While I've no belief in the concept of god or in an afterlife (if I'm wrong, I'll be the first to admit it – but only at my own end and probably muttering George Carlin's seven dirty words as I trip and stumble into the fire) I have, over the last few weeks, become increasingly paranoid that my dead grandfather is watching everything I do – a paranoia that's become worse since I finished The Emptying and have, for the first time since September, time to process the events of the last four months.

Backlogs suck.

Anyhow, working theory is that this is my brain creating a way to maintain its inherited and oftentimes paranoid perfectionism – as much as I adored that man, more than any other human on the planet, I will fault him (and myself) for instilling said perfectionistic streak, one bordering on pathological – in this new normal. It's my brain's way of holding on to what it knew, the prison it created for me.

Worth noting that this phenomenon didn't happen when my grandmothers (adored) nor my mother (loathed, especially by the end) died – but my bond with my grandfather was something special: as I've written before somewhere, I know I was lucky to know unconditional love for 42 years – many don't get it for 42 seconds – but that doesn't make it easy to navigate its absence. At all. I miss him terribly.

Solution: perhaps working to let go of this extra-corporeal manifestation is the first step towards living my life as it is now – which is what he would have wanted anyhow – and build it into what I've always wanted it to be (whatever that is, TBD). Trick is to figure out how to go about doing that.

It'll come to me, probably.