<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><oembed><version><![CDATA[1.0]]></version><provider_name><![CDATA[a hard and a rock place]]></provider_name><provider_url><![CDATA[https://muirnin.wordpress.com]]></provider_url><author_name><![CDATA[David]]></author_name><author_url><![CDATA[https://muirnin.wordpress.com/author/muirnin/]]></author_url><title><![CDATA[91. yen]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<p>Brief update this evening.</p>
<p>Spent most of the day in bed with a fever. Started feeling not-so-great yesterday afternoon and by the time I got home all I really wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep.</p>
<p>Which is precisely what I did.</p>
<p>All I wanted (besides to not feel like the second coming of Hades, who, by the way, is a character in my novel – and no, HE DOESN&#8217;T SPEAK IN SMALL CAPS) was for someone to bring me potato soup and maybe read to me or something.</p>
<p>But, alas, that was not to be. I wasn&#8217;t even hungry, so all I could do was curl up in bed in the fetal position.</p>
<p>And, naturally, that set off a whole chain of depressing thoughts that led to feeling more and more depressed, augmented by the fact that I was feeling like the second coming of Hades. Thoughts that I&#8217;m almost twenty-nine and still single, and this is likely what the whole rest of my life is going to look like: Lying in bed in the fetal position, feeling dreadfull (sic), and wishing that some cute guy would bring me soup.</p>
<p>The holidays are also fast approaching, and this will be the first year ever that I do not celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas with my family. It&#8217;ll also be the first year that I observe both as an atheist. That part isn&#8217;t so bad since I never really believed in any of it anyway; but it&#8217;s losing my family, and not having another family to be a part of, that&#8217;s the hard part. I&#8217;ve always more or less been on the periphery when it comes to holidays as the non-plus 1 – always the single guy at the table. Now I don&#8217;t even have a table, or a family. Or a God. It&#8217;s a lot to take in at once.</p>
<p>Most of today looked very much the same, aside from checking work email occasionally (and got an email back from a co-worker saying, &#8220;What are you doing!? Stop checking your email and worrying about what&#8217;s going on here! Get better!!&#8221;) and then going through some old keyboard music and realising how full of shit I used to be. Some of the organ music was cool but so pedantic. <em>Oh god, enough with the twelve-tone!</em> I kept thinking. It was 2001-2003, and it seemed like a good idea at the time, I guess.</p>
<p>Makes me wonder now how I&#8217;m going to look back on the work that I&#8217;m doing now. That&#8217;s the beauty of being in the business of creating, is that you&#8217;re always a work-in-progress. Unfortunately, that means producing a lot of shit in the process. But there is always some good that comes of it. It&#8217;s like mental alchemy – with the gold comes a lot of dross.</p>
<p>In the meantime, is it too much to ask for a great, cute guy to come and bring me soup, and maybe read to me from the New York Times?</p>
<p>Perhaps.</p>
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