I thought about writing about performance, and how I’m recognizing it in my interactions real time now instead of through retrospection. Which has been helpful to navigate my interactions with Joe and in general life.

But now I’m more drawn to digest the fragility and fleetingness of life. For as strong as these bodies can be, they are fragile. Able to survive within only a narrow range of environmental factors, and our internal life support systems extremely susceptible to malfunctions.

Dreams, plans, desires, all wiped away by something unexpected. Faster than regret can set in. Leaving a hole that can’t be healed.

This is why people say to live each day like its your last. Because in the blink of an eye, you can lose people that you thought you still had time with and be plunged into regret. Regret over things unsaid, actions not taken, things left unexpressed.

Time moves too quickly, say the words, step out of comfort zones, ask the questions, take the risk. Regret hurts worse than making mistakes and learning from them.

Almost 2 years ago I sold my deceased father’s truck to a co-worker who was in a rough spot. I was in need of a new couch because all we had was a recliner and a love seat, and that wasn’t enough to accommodate the 3 of us for watching movies. So I took the funds from the sale of my father’s truck and I bought a sectional.

The delivery timing was nearly perfect. Joe got COVID so I slept on the couch. And then I still caught it.

That couch held me through COVID and a hysterectomy, and then through the start of a weird split from Joe.

But now, as part of the split we are selling the house and going our separate ways. He’s talking about getting his own place and was asking about what I was going to do with the couch, like he had any stake in that particular item in our house.

I explained that I would find a place for it, because I wasn’t about to get rid of the couch I spent the money from the sale of my dad’s truck on. That shut him down quick enough.

I think he was starting to have some delusion that we had purchased that together. Yes he was there, he and our child helped me pick it out. But I purchased it with money that had nothing to do with him.

Because why the fuck not!!

For far too long, I’ve put too much stock in the opinions of others. In regard to EVERYTHING. When I was either still in High School or just after I graduated, I wrote some spicy stuff. Like, put pen to paper… wrote it down.

And then my dad found it.

And he read it.

And his only reaction was that I might have a future in “writing smut”.

I was mortified! And it hasn’t been until recently that I’ve had any inclination to write anything like that again. I don’t know that I’m ready for the prospect of negative reception of those writings yet. But so far, the poetry-like stuff hasn’t received any negative feedback. Admittedly it hasn’t received any positive public feedback either though…

I’m not sure if I should publish the really spicy stuff here or not. If I should publish it under a pen name or not. I guess I’ll figure that all out in time.

Its 1:30 in the morning, in a hotel room. Its quiet. too quiet. I don’t know what I expect. I could just put an earbud in and listen to music, but in the state that I’m in that would not only lead me to being up far too late, but it would also lead to me completely losing focus on doing anything but dwelling in my emotions.

The hotel is full of young hockey players here for a series of games. I guess I expected there to be more ruckus, but evidently the hotel has dealt with them before and they are aware of the rules. There were also staff members patrolling the halls to make sure there were no disturbances.

The only real disturbance was at the pool where an out of control football came ricocheting into the hot tub earlier. But even that was short lived because after 10pm anyone under 18 years old gets kicked out of the pool area. Definitely made for a quiet hour, but there was the creeper in the corner by the hot tub that just kept going back and forth between his chair in the corner and the open air shower where he would rinse off and then go back to his chair presumably to sit and dry. Except he would eventually get up and rinse off again. We didn’t really get peace until the last 30 minutes of the adult swim hour.

Still better than nothing.