One bad week

The seven days spanning from September 29 to Sunday, October 6 were something remarkable: a series of crises and nightmares, one for almost every day. I've blogged most of it (including some of it retroactively, I no longer know exactly what), but I'm going to try putting it into perspective and connecting all the dots to wrap this up and continue writing the things I was intending to.

• Friday, 9/28-Saturday, 9/29: Went out to dinner with A. (which merits a retroactive post tonight, if only for the sake of filling out "one good meal," because it was a good meal.) Played part of a game of LOTR Risk, and watched Looper (which I'm still trying to write a review of.) The first sign of the coming week of fail was after midnight, when I got home and realized that I'd left my umbrella in the car.
• Saturday, 9/29: Alarm clock was set to go off at 8:00, 8:15, and a few other times to wake me up. There was a further alarm set to remind me to get out the door for my car inspection at 10:30. When did I actually wake up? 11:15. Oops.I rushed my ass down to Holyoke to drop the car off, and managed to reschedule for Tuesday - at which point I realized that because of my scheduling I'd be driving two days after my inspection sticker had expired. That meant super-cautious driving, because the cops would be out in force, and if you're pulled over for a bad inspection sticker you're going to be pulled over forever. And so I drove home, super-cautiously, noticing a vibration in the steering column that I hadn't felt before.
  
  On the way back, I stopped and checked at all the places I'd been with A. the night before. None of them had my umbrella. Fuck. 
• Sunday, 9/30: Woke up in time to miss church, and as planned drove up to Sunderland to meet Mom en route from Vermont. Fuck "vibration." By that point, I was driving my own private earthquake. We got out of the car and walked a bit (before it started pissing down rain), and I rumbled my car back to its parking lot to get my first good meal of the day - my first mediocre meal at the little Korean restaurant. (And, after that, some delicious caramel apples.)
• Monday, 10/1: I honestly have no recollection of this day at all.
• Tuesday, 10/2: Accounted for here.
• Wednesday, 10/3: A thankless day, a dreamless night. I ate some breakfast at the Route 9 Diner, which improved things a bit, but then got stuck in front of a computer monitor until dawn, at which point I trekked back to my house, took a Concerta, showered, shaved, lay down, got up, and had...
• Thursday, 10/4: Which was spent walking in the rain, without the umbrella that I'd lost on Saturday. (Isn't it fascinating how these things keep recursively connecting?)
• Friday, 10/5: I drag my ass out of bed and sprint my ass up the street. Late to appointments. Fuck.
• Saturday, 10/6: Accounted for here. Fuck.
• The last Fuck of the week was Sunday, when I slept through church again.

It's not pleasant to write, but it is cathartic at least; now that I've got this off my chest, I can get back to active writing. So yeah.

Phone troubles

My phone died while I was on vacation last week. By Sunday, the touchpad had seized up; I could no longer dial or access any of its messages, and by Tuesday we'd ordered a new one. (It was an enormous hassle.)

It arrived about this time last Thursday, at which point I promptly went to the store to activate it - and discovered that it couldn't be done, because the pricing plan had been changed during the ordering process, and they couldn't activate the phone until the new pricing plan took effect. Which it would, on August 9, after I'd been conveniently slapped with a bunch of fees for not activating within a 14-day period and suchlike.

On my way back from the store, I discovered that I could call somebody after all, with a lot of work - and so I tried calling my mom to talk this through. I got an answering machine, and left a message - and then, realizing that I couldn't hang up, pulled the battery out.

It was only then that I remembered that I couldn't actually turn the phone on either. My phone was well and truly dead - and Mom had no way to reach me.

Regulation, presence, and Thomas Merton

A few weeks ago, I discovered Thomas Merton. I picked up Contemplation in a World of Action from the library; I actually bought No Man is an Island a few days ago, because it was ridiculously cheap. It's like legible outsider art, reading him discussing problems that I will never have the leisure to have.

A few weeks ago, I also decided to commit to regular writing, which (reading back) I realized that I'd never actually defined. This is not the post for that definition (defined here), but it's as good a time as any to say why I wanted to write on schedule: most of the "regular writing" that I wanted to do was disciplinary.

I've never tried to write about specific things at specific times. I've done so - when I sit down I can, for instance, write sonnets without much prior thought - but I've never tried to do so. And that's a problem. Because part of the reason I read my favorite blogs is because they are regular writers: able to write something new consistently. (Charles Dickens was able to write serially. Achieving that kind of consistency is a long-term goal of mine.)

Looking back on it, though, I had a problem: I was writing at cross purposes.