This is the illness that keeps giving. After I wrote my post, I could barely function. I spent most of the morning feeling like I was going to pass out; the rest of the day in uncomfortable rumblings of the stomach. This morning, I’m already nauseous.
I’m starting to worry that this is something a little more serious than norovirus and acid reflux.
Target: 1300 words
Written: 691 words, novel: Father LightningI hope. I slept in the recliner all night last night, which while completely fucking up my neck, did keep my from having another acid attack. I’m a little feverish this morning, but that could be from lack of movement. I’m winded easily.
Fucking norovirus.
Still, at least, I’m on the track to where I’d like to be, which is better. Slow and steady, ease back in, one toe in the pool of normal living.
Teaching me all kinds of things about kindness.
Target: 1300 words
Written: 507 words, novel: Father LightningAnd then lighting it on fire. From midnight until two, I tried everything my wife and I could think of stop what to this point in my life, is the single worst acid reflux I’ve ever had. If I hadn’t felt the bile cough up my throat and burn my tongue, I would have gone to the hospital, thinking I was having the big one.
What ultimately worked is the thing I should have thought of right off the bat. Fuck Tums, Gaviscon, Pepto and the rest of it. It’s the age old secret to eating spicy foods – milk.
I don’t drink a lot of milk; maybe I should start making it part of my regular routine again. Good milk. Fresh milk. Pasture-raised, grass-fed. None of that horrible factory farmed bullshit; that should be illegal.
Hallelujah, for the almighty cow.
Target: 1300 words
Written: 667 words, novel: Father LightningYou forget how much it sucks. I’ve avoided COVID and pretty much everything else the last few years, so this is a unfamiliar sensation to me.
It sucks being down and out.
Target: 1300 words
Written: 2120 words, hip little story: Forest EdgeIn a final bout of revenge, my body shut down completely last night. At the tail end of a brutal year, my body decided it need to go straight to hell. I’ve been tossing and turning with a bloated stomach, extreme fatigue and ultimately, a feeling like I’d gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson, and all he did was work the body. I slept from six last night until past noon today, my body alternating between a cold it could not get rid of, even with a heating blanket, to a fever that didn’t go away.
I intended today’s post to be about my search for a little kindness in the world; instead, The Mungk beat the shit out of me.
Such is the fickle nature of life. Every time you wish to step forward, it drags you back.
Target: 1300 words
Written: 1865 words, hip little story: Forest Edge I’ve spent the last year wallowing, essentially getting punched repeatedly, and punch drunk, like a boxer in the tenth round, I fell down over and over until I couldn’t get up again.
Somehow, in the midst of this, I wrote The Mungk, an exploration of fatalism and trauma.
I try to learn something from everything I write, and what I’ve learned from The Mungk is how easily a life can be derailed by circumstance and an unwillingness to deal with the thoughts inside your own head.
I’ve been thinking about how to market The Mungk and honestly, I don’t know. It’s a good little book. I know it. But it’s fatalist. It’s dark. It offers little to no hope. A metaphor for trauma and life eating away at us until there’s nothing left.
It often feels like there’s nothing left of me, after this year.
So next year, I am going to try to focus on something better. No more fatalism, without some genuine kindness. No more Mungk (except to sell the manuscript or publish it myself, in any case).
No more trauma. No more wearing down. It’s time to find something a little better in the world around me. It’s time to apply that presence and focus and radical acceptance I’ve read so much about for more than a few minutes a day.
So, goodbye, trauma year. I wish you long gone.
Target: 1300 words
Written: 9100 words, hip little story: Forest EdgeFour day workweek this week. Most people seem to think I’m taking the day off Friday for St. Patrick’s Day, but my days of going out and getting hammed up are long gone. A beer or two on a nice afternoon is about all I care to do now.
It’s less about volume and more about quality enjoyment. Like relaxing in the sun, sipping a cold IPA, rather than pounding shitty Blue at a crowded, smoky bar. I don’t necessarily regret those times, but it’s not me anymore.
Now, it’s my wife’s birthday, not some magical saint of snakes and booze. And that’s just fine.
Target: 1200 words
Written: 5184 words, hip little story: Forest EdgeI’m resigned to my fate. It looks like I’ll be a nobody, so I guess, well, that opens things up, right?
I mean, if there are no expectations, then you can try just about anything, I think.
Target: 1200 words
Written: 1834 words, hip little story: Forest EdgeSeriously, when are we going to stop this shit? Terrible sleeps abound. How much productivity is lost in the wake of this change? How much extra anger? How many more accidents from lack of sleep?
Who did this ever benefit, anyway?
I guarantee it was someone’s pocketbook or ego trip. Whenever there’s some bizarre rule we’re all forced to follow and no one knows why, I guarantee it only exists to serve one or the other.
Target: 1200 words
Written: 374 words, comic: Bike #4Mazy’s cousin has finally started settling in, realizing that maybe the other dog isn’t trying to eat her food, and neither are the cats. She’s still barking a little at random passers-by and she’s attached to me at the hip, but there are signs that she’s starting to get more used to it.
It’s the longest she’s been away from her family, so I’m expecting her to get a little depressed as the week goes on. Usually, she only stays with my sister for a day or two. We’re already on day three. She seems a little quieter this morning, and I’m not sure if that’s just settling in or little doggy depression. I hope not, but I do expect it. All we can do is love and play and show her a little happiness, and she’ll be fine.
She’ll be ecstatic when they do finally return, if Mazy’s reaction to us leaving overnight to go to Trenton is any indication.
Here’s hoping to a good week, and some good snuggles and less barking.
Target: 1200 words
Written: 754 words, comic: Bike #4