Good morning good morning hi hello howdy how are you? I hope you are doing well. I hope you are doing better than I am. Because I am not feeling great today. Emotionally.

I should probably come out and state that I had a horrible dream last night, and it really does seem to fuck with me! Bad dreams did not used to fuck with me! (Is that correct grammar? “Used to fuck with me”? I probably should rephrase that. An editor would make me. BUT TOO BAD because we don’t have any). But now? Oh man. They fuck with me all sorts of bad.

I will spare you the details but the dream involved several horrible things: waking up in the morning realizing you were blackout drunk and having no idea what you did last night. Worse yet, my mom woke me up. Worse yet, I was back in that horrible period where I was detoxing her in a hotel during covid. God, that sucked. Then we have an acute terror: the endless, liminal hall ways of the connecting tissue of casinos and convention centers: my personal Backrooms-esque horror that I just cannot handle. Except this time it was on a cruise ship, so, additional horror. Then the cruise ship got hijacked and most of the passengers brutally murdered until I had to horribly, graphically, bloodily kill the remaining hijacker with a Shun Premiere 7” Santoku knife (in Black). Stabbed him in the neck and chest and ribs and oh god it was so awful. Then I fell in love with an elderly Jamaican woman, which was nice, but we tried to sneak off the cruise ship with the immigrant workers to leave our identities behind and start a new life but we got chased and beaten by ICE, so that was great.

I maybe could have emotionally recovered from this dream today, eventually, but subsequent events have really made this more difficult.

Jane was great, dropped her off, listened to Wet Leg and Joan Jett on the way. Then I went to McDonald’s and there was not a single old man reading a paperback. Probably because I went to the other McDonald’s, in Pittsboro. Because I had Pittsboro errands. They played “The Living Years” by Mike and the Mechanics. That almost turned things around.

Then I read this passage in a newsletter from my wonderful friend Diana (She is quoting someone else here):

Like many people, I have an uneasy relationship with attention, so it wasn’t clear to me that “professional writer with a platform” would actually appeal to me as a lifestyle. But what I realized was that my envy was not about the attention (which I am still weird about), but about the way the world seems to open up to people who put themselves out there, successfully. They become like magnets for interesting people living thoughtful lives. I always disliked the way working at a company can warp your world around that company; people become obsessed with things like leveling and scope and other things that really, in my mind, do not matter. Being in conversation with the world felt like an antidote.

– Hilary Gridley, October 13, 2026, “as naturally as breathing.”

This made me really sad. Because Hillary is correct. And I miss it. Except Hillary is new to this whole “writing is influence and connections” thing, and she thusly has not experienced the darkside yet, which is that slowly, over time, the attention and connections warp your writing into something that isn’t you and you become disconnected with your true self. Of course many people do not mind this, the benefits outweigh the costs. But I couldn’t live with it, so I have stopped being a professional writer with a platform and instead a curmudgeonly small-town life blogger With Opinions™.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t miss it and man I felt like a junkie watching another junkie discover smack reading that.

Then I went to Lowe’s Hardware to buy dirt which is a completely stupid thing to begin with, but they did not have any dirt carts and I had to put it all in a shopping cart and it felt stupid. This is a thing that would not have bugged me and even seemed funny were it not for the nightmare.

Then I went to the Post Office to order a new passport, again. Because I didn’t have my driver’s license last time. Or, rather, I only had the temp printout. Gone was the super-nice old lady from last time who told me to come back any time, no need to make an appointment. I wisely did not take her advice because a) the Post Office is now appointment-only for passports, and b) what if she wasn’t there?

And boy was I smart to do so, because instead of the super-nice old lady, we got the other time of southern elderly lady, the kind who would have been much happier in life had they been a dominatrix and joined Women of Sodom. Just the worst. So mean. And I tried, I really tried to smother it with kindness, but she knew, she knew she was getting to me.

And then at the end, she said “bless you.”

Raaaaaage.

Also even though I made an appointment and I could hear voices in the back of the post office, they did not bother to bring out another attendant and there were six people in line behind me who all hated me.

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We’re listening to Ranges. Two great post-rock albums came out this week: Ranges’ new album If and Caspian’s new album, Caspian. Who makes their six album their self-titled one? Love it. Ranges may have given their album a short name, but the songs are most-excellently-longly named. This track is called “You Can Force Your Heart and Nerve and Sinew to Serve Your Turn Long After They Are Gone.” Excellent. Tattoo it across my chest. No idea what it means.

So then I go to the grocery store, that went fine, but then I’m sitting in the grocery store parking lot planning my next errand, buying mulch for my chores. And of course I can’t do it because Android won’t load Apple Notes and thus I can’t look up my note from previous years about how much mulch I need. Because of course as soon as I start trying to do actual chores on the chore week list, things start going to shit.

(Then I went to vote and it went great and took ten minutes and there was a poll worker woman who is under 60, in all black, jet black hair, so helpful and oh god I was almost in love for a hot second were it not my commitment to my new Elderly Jamaican Fiancée).

We are definitely in the trough of disillusionment with chores here. I am so not going to get everything done.

I spent like four hours yesterday trying to fix one hose leak. I got it fixed, but jesus. I am so far from getting the drip irrigation repaired. Had to order seven things from Amazon overnight to try and fix it today, because none of these things are available near me and I fucking hate ordering so much shit from Amazon, Jess Bezos sucks, there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, The Good Place scene with the flowers, etc. etc. Also only four of the items actually showed up this morning, of course, so I’m mostly fucked anyway.

Then I tried to clean the gutters on the greenhouse and man, they are gross. Basically wet mud. Cant blow’em out or pressure wash em out gotta scoop it out by hand what fun. I bought a little scoop but you know that’s not going to work, you know I’m gonna have to get in there with my grubby paws. And I have no idea how I’m going to pull this off on the back side of the greenhouse where I have compost bins right up against it. So that chore is not going to get done, and I’m going to have to give up and spend more money and pay the wizard hippie window washers to do it. Which, I mean, not the worst, they really are adorable, WINDOW WIZARDS, but still. More fucking money.

These chores will get done. But it will not be a lovely happy week of bliss. Because it turns out Chore Week is very different than a normal chore weekend. A normal weekend you have a huge list of chores, no hope of getting em all done, so you just putter from this one to that one in total bliss, and as long as you make progress or get one or two done, you’re so happy. But during CHORE WEEK, I feel so much pressure. It is unpleasant. I am trying to FIX MY BRAIN about it, but it is tough going. I need therapy.

AND SPEAKING OF THERAPY. We took Jane last night. Emma spent, like, months finding the best therapist for Jane, waiting on the wait list, doing all the intake questionnaires, dealing with insurance, and we finally got to go. And it was so great, and she’s so close, only six minutes away, and Jane liked her, and we liked her and it was the best.

AND THEN she said “well, I am moving to another practice and it’s like 30 minutes away and you’ll ˙have to do intake all over again.” FUCK FUCK FUCK. She JUST decided this in the last day or two or she would have told us sooner.

But man, better to have never gone than to have something so great held out then snatched away.

There’s another woman at that practice but she only does teens, and then a dude but he has a goatee and my daughter is not going to a goateed dude therapist and in any case she already ruled him out.

So we’re fucked.

Emma and I did have nice talks about therapy and other things while we sat in the waiting room and the therapist talked to Jane. I talked about why CBT doesn’t work for me, how I can’t handle therapists because they don’t want to read anything, it takes you months to even get the barest outlines of your trauma and life experiences to them, they keep cancelling and eventually they just quit their job and move to Montana. Because it’s just a job. We also talked about my Chore Week setbacks and how I needed to CHANGE MY HEAD about it. Talking to my wife is swell. She is swell.

Then Jane threw a big fit just as soon as she was out of the therapist’s office, so the therapist couldn’t see it.

Of course.

And now it’s almost 11 AM and I am yet to really begin my chores today. I would be so happy if I could finish the drip repair and gutter cleaning but I already know the latter is a lost cause, so my ambitions get trimmed yet again. Sigh.

I bribed Jane with ice cream to can it, watched Slow Horses and got outraged about their shoddy spycraft and read a book where I got offended the author was using Encyclopedia Britannica as a source seriously have you no shame?

Or maybe that’s fine what do I know.

The share button has re-appeared in Apple Music so we’re just gonna share the awesome Shoegaze playlist from yesterday again. Enjoy. Assuming you have Apple Music. Which, I mean, good for you. You tried.

We will plow this trough of disillusionment and come through on the other side stronger. Just you watch.