The year’s about to end. I’ve been super lax in updating stories recently, which is funny, that the posting of the stories, which takes three minutes, is what I’ve been bad at, and not the writing of the fucking things, which takes an hour or more but takes a shitload of mental energy besides, during a stretch when I’ve had absolutely none to spare, and doing anything at all was a zero-sum game. Anyway, there’s a new one up; and I’ll post one tomorrow, and that will be an end to the posting. I’ll talk more about this in a couple of days, but just so you know, I didn’t quit; and though I paid a price academically and professionally, I haven’t fallen down. I’ve written a story every day (or a novel chapter; more on this later) since I first mentioned it almost two months ago. We had a gentleman’s agreement, you and I, and never let it be said that I’m not a gentleman.
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I know it’s hip to be down on New Year’s resolutions; which I’m kind of disgusted by, to be honest. Yes, people rarely follow through with them; and yes, if one were the Perfect Human Being one would make changes, as needed, every day of the year. But nobody I know is the Perfect Human Being; and the fact that people rarely follow through is the best fucking evidence that something that needs to be addressed is amiss, and what better time to address it than the beginning of the year.
So your cynicism is lame, is what I’m getting at.
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I’m taking a lot of care with this year’s resolutions; I have a lot of stuff to choose from, but a resolution that I can tell you about now is that I’ve resolved to find a compromise for LSH and for my own personality that lets me post more; it will need to be a two-way accommodation, since I don’t have time to do the kind of posts that were “good” posts in the past; and I don’t have the type of personality to write the super quick cat-bloggiest of cat-blog posts, by which I mean: “Had a great lunch at Annie’s Parlour today. Hamburger: yum!” And I need to get something out of the writing of the posts, which is a little different in this context than it might be in another, since the blog doesn’t generate much conversation; but I do want the people who stop by to get something out of it, too, which keeps me from using it as a sort of scientific clearing house.
That’s a lot of constraints, but I’m going to figure something out. I’ll talk more about that later. For now, I just wanted to say hello; and to publicly thank Elan for sticking with the stories for much of this stretch. I used to work at a dog kennel and there were these mornings when I had to wake up, drive my four wheeler through sleet and ice, and wash windows and walk dogs and scrape out the watery stew of shit and food nuggets that had swollen to the size of grapey maggots. Anyway, waking up to one of these days I just wanted to stay in bed; I didn’t want to burn a Saturday on that. But I did it, partly because I felt obligated, partly because I knew my friend Shane Hite was counting on me to be there.
Many days during this end-of-semester stretch, with three classes, two class projects, a first year project, meetings, a job, hospital visits, physical therapy, all of this fucking shite -
many of these days were harder by a ways than those days of cracked hands and wet and frozen feet at the kennel; and some of them were cut so close that if Elan hadn’t been reading I dunno if I would have kept going; which would have been a tremendous loss for me (NOT, I hasten to add, a loss to anyone else.) So, gracias un monton, el Gaucho, por leer.