91. yen

Brief update this evening.

Spent most of the day in bed with a fever. Started feeling not-so-great yesterday afternoon and by the time I got home all I really wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep.

Which is precisely what I did.

All I wanted (besides to not feel like the second coming of Hades, who, by the way, is a character in my novel – and no, HE DOESN’T SPEAK IN SMALL CAPS) was for someone to bring me potato soup and maybe read to me or something.

But, alas, that was not to be. I wasn’t even hungry, so all I could do was curl up in bed in the fetal position.

And, naturally, that set off a whole chain of depressing thoughts that led to feeling more and more depressed, augmented by the fact that I was feeling like the second coming of Hades. Thoughts that I’m almost twenty-nine and still single, and this is likely what the whole rest of my life is going to look like: Lying in bed in the fetal position, feeling dreadfull (sic), and wishing that some cute guy would bring me soup.

The holidays are also fast approaching, and this will be the first year ever that I do not celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas with my family. It’ll also be the first year that I observe both as an atheist. That part isn’t so bad since I never really believed in any of it anyway; but it’s losing my family, and not having another family to be a part of, that’s the hard part. I’ve always more or less been on the periphery when it comes to holidays as the non-plus 1 – always the single guy at the table. Now I don’t even have a table, or a family. Or a God. It’s a lot to take in at once.

Most of today looked very much the same, aside from checking work email occasionally (and got an email back from a co-worker saying, “What are you doing!? Stop checking your email and worrying about what’s going on here! Get better!!”) and then going through some old keyboard music and realising how full of shit I used to be. Some of the organ music was cool but so pedantic. Oh god, enough with the twelve-tone! I kept thinking. It was 2001-2003, and it seemed like a good idea at the time, I guess.

Makes me wonder now how I’m going to look back on the work that I’m doing now. That’s the beauty of being in the business of creating, is that you’re always a work-in-progress. Unfortunately, that means producing a lot of shit in the process. But there is always some good that comes of it. It’s like mental alchemy – with the gold comes a lot of dross.

In the meantime, is it too much to ask for a great, cute guy to come and bring me soup, and maybe read to me from the New York Times?

Perhaps.