Sorry about the popped p’s today! Something’s gone weird with my mic placement.

It’s humid. The kind of humid where you feel like you’ve got a thin sheen on your skin all the time. My wife, a Southerner, is a fan of AC; I’ve never liked artificial cold, it feels weird and I don’t like breathing it. I’d rather be slightly hot and sticky most of the time.

But it’s also kind of fatiguing; I have a long-term mental dialogue about whether or not other people have it worse and I should just suck it up (and I’m in, like, the 5% most privileged people on the planet, so other people invariably constantly have it worse). That helps.

I think there’s a general fundamental worldview split between “I measure things by what I can put up with, and take action when something is intolerable”, and “I prioritize my own comfort and well-being and am proactive in taking care of that.” I definitely fall into the Protestant former category. It’s got pros and cons. But self-care ends up low on the list when you’ve got that mentality.

(I have another essay-length thing about people with “tradeoff” as their default worldview, which I am as well, but that’s another day).

So the trade-off here is that “put up with what you can” is a less expensive lifestyle and means you walk more gently in the world — but can also lead to severe problems that are resource intensive to solve. “Maximize self-care” is more resource-intensive up front, but possibly forestalls a lot of problems that take a lot more to solve.

Is one better than the other? Who knows? But I’m putting up with it.

Yesterday turned out to be more a “print things out and tape them together and then cut them up” day than a sewing day; I mean, it’s part of sewing, but there’s a lot of pattern-preparing work that I had sorely underestimated.

That and change rolling. We had a lot of change!

Speaking of rolling, things are rolling along nicely. Weight’s stable, exercise is on point M-F, I’m not eating stupid. Setting it up nicely for a good run into autumn.

Heading out in a few minutes to get some coin rolling papers — we’re doing the three-year dump of coins, to help defray the upcoming cost of a family visit — and print out a shirt pattern my wife bought me, so I can start sewing my own “summer shirts.”

Why pay others for garish weird short-sleeves when I can garish my own weird short-sleeves?

There’s an interesting space for “fun projects” in my head; it’s hard to separate work and projects. Playing video games is a fun thing, for instance. Reading a book is relaxing. But sewing, renovation stuff, building furniture… it’s not fun in the way that a video game is fun, but it’s still a leisure time pursuit and should be fun? I think?

I certainly like the end results, so that must make the middle parts worthwhile. Does a fun result mean the pathway was also fun? Or is sewing “leisure work” with a fun outcome?

LIFE IS A MYSTERY.

Another Big Chore Day ahead, as we prepare for a week-long visit from my wife’s mom — she’s delightful and we’re going to have a lot of fun, but we want to make sure the house is good n’ ready.

That, and we’re going to see a movie at the local arthouse cinema, but it is a LATE movie! So it’s going to be a big nap afternoon, and the first time that we’ve been up past sundown in ages. Seriously. I know that sounds weird, but we’re usually in bed when it’s still light out, and I get up at dawn-ish. This will be the first time we’re outside at night since spring started.

That’s my new word. “Slunning”. Slug-running. Sometimes I run and kind of wish people could see me — powerful strides! Confidence! Movin’ fast!

Today, for whatever reason, I felt like I was in that Kids in the Hall zombie sketch. Doot de doot de doot de doooo!

I did it, is the important thing!

Not every day is a race day, as the wise runners say; even sludgy runs are better than nothing.

Another rough night, this one again due to the gross misapplication of phone alert systems to Amber Alerts (a good summary of the problems with it, here) — no exercise this morning, just trying to get things going before a crew arrives to dig up the driveway due to a shared sewer issue (which in turn is causing financial stress).

The good news in all this? I think my equilibrium’s better than it was a while ago. I’m rolling with the financial punches fine, and the lack of sleep and exercise is a pain in the neck but it’s not causing the kind of anxiety it would have a while ago. Maybe I’ve come through the whole depressive episode in June more resilient than I was when it started? That’s a nice thing to think about.

A good run this morning; not super long, but vigorous. Juust enough time for a bit more sleep before work; my groovy insomnia is back, not for any particularly bad reasons, just lots o’ thinking going on.

In the interest of writing something, the social media diet is now… I don’t know, over six months at least. It’s great! My relative level of jealousy and irritation with the world has diminished radically now that I’m not personally on Facebook, and I wasn’t much of an Insta person in the first place, or tweeter.

So that’s a thing. No Facebook! Feels good.

A bit of exercise this morning, food’s going fine, and things are… okay! Not much else to add. Carrying on.

Hitting the road at 4:20 (brah!) a.m. to run in what our real estate agent cheerfully calls a “neighbourhood in transition” means you get to see the interesting side of town, with transactions on porches, open bathrobes, bikes and little trailers filled with what I can only assume is treasure, zombie walks, and somebody yelling something at me that for some reason I chose not to slow down and check out.

So it was a good run that came with a heaping side helping of humility and gratitude. I’m happy with where I’m at in life right now, and not foolish enough to believe it’s all me: I got lucky genes, lucky with my parents, lucky with my upbringing, and lucky not to be unlucky in the thousand ways that could have taken my life in a different direction.

For a couple with no kids, we seem to generate a supernatural amount of laundry. I think it’s exercise — when you think about it, that’s a shirt/shorts every day for me, and again for my wife. But it seems like one evening and a chunk of the weekend is always laundry, and if we miss laundry one weekend it can take weeks to catch up.

But it’s gotta be done! So off to laundry. Before enlightenment chop wood haul water, and all that good stuff.

Carrying on just fine with exercise, food, etc.