I never write anymore. My days are the same, unbroken stretches of yesterday, today and tomorrow where each is indistinguishable from the last. It's probably worth it to record what those days are like, if only to assess what it is that's so banal that it's not worth noting.
I get up at 6 AM, shower, and walk the dog. If the dog is compliant, I can catch the 7:07 train to Center City. If not, I wait for the 7:37. I can take the bus from our new house, which is a nice fallback option. The early train gets me to work half an hour early, the late train gets me there right on time: usually 5 or 10 minutes late, given how reliable SEPTA is.
I work for the commonwealth, doing clerical work for the welfare office. Mailing forms, processing requests. The pay is shit and the neighborhood I work in is awful, but I'm doing work FOR people. I quit being a doc review lawyer because it was just helping billionaires sue each other, or get out of being sued by the government. I feel morally better about my current job, even though I look like an asshole for doing three years of school and six figures of student loan debt, followed by 15 years of work I hated.
I eat fast food or peanut butter crackers for lunch. I waver back and forth on soda -- either I'm only having one a week or one a month, or I'm having one or two a day and justifying it to myself as something I deserve because I'm sad.
I'm sad all the time, so this is not great reasoning.
I work 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM with an hour for lunch. My coworkers are good folks. I am in a union.
My commute to and from work is about an hour each way. I ride the regional rail train for thirty-five minutes, then change to the subway to get out to West Philadelphia. I walk about half a mile on each side of the commute, plus any steps I get at lunchtime or during breaks. I like to pretend this is enough exercise, so I can defend spending the rest of my free time in a recliner. I am conscious of my own bullshit.
At work I spend way too much time staring at my phone. My job requires me to stare at a computer monitor. When I get home, the only thing I like to do with my free time is to play computer games. I'm amazed my eyesight isn't completely fucked yet.
My dad died last month. He hadn't been well, so it wasn't a surprise. You spend a lot of time telling yourself whatever reassures you or supports your course of action. Whenever I would suggest to family members that he might not have much time left, they were shocked. "He's not DYING," they'd say. "He's just got a problem with his foot / heart / circulatory system / etc." Dad reinforced that with his simultaneous "I'm fine, the doctor says" and "I don't know if Mary and I will get another Christmas" statements.
Funerals are expensive.
Earlier in the job-related part of this post, I mentioned that my pay is shit. When someone had to go to New York and sign with the funeral home, I tried to keep my brother and sister informed. They got mad over the cost, and I certainly didn't have $17,000 lying around. But it was what Dad wanted, so we did it. I didn't let myself get worked up over the cost because 1) credit cards exist, 2) my sister is basically a millionaire, and 3) we would eventually be paid back by Dad's estate.
No one wanted to pay the lump sum to the funeral home and there was a lot of "that guy gouged us, fuck him and his bill" talk. I asked Ingrid to put it on her credit card because mine wasn't large enough. As soon as my siblings heard that Ingrid paid it, they switched gears and got very generous and "oh money is no object." That made me madder than the initial $17,000 bill. If money was no object, why did I have to do all the decision making and heavy lifting while you all bitched and moaned?
It's over with now, and I hope we'll see that money back from the estate. It'll take time, and as stated earlier my time is just grinding along.
I feel like this was real whiny and self-pitying, but that's nothing new for this blog. I don't care much because no one's reading it. If you want to hear something nice, I've been buying computer parts and I'm building my first PC once I have the nerve to spend $500 on stuff I literally don't need. Again, credit cards exist (I got a new one so I could balance-transfer the funeral debt off Ingrid's card), and better to do something nice for yourself than wait for someone to do it for you.
Happy roll back the rock day, primitive hunter gatherers. If Jesus sees his shadow it's six more weeks of Lent.
--10:57 AM EDT, Philadelphia, PA, 3/31/2024, Whoa no, Guadalajara won't do
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