Amazing

Nothing amazing happens here, nothing out of the ordinary. I've become comfortable with the doldrums and though it's a part of me I don't like it's a part of me all the same and I have to learn to live with it. I used to dream about moving to LA or Miami or someplace sunny and warm but the realities of a limited income and the costs of living somewhere near downtown eventually convinced me to give up on that. Or maybe it was just the fear of change. Who knows.

The other day I sat on our front porch and listened to a song on repeat and vowed to enjoy summer as much as I could, until endless cloudy greys entered and ruined the ambience. That vow lasted a couple weeks.

There's a place on campus where the students put up hammocks in between trees and lie there and sometimes I see one reading a book the old-fashioned way, not on a tablet or phone or what have you. The large water fountain there gently creates white noise but the setting is isolated enough from traffic that it's not a big deal either way.

If you drive to the west for 45 minutes you can look out over an endless lake and watch the sun dip beneath it as boats in the distance gently bob up and down on the waves that are now covered with the red and orange and purple hues that autumn leaves will possess in several months time.

One friend moved to North Carolina and another moved to Arizona and another is stuck in Indiana which isn't so far from Michigan but might as well be because we haven't talked in almost a decade. None of them.

The other day I made tacos over the stove and the kitchen was already 85F and with the gas burner going I became inundated with epidermal moisture. The tacos turned out alright but the soft tortilla shells were way bigger than the hard ones and when I tried to wrap the hard ones it didn't really fit right.

I think people are good at knowing when someone's laugh is fake but they just sort of accept it because they know they'll do it often too.

They're tearing up the road outside work which makes it hard to have the windows open in the morning when it's not that hot yet because it smells like asphalt and the constant noise can drone out the person on the other end of the phone who has the wrong number.

Some of the grass is dying because we haven't gotten much rain in June. The middle-upper class neighborhoods have green grass because they can afford underground sprinklers or lawn care people. Less dandelions, too. That's all my neighborhood is this year. Dandelions. Even when dead they're not so attractive.

On Saturday night two houses down and across the street they had a party or gathering or get-together or whatever it's called these days that went on past 1am on their front porch. They will have many more this summer just like last summer.

Nothing amazing happens here, nothing out of the ordinary. I drove home listening to the same song I've been listening to for the past two months. I don't know where that time went.

Throw Hands

One might be inclined, given recent current events, to "throw one's hands up" in dismay. The current author would then ask, however, where those hands were previously, if not being thrown up constantly at the dismay of the meaninglessness of existence.

Sports

It is said, oftentimes, by people wishing to critique the admittedly large amount of money that circulates around the world of professional sports, that sports are, in effect, meaningless. That they convey no real significance to the world at large, and that the profession, in terms of reputation, should pale in comparison to that of, say, a cancer researcher, or NASA engineer. Given, however, that said researchers and engineers meet the same end as athletes, and do so while imparting material changes on well under 0.0000001% of the known universe, it is safe to say that, using a scale that determines that sports are meaningless, one would have to then conclude that all human endeavors are meaningless, and all end in the same, finite conclusion.

Opiate of the People

Marx may have once said that religion is the opiate of the people (often translated as "the masses") but given the rampant opiate abuse in the US during this century, it seems astute to perhaps modify the original quote. Occam's Razor might dictate the most accurate turn of phrase in this case; in that in modern America, opiates are the opiates of the masses.

Writing Rule

It's been said - at times contentiously, given that nobody truly "knows" a fantasy world or sci-fi world - to write what you know. Given that all the present author knows is abject failure, a sustained, habitual retreat to a bedroom, and a constant, gnawing, 24/7 fatigue, it stands to reason that anything the present author writes that is known, on a personal level, will be a trite, dull, failure of an attempt. To convey such a thing is, perhaps, the highest to which the present author can aspire to. That the present author can not succeed in the use of language to convey such failure and apathy is another strike against.

What A Lovely Day

It is common, rather much so, in summer, to observe one's outdoor environment and internally proclaim it as being "agreeable" or "pleasant" or "bright and warm." It is common, rather much so, to ignore said outdoor environment upon this realization, and instead spend vast amounts of time in a much more relatively static environment indoors. One observes that this is true on a larger scale than simply choosing not to exercise outside, but is rather a representation of our collective desire to experience new things but falling back on the easy familiarity of routine.

Give Up Your Dreams

If, as we well know, only 18% of success across a multitude of various fields can be defined by hard work; if, as we well know, our intelligence starts declining at around age 25-28; if, as we all know, the two greatest influences on our life are the wealth we are born into and the genetics we are born with, one must, it must be asked, dare to question why bother trying, why bother succeeding, why bother entertaining the idea of grand dreams, when their very success is almost entirely out of our control.

Roads

It's the little things you notice, how construction season is condensed to 8-9 months instead of the 12 it can be spread out in down in Miami, because of the snow and ice. The roads are worse, whereas Florida is all smooth and steady, Michigan's are battered by 90 degree swings in weather over the course of a year and endless salt and sand in winter, the potholes and cracks turn the flat pavement into off-road excursions. Now, hurriedly, the men in orange vests seal it with rubberized asphalt, the trails of black malleable material pepper the road and age it horribly, they are not perfect fixes and still leave uneven texture. Variation may be the spice of life but for the routes we take, it is their very undoing.

Withdrawal

Brain zaps. Imagine a fuzziness, a static feeling, suddenly in your brain, a minute confusion and disorder. It's a sensation I've never felt anywhere else. It's impossible to explain, nothing like feeling the quick reverberation and buzz (in a bad way) that seems to inhabit, briefly, an area of your brain, not the whole thing, but a subsection.

Fatigue, flu-life symptoms, tired, tired, tired. The pills cause fatigue, to not take them causes fatigue, everything is fatigue, at least they let me sleep. But now I feel sickly and tired and weak and dizzy and sick. Four days, of course, last pills swallowed on Thursday it is now Tuesday and my body is rebelling, withdrawal symptoms in full swing. I eye the bottles on my desk and just want to drown myself in them but tough it out until the evening when I take three of them like I always do. The morning will pick up the rest.

It's Wednesday. The brain zaps are gone now. The sickness is gone now. I have replaced it with the pervasive drowsiness. I yawn, repeatedly, as the morning goes by. The great irony of all this is that avoiding the pills to feel better just makes me feel worse, taking the pills makes me feel worse, too, but at least it is a familiar worse. Fatigue is preferable to an electric storm in the brain. One can always sleep. One can't always reach into one's skull and pluck the very sickness out.