you, and for that I apologize.  I would appreciate feedback on the “audio of my stories” question, though, so if any of you have any of it to give, it would be welcome.

Thanks.

*Barring, as always, the unforeseen.  I really ought to feel fine with just leaving this caveat unsaid, since it is always the case that any predictions we make do not apply in the case of the unforeseen.  That’s more or less true “by definition” if anything is.  Unfortunately, I feel compelled to say it explicitly, lest I be unclear or misunderstood.

**By which I mean that I was in relatively low amounts of pain.  I don’t have any idea how much pain the day itself experienced; I honestly doubt that it can experience pain, or anything else.

***No, you really shouldn’t.  If you think I’ll enjoy hearing you badmouth the mother of my children, the woman I married, then I want to disabuse you of that notion.