A paucity of posts lately, and I can't say that's likely to change soon. I'm trying to get into a good working mode during the (hot and hated) summer; paying work in the day, fiction at night. I'm ordering it in that fashion since I dislike existing during hot sunny days, and never feel less creatively inspired than when I'm sitting in front of a fan and my ass is sticking to the chair. It's seldom that hot here, and my apt has a small A/C unit that can slightly cool one corner of the living room (which is, not coincidentally, where my chair/desk are located), but even when I'm not actively sweating, I am fighting off my usual June-September
reverse-SAD, which results in far more time spent squinting out the windows and wishing it would hurry up and get dark, than time spent working productively.
Sometimes I wonder if I'd be happier working in some horrible office, down in the bowels of a big office building. Far from any windows, unaware of the sun or heat, ensconced in air conditioned comfort. The stale, recirculating, filthy office air would suck, but I'd probably find it easier to get lost in a work project without the bright sunshine in my peripheral vision.
Of course in such a location I'd be expected to do work for someone else, instead of doing my own website maintenance or fiction writing. Which would kind of defeat the purpose.
At any rate, I've been sporadically successful at doing my website work in the day, but less successful at doing the fiction and fiction-promoting work (which is really all that matters) at night. I feel creative and energized after dark, especially once it gets cold past midnight, but it's hard to focus or concentrate then, as my body emerges from the stupor it was hibernating in all during the hot, sunny hours.
Adding to the fun, I wrenched something in my lower back last fall, and it's been bothering me ever since. I had several chiropractic visits during the week I was in San Diego over Xmas, and that helped a bit, and I don't remember it bothering me much during January-March, but for the past couple of months it's been a constant bother. It feels like my right hip is jammed, but the pain radiates up from there towards my tailbone, and into the muscles on my flanks below the ribs. It's worst when I have to stand around for a while, and lately after a day spent running errands and standing in lines, it's been quite painful.
This wouldn't matter for my working, except that when it acts up I can't sit comfortably. I have to really slouch down, almost reclining, or else sit leaning way to the left or right (or alternate). I've rearranged my desk, moving the tower out from under it so I can stretch my legs out to the right or left, and I get up and stretch out pretty often, but some days nothing really helps, and I end up crashing on the couch to watch a movie, or sitting/lying in bed reading. (No TV, by choice.)
This sucks for getting work done, (or blogging) but it's been pretty useful for my "read more books and watch more movies" summertime recreation plan. I've gone through a number of new and borrowed DVDs, and have made some progress into my summer reading list. One classic down:
The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco. I just finished it tonight, and I'd like to bang out a review, but I really need to think it over first. It was magnificent, very informative of the era, thought provoking about European history and religious history, and more than enough to galvanize anyone to oppose the imposition of a ruling theocracy.
It's one of
Hitchens' central anti-theistic arguments, but when you see it in action (even in historical fiction) you can't help but realize what an incredibly evil form of dictatorship a theocracy is, through its ability to accuse (and try, and convict) anyone of the thought crime of heresy. They will burn you at the stake if you don't believe in the correct imaginary old man in the sky...no, actually it's much worse than that. If you don't believe in the currently-ascendant interpretation of the endless and eternal interpretative debates about how the incoherent and contradictory holy texts should be read, they will torture you and burn you at the stake. That's theocracy, in its purest form.
Parts of Eco's book depressed me, but not so much for the historical evil done by the devout, but more for how it demonstrated the incredible effort humans once (and still) put into theology and doctrinal arguments. The depiction of the most intelligent and educated men of their day devoting their lives to (essentially) arguing whether the
Emperor's New Clothes are fringed in gold or silver tassels is painful to contemplate. As I read through pages of detailed, impassioned, 14th century arguments about whether or not Jesus was poor, or really, really, vow-of-poverty poor, I found my attention drifting as I imagined the progress human civilization could have made by now if most of the brightest individuals in human history hadn't wasted so many brain hours on rival interpretations of the dominant mythologies of the day. (All of which seem utterly absurd and naïve to read today, even to believers who share their faith in the actuality of that particular mythology.)
And yes, I'm getting way ahead of myself by discussing it in this fashion, outside of a more comprehensive review. And since my back is aching this night, to the point that I'm constantly shifting in my chair and have had to get up to pace around and stretch couple of times just writing this post, that review won't be coming any time too soon. I've got a bunch of reviews to write, and I've put down some notes/thoughts on the books/movies, and done my scoring matrix for each film/novel, but haven't taken the time/pain to flesh them out, yet.
No ETA on any of that, sadly. I can say that I'm probably going to seek out a chiropractor next week, if this doesn't let up. I can't afford it, but I can't afford not getting much work done either, and what good are savings if you don't spend them on something you need? You can't buy happiness, but you can sometimes buy an end to pain, which is about the next best thing.
For an amusing side note, let me point out how hard it is to stretch your own legs. Short of buying some of those hooked ski boot things you can use to hang, bat-like, from an overhead bar, there aren't many convenient, at-home ways to try to pull your own leg out of its socket. The hard part is that you can't be straining your muscles, or you'll tighten up and that defeats the whole stretching, adjusting purpose. I thought about trying to hook my foot under the couch, or around a doorway, but when doing that I'd be pulling with my arms, and that would tighten my back, which is the whole problem.
I have a pull up bar suspended from the eaves on my back patio, and dangling from that helps sometimes, but I feel like I need more weight on my leg; like it's jammed into the hip and needs to drop down half an inch. Earlier this week I was especially sore, and tried that, and then tried tying a dumbbell to my leg. That's quite an exercise in of itself, especially when the dumbbell weighs 30 pounds, and the pull up bar isn't so high that you can dangle without your toes touching. I eventually managed to use a belt to lash the weight around my leg, just above the knee, but that was less than satisfactory. Oddly, what actually helped in the end was doing the kid-on-the-monkey-bars trick of flipping upside down and hooking my legs over the bar behind the bent knees. That hurts my legs, since the bar is thin and bites into my tendons, but it actually did help my leg feel less jammed, which made my back stop (somewhat) hurting. In fact, I'm going to hit that up now, before I go to sleep, in hopes the (probably futile) hope that I'll wake up tomorrow in less
pain discomfort than I am in right now.
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