Hi.

So, after a year of waking up every day and not having much to say, this morning, my brain chose violence.

I’m still not sure WHAT I have to say, but, honestly, I think I am just tired of this page having a date on it that’s so far in the past. But that’s how things go in my brain. I have (undiagnosed but oh-so-obvious) ADHD, and I get excited about something (knitting, art, diamond patching, writing a blog) and I put every waking minute into it, until one day…I don’t. That is why I have had SO MANY blogs over the years. And then a couple years later, I go to look at the blog, realize that I missed the email about renewing the domain, and Bob’s your uncle, another blog in the graveyard.

With this blog, I did the smartest thing I have ever done (besides marrying him—duh) and put my husband in charge of renewing the domain, so I at least have a reasonable chance of not finding the page unexpectedly gone (which, sigh of relief, it’s not).

But now, I’m in the place where there are so many things firing at me in my oh-so-damaged brain that I am not really sure where to start.

I’ve always said that I do fidgety things (art, knitting, diamond painting) when I’m anxious and contemplative things (reading, writing, meditation) when I am depressed and I think that holds true now, because I have read 98 books this year and not done much else. Most of them were light romance, because the dopamine from those happy endings are no joke. But still, 98 books in 132 days is either impressive or pathological depending on your perspective. The book lengths vary, but average out to 378. So, not reading Little Golden Books here.

It’s a staggering level of disconnect from the real world, is all I am saying.

Which isn’t to say that I am disconnected, not really. I’m on so many zoom calls a month that I practically had to make a spreadsheet to account for them all.

The number was—if I am counting correctly—24. Which is more calls than I was on when I had a full-time job.

Some of those are therapy (six sessions a month, individual and group.) Some are gaming, both online board and RPGs (six sessions a month)

And the rest are just scheduled hangs with friends, which accounts for 16 evenings spent in the company of people who matter to me.

And I just realized that 16+6+6 is 28 and not 24. Guess I really did need that spreadsheet.

But my point in all of this is that I am not a hermit, I’m involved with the world around me. It’s just that my level of CARE these days is pretty busted. What do you want for dinner? Don’t care. You want to go to brunch tomorrow? Don’t care. You want a piece of cake? Don’t care. Sleep late? Don’t care, and my bladder won’t let me anyway.

Living through the collapse of democracy and late-state capitalism has just beaten the care out of me.

So I read. And wow, do I care about that. I care about the next book almost as much as my next breath. I am brutal about not finishing books that aren’t what I want them to be (pretty sure I started and deleted three yesterday alone). Part of that is that self-publishing means that any jagoff with a keyboard (and no, that irony is not lost on me) can write and publish whatever mediocre story that they can manage, and Amazon makes it easy to get them onto my Kindle.

But the bigger part is that the authors I love just can’t write as fast as I read, and so I am always searching for new voices, and that path leads me directly into the Sea of Meh on a pretty much daily basis.

So. Here, probably depressed, reading like it’s my job and I want a raise, and miserable about the state of the country I’m living in. I think that makes you current.

I have other things I want to say, but this was a LOT, so…maybe tomorrow, yeah?

Love y’all.