Month the Twenty-Fourth

2.21.25 Sad

I don’t know why I am so sad today. I feel like I want tears to stream down my cheeks, like that release would make me feel better. But I can’t cry, not right now, it just won’t come. Is it the obvious, that we will have to go almost a week and half without each other at the advent of May, or is it just the malaise that strikes me sometimes? There is no way of knowing, but it feels bad. Worse than most of the sadness that passes through my life.

I know I don’t have anything to worry about with her going to North Carolina, where that rich guy made his first pass, when we had just met. No it is not that. It is maybe the separation. And my neuroses telling me that something outside of her control will happen while she’s down there. And the fact that I don’t really want to go on the trip that extends the separation. But feel obligated to support my soon-to-be-brother-in-law. And the trip will be fun, I suspect. Not that I’m much for bachelor parties. It sounds kind of like a bum scene to me, for whatever reason. Maybe that is just the sadness getting the better of me. Maybe we will have a grand time and I’ll be in better spirits then. I just know I will be missing her the whole time. I was already going to be, and now it is extended by a few days. I’m such a sad sap.

I would spend every day with her. It is why I haven’t seen Adam in so long. I just want to fold into her being. To be one all the time. That is a lot to ask, and maybe even unhealthy, if my current mood is any indication. I don’t know why I’m feeling this way, but I want it to stop. I just want to smile and have a hug from the woman who truly has become my world. I didn’t mean to fall in love when I met her, but I fell hard and fell fast and now the hours spent apart drag on. I would spend every day with her.

I’m sorry to those in my past who didn’t evoke such feelings. It is nothing to do with you and everything to do with her. I have never been so in love. To want to spend every moment making her smile. To make a go of this writing business so I can support our wildest dreams. To help us get a house. I’m making jack shit right now. She’s going to out earn me by at least a factor of two this year. I feel like a loser right now, for all my good qualities. Why can’t I be the perfect person I want to be? Because no one can Richard, it’s perfectly natural to be sad about having to spend ten days apart in a few months. It’s not okay to beat yourself up for being sad. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you have the power to be happier than you are right now. Don’t worry about her on her work trip, she will be safe and faithful. She has given you no reason to doubt her fidelity. And you no reason for her to doubt yours. When your sun rises and sets on another it is easy to get caught up in “what if?”.

What if, what if, what if? There is no reason to be mired in the doubt of what could be. No one can predict the future, and if in the future something comes between us then I will be very sad, but I will survive. I long to see her in the delivery room with a son cradled in her arms. To see her in a white dress all made up for me and me alone while I wait for her in a suit. I want all the happiness and none of the pain. Is that too much to ask?

Of course it is, there will be pain. But there will also be a great amount of fun. With any luck anyways. And hopefully it will go on for decades. This is a love that can go the distance, of that I am sure. Neither of us has ever felt this way before, to hear us tell it. That says something of people in their thirties and forties. Oh gosh, she’s in her forties, no—thirty-nine forever! That is the rallying call until I catch up to her and then we will go on into the ages at the same age! I love her so stinking much, I just want to climb on the roof and start shouting! I just want to fall into her arms and collapse in a heap at her feet. To kiss her on the mouth and return the smile that is so kind I can’t get over it. I won’t get over it, I will put a ring on that finger and marry her at the earliest convenience. Maybe even upstage my sister, if I can’t wait. Who knows? There are a lot of days between here and labor day, when my sister ties the knot. She’d be pissed but I’m not sure I care.

I want to say “forever”, or at least “until death do us part.” There aren’t enough hours in the day to show her how much I care. There aren’t enough days in the year or years in a life. But I want to spend all of them making her smile, making her laugh. I think that is all I can do, I think that would be enough. I love you Tara, more than I ever imagined possible. Thank you for coming into my life and for wanting to keep me around. I’m feeling a little bit better than I was when I started this, so that is something. Something worthwhile, something that makes me optimistic for the evening to come, when I get that hug and kiss, and maybe get to share some intimacy with you later on. What more can a guy ask for?

TTFN,

Richard

2.23.25 Salvation day

I don’t know why I titled it that. There is nothing being saved, there is no rescue coming for me or for anyone. You can try to piece it together, but good luck. Because you see, there are mysteries that abound in this life, and I am in the thick of them. Like the mysterious house next store, that seems to be abandoned. And the way the snow is falling, straight down, or the way the thirteen year old in this house doesn’t think we’re as funny as we do. These things aren’t as mysterious I suppose, and the smell of ground coffee is making me crave another cup though really what I need is food. And a kiss from my baby, who is making chocolate chip toast. I can’t wait to have the house to ourselves, is that bad of me?

Probably not, I don’t know, it doesn’t matter much. Oh gosh, now that we have the place to ourselves it seems like there is something missing. Or maybe I am being sentimental, for lack of something to write about. Maybe it is the vacuum in my mind that comes with not smoking cigarettes. I have not had one in almost twenty four hours. And only a few more in the last forty eight. I am going to do it. I am going to do the thing that will prolong my life. Interrupted here by a brief makeout sesh. Oh gosh, we almost killed a pretty flower. And I just a pretty flower waiting to be plucked. Oh gee, oh golly. This is a bum entry, isn’t it. Where are all the lofty ideas that were with me when I started this almost two years ago? Can you believe that we are in the last month of the second year?

What a journey it has been in my life, through hell and back again to the surface where I could breathe easy. I think that the worst part was last christmas, when my parents went to get the tree, and I sat in my room as if in prison, as if in a psychic prison I was afraid to be seen, to even go to the bathroom. From those depths of despair I rose to not a manic high but a stability that was tenuous at best, characterized by heavy drinking and loneliness. And then Tara came along and changed all that. Brought me into my best self, the one I like to think I am embodying now. Maybe there are higher selves yet to come? Maybe I have only been searching for the person I want to be.

And every day a journey of discovery on that task. Every hour spent in stasis as I try to find the person I was meant to be. And getting nearer all the time. Getting close to being what I want to be. Which is to say stable. Which is to say sane. Even when I have the hiccups of extreme anxiety they seem to be more manageable, and pass more quickly than they did before. I think that is a result of me doing work to regulate my nervous system. Or maybe it just comes with the passage of time. I am not one to overanalyze or measure progress. I think even now, these additional entries, the measurement of my improving mental state, or even my fluctuating mental state as the case may be. It is nothing to say that everything is always better or worse, or that any day is always anything. Of course, it is always in flux, and that is not a bad thing.

I wish to say here that thanks to my newfound life I am looking forward to the future. That is a big deal for someone who used to dread getting up in the morning. Who used to think about killing himself every morning when the new light shined in his eyes. Yes I used to struggle almost every day, and now it is more like one day in twenty. Or maybe even less. Maybe now it is not so much the pressure of having to exist and rather the joy of getting to. I love this life, and I am grateful for all that I have. That gratitude makes a big difference, I think, in my new outlook where the future looks promising. Maybe I will even sell a book. Maybe I will even get rich and famous. Maybe I will just be happy.

TTFN,

Richard

2.26.25 A day late and $24 dollars short

Where do we go when we don’t have the funds? Where do we go when we do? What is to be said for all these questions, to which I don’t claim to have the answers? Maybe if I run out of things to say I will have an entry that is 100% rhetorical questions. What would you make of me then?

Probably not much. I am not worth so much that I always have the funds, but it seems like I do more often than I don’t, and for that I am grateful. I mean my weekly average on that title. It is not looking good to make my goal this week, as far as my earnings go. But there are still two days left to the workweek, and I am hopeful, even if there is supposed to be a spending freeze on Friday. I do not know how that will affect me, but I hope people elect to support small businesses instead of the massive corporations that threaten us with their dystopian policies. Who knows what is going on in the world, certainly chaos seems to be the new normal. I don’t think I care all that much, about what is happening, because I am in my bubble and my bubble has my baby and she is all I want or need. I think that when I get to marry her is going to be the happiest day of my life so far, and that making a baby will be the next great adventure. I think that I am going to need to shape up a little bit, meaning get in shape and stop smoking cigarettes. I have only had three today though, and that is better than yesterday.

Pretty much everything about today is better than yesterday. As my days filter through my moods. I am happier today, that much is for certain. And certainty tenuous as a measure. I think that if I could live a million more days that would probably be enough, but I don’t really know off the top of my head how much time that would be. Oh yes, twenty seven hundred odd years would be long enough. Probably too long now that I think of it. So maybe something less than a million more days. Maybe something more like twenty thousand more days. I think I could stomach that if I had my health, and I intend to do everything in my power to keep it.

You see, they say health is wealth, and they are right. And there are never any guarantees you will remain healthy in this way. For the deck is stacked against me. Something is coming for me already, I just don’t know it yet. Something is bound to fail in this soft machine, something is bound to kick it and so make me kick the big one. But I am happy for now, and that is something special. Because if you can’t enjoy it what is the point of having a body?

There isn’t one, I’m quite sure, and I’m also sure that I’m going to burn as bright as I can as long as I can. Be the light I want to see in the world. Someone happy to be alive and making every moment count. I am glad that there is no fairness in this game. That maybe there is a chance I will be lucky. That maybe baby and I will make it to 496 months. We are gaining on 11 such months of togetherness. And I just need to find the right time to give her that ring and make good on the promise of forever. Because I am sure. And that is a little bit scary.

I have said before in here I believe that when I get sure is when things begin to get dicey. That when I can’t be dissuaded is when you, dear reader, should be worried. But there is no doubt in my mind that I want to make permanent the union that is already so solid I have no worries about what baby is doing, whenever, with whomever. Even the suitors do not threaten me, I am secure in her love and she makes me feel so good that I simply can’t stand it. I am lucky, truly, to call her mine, and she feels lucky to call me hers, and for this unification I am grateful. We will be together until one of us kicks it, and she will be home in just a few minutes and then I will get to shower her with the affection that is my trademark “move”. How does it get so good, and can it stay so good forever?

Where do we go when we have it all? Where do we go to at all? Can’t it all be so good that it hurts? Can’t it all be so good that we are immune to pain? Can’t it all be the thing we have been waiting for that we didn’t even believe existed because of what life had shown us? Isn’t it all so fucking groovy that we can’t even stand it? Is that too many questions in a row? Is that one more in a string so absurd that it baffles me? I think it is, and then another one for good measure. So: who knows?; who knows?; yes; yes; yes; yes; no; yes. Sequentially that tracks. Sometimes, you see, I have the answers. Just a few of them though, there are too many questions, and sometimes a “who knows?” is all you need to answer them. If you don’t know, admit it. Let the lack of knowing fill you like a warm bath in a tub, let it wash over you and take away the spectres of fear. There are a lot of things that will never be known, so take solace in that fact. Your deepest darkest secrets are probably safe. That’s all folks, that’s all I’ve got.

TTFN,

Richard

3.5.25 Cold beer on a wednesday night

A pair of jeans that fit just right. [sic] I think that this day is going to be better than yesterday, though yesterday was not a bad day. It was just a jumbled up day and I had some paranoia and felt like I wasn’t doing a good enough job at work. So I went in today and did better. And I will do better tonight, not getting drunk, but being the supportive helpful partner I know I can be. Maybe sooner than later I will replace “partner” with “husband.” That would be a dream, I am dreaming it right now as I sit here and text with Tara about our days, sipping on this cold Grolsch and happy to be alive, to not be stoned and to be happy, or at least happier than I was earlier when I was stressing about how I behaved yesterday.

Not that it was even a problem yesterday, I just got in my head about it. Isn’t that the way it goes though, that our imaginary problems are real enough to cause us distress. I could write a book about that. I have written a book about that. Now I am going to try my hand at a mystery, though frankly I have no idea how to go about it. It’s okay, writing is always a process of discovery. Rarely do we know where we’re going when we start writing a book, and this one only has a brief premise to function as the germ that will grow a culture that may end up a tumor on the collective kidney of the literati. Maybe it will be terminal, and I will make so much money that I can build a pool on my house someday, entombing a penny in it a la Hemingway.

The rain comes down outside as I am warm and safe in my parents’ house. Alone, happy, creating something other than the vast nothingness that has eaten up so many of my days. And no cigarettes in almost a week, I think, I lost track of when I had the last one. But it has been a while and I’m determined to quit even though I love the bastards. The sick perversion of health to put smoke into your lungs and blow it out. What a pleasure, and I wish it was one I had never discovered. But alas we live and we learn and we make changes to our lives that we feel will benefit us, and so we grow and learn and make ourselves better people, allegedly. It is a tenuous process, like writing a book, seeing only as far as your headlights in the fog and driving the whole way home that way. I think E.L. Doctorow said that. I’m not sure but I think I am going to have a better night tonight, eating some grilled cheese, some comfort food that will put to rest the notion that I and baby were growing apart as this week went on. What a perilous notion, that, and one unfounded but persistent as I grappled with the limited contact I had last night and this morning. Oh christ to live the carefree existence of a child! Not that children are so carefree as we give them credit for, I suppose.

And I suppose too that I am doing great today, that today is my day, that tomorrow will usher in greatness unheard of in my time. What a Trumpian bravado that was. What a strange conundrum that the man has entered the lexicon. That I am sitting here with my music playing a million miles removed from the loss of civil rights protections for trans people in Iowa. I guess we have to have an enemy of the state if we are going to be fascist. And they an easy target (no pun intended), for their visibility and their vulnerability already. I’m glad to be a cis-het-white-male on this day, as most every day, and not just for the privileges afforded. I am glad to be that because that is what I am, and I am happy to be me. I have spent a lot of time not happy to be me, and this is something of an accomplishment for me to be happy to be myself. I hope that doesn’t come off as selfish in a time when people are suffering at the hands of the system, but I’m afraid it might. Alas…

There is nothing I can do to restore civil rights protections to trans people in Iowa. There is nothing I can do to alleviate the suffering of my Aunt Susan in Pittsburgh, or wherever she was last heard from. Maybe Philadelphia. I am lost in this vast and unkind maze of a world with a smile on my face. That is all I can do. I’m off to get some tomatoes for soup! To make a delicious and heartfelt rendition of comfort food. To love another with the full force of my being, and be sure they know that is how I love them. What a life, what a trip, what a laugh. I am happy today, even if everything on the news is bad. And that is something…

TTFN,

Richard.

3.14.25 How will I afford my wine habit?

With 200% tariffs, that is. Who knows, if that will even happen, or if it does we will just have to adapt. Drink more spirits I guess. What a lunatic though, to go tit for tat with everyone the world over just so he can feel like he has the bigger peen. It’s fine though, other than the immediate impact that we will be drinking less good wine—bad news—there is the option of saving money, overall. So I guess there is a silver lining to all of this, and I just the beneficiary of a hard luck savings plan. Of course with any luck the tariffs won’t last forever, or maybe I will just be able to afford more. How is it I’m still talking about this?

Spring seems to have sprung, at least momentarily, and a full week ahead of schedule at that. I sit here writing to you from the sunshine, enjoying a beverage after a long week. Oh I guess it wasn’t that long, and relatively profitable, if I did come into some liabilities as well. But they say you gotta pay your dues, before you pay the rent…oh come on Richard, snap out of it, get on with the show which is to say get over yourself. Your money troubles are none of your readers’ concern. None of it will matter in fifty years when you are dead. None of it will matter even slightly unless you leave your heirs big heaping debts, which it doesn’t seem like you will.

But who knows, who knows what could happen? It is all a vortex of permeable possibility, and you don’t have the faintest clue what is coming, do you? Addressing myself there as if I was somebody else. Wondering if I’m ever going to get it together so we can go steady again? Is that a question? I don’t think so, and if I am going to get myself back on track I’m going to need to step away from this for a moment and get back in the car so that I might find some piece of ground on which to hang my hat! Oh Huzzah! We shall make ends meat of this roast!

Oh to be a bumblebee just waking up from a long winter’s nap! To buzz around and find the delectable flowers instead of sitting here listening to the planes buzz overhead. Buzz buzz buzz, aldrin, lightyear, who knows what other iterations there might be! How can I not be sad that I can’t fly except in an artificial craft! Oh what it would be to soar on my own wings, and yet I am no bird, as Tara purports to be, with those bony protrusions from her back. I have no such pretensions, am just happy to have my work week behind me, to be able to sit here and try to unwind with no vice, no smoke to facilitate said relaxation. Gosh what it would be if cigarettes were harmless! But I cannot in good conscience continue down that road of ruination, no matter how pleasurable they might be. So I set them aside and have a high noon, stare up into the sun and look around the yard at all the butts left over from my escapades this winter, all the while waiting for baby to come home so I can give her a squeeze and forget for a moment about the ache where my stomach should be. Tomatoes, tomatoes and vodka, and not in that combination of vodka sauce!

Anxiety, with its hold on me, and the traffic on the street unceasing, I am glad that this house next store remains abandoned, and that this dollhouse fits my bones and that this breeze is warm even if the heat of the day is fading fast! I am a recluse from myself, hiding in the shadows that grow longer as these longer days make me happier, happier than ever to be hiding in the shadows from myself on this busy street as the young girl’s bicycle bell dings and dings up the block. If only I could smell, if only this day would present its olfaction to me and I could forget about the boy (or is it a short-haired girl) with the dog walking by towards the woman with the toddler that reminds me who knows somewhat soon I might have one of those. Does that make sense? I doubt it. I think that it is growing near the time when I will be reunited with the love of my life and will be melancholic no longer. Of course as the ice drips off the roof, melted back into water, I am reminded of the immediacy of my process, like that water and its urgency to get to the ground. I feel the crunch, feel the crush, feel myself wanting to do something tonight besides rot on the couch in front of the television.

Of course all the options are bad options in this town where nothing ever happens besides cops driving up and down the streets, besides hunger for something fulfilling, seeking it in the illusory happiness of drink and drug…oh those days behind me, who would have thought that a year ago I would be on the cusp of thinking about quitting drinking entirely rather than just getting it under control. Oh what a gift is alcohol, what a lovely dullness coming over my senses. And not even drunk, just softened before the blow that surely is always right around the corner, always waiting for you around the bend. Of course this whole year has been a driveling nothing, hasn’t it, and most of it redacted for the sake of the divorce. But know that has been written and what is written shall be. And we now engaged! If we haven’t told many people yet. We are excited, to be married to her will complete my life…to have a child with her exceed my wildest expectations for the value I could provide to the world…oh gosh, oh golly me, oh gee, oh my! What are we missing from this world?

I made some money this week, and my wallet is fat with cash in preparation for vacation. Who knows what we will need to buy, who knows what we will need to spend? Always with the questions young Richard with his face glued on upside down…ellipsis, ellipsis, sing me a tune! I posit that someday we will be singing in a heavenly choir, the echo of our exploding star leaving our chorus of souls to repair to wherever they came from before. I don’t believe in vishnu, I don’t believe in karma, I don’t believe in bardos, I am ready my lord (hineni, hineni).

Here we go again with the talk of death, of that great impermanence that washes over me in roiling postulates that make sense most eagerly when I wake up in the morning with the suicide itch, the fear to face the day that makes me wonder what my life is worth. And yet I will never surrender even when it is tempting. No, I will have another drink and wear a smile. For smiling is our greatest weapon against malaise, and if I am a life force let me not be blind in the sunshine, let me see in the dark and let the trucks on the street move on around me as if I wasn’t even here…oh gosh golly oh my! I wish to be a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floor of silent seas…

TTFN,

Richard

3.16.25 Piles of stuff

That is what I am settling in amidst as the true crime serial killer women having affairs show plays on the television. I am transfixed and having a hard time focusing on this beautiful game of accruing letters in sequences that grow more and more inane. Because there is nothing to do other than comment on the snow falling down when yesterday it was springy as can be and looking like winter was over, finally…but alas we continue through the seasons with the unpredictable weather that comes along with them. As serial killers stalk their prey on the television and I sit here with a high noon watching baby take care of the chores!

Where was I going with this, where was I going to have a better day than the day I had yesterday? Isn’t there a better life awaiting me when I pull my head out of my behind and commit to being a better man? Or is that just the wishful thinking that comes with denying yourself a cigarette? Is this the way it is supposed to go? Is this beautiful or is it hideous, hiding among the ugly dwellers of the Pleasant Plantation? I think that if anything here is going to land I’m going to have to step away from the television, which though enthralling is doing me no favors as far as concentration goes. It is useless to try and do two things at once!

And yet I persist, yet I watch the struggles of the strange Angelinos, and I just a little Petosegan from the north country, a man whom the world has left behind. I look out the window at the weather and wonder why I am so tired, why I don’t just go lie down and forget about the world for a few hours. Maybe I will retire to the hermitage to seek out a few hours of solitude. Here, away from the distractions I can collect my thoughts in a meaningful way.

For instance, what does it mean that I have written nothing of substance in months? Is it a reflection on my newfound happiness that the art is no longer any good? Was the art ever good? Will it ever be anything other than an idle diversion for my restless mind? Is that too many questions, too many queries for the reader of what will surely be another dead end book? Where am I going in this writer’s life? Where is the endgame of the hundreds of thousands of words that have ended up in this document alone? To say nothing of the many others that exist. Ten thousand hours, they say, to achieve mastery of a craft. And what is this besides the endless accrual of those hours. The effort to achieve the pinnacle of what can be achieved in letters…I do not even aspire to such great heights, but only to have what I want to express be clear and unobfuscated by my own efforts to communicate it. Surely there is something to be said for being concise, even as brevity gets away from me here and drowns whatever wit I had in my own narcissusian pool.

I look out the window at the paint chipped off the house and smile. Surely there are bigger problems in the world than my lack of success thus far? Surely you can’t be serious? Now we all know the refrain to that one. And if I were serious, would you take me seriously? Wouldn’t this all be possibly the ramblings of a maniac, the effluvium of an unwell man? What even does effluvium mean? I can’t remember off the top of my head. And so I look out the window and smile, and wait for the snow to melt again, and wait for the light above the sink to turn off because we have done all the dishes. And wait, and wait, as the master Bukowski once told us we should. Don’t try, being the opposite end of that phrase…and I here trying, just trying for one moment to collect the dew of a worthwhile thought from the air near my fingers.

Of course as the vacuum sings out its howl from the other room and the snow swirls about the eaves, and the flowers from valentine’s day remain resolute on the counter and the bread from this morning continues to rise, as the empty bottles and cans grow colder by the minute and the hats and belts hang from the hook on the wall, as I contemplate a shower and wonder if I have ever said a single worthwhile thing, I sit and contemplate also the horror of doing truly nothing with one’s life. Of leaving nothing behind. At least these words will be a record that I have lived, and for that I am grateful to have the nerve to say all these petty nothings even if no one ever cares to read them. Certainly this is less exciting than musing about God, about Jesus Christ, as the mania coursed through my veins. Certainly this slow and steady accumulation of verbiage about writing and the lack of progress in the process is not the way. Maybe there is not a way, and that thing there is the illusion we should stay away from. Maybe we should just let the snow fall and the bread rise, and let the sound of the vacuum cleaner sing us to sleep. Maybe that is enough for now, and I should rest my head. Maybe, maybe…

TTFN,

Richard.

3.19.25 11 months, and 2 years

Oh boy, we are in the last day of this second year of grasshoppers, as is my personal shorthand for when I sit to write these entries. Is it a project worth continuing? I do believe so, if it only gives me something to do on the long days when I am not working. I also think that you can learn something about me, and also maybe about yourself by reading through the entries that glow, luminous with the spectral evidence that I can, in fact, still think and breathe. It is maybe not for everyone that I continue to write these things, and maybe it is only for myself, at the end of the day, that the pages continue to roll on towards who knows, maybe twelve years of this. And then what? Can I even sustain the momentum that long?

Do you care that I often fear going to prison, though I don’t ever break the law? Do you care that I love my fiancé and want to make her my wife? Do you care that we want at least one baby, that I plan to start a family with the beautiful woman who lights up my world every day? Do you care about me at all? Then why have you read this far? Why have you stayed with it when the living got slow? When happiness supplanted the quiet desperation that characterized the first entries. When I ceased to be vague because I knew I wasn’t publishing them any time soon. Why have you stayed with me when you knew that I didn’t have a lot to say? Because sometimes it is fun to read something that doesn’t tell a story, that reveals a story to you by way of what it doesn’t say. Isn’t that something?

We see the lights come up on the stage, see the actors step out into them, and wonder what happens next. Well what happens here is a special kind of magic, the kind of magic that makes you wonder if what you just read was a prank on you, a joke meant to make you doubt your own reality. For what other purpose would a writer entomb his thoughts several times a week for now going on two years. And promising to do it for another ten, at that. Of course you are probably wondering what the eleven months of the title was referring to. Well that is how long I have known Tara, and I hope it stretches out to hundreds of months, that ill-fortune does not befall us and make us lament that we met so late in life when the time we had was already growing short. Or maybe that is to exaggerate. Maybe we still have many more years with which to enjoy each other’s company. Maybe there are many more warm nights left for us to snuggle in and make the other sleep better. Maybe a lot of other good things too.

I have been querying books, and not finding much traction with the agents. Maybe that is a failing of my books, but maybe I have just not yet found the right person at the right time who is interested in a project I have sent out for them to review. It is a long and arduous road to publish a book, I dare say, and one I would not wish upon anyone who does not have fortitude and perseverance on their side. We leave it to a murderer to have a fancy prose style, but the rest of us must just make do with our regular prose styles, and our lack of murderous impulse. I suppose that is a good thing, truly, and I aspire to keep my murderous impulses lacking, and my prose style a direct consequence of my consciousness, a straightforward logical following from what I think.

Maybe it’s all predetermined and nothing we do can change anything. Of course in that case the actions we take are also predetermined and we can’t not do anything that we do. That is a slippery slope at best, I would contend, for if there is no free will then the whole system falls apart. How can you punish someone for something they had no choice but to do? I guess you can punish anyone for anything, truly, and we must look for meaning in spite of the bleakness that surrounds us. There are no limits to how much we can suffer, and not many more on our capacity to experience joy. May my suffering be limited by how much I don’t want it, and my joy be boundless. That seems as good a place to end this as any. Surely there will be more to come next year, and more to come the years following that. Hopefully I won’t have to write any years from my deathbed. Hopefully we will continue on into the harmony of love. That love will be the overarching factor in the coming years. Signing off on year two, I hope you’ve enjoyed yourselves so far.

TTFN,

Richard