Hold on just a minute. Did I really not write anything here during the month of February?
(checks blog)
Goddamn. I don’t quite know how that happened, but it happened, and so there it is.
I have noticed lately that I have been getting more and more frustrated with my relationship to the internet, and as such I’ll periodically pop in on Facebook or whatever just to say that I’m taking a break, and the break lasts for about 45 minutes, and instead of feeling frustration, I feel shame. Whereas here, I kinda just… disappear? I don’t announce anything, it just sorta happens, and surprisingly enough I don’t feel shame when I realize I’ve been away. This is my private little corner of the internet and if I don’t get around to writing anything, well, that’s on me.
The first paragraph of my last entry (on January 29!) was this:
You ever have one of those weeks where you keep thinking that you have stuff to talk about, but then you start writing it down and none of it seems particularly interesting or important? That’s where I was last week. That’s sorta where I still am this week, but the day job is slow at the moment and I need to look busy. So here we go.
I guess that’s been the order of things here. Work has been just busy enough to keep me from gathering my thoughts, and when I do gather my thoughts they don’t appear to be particularly noteworthy.
I suppose some catch-up is in order, and hopefully that’ll help shake off the dust and get me back into some sort of a regular writing habit.
In that same entry from the end of January, I’d written how I was experiencing some technical difficulties with respect to my musical endeavors – namely, that my 8-year-old MacBook is falling apart, and my old input device wasn’t being recognized. I ended up buying a replacement input device, but I’m ashamed to admit that I haven’t taken it out of the box yet. Why? Well, for the same reason that I’m often reluctant to go to a doctor if something’s wrong; I don’t want to be told that a toothache is actually a brain tumor. In this case, if my new device works, I can at least try to continue making music. But if I hook it up and it’s still busted, then that means I have to drop nearly 2G on a new computer. Which is a tough pill to swallow. Which is why nothing’s happened, music-wise, in over a month. I completely missed the RPM Challenge this year.
Books: In that aforementioned last post, I was finishing up a mini-George Saunders marathon. Since then, I’ve read:
- The Immortalists, which is a current front-runner for Book of the Year;
- The Sky Is Yours, which I enjoyed, though not as much as I’d hoped;
- The Infinite Future, which should’ve been right up my alley but was a little too wrapped up in its own poetry to bother tying any of its plot threads together;
- The Woman in the Window, the latest Gone-Girl-esque thriller of the moment, which turned out to be better than I’d anticipated;
- The Gone World, which houses an intriguing time-travelling premise but is buried under its own weighty prose;
- Rock n’ Roll Lies: Ten Stories, a charming little collection that just happens to be written by a new friend of mine that lives in my town; and
- Red Sparrow, which I gave up on after maybe getting a third of the way through; it’s atrocious and has turned me off from the rest of the trilogy and the movie and everything else. Ugh.
Currently re-reading The Way of Kings, so that I can then re-read Book 2, so that I can finally read volumes 2.5 and 3.
Games: I’ve been playing a whole bunch of nothing, which is frustrating, because I did just buy a new sound bar to accompany my glorious new TV. I’ve been listening to music more than I’ve been playing, basically. And that’s great! I like listening to music, especially on good speakers at reasonable volumes! But by and large I’ll go down to the basement, look at all the stuff I have, and realize I’m not interested in any of it. I’m kinda hoping Far Cry 5 will shake me out of my stupor, though I’m not necessarily counting on it. If I have to wait until Red Dead Redemption 2 in order to get my mojo back, well, that’ll make things easier on my wallet, at the very least.
Wouldn’t you know it, I just got busy again. TO BE CONTINUED?
Shouts From The Couch 