As predicted, the weekend was pretty low-impact. Friday night involved some livestreamed-over-the-internet theater (the kid kicked ass in a very intense role), Saturday was a brisk five mile hike, doing the shopping, and spendng a few hours engaged with the virtual version of the Ohio Valley Filk Fest, or as it was called this year, […]

Another Friday reached. Another week behind me. All told, this one’s been a little less stressful than the last few. Sure, there’ve been headaches and roadblocks (one of the backbone financial systems supporting multiple agencies has been choking all week, preventing me from getting important requirements funded, and more importantly, keeping many people from submitting […]

Yes, Chuck, you may, objectively, be in the best shape of your life right now. Be proud of that. However, realize you’re not 20 anymore. You might indeed have the stamina and strength to push through a brisk seven mile hike on some rough forest trail in less than 90 minutes. You indeed might feel […]

To add some reasonably specific context to my general frustration with the world, I present, for your edification, an actual conversation I had with a work colleauge this morning: Colleaugue: As a side note, it is a little shocking how much touch labor has to be used to get [this simple work thing] out…. Me: […]

And, apart from a few hours of low-impact office work today, this week’s in the can. It’s not been entirely unpleasant, and kind of eventful. I visited my actual office for the first time in more than six months, and survived to tell the tale. I mysteriously pulled an abdominal muscle doing a five mile […]

I think I might be able to honestly report a reasonably okay long weekend? I didn’t really do anything out of the ordinary, but nonetheless it was a break from the hassle of work. I cooked some decent meals, got a little biking in before the rain, maybe booked a future gig at a local […]

The week’s ending slightly better than it started, I guess; “nothing particularly significant” is better than “total emotional breakdown,” if we’re keeping score. The low point was Tuesday afternoon. I got through the work day well enough, apart from the usual bullshit regarding the ever-shifting office policy and SharePoint gatekeeping. After shutting down for the […]

While I was logging my trail miles over to your left last night, my wordpress install pointed out to me that since I started using the platform to run this ‘blog back in 2007, I’d written 1,999 posts. My first thought for the 2k milestone was some kind of retrospective something, but honestly the world […]

Those reading this space and what things I say in other spaces lately are no doubt aware that I’e been struggling. I’m not sure what it is, really. I suspect it’s a shifting mix of cabin fever, depression, anxiety, boredom, mourning, anger, existential dread, fear for the future, stress, ennui, a well-timed mid-life crisis, frustration, […]

I don’t really wanna talk about the weekend. Suffice to say it was extra stressful, not particularly restful, and ended Monday morning with wonderful news about middle-of-the-night policy changes at the office that mean I need to take some proposal packages I’ve been working on for the last month or two back to the drawing […]