So much of my working times these days are spent figuring out where the voice went: where it's hiding, if it'll ever come back, if it ever existed. Right now, a spirit of experimentation: do I need to balance the timed (TSBMR, newsletter, Attendance Cards, intended Project500) with something of a more open-ended duration? Only if I can accept that "open-ended" doesn't mean "never-ending.”

rain rain rain rain wind wind wind wind advisory advisory advisory blah blah blah

Indeed, it is rainy and windy. Again.

Week's been nuts so my efforts to work out a rhythm to the day remain elusive. Assuming, as per usual, that I'll find it just as I have to switch to summer break schedule. Alternative would be to give in, start sb schedule now so I'm less pissy when the time comes. Hopefully sticking to Project500 (more on that in Sunday's Macro0166 but please do know know that "Project500" isn't some stupid / clever code title for something: I literally don't have a name for it and I'm basing it around 500 words, so that's what it'll be for now) / TSBMR / MacroParentheticals and that being it will help.

Current Project500 quandary: what's the bare minimum needed to open the gate to the winding road through?

High potassium continues, though all other numbers look fine, except for blood sugar but that's not surprising; it's always high in the morning. Doubtful that I have kidney disease, though who knows at this point. Only dietary thing I can think of that I've added (other than weight) since my big checkup (where everything was peachy) in December, is matcha (which I'm not giving up because I like how it makes me feel - read: not comatose) and an extra vitamin D3 pill at the doc's request three days a week. Everything they suggested had MORE potassium than what I was doing so fuck it, IDK. No call yet from the whitecoats, though if they keep to their pattern, it'll be either at lunch or at the end of the day.

something new

Been a long time coming, but today feels as good a day as any to commit it here (so I can possibly undo it by Sunday's newsletter, but I doubt I will, not this time): I'm stopping work on MainFictionThing and moving on to something new.

I love the characters and the story, but I can't crack it, and, more importantly, I feel no connection to it, no spark, none of the important, unwritten things to make it at least semi-compelling to a reader. It feels like a relic of a former me, a time – among other things – when the most important person in my life for the entirety of it was still alive.

As I'm moving on with other aspects of my life, it's time to move on with this one too, into something new. The something new is percolating, and I need more time to process it, but I think it'll work; all I know is that I've little interest at present in long-term, long-form projects, fiction or non–: the weekly SHORTBOX MEMORY REVUE pod is part of it, but not the whole of it.

Aiming to have a better picture of it by Sunday's MacroParentheticals. In the meantime, the only way to get that clearer picture is to play with sketches and fingerpaints and see what comes.