I haven't updated the ol' blog here in a minute, mainly because the last time I went up to Portland I deliberately left my laptop in California so that I'd be forced to take a break from all forms of work. I had a lovely long weekend at the coast during which I didn't have a choice about whether or not to be productive.

But I know how depression works: it sets you up in order to keep itself fed. It convinces you that you need just a little time off, just a day to do nothing so you can recuperate some energy. Then it makes you feel like shit for not doing anything, so then you need more "time off" to recover from that. A day of doing nothing becomes a week of doing nothing. The work piles up, the house is a mess. You feel worse.

At the same time, "pushing through" is a pile of horseshit. You don't get better that way, either. Eventually you'll burn out and end up in exactly the same place -- the couch -- but you will have torched a lot of relationships along the way by acting like a complete monster.

There's a middle way, but it's exceedingly narrow and difficult to find. Like when Indiana Jones has to find the invisible bridge to get to the Holy Grail.

In between "doing nothing" and "doing everything," there's doing something. A bare minimum to keep your body and your brain and your life functioning until your spirit returns. I'm not saying this fixes depression. But it's a scaffold that keeps the walls from caving in.

Anyway, all that to say that I've been doing next to nothing for too long and I'm starting to feel it. So I'm forcing myself to do something.

This here blog

Things are moving along, all right. I have maybe as many as five readers now (hi!). My husband, who insisted that I learn how to manage my own site rather than using Wordpress or something like a normal human being*, has turned over to me the power to publish new posts all by myself instead of writing and marking them up and then asking him to push them live. I've graduated! I still fuck things up occasionally because I have no idea what I'm doing. But it's been "fun" to learn.

I also added a newsletter feature because why not also learn how to use Mailchimp while I'm at it? Why not pretend that I'm a li'l business? The newsletter is just links to posts, for those who don't use an RSS feeder, that I send out once every so often. I don't want to inundate people with newsletter mailings, that's irritating as fuck.

I have some ideas for blog series I'd like to do, sort of along the lines of my Veronica Mars, Ranked series. I'd like to watch and review all of the movies listed in Science Fiction Double Feature, the theme song of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I'd like to do a bracket-style tournament of fantasy movies from the 1980s (even though I'm confident that the Dark Crystal will win.) One of these days I'll probably talk about my writing, but I find writers writing about their writing kind of tedious.

Also I have a real profile picture now instead of my little AI-generated moss ball. Photo credit to my BFF who took the picture for me while we were at the coast.

My fucking joints

One of my new part-time gigs is going to doctors. My hypermobility/probable EDS isn't super bad, which is why it didn't get diagnosed until I was in my 40s--just in time for all the arthritis to hit.

Long story short, my left thumb and right knee are both fucked. Cartilage gone, bone rubbing on bone, subluxations every which way. The thumb isn't ready for surgery--did you know they can replace thumb joints?!**--so I just have to suck it up for a while. I'm supposed to wear a brace, but sometimes that just seems to make it worse. What I really need to do is stop using my thumb to scroll on my stupid phone.

The knee, though, might be ready for surgery (pending a new MRI). But not a simple surgery like a total knee replacement. Oh, no. The surgery I need involves cutting the top off my tibia, realigning it and then screwing it back in place so that my knee tracks correctly. (This is the story of my life--I went through the same thing with a hip in 2017.) It's a much longer and more difficult recovery, so I have that to look forward to.

Everything else

I am tempted to say "life sucks," but most parts of my life are actually pretty great. It just feels like life sucks right now. My protective shock/numbness after my sister's death has worn off. I'm firmly in the depression phase right now, and I'm hunkering down to wait it out.

The only thing you can really do is put up the scaffolding and allow the time to pass.

*As of 2025, I'm using Wix instead of coding my own blog. It was an interesting experiment but also a huge pain in the ass.

**I later learned that they don't do this surgery anymore, so I'm just stuck with an arthritic thumb for the rest of my life.