58 - The Blog Stops Here

Tomorrow morning, up early, out early, and in early to take a quick glance at eight weeks of email to see if I can divine what's going on. People will pop in and say “Hey you're back!” and “Who are you?” and “Did you go anywhere special?” and I will try to avoid answering questions without being too diffident. People will want to know but they will also want to be polite and it will be the expected thing and I just won't want to go along with that. Time to move forward. I will survey recent emails and get bored and go down for coffee and hopefully see someone I want to talk to (i.e. someone who isn't in my work group) and I will think, hm, I'm already failing at my resolve to integrate better, I really need to get to know my cow-orkers better, and I will go back upstairs and wryly bug people and ask if the boss' new hire is the meddling micromanager everyone says he is and go back to my desk and see if I can't try and keep it neat and organized for once in my life on the theory that an organized desk is an organized mind and dog knows THAT wouldn't hurt. In an instant of boredom I will come THIS close to checking for any action on Facebook but I will pull my hands away and say, whew, let's not let THAT happen and go for a walk. By then maybe something will have come up that I can put some billable hours into so to speak and the new post-sabbatical life will be off and running, the most important thing being that I go to the gym at eleven sharp and do so every single day from now on. That will be the easiest part of the day.

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I’m going through books my father didn’t want, sorting through for any I do want and stacking them with my own books, all of which will end up in the shelves I put in the upstairs guestroom / library / workshop that will in theory be my approximation of a mancave. Well, I guess it is already. It’s where the writing gets done, the electronics work (e.g repaired the el-wire in my fur vest last week), planning for any Burn-related projects (the Burn will be a major part of my life this year), plus there’s a view out towards the cul-de-sac so I can see the mobs with their torches and pitchforks before they see me.

I’m learning something about books and that is that coffee table books are nearly completely worthless. They are given and received as gifts and when sorted through thirty years later are just not worth keeping, having spent the last twenty eight obscured on some shelf behind piles of other stuff and never missed. They’re not uninteresting: My father has a vast interest in history and philosophy and his books reflect that. So do I. It’s all good stuff. It’s all gaw damn space-consuming too, and they won’t be looked at, and they’re no good for research, and so they won’t be going into my shelves.

Some books, though, are priceless whether or not they're worthless. Not to denigrate John Muir but I don't know if I'll ever actually read The Yosemite.  However, my grandparents honeymooned at Yosemite in 1924, and Desmond gave the book to Dorothy on their anniversary:

Heart-strings, plucked

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We went to Nevada City today. It is unbelievably beautiful up there in the spring, with tulips and lupines and poppies abloom in the well-tended gardens and wild hillsides alike. It is an old Gold Rush town hence the streets are narrow and contend with the slopes rather haphazardly. I guess a street grid didn’t work when people were digging up the ground wherever they found any hint of a vein. Today it is successful as a draw for shoppers and pleasure trippers, and the entire downtown was prosperous with cafes and dress shops and bookstores and bars in the hundred and fifty year old buildings, all freshly painted or artfully not so, and people everywhere. It was rather magical.

The general idea

The Nevada County Courthouse is an art deco treasure (1936)

One of the phallic "monitors" that washed half the Sierra down into the rivers to the destruction of towns and farms alike until some limits were finally established in 1884

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I would like to thank everyone for reading this blog and making comments and generally doing what blog readers are supposed to do, make the blogger feel like a real person. I managed to meet my goal of posting something, with a picture, every day. I cheated a little now and then: Some posts were put up the next day and the time set to the intended day at 11:59pm.

Will I continue with another? Maybe, but if so, not just yet. I need to return to the rat race and establish better work habits. Constant improvement is not only a good idea, it’s a necessity for remaining employed. Bloggery can be distracting so for a time I will turn away.

All comments will continue to be forwarded to me via email.