Click images for desktop size: "Knotted" by Joel Faber Not feeling well. Better is the Brit-Speak: I'm feeling unwell.
Nothing I haven't felt before. It has just become more annoying as it goes on.
I keep thinking that I'm near the end of the road. Its been a great trip. More dips and valleys then a sane person could accept as normal, but its been good.
Not ready for it to end.
I can still laugh and I can still enjoy my puppy fighting to get close to me. I still like the sound of the guitars making like a mini-symphony with more grind.
Just tired and unwell. No big deal. Just the unwelcome thoughts going through my mind.
I always worry some. It keeps me cool and unpanicked, I think.
Alkaline Trio are on tour. I think about seeing them. I figure I'll be disappointed but what a nice way to be disappointed.
There's a lot more movies I need to see. There's a mystery that needs solving and the key might be locked inside of one of those frames.
There are stories I haven't heard yet. People, real and fictional I haven't met yet.
When my mother got depressed. (I always remember her smiling and giving me something to eat . . . she couldn't cook, at all, but I remember her handing me food). A divorced mom, barely out of her teens with a rambunctious son had plenty of reasons to be depressed back then. The only solution for an uneducated woman was her own cottage business or to marry well, or at least better.
Anyway, when she'd get depressed she'd tell me the story of somebody, I think it was one of the Eastman's. This fellow woke up one morning. Photography had been his life, not taking pictures but creating the cameras, the tools and the film. That morning he awoke and realized that his art form had progressed as far as it possibly could. There was nothing left to create or to perfect. No one would ever take a better photograph than Stiglitz or Cameron or Weston.
Thinking there was nothing new and exciting in the world, that his art was perfected and that his work was done he calmly shot himself in the head.
Later that day they announced the Polaroid Land Camera. Instant photography . . .
As a kid I never understood why my mother gathered strength thinking about Polaroid cameras. It still baffles me.
It bothers me still that she allowed herself to get so depressed that she had to think about some rich guy blowing his brains out.
I guess what matters is that she gained strength, strength from a story. Strength to carry on from a story.
For me, that's the important part.

Click images for desktop size: "Start-Trafalgar Square" by Unknown And like my buddy Jim used to say, (Jim was the guy who I did that radio show with) "It doesn't matter what we play. There's always somebody out there who will like it."
Morbid thoughts.
My birthday is coming up soon. Too many birthdays for me to care.
I used to use my birthdays to gauge what I'd accomplished, what I'd gained in the past year. I used to spend the day deeply analyzing this.
Since my goal for the past few years have been mainly to stay alive there's not much need for introspection there. Its a pretty binary question: Yes or no.
But I am alive.
I'm pretty happy, happier than I'd thought I'd be in a long time.
I want to stay alive. That also seems pretty binary but, unfortunately it isn't.
I need my own story.
I think I have one. I write it every day.
That sounds trite. It is. I need reminding sometimes.

To distract me I'm updating the website to Movable Type 4.2 Pro today. It will probably break stuff. The updates usually do.
Since Movable Type has spun off a side bar Open Source Project and since 4.2 has been in open beta testing for about 90 days, I have a bit more confidence in this update than I usually do.
The best part about Movable Type is that it generates those stationary html files so even if I break anything you probably won't notice!
Which means I get all the sweaty nerve wracking fun trying to figure out permissions and perl code. Hotcha cha . . .