Well, I guess now I know that if anyone tells you you’ll be having “kidney surgery”, you probably ought to prepare for a pretty un-fun experience.

I’m not “back to normal” yet, but I’m as close as I’ve been since February. I lost 7.5% of my bodyweight from January through the start of March, much of which was muscle as I wasn’t very fat to begin with.

But I will say, it’s nice to be able to walk around more or less comfortably again, and it is nice not to feel more or less physically helpless.

I am still preoccupied with death in unhealthy ways. Most of my non-workplace interactions with people involve my passively wondering which of us will die first, and then, from there, I wonder about their entire social network. Will they die before or after their spouse? Will I be there to help them mourn, or will I be dead too? Which ones of us will be the last one left? Who will be there to support them until the end? Will we even still be talking then or will we all drift off and die alone in our own imposed obscurities?

I don’t want to think so exclusively about death, but it is hard not to. Around my wife I seem to be able to escape it, but around most other people I just… drift there, eventually.

I think I am starting to crave social interaction somewhat again even though I don’t really know how to do it normally anymore. I don’t even really know if I want “normal” social interaction anymore anyway. I don’t think I know how to “be” normal anymore.

“Normality” seems to require concern for a status quo that I simply don’t have anymore. I don’t really give a fuck what’s normal. My normal has been shattered and almost all I have left of that is tied to one person, whom I could lose as easily as anything else. What is “normal” for any of us is all just tissue paper waiting for a slight rain to come along and render it all meaningless.

Normal is smoke and mirrors. There is no normal but what we carve out in the world for ourselves, these places of refuge from the elements out there.

So, I’ve become divorced from “normal” to some greater degree than ever before in the past because I cease to actually desire that form of acceptance in a widespread way. In some sense, some part of me has always craved acceptance from… this greater, vast sense of the “other.” Those people out there, the strangers, the bright and shiny ones who might be out there, magical, just waiting to be met.

I don’t really care if those folks exist anymore, and if they do, I don’t need their approval. I’d love to be liked by the people I respect and admire, but I don’t really care that much about that anymore, either. It isn’t necessary. Their opinion of me, and mine of them, isn’t really significant to anything, or meaningful in really important ways.

I already know the most important people to me. What family I have left, and my close friends. It’s a shame I can’t interact with them more to show them I actually care and I’m not avoiding everybody because of disdain or apathy. But I’m working my way there, slowly.

But that’s just it, it all feels… trivial. It is hard to explain.

Nothing really feels like it matters when the most important people in your world can just disappear overnight. Nothing really feels permanent. All you can do is try to cherish whatever you can while it’s there, but somehow even that feels hard because every moment you try to embrace, in the back of your mind there is a whisper “this could be taken from you.”

And so, insidiously, even in the loving embrace of a family member, you are not in the moment enjoying your time with them, but imagining their funeral.

And stuff like this makes me not want to be around people. Because it is hard to think about everyone dying all the time and sometimes it is just easier not to be around people.

But it isn’t even just people. It’s anything.

Work is somehow easier because at least I’m being paid so there’s a clear transaction and I can tell myself “well I have to do [thing] because someone paid me and is expecting [thing] to get done in exchange for my pay.”

Sometimes I find myself clearing out boxes or organizing things and think to myself “well this will be a pretty silly use of my time if I die next week. Me sitting here sorting this box.” You could say so about any number of things.

And I ruminate in that space for a time and sometimes I conclude that whether I die next week or not, ultimately it is good to do these little things, to carve out order and sense in this world around us. And so I conclude even if I am to die next week, the weeds in the front yard still need to be pulled and the trees still need to be maintained and the roses still need to be pruned.

Whether I die or not (though I surely will die, as will we all), I was put here to be a steward over what is here. And during my time, that much I can do; I can try to look after those things in my care, and leave them marginally better than they were, so that when I am gone maybe things are a little better because I was here, and in some way, if my presence does not last, some echo of my existence will be felt by these marginal improvements that might in turn lead to further generational improvements from the next steward(s).

But I also fear that there will be no future stewards, that our society is losing any sense of responsibility for taking care of this world we rely on. We’ve elevated ourselves above the common world, and we will all burn, starve, or drown, as we realize we have never truly been above it, but a part (not “apart”) of it.

But none of the above makes it necessarily any easier to navigate day-to-day thinking when you are bombarded with death-related ponderings, punctuating or interrupting every other accompanying thought.

I would have written sooner, but this entire website feels massively narcissistic and I don’t really know why I’m maintaining this.

Why am I keeping a public record when I don’t actually want “public” attention? Is anything I’ve produced actually meaningful, worthy of sharing? Historically, so many of our “masters” of one artform or another simply happened to be those whose works/legacy survived, so, am I, by recording my past actions, insisting upon trying to preserve some unmerited artistic legacy? Carve out my niche for future anthropologists to discover me and attribute some form of merit to my work which I’ve failed to obtain while living?

I started this for my parents, out of some sense that I wanted to share with someone, (anyone? everyone?) those things that I could no longer share with my parents.

I question that impulse now, just as I have questioned it at least once a week since starting this website.

What is the purpose of this? Is this worth continuing to do? Or would some other way be better?

These are questions I’ve been unable to answer, and because of that I have not yet closed this website.

I don’t know what I’m doing, internet, some locomotive form of madness propels me forward. I hope you are creating things. I’ve been brainstorming writing ideas and developing past concepts, but I’ve made no real progress on anything at all these past 6 months. I would have agonized about that a year ago, but I can’t really care about it too much, I wasn’t capable of doing much for a good chunk of these past 6 months.

I occasionally wish I either had more confidence or less self-awareness, because surely with an adjustment in either direction I might be more productive since I would dedicate substantially less time to questioning whether or not I ought to be doing something at all.

Well, I’m done moaning, for now, and if you weren’t in a poor mood before reading this I hope you aren’t now. We’re all gonna die, but the world is still beautiful, so you may as well enjoy as much of it as you can while you’re here. Don’t let the beauty be obscured by our temporality. I’m blinded by it right now, but our impermanence, if nothing else, should only add measure to the beauty. It exists frequently only in those fleeting moments, to be witnessed by you alone and then never again.

Try your best to to choose to see the beauty, rather than the emptiness preceding and following it.