Clever Manka is dressed and undressed

Siding work continues today after a three-day break and Twenty-Something Fuckboy is parading around my lawn shirtless.

I'm fine. This is fine.

Welcome to my latest musical crush.

I know the mentality of the generational divide(s) is a problematic construct and often detrimental to building and cultivating inter-generational communities but omg these public service announcements explain so much about why Gen X is the way it is. As one commenter says: "Gen X. Raised on hose water and neglect!"

I vented about this on Bluesky but am mentioning it here, too.

I got an email this morning notifying me that the Affordable Connectivity Program is ending in April due to lack of funding from congress. There are no words to describe the obscenity of my government affording to fund a genocide but not discounted internet to its citizens living in poverty.

I'm down to my last few thousand dollars and am just hoping my approval for disability comes through before that money runs out. If worst comes to worst I can cash out my life insurance policy, but I'd really, really rather not.

At least I have it to cash out, so I'm grateful for that. But I'm weary of being grateful for having the means to continue existing in moderately comfortable, isolated poverty for a limited period of time.

Last week's sinus problems were (I think/hope) caused by too much dry air. Every week I descale my humidifier by letting it soak in vinegar. Lawrence has really hard water and I think it's getting worse because I've lately had to soak it for 24 hours instead of just overnight. Apparently that was too long to go without adding moisture to the air because after three days of running it full blast my sinus pressure had decreased. Yay for that but also I can't just... stop? cleaning it? So idk, crossing fingers and hoping for the best which seems to be all I can do about most things these days.

I've come to the distressing realization that I've lost the ability to converse like a normal person about normal person things. I don't watch shows, I rarely read, and when I do it's mostly about writing, tarot, or emotional/internal stuff. I don't go anywhere. I don't have any actual activities other than just existing. Turns out when years pass where 90% of what you do happens in your own head it kinda destroys your ability to just... chat. If I had the spare energy I'd take the opportunity to re-learn how to engage in casual dialogue but anything I've got has to go to writing (or the business thereof).

At least tarot readings (the type I do anyway) are all about internal life stuff so I can still do those! But laid-back conversations like "hey what've you been up to?" are hugely difficult for me. It's very weird to have yet another layer of isolation laid over the obvious, logistical ones.

Speaking of writing, I'm over halfway through the final edits of the first book. At some point I really gotta start on the marketing work.

God damn what I'd do to be able to work a regular job. Talk like a regular person. Live something like a regular life.

On the 17th I mentioned stuff I was doing during a break in January's bad weather. I said I planned to deal with the ice buildup on my studio window the next day since I was already worn out and still had more to do. The good news is warming temps melted the window ice for me because the bad news is I've spent the last week and a few days recovering from the worst fatigue flare I've had in maybe a year. My records here tell me it looks like I had a flare in August and the previous notable one was in February. When I have the energy (ha! ha ha!) I need to read the entries surrounding those dates to see if I made record of when I started to recover and also if I can glean any patterns, besides just doing too much. I need to be more explicit in these entries. When I'm this tired I don't want to have to read between the lines, self. Come on.

So mostly for my own records:
I was already feeling a bit run down in advance of that post. Seeing two friends on a rare (masked) indoor visit on Friday afternoon was by far the best I felt that week. The joy still took a toll, though, and the weekend following was a nonfunctional blur. I had to cancel a standing Monday morning phone call that I haven't missed in over a year. I wasn't even capable of bathing until Thursday. My brain has been slowly coming back online, but I still get spells of dizziness when I stand for more than a few minutes. I have to lie down two or three times a day for at least thirty minutes, sometimes an hour. This is day nine and I'm still not capable of anything more taxing than watching a movie. I wasn't even able to do that until yesterday and it wore me the fuck out.

Please continue praying or crossing fingers or whatever that I get approved for disability soon.

Temperatures are reaching (reasonable) double digits today so I'm running all my errands. I hope the snow I can't shovel will allow me to exit my driveway. I'm pretty sure it will, although I'll likely have to clear at least a couple narrow paths to roll down my trash bins and my landlady's. Crossing fingers she doesn't have enough recycling to worry about because that will mean three paths and I'm not sure how I'll manage that and run errands. We'll see.

I'd planned to write marketing copy for Secular Sacred yesterday--those ten words and brief embellishments of them--but only managed five because I spent a lot of energy (and wrist strength) on removing the ice from my bedroom windows. Between the potential damage to the untreated wood sills (I know, but I don't own this place so am not putting in the effort and money to rectify that) and the specks of mold I saw growing under them (yikes) I figured I needed to deal with that toot sweet. Tomorrow I'll tackle what's likely the same on the window in my art studio, which will entail clearing off the entire worktable so I can kneel on it (it's very large and unmovable by me).

I despise winter and everything that comes with it, but I am also emotionally bereft when removed from an environment without a significant tree population. Also I can't really afford to live anywhere but the Midwest. Capitalism continues to be the bane of my existence (and so many others').

Monday I had the pleasant surprise of someone scheduling a tarot reading. It felt good to read for someone again, and the $30 didn't hurt! I'm feeling a bit discouraged by the lack of response to my offers of even free general, vibes-based readings to my Patreon members. I'm considering offering a free reading a week to the general public because now that my online tarot group has disbanded I have few opportunities to stay in practice. But I think a similar lack of response to a general audience might be further depressing? On the other hand I don't like operating from a place of acting (or not acting) out of a fear of the worst, so...

The business of practicing optimism is a difficult one.

Excelsior, though. Right? Right.

I haven't had the brain resources to read this (very old) article about Shakespeare's use of language but I finally manged it today and it's so good. Ignore the clickbaity title that has nothing to do with the content.

This sentence amused me greatly: it makes sense to imagine engagement with art as involving lots of active, self-aware deliberation, with correspondingly high levels of neural activity…doesn’t it? Because no? Not at all? Anyone with even the most superficial experience with general media consumption probably understands on some level that our gut-level, unexamined response to art (of any time) drives a lot of our desire to remain engaged.

But this articulated why I'm often bored with arty, pretentious adaptations of Shakespeare: In addition to its concordance with the 16th-century concept of sprezzatura —lightness, ease, the ability to make even the most difficult things look effortless—a play crafted to maximize delight helped Shakespeare fill theatres in a way that a lot of visible sweating over the lines might not have.

Productions like the 2015 production of Macbeth that don't engage with the absurd, ridiculousness of the source material leave me cold. But I'm still enthralled by the 2009 Hamlet (the one with David Tennant), despite it being conceptually more ~arty~ with its groundbreaking camera technology and plot that is (imo) genuinely more tragic.

Anyway, Shakespeare, yay!

And now I am checking out of anything resembling cohesive thought for the rest of the day.

I think there's a lot of factors for people losing their conversational skills these days. I've mentioned Cole Jeanette here before because I appreciate his takes as a neurodivergent person who struggles with outwardly compassionate engagement. He offers practical, non-judgemental tips on how to talk with people, not at them. This recent post of his is a great step-by-step on how to converse in a way that shows people you're actually interested in them and their experiences. He also offers a small talk toolkit downloadable here.

Not much to say, but I felt like marking the end of another year.

Here's to the possibility of 2024 bringing positive, meaningful change for us, friends.