Where have I been all my life?

Now? Here? ... Why?

Here and now are as good a space-time as any to resume obstreperously publishing blog content of interest to few but me.*

It's good to be back!

I began this blog at a time when I had taken months off from gainful employment to try my hand and my pencil at completing a fiction novel. Hence I spent hours upon hours reading nonfiction, thinking about nonfiction, doing things other than plotting fiction, and telling family that, though it be a struggling artist's life, I was finally moving toward my dream of writing fiction. Turns out I was doing it wrong. (Eh. Live and learn. Paychecks and rent money are for corporate drones! Housed corporate drones. Housed, fed, content, future-prepared corporate drones.) That was 2011.

The similarity between then and now**

Earlier this week, an intolerable clunking sound began filling my teeny studio apartment every two to three hours, lasting approximately five minutes each iteration. You see, I live in Arizona now. It's a desert. You think I'm speaking in historical terms or xeriscaping terms. I'm not. We give our habitat euphemistic titles such as "Valley of the Sun" and "the 602" and "Phoenix," but what Phoenicians really mean is "I burnt my flesh on the doorknob! Why isn't it January yet!!?" It's true: residents of Phoenix, AZ, USA, really do call themselves Phoenicians. It's as zero-humidity reminder of our climate's non-resemblance to the Fertile Crescent. Right now is September in Phoenix, when air conditioning units redline. This accounted for the intermittent clunking I mentioned. Ingenious as I am, I devised an easy, economical, immediate remedy:

All I had to do was hop up on the sturdy counter, take a Phillips head to the vent's screws, remove the plate, reach inside, and clear out whatever was thumping around in there. Let's never mind that the clamorous culprit might have been something formerly living and I was risking my bare hand to sweep it out; rejoicefully, dead rodent turned out to not be the case. Less worthy of rejoicing, the far edge of the vent-- situated seven and a half feet above my tile floor-- was unreachable from the sturdy counter.

Being a strapping and proficient rock climber (and, don't forget, ingenious), I gave no second thought to grabbing hold of the ledge, abandoning my perch on the counter, and placing my weight and my life in the hands of... my hands. Knowing now that skipping second thoughts is how I often operate, I am considering instituting a more deliberate and rigorous first-thought process for future decision cycles. While my weight and life were spared this time, my joints were not when my fingers slipped over something half grimy and half slippery inside the vent's recess.

Owing to a fun kipping motion that was intended to help me reach one arm farther into the vent, my knees were above the height of my head at the moment of drop-ture, and my spine was parallel to the conveniently easy-to-clean tile floor. If ever I had wished for unmanageable carpeting, it was now. The instantaneous result was a seven-foot drop onto my back. The moments-later result was two dislocated elbows, a tender gluteus medius, unhappy latissimi dorsi, and a contusion on my tongue that one family member later (affectionately?) dubbed "raw meat." The days-long result was an overdose on fruit smoothies, limited minutes of being able to operate a keyboard or touchscreen or mouse, and hours of enjoyment making unpredictable requests for information that began with "Okay, Google."

Exactly like those months when I unsuccessfully wrote fiction every day, my past four days have been spent building my video business by not researching video business, not conducting video business, not editing already filmed video business, and not thinking video business. Years ago, intellectual injury was to blame; today, physical. What has all of this again created? Perfect conditions for blogging.

Let's see how it goes.

Call:

And Response:

* Now there's a tough phrase to figure! "All but me" means, obviously, that everyone else is including but I am excluded. "None but me" excludes everyone else and includes me. But does "few but me" include the few and exclude me? Or does it exclude the few and include me? By the feel of the statement, I think it would be taken as including the few and including me, but then why the "but"? Shouldn't the phrase rightly be "few and me"?

** Other similarities between my 2011 and 2015 circumstances: I still am yet to complete a fiction novel. I still have so much I want to convey about my quest for "the human connection in writing, politics, entertainment, and life." I still think that that is an undisciplined, overreaching subtitle and guidepost for this blog. I still want to keep it.