No More Excuses

In the midst of all the heartache, here I am believing I have no more excuses to ignore my few, precious Dear Readers. So here I am in the midst of a post-truth, post-Trump mindset. Here are the things I am working to accomplish:

Nissi at rest. She is maybe 6 months old here, black with tuxedo like white markings. Here she is napping on the corner of a grey couch. 

• Training the puppy is going well. She is so much smarter than I thought, so it is much more like having a toddler in the house than usual.
• My head hurts. 
• My teeth need attention. Professional attention. I am working on it, appointment after appointment - now I have to see a hygienist four times a year to try to save what I have left. I am starting to sometimes actually look forward to being rid of them some day. 
• I need to write more. A lot more. These brain droppings are cluttering up the works and so I exorcise them with you.
• My gaming will never be better than the upper echelon of mediocre, and it is only very rarely even that good.
• Learning Spanish is slowed to a stop, but I have not given up. Thanks, Duolingo.
• I have the fortune to discuss the nature of reality with the author of Quantum Sorcery - have you read that yet? I learn, aid, and keep the candles stocked - apprenticeship!
• I can now draw a sad coffee cup that other people can recognize and say "nice" without appearing to bullshit me. That is kind of cool, will keep working on it.
• My cleaning projects had unexpected progress, which is great. Our black carpets frequently get vacuumed before they turn grey from pet fur.
• Woot! My craft room is accessible and useful again. It does need some work. It will always need some work. D valiantly offered to get a new sewing machine if I got the room right again - I will be talking about that soon.
• I gathered all the stuff to start learning recorder, but there are too many people home all day for me to feel comfortable going back to fourth grade right now. I can read music and I played clarinet for a decade, this so not be super difficult. But thanks to my teeth (see above) I cannot play clarinet without killing my head, so recorder it is. Well, it will be once I have some private time on the regular again.

My Buddhism may be causing this existential crisis. I have not the resources to take any great practical leap: week or month long retreat. Hell, I can barely afford a new read. But I feel like I am on the burning edge of something... I am not sure if there is much difference between a leap and a fall - besides the landing.

Sometimes I feel something... precious. Dust mites in the sun glinting like diamonds, special in their transience, their worthlessness. Connection to the suffering of others, an empathy uncontrolled in reach and depth, dangerous without the rest. 

A frustration with the things I own owning me, but raised too poor to give away all that I should, let alone minimizing as I sometimes want. Once a poor person has a thing, unless we must leave it behind it is very difficult to give things up. 

An unnamable desperation to stop feeling so fucking desperate. A coming together that keeps falling apart. 

I hope you are getting by, Dear Reader. Find comfort where you can. We are regulated to the fringe again: Outlaws that have done nothing truly wrong.