What a weird week.

I'm not able to work out much right now while I am recovering from the surgery. Overall, it wasn't bad. Certainly a lot better than my entire experience around my hernia treatment in 2015.

I was able to recover well enough to do everything I wanted to do on Saturday. I spent the morning at curling, though I had to sit out the second hour when my stitches started acting up. I walked around this lovely art expo and looked at dead creatures, though I ended up doing a couple jumping jacks and that was a bad idea. Don't ask. I did find a renewed perspective on The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) so I might give it another shot sometime soon. And then I attended my friend's birthday party where she continued the running gag of picking the loudest, most crowded normie bar she could find even though Columbus keeps closing them.

All in all, I feel pretty at home in my life. It's a little scary to type that. It's like a wish in the light of a dying candle in the dark full of monsters, and the wrong breath from my lungs could whisk it away.

So the cold stopped antagonizing my anxiety. I'm not happy with the cold, it definitely pisses me off and I would say kinda hurts, but it's not setting off that bear trap I've been carrying in my gut for as long as I can remember.

The anxiety still exists there, don't get me wrong, but in a much more manageable way, much like it was during this past autumn. It makes me ask if my madness was always tied to something in my body, something I shouldn't have eaten, some habit I kept up or didn't keep up. How much of reality has been some quirk of my flesh?

Then again, as beings in flesh, what other kind of reality is there?

I woke up this morning after not getting enough sleep last night. Been having these dreams. Nevermind about that though. Couldn't work out so just played on the guitar for a bit. Learning new songs never stops being hard, but lately I've just been strumming on a chord here and there just to hear the sound, to know I'm making something simple but pretty to my ear.

I wonder when I stopped hating myself.

Got into work and shared my adventures with my boss. He's cool. He's a manager so there's limits, but he's a genuine human being who lets me take home old equipment pretty liberally. I haven't bought a laptop in seven years.

The old lady who runs one of the electronics departments here stops by and regales me with the tale of her wife's cousin who just had gallbladder surgery a month ago and then died of sepsis a few days later. I did not want to know this story. I suppose a few of my bar stories have earned me that as fair trade from the universe.

So a couple weeks ago I decided to try and get into reading again. My ex, Caitlin, gave me a copy of the Left Hand of Darkness several years ago. I'd read a lot of Le Guin's essays and a couple short stories, but I mostly just enjoyed the intellectual clout having it on my shelf lent me. I finally decided on a lark to try it, since I want to finish writing my scifi novel and a good writer I think has to be a good reader.

It took me some days since I had to get my brain back into gear for reading again. Ultimately I was left sitting in my bed, speechless. Unclenching my jaw. Unsure of what I felt. Like I saw the universe just a little differently than before I picked it up. Somehow it was a little more beautiful than before.

I meant to pick another book when my troubles with my gallbladder began.

In the hospital, I told Caitlin I finished the book and that I loved it. I told her about my reaction and she said she had the same reaction, and still does when she rereads it. She said it was her favorite book. I didn't know that. I told her "God I was a shitty partner" with a laugh. She smiled and merely said "We both needed a lot that we couldn't give each other." I think I forgave myself in that moment.

Last night I resumed choosing a book. I have a couple other Le Guin novels on my shelf, but I didn't want to get too stuck on one author. Twenty years ago I first got into reading with the Drizzt series by RA Salvatore. They are wonderful novels, even though after a while it does feel like a soap opera I've been following my whole life. This is not derogatory. Still, I must have read a dozen of his books in a row and it made it very difficult to switch to another author when the time came. These days there's more than a dozen more of his novels for me to dive into, and perhaps I will again soon, I checked in on Drizzt and company around 2016 with the Companions Codex and was happy the series seemed to be winding down.

Yes, I am aware Wizards of the Coast has continued churning them out.

So I perused the books in my library I haven't yet read, mostly from the modern classics shelf which mostly consists of things highly recommended by one of my closest friends who is an avid reader (and a well studied film buff, which is wild 'cause I remember when she'd hardly seen any movies at all). She recommended NK Jemisin's Broken Earth series, of which I have the first book courtesy of her, but I opted for something perhaps a little more lighthearted.

So I chose Terry Pratchett's Mort. I've been fascinated by his work for many years. When I lived in Tucson everyone I knew seemed to love Discworld. It felt like something really fun that I would get to eventually. A really lovely lady I knew offered to lend me Wee Free Men to me back around 2011, but then we started dating and it just sorta fell between the cracks so to speak.

My dear friend I mentioned before (whose first name is entirely too easy to dox) read me an excerpt from this one a few years ago while I got really drunk on sake at a sushi place. I never forgot it though, the writing managed to cut through the haze.

I found myself racing through the first fifty pages, I had to stop myself so as to not pass it by too quickly. He is a remarkably good writer, and I was left interested and amused throughout. Gotta say, I should've read this years ago.

Tonight there's some karaoke happening at a bar that's a bit more blues/classic rock than I usually go for, but it's for the benefit of the local public radio station and I figure a little Rob Zombie won't hurt 'em. Much.

So yeah, winter's passed and while it still lingers, spring is beckoning me toward summer. I'm alive and that means possibility, and I'm just happy to be able to dance on the edge of it.