The cloud of fraud

10:15 a.m. 

On any given day, I can have moments where I sink into absolute doubt about what I'm doing with my life. I must express this doubt somewhere so that it can escape my mind and be put into the world so the thought can be weighed and measured.

And then I get back to work.

But for whatever reason, this doubt is close enough to me to continue to be manufactured as I go through my day. I have put enough of a framework in place to guide me when I'm flailing around. 

It's okay to flail, but not to actually fail. I have information I need to produce and I will get to it each and every day. 

The current illness strikes

Sometime Sunday afternoon, I felt a sudden change in my body and knew I was infected by something. I wasn't sure what, but I knew it was going to affect me a few days.

On Monday, I still had to work. I don't have a normal job where I can take off. I have deadlines almost every single day. Some people don't like the use of the word deadline, but if I miss any, I feel horrible.

And disappoint people.

I got it all done, crashed as soon as I was done.

Overnight yesterday the symptoms got worse. It's just a cold laced with allergies so the windows have to stay shut. There are blooms outside all the accessible windows so fresh air will have to wait.

Yesterday I didn't want to work, either, and I could have gotten away with not doing anything but there was information I wanted to get out. Last week, an elected official said something absolutely incorrect and serendipity got me a story to set the record straight.

Pertained to childcare.

Someone else got stabbed, the kind of story I hate to write but you can't just write the stories you want. Or at least, I can't. So I started work around 1:30 p.m. or so and I got it all done yesterday, and then spent some time working on the business, invoicing one of my sponsors for March.

The money is already in my account.

Today I'm going again writing, and am about halfway through a newsletter. I think the cold is settling in for a few more days and maybe it's COVID but I doubt it but maybe I'll check, given that I have one kit left and why not?

Does anyone remember COVID and how our lives changed? The person who lived in my house got sick from drinking too much alcohol and moved out and never came back. I had COVID once when someone else was here, but I've more or less been alone.

Alone I exist to write and to inform. When I lost my children, there was nothing else in my life I wanted to do so this is likely how it will be until I figure something out, but even when I'm ill, I really love what I do and am grateful that if I sit down and begin to work, I'll produce things that pay the bills, and that's rare.

I'm aware the world is broken and sometimes sick, but I'm also aware that despair hastens the fall. The only thing I can do is find a moment of calm and then get to work on the pathway I decided for myself a long time ago without even knowing.

I'm not a puzzle, and find myself grateful I can likely be home by myself for days more to come, because outside in the real world there is only disappointment.

Me doing the disappointing.

I deserve nothing but the air I breathe as long as the lungs still work.

Kim Kim Rock

Little Trouble Girl is playing on the radio as part of a WTJU Rock Marathon show focusing on Kim Deal and Kim Gordon and suddenly I'm plunged into a sense of how much of my life has passed and I missed it.
And then Cannonball comes on I can close my eyes and it's 30 years ago and I'm so convinced I'm going to change the world and be something and I'm going to be fix things and I don't know if that's true but 19 year old me heard this song for the first time and now I'm 51 in August and the end is closer than the beginning and I think about how many times I've heard this song and how many of them I did so alone, like I was at 19, like I was at all the other ages and like I always will be.
Life is best lived when you allow yourself to the feelings but don't allow yourself to be guided by any of them anymore. The sky is filled with clouds reflecting conversations between many parts of this earth and I remember how this song made me feel when I was young and now I'm old and I feel that same way again, hopeful but resigned to the fact that sadness reclaims everything in the end.
Oh and then Kool Thing comes on and.... I really need to push through and get the next newsletter out. I lament being alone and resigned to being that way the rest of my life, but at least I have this music as well as all the other music I've yet to discover.

Quote from a train

I am on a train heading back to Charlottesville, where supposedly people know me as a journalist. It's tough to work how I want with all of this movement so I'm archiving things. 

Here is a quotes from an email I sent to someone to remind myself of what I do:

"There is a role for journalism that includes informing the public about how things work, and how they can get involved. That’s how we can build hope, resiliency, and rebuild the trust we need to be a better place." - February 28, 2024 

Today we finish in Pennsylvania

In the grand scheme of things, I have absolutely no idea what this assemblage of words. I suppose that no matter what it comprises one slice of who I have been so far. I don't write much about who I am right now because I'd rather keep much of that to myself. 

Can you blame me?

I am not going to look back at any of this tonight because I don't know what I would find. Tonight I'm more concerned about the next four days I have here in Pennsylvania and how I can maximize my time with my parents. I don't live here and they don't live where they used to anymore. 

I am here now and I tell the television to play the Frog Brigade show from the Fillmore in Philadelphia back in October. Except the selection playing just plays selections. I was at the show and maybe snippets are what I need to remember the point. I was at the show and it was a very important night in my life.  This particular video was shot from where I stood for most of the first set before the intermission. 

In any case, I'm here and I've been here and for all of that time I still write about home. Today I did not finish my newsletter by 7:00 p.m. so I opted to post it tomorrow morning. That gives me some leisure time and I also know what I'm going to write about for C-Ville Weekly. 

It was a full day. I watched my father go through all of his degrees from various places, and I got a real sense of what his career was, working hard to make engineering processes more efficient. 

All I want for him and my mother is to remember the lives they have had, and not to use that to be positive about the future they have left. My job as their son is to do what I can to make sure that conversation continues, so I am glad I took time today from what is usually a full work day to spend time with them. 

My mum and dad are from Liverpool, grew up there at the same time as the Beatles. That's a fact that has always stuck with me and I wonder if I've written about this before in this silo. 

As I write this, I'm listening to Sean Lennon play one of the songs he made with Les Claypool as part of their partnership. He's two years younger than me, and has made something of himself more than just who his dad was. And now Lennon is playing on Hendershot, a Claypool song that is a response to a Johnny Cash song. I see my dad on the couch next to me six hours ago telling me the details about each document he went through. I'm lucky because I got to watch my dad grow older. 

"These are the people of Philadelphia!" Claypool chides Lennon after he asks him if it's the best version he's played so far. I'm sitting here in Bucks County five and a half months later and it sounded great again! 

My life here in Pennsylvania unfolds here at the same time as life unfolds back home, where I am already there four days from now unpacking and getting ready for whatever it is I do when I'm there. Even now I'm planning my next trip which likely does not involve a train but who knows? 

And then they go into Pink Floyd's Animals and I was there because I fought my anxiety and here I am now listening to it again thinking about family and how much maybe it's me who has to put a few things together. 

Today we start in Louisa

For the 257th Sunday in a row, or so, I'm writing up what's happening in local government. I do this because it's part of my job. Today I have to also bring my parents back to my sister's house so we can watch Premiership football. I'll make them a lunch and we'll hopefully have a good time.

This month marks 17 years since I started at Charlottesville Tomorrow, a job I didn't really want but I took anyway. Six years ago next month marks the time I realized it was all going to end for me there. Someone didn't like the information I was writing.

I liked the information I was writing and somehow I have devoted my life to what I do now, which is to comb through all sorts of websites and put together a list of what's happening. It's a very isolating and lonely job, but I want to be an isolated and lonely person.

Anyway, today we start in Louisa County and I'd better get back there. 

Here where are sounds whirring

I don't write about myself anymore. Now that I am making a living as an independent journalist, I don't take the time. And it doesn't matter. I write every day as an imaginary figure but I am real, I think, and I hear a dishwasher where I am now and feel it's soon time to get my own.