not yet

Every time I go into what used to be my office to put on clothing or punch a punching bag and see all the boxes on top of the closet door on saw horses and all the boxes on the shelves and all the boxes on the floor and across I tell myself that I've got to get on with cleaning this shit up. Even get notions of how, exactly to go about doing it. But I haven't brought myself to do it yet: I only finished emptying his house a month ago and I was able to do it only by not caring about the things I put in the boxes in the name of meeting a closing deadline. To embark upon this great cleaning and organizing means that I have to care about the things I put in those boxes. And I'm not ready yet, no matter how nice it'd be to take a full swing at a punching bag.

Spikemobile a hit – and will be especially once Spike's feet reach the pedals – with nary a tetanus incident (that I'm aware of). Victory. But that's about it in the victory department these last few days. Feeling The Void and its attendant horsemen – Ennui, FuckItAll, and GoToHell – rather intensely today (though it's been a slow burn over the last several).

Big Nowhere continues in The Main Thing, Ennui prancing about as I say FuckItAll and GoToHell to the blinking cursor of empty. Such is the somewhere and the nowhere.

Convinced I need an outbuilding with a loft office above it and room for all sorts of things. Spiral staircase a must: a house we looked at before building the cabin in the woods all those years ago had one and I've been obsessed with them ever since. Emergency Bat-pole too. Maybe a slide instead, IDK.

extra-corporeal perfectionism

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.

void/bridge

As I get his house emptier and emptier, the void of his absence grows more profound (felt it deeply the other day) – not that I have any emotional connection to that place: my grandparents' moving there cost me the only house that ever felt like home; no, I think it's – other than him, my rock, being gone, of course – more from the unease of seeing my purpose in this particular life event coming to a (merciful) close and, while the uncertainty in and of itself isn't necessarily terrifying, its illicit coupling with the other void – similarly one of lack of purpose, a void which writing's ability to assuage is waning – is a recipe for if not disaster then at least increased happy pill dosage. Vigilance factor against the worst aspects of my nature: elevated – but for now, I have pool tables to move and am, if nothing else, fully in love with having a pickup; I suppose I'll blow up the other bridges as I cross them.

void recognition, somewhat

Recognizing that the void mentioned yesterday is coming, at least partially, from the reality that – after two+ decades of dreading the holidays – I no longer have to dread them. Can't help but laugh when the texts from the funeral home arrive about grief in the holidays: I don't have grief in their lit candle prayers sense but in the sense of an umooring brought by a freedom from dread and a total lack of a notion of how to navigate the holidays and life in general without said dread. Happy dead turkey day to those who celebrate.

something(?)else(?)

Second day in a row that my Attendance Card has featured me pondering something – though I think this one is more effective than yesterday's.

An unshakable feeling that there's a void, something missing. A part of me, perhaps? The parts that are there are fine, dandy, solid, settled: marriage, writing, all that. No, this is something else.

Writing is fine save the striving of the last ten years. I'm done with it. I'm going to do what I want and stop worrying about what it could lead to. No point; write and publish for its own sake, my own way, my own things. Definitely an epoch of "burn things down and start over" in this, the post-Twitter era.

But that something else has been nagging at me for awhile, longer than awhile. Doing my best to not force it along: have a feeling that it, like anything worth anything, will hit me in a moment of unthinking. Can only ride the waves until then / carry on, etc etc.

void considerations

One: reorientation from consideration of results from without (what others think of work, etc etc) to results from within, how the act of doing actually impacts mood, objective internal assessment of fruits of labor? // Two: say fuckit and move on // Probably go with two but incorporate elements of one.

OLED void amelioration

(Update, 1019: the SmurfPiss Chariot rides again.)

60ºF, clouds: gave in and bought myself the OLED Switch (podrelease reward) and will dive back into ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD on the big screen – though today’s main non-writing project is to replace the car battery in the SmurfPiss Chariot; spent much of yesterday afternoon caked in battery acid and corrosion what fun. The Lite goes to K so she can learn how to get thumbs working with dual joysticks, a hand-eye coordination complexity that has befuddled her since even before we started dating.

Pleased with the sound quality of the latest TSR: the Vocaster Two was definitely worth the price tag (though I could have gotten away with the Vocaster One; didn't realize that the second input was for a second physical guest but maybe someday I’ll actually use it) and the post-prod addition of music was easier than I expected (without a physical knob, I couldn't do the intro/outro over the music live).

The only solution to the post-release void is to work on more things (and upgrade to an OLED Switch). And so it is and so it goes. Repeat, repeat, repeat.