Category: NoJoMo

Wrap-up

Ten years’ worth of month-long writing, and I”m finished.

Today, as I’m writing, I’ve been tweeting back-and-forth with someone about the place I tweeted a photo of on my train ride out yesterday.

But back to the topic, yeah, I don’t know if I’ll do this next year. Part of the reason I was so into doing it was that I felt like it was something that helped me prepare for the down part of the year.

I almost wrote that it “felt like a chore,” but that isn’t true. It’s something I can still do, which is important.

I could provide the resignation that I’ve reached about as high as I’m going to go, but, if so, that’s fine, too.

I think I’ve started to figure out why I like what I like.

Do I think I can still crank some things out when I need to? Yes. Do I know exactly what I’d like to crank out? No.

*deletes bit that I don’t want to share…nothing embarrassing, but just something I want to keep to myself*

I can still write. Even if I can’t see that well. The muscle memory of typing is something that I do remember. And, no, I won’t quit putting two spaces after sentences, even if the modern practice is a single space.

The next question is how do I make money doing it. Hmmm….

Regardless, thirty days down, so Fin.

I have some things I’d like to do today. Get my hair cut, maybe shave this, and get my hair cut.

*checks nearby barber my wife recommended*

No, they don’t take credit cards, so that won’t work for my Small Business Saturday purchase.

Nope, they don’t take credit cards. So much for that.

I’m finished, though. Despite two travel stretches, I’ve gotten them all out this month.

Merry Christmas.

Shopping/Free-write

I’ve not done much shopping, as as I write this, I’m on a train headed back to Alexandrai.

It’s so strange how I can now talk myself out of just about anything that I might have wanted for a moment.

Even momentary urgest to maintain are fleeting.

I could fire everyone right now.

What does that say about me?

Yes, I’m going to do that some, at least.

I need to find a new dentist, PCP, and dermatologist. I’d be working on that right now, if I wasn’t on the quiet car.

I would say that I’m very dissatisfied with many things in my life, but that’s not true. I’m just so ambivalent towards pretty much everything that I don’t do anything.

I guess the question ought to be whether dissatisfaction might be preferable.

I just don’t know. And I’m not interested enough to find out.

Tomorrow is the final day of this.

I’m not sure what I should think or feel. Ten straight Novembers.

I think I should feel some sort of accomplishment to say that.

But I don’t.

Thanksgiving

So, I’m writing this from my inlaws’ couch, with the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

We left out at about 0630, and got down without too many issues.

My wife got the turkey in, and we’re waiting for my mom to show up.

This is the first time I’ve been down here since I left last May. No feelings of comfort at all, whatsoever.

So, the plan is do dinner, go to a hotel for the night, then I get on the train to go home in the morning.

But I do what I’m expected to do.

*shrug*

I should be looking forward to the football games. Even moreso with the Saints playing the Failcons tonight. But I’m having trouble being excited. About that, or much of anything.

*thinks of turkey*

Nope, that doesn’t work, either.

Maybe I’ll have some inspiration while I’m on the train tomorrow.

Write about social media. What are your accounts? What have you set aside?

I’ve heard a lot of discussion over the past few months saying that social media is very destructive. Maybe that’s too much listening to Bridget Phetasy.

Still, there’s been the thought that’s been going through my head for some time now that you can leave.

I stick with things longer than I should too often; just how I roll. Still, when I do leave, it’s a decision I’m not often going to reconsider.

For the social media sites, it’s probably more difficult because of what they do to make things addictive.

But, as is the case with some of the therapy I’m doing lately, I am able to resist.

What’s going on on Facebook?

Uh. Maybe I’ll look later.

Or maybe I won’t look at all, because fuck them.

Choose something different.

You’re free to do that until the men with guns come and tell you to submit, or get locked in a cage.

A nastier follow-on comment to that just got deleted.

I’m self-censoring, even without the ginger, or the totes-didn’t-used-to-be-evil company’s urging.

With the self-censoringediting, though, I wonder if it’s really a problem. You’ll be hard-pressed to find someone who’s as much of a free speech absolutist as I, but I really don’t see a problem with people watching what they say.

Yes, you can shout “fuck” in a crowded theater. Yes, the proprietor is free to kick you out. Yes, you can shout “fuck” on a street corner. Yes, you can probably be ticketed for doing that. Yes, you can shout “fuck” in your own living room, and nobody, other than the gathered assemblage, should know or object to it. Alexa, please divide your microphone gain level by zero.

Tomorrow is going to be a very long day. We’ll see if I have energy to stay up to watch the Saints in Atlanta. Tryptophan and travel may have taken me out by then. That, and I have an early train to catch Friday.

But, as far as what I use.

I still look at Twitter quite a bit.

I check Facebook every couple of days. The FB app is gone from my phone. So’s FB Messenger.

I’ve deleted the Instagram app because I really don’t like some of the privacy things FB’s done lately, or their please-regulate-us-and-cement-our-market-dominance credo

I’ve messed around some with Gab and Minds.

I still check Fark, mainly on the weekends.

I’ve developed a hatred, perhaps irrational, for Reddit. It was slightly less pretentious when it was called Digg.

So that’s about it. I’m sure there’s things I’m leaving out, but I’m leaving myself out, too.

Healthcare situation (reach-back to 2016, trip to Georgetown.)

I’ve written about this some this week already.

MS stuff

• Neurologist at Georgetown
• Tysabri infusions at Georgetown
• Other stuffs here

Since the move to ALX, I need to find a new PCP and a new dentist.

I do like the folks I’ve been seeing since I came to NoVA, but they’re a hike for someone who can’t drive.

They’re also, I think, outside the short bus service area. (read: ADA Ride paratransit)

I have an appointment in late December to address something else that is a side-effect of everything else long-term.

I still have my fingers crossed that there’ll be something that miraculously fixes what ails me.

At the same time, I’m not holding my breath on it. i recognize that the MS probably isn’t going to kill me; I’ll probably die of cancer or cardiovascular disease like everybody else.

The question is whether I live as long as my male ancestors. My dad was 59 when he died. His dad was 54. But my maternal grandfather is 90, and my only living grandparent.

But lately I worry more about people think they should be able, with plurality approval, force me to live by their prescription.

Just a few more. I hope there’s something where I can really dig in and write. I know that there’s a free-write there. Hmmmmmmm.

Recap of your year month-by-month.

Yeah, I’m just not going to do this one right now. I really don’t have a firm memory of the things that happened last winter. I know I got this job, even though I didn’t go looking for it.

Then several months of bouncing back-and-forth to Amazonville to meet my time commitments there.

The whole time, pretty much, I was looking off and on for a new place for us to live.

Takeaways?

• DC is too expensive
• Driving in DC is terror-inducing (not for me, since I can’t drive anymore, but for my wife)
• PGC, Maryland, especially the parts bordering Southeast DC,sketchy as fuck.
• MoCo, Maryland, home to about half of all the bad local ordinance stories you see on TV news, or read about in magazines

So we ended up in Alexandria, Virginia.

I can get around well enough, here.

Today was a long day. Traffic was nuts, but I did get pretty much everywhere I needed to be on-time.

I am tired. So that’s it for today. I may look to see if I can do a month-by-month thing later this week, when I’m back from Thanksgiving fun.

Doing that last year did help me focus on a few things.

Hasta….

Write about three things you did for the first time in the past year. (reach-back to 2016)

From November 18, 2016:

Okay, so three things I’ve done this year that I’d never done before.  Please excuse the odd organization;  i started with bullets, and I’m not sure if that was the correct way to go.  There’s multiple paragraphs for each.  Of course, if I was writing a DoD PowerPoint presentation, they’d be awesome.

Anyway, on to it….

• Ate a raw oyster. A few, actually. They were listed as a specialty at my friend’s restaurant. I’d been considering doing it. The opportunity presented itself, so I went for it. Reaction? Not bad. Probably something I wouldn’t go for often, but it was good. If you want an example of what a nerd I am, in the months leading up to that time, I actually googled how to eat them. Do you chew them? Swallow whole? What? Obviously, roasted or fried you chew, but what of the raw variety. The answers I found said, essentially, take a few bites, let the flavor circulate around your mouth, then swallow. Yes, this is a pretty lukewarm reaction, but I’ve found months later that I have a craving again. It’s the oddest damned thing.
• Spent a night in the hospital. This one didn’t happen until it was oyster season again. Obviously, they don’t serve those there. Both times were terribly unpleasant. One night the first time, two the second. The second instance was one day shy of a month later. Both were due to infections. Both of different bacteria. Both, ultimately, of the same cause. Protip: when you’re killing your immune system every four weeks, inserting foreign bodies into your body is a really bad idea(TM). Ultimately, I place the blame on one medical provider. I won’t write much about this here because I’m still considering all options (and, yes, that includes whatever legal remedies might be available). But, in my current job, I have no leave at all. None. I don’t even get paid holidays. If I’m not working, I’m not getting paid. I was also completely out-of-control. When I was younger, I prided myself in my ability to put up with nearly anything. Since I got sick, I’ve had to get over that. There’s things that I just can’t control anymore. My body is included in that growing list. That includes my emotions. I’m tempted to go back to some of what I wrote in about 2005 where I felt like I was completely numb to everything. Things have certainly changed. There’ve been high highs, and low lows. Sarah and I chuckle at one of our animated sons, Butters from “South Park,” (And if you know either of us, you can see how that’s our boy….) who was sitting on a curb crying after his girlfriend (a waitress at a place modeled after Hooters) dumped him. Stan was sitting nearby despairing about getting blown out by his new circle of friends. “I’d rather be a crying little pussy than a faggy goth kid.”
• Walked away from a terrible work situation. Here, I’m talking about my last job. I don’t even try to miss it, knowing I won’t be able to. I’m still on decent terms with a few of the people I encountered, but there’s others I hope I never speak to again. Aside from the last two jobs, I’ve never felt that way before. Again, there’s a lot more I could say on this one, but won’t. I was used. I hope the people responsible have memories so short that they can look themselves in the mirror again someday.

I could write for hours about these, but I think I’ve said enough.  The last one is a bit of a cop-out;  I could have written about the sheer volume of whining about the election.  Oh, you’re going to have a peaceful protest?  Yeah, I give that about half an hour.  Also, nobody cares.  The Commonwealth of Virginia supported a loser.  Again.  This has been true many times in the past.  So, too, that I voted for whoever lost.

But I get it.  I’m a bigot because I didn’t vote for the party of historic racism.  Hmmmm…okay.

I suppose I thought there were a few things I could write about when i plucked this one out, but I’m really having trouble picking something out that’s not sounding like a boast.

Reading the old stuff, though, it’s tough to relay how much that year, in retrospect, fucking sucked.

This is the year, however, of trying to get some things really together.

I’ve gained some insight into why I’ve done what I’ve done sometimes. Also, in retrospect, I’ve not done anything I’m really ashamed of, either. Reading the second bullet there

I do feel, now, that I’m free of some of the burdens I’ve had since I got laid off in 2013.

What I need to be able to do, however, is really forgive some of the folks responsible for how I was treated during those lean years.

*steps away*

Yeah, this prompt is really not working, so I’m going to dig through my drafts to find something else to write about.

Nope. Nothing I’d like to talk about.

*leaves for another cup of coffee*

Still nothing.

Trying to push aside the thoughts of fried porcine delights that are entering my scarred brain. (Canuckistani bacon, if you were wondering….)

And just as I finished spitting that out, my wife comes back from the store, and asks if I want turkey sausage. Yeah, I guess that’ll probably meet the craving.

As for the rest of this entry, I almost feel like I should have some things I desire going forward. Need to get about thinking of a few.

In the meantime, I’m going to stop now. I’ve written enough. Enough for awhile.

I should go figure out accommodations for the trip later this week.