Malaise

I’m sitting here in my armchair on a Saturday afternoon, wondering what to do with my day. I confess that no activity sounds appealing to me right now.

Reading? Meh

Writing? Meh

Watching TV? Meh

Playing chess? Meh

You get the idea. I wouldn’t say I’m depressed. I wouldn’t write at all were that the case. So I exist, an irony because I’m writing even though I don’t feel like it.

I once read that the times it’s best to write are when you don’t feel like it. That’s when you dig deeper to discover what the fuck the problem is when there technically isn’t any problem at all.

That’s me today.

It’s a beautiful Saturday afternoon here in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Sunny and touching 80 degrees. I’m listening to a Train mix through YouTube Music, probably because I wish I were in San Francisco. But I’m also fine just where I am.

Maybe I’ll wheel myself outside and recline in the sun for a while. Or maybe I’ll sit here and write through this malaise. That would probably be the best thing for me. I like to understand what’s going on between my ears.

I’m writing this post because I can. I survived a near-death accident, something I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Well, almost anyone. Hey, I’m spiritual, but I’m no angel. I’m grateful to have a hand that can type. I’m grateful for the breath in my lungs.

There’s a certain peace that’s slowly filling me as I write. That’s really why I write: to get what is in me out of me and in a place where I can inspect it and be reminded…

I am not my thoughts.

My thoughts are all over the place. San Francisco, regret for not making the military a career, wondering where my cat is, what I should do for dinner, how I could possibly visit a friend in Vermont, would I get Lyme disease from a tick bite up there…

Miscellaneous, random crap.

I know this blog has been languishing, so I figured I should write a post.

But then what to write about?

Maybe that dream I had last night? Too personal…and get your mind out of the gutter!

Here’s a realistic snapshot of a day that lacks direction. That’s okay for a Saturday.

Did you know Train recorded covers of Zeppelin songs? I didn’t. I only learned that about a year ago. Pat Monahan does a great impression of Robert Plant.

Something I’ve been working on is a revision of a memoir that covers the last 14 years of my life. It covers a time after separating from my ex-wife through discovery of distance running, then through troubles with uncontrolled bipolar disorder, then the accident and everything bringing me to today, posting in a blog and living the writer’s life.

It’s living a dream I didn’t know I had until I was in the middle of it.

It’s possible I’ll never be published, but I have to take the shot. The biggest risk you can take in life is avoiding the risk you should’ve taken.

Who was it who said you miss 100% of the shots you never take? Or something to that effect. I think it was Wayne Gretzky. I’d look it up, but I’m trying to exercise memory.. my mind is sometimes fuzzy. Could be my traumatic brain injury; could be a lack of caffeine.

As I’m making my way through this unedited post, I’d like to take a minute to thank you, the reader, for making it this far, walking with me along my meandering path.

I read in the New York Times today that there was a meeting of leading developers of artificial intelligence, A.I. The leaders, 350 of them, signed a letter that warns A.I. could soon pose an existential threat on par with pandemic and nuclear war.

Rise of the Machines!

And I don’t mean that facetiously. I watched an interview with A.I., and it was spooky. To think that a human was having a freeform conversation with an artificial mind struck me as more living science fiction than anything else I’ve witnessed in recent times.

I’m not worried about my own earthly existence. I know I’m living on borrowed time. But the survival of the species is certainly in question. Nuclear threat, pandemic, climate change, A.I…we’ll either finish ourselves off, succumb to the ecosystem protecting the planet, or maybe, just maybe we’ll rise above.

I’m a cautious optimist. Younger generations seem to have a handle on how to steer the ship before we go over the edge.

So writing through the malaise has helped. I have a better sense of how to steer my day now. Reading and movies are in order. And catching up on correspondence.