I have a horrible lack of skill in marketing and advertising. And doing business gives my heart road rash. My joy is to pursue an idea as long as it holds my interest and then leave it unfinished and go chasing after the next when it appears. I’ve finally, just this year (and perhaps because of “pandemic brain”) accepted that this is my nature, and now (thanks to social security) I have given myself permission to be as capricious and fragmented as needed to drop the last idea and pursue the next. I wake up well-rested these days, and full of enthusiasm and whimsy.

My cat, Smudge, came up on my lap, and I could tell he wasn’t sure if he wanted to settle in or be fed. So, I thought I would praise him and perhaps he would then decide. I told him, “Smudge, you are such a BIG kitty!” But as soon as I said “BIG” and my mouth was open, he stuck his tail in it. No dinner tonight, Smudge….

Why do I post so much? Because I’m fascinated by every damn thing. And I chase every dog with a fluffy tail. And I get so many ideas that I never have time to follow any of them to completion before the next one lures me with its Siren song. Sometimes I get down, fed up with it all, feeling like I’m trying to have a conversation with the wind. But then I remember the butterfly effect, and if my words change the wind currents just a tad, perhaps I can disturb the flight path of the butterfly and drive it into a tree or a spider web before it flaps its wings to start a storm in Hong Kong. In the end, I try to be a good curator of the weird, wild, and wonderful things I find, a purveyor of fine considerations, and a seething fissure of passion spewing out all over the deck. Not sorry, but I do make one promise: I shall make every effort to be fair, never to be needlessly cruel (though sometimes…) but mostly I promise to never ever be boring. Except for now.

Another me and Teresa conversation:

Me: If you create an artificial life form that genuinely, to the fiber of its being, enjoys something you find disgusting, demeaning, and distasteful, and you deny them that, would that be morally worse than having created them in the first place?

Teresa: Just because your robot likes being sprayed by a skunk doesn’t make it a good thing.

And there you have it.

If you are at a time in your life when you are broken and vulnerable, beware those who say, “I will be your friend,” and then ask you to pick up their laundry.