Been a while. Various things have been up, and I’ve completely lost the thread here. I always feel a need to get back to the blog and start posting regularly, but getting the first post down after a month or so sets the tone, and I have no idea what the tone is, so here goes.
First major thing was that my cat Squeak died. We got both of the cats 18 years ago in Denver, and she was maybe six months old then. So she had a good run, and she’s had various medical stuff for a while. She kept going a lot longer than expected, but the last year or so has been rough. It was still an incredibly hard decision to let her go, and a month and a half later, I’m still upset about it. This was compounded by the fact that I spent most of that 18 years working from home, and a heavy part of my routine was seeing what was up with her during the day. I was going to write more about this, but I can’t. Extremely grateful for Humane Colorado for the start of her journey and Lap of Love for the end.
Second… I guess writing got away from me for a bit. My next book is possibly too political, and I now have many fears about publishing this in the current climate. Aside from all my other fears about writing and publishing, I also don’t want to suddenly not be able to get back in the country on my next time I go on vacation. So I lost maybe a month there before I was able to get back to it.
There are a lot of various concerns about persona and the type of writing I will do in the future. I think I waver between wanting to do something “serious” or complex, like some David Foster Wallace magnum opus. Or I want to do basically a performance art piece of wild and crazy absurdism. And I think whichever one I do, I have to sort of “become” that person to the public. I think of how I was always posting over-the-top memes and crazy stuff ten years ago, and how that dovetailed with my writing at the time. I ran into a wall with that whole thing, and I don’t know what the answer is here. (And I’m not looking for one.) This is probably the subject of another essay. Regardless, I’m writing, and that’s all I really care about.
Third (why am I still counting) – I have been busy trying to get my remote pilot license, the FAA Part 107. I’ve been hemming and hawing about taking this test pretty much since I started flying drones in 2021, and I’ve bought numerous books and video courses and flash cards and whatever else, but never got it together to take the test. Finally, I said screw it, went to the FAA, and registered for an exam last Friday. After a week or so of cramming, I realized there’s no way I would be ready, so I pushed it out two weeks. I’m still working through a course, flipping through flash cards, and trying to remember when you use CTAF versus UNICOM at a towered airport after hours to self-announce traffic advisories. (And that whole thing is stupid, because I have to know all of this stuff for the 107, and then the very last rule is, “sUAS PICs cannot communicate on CTAF.”
Aside from writing and studying, I’ve been wasting a lot of time building book nooks. A book nook is a sort of diorama about the size of an unabridged dictionary with a glass front and a very detailed scene inside. I have built four of them now, and the one that got me hooked was the Kowloon Walled City 2049 kit. Of course I feel a need to customize these things and have fallen down this rabbit hole of paints and plastics and accessories and lights and scratch-building new details. All of this is questionable because the one thing I don’t have is shelf space. But it’s been a fun distraction.
Work is work. Had a brief staycation because I canceled a trip due to all the Squeak stuff. My only other travel plans in 2025 are Christmas and the Midwest, although I’m thinking about another crazy trip for my birthday. More on that when I figure it out.