120318 right now all i got is a story about a guy who is so tired his guts want to flop loosely out of a hatch in his stomach, like limp pancakes made by an inept chef. i am so tired. i am so tired. i am so tired. my hands feel like balloon man protestors gyrating pathetically in the wind of an oncoming train. sheer cussedness. there is no panic monster here, folks. all i have is a good keyboard and a shitty display. what’s supposed to be black is a gross kind of felty green. what’s supposed to be dark is lit up like the grinch stole christmas over a polluted metro area. there is absolutely no good reason for me to be doing this, so why am i doing it? can i handle this shitty screen? god damn it, it is so frustrating that this is the only mac with a good keyboard that you can buy new. should i return it and get a used 2015 13 inch retina macbook pro from 2015? is there ever gonig to be a day when i stop asking this question? think of all the diamonds and gems i could have come up with in the last few moments if i hadn’t been wasting my time asking myself that question. I didn’t do *any* grading over the weekend. I am starting to wonder what is wrong with me again. When the fuck am i going to do it? I need a shave. It’s so hard to work over the weekend, he whines, because everyone’s here. There’s meals to prepare and kids everywhere and they all have needs and they do homework and practice and millie’s always sitting at thekitchen table and ian comes over and i don’t want to go in the basement and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Why is it so hard just to do my god damned work? There is no job that doesn’t have some god damned work to it. Wny am I so fucking lazy? Why don’t I care about anything? Look, I know we discovered last summer that self loathing and castigation tends to be the precursor to giving up, but that’s not even what it is at this moment. I genuinely want to know the answer to the following questions: - should i return this computer? If so, what am i going to use to type in bed in the morning? - is that the wrong question? Is typing in bed so important that it wasn’t completely insane to buy a computer to expedite it? - why? literally no one cares, it doesn’t make me any money, its not making me a better writer, no one is ever going to see it, i’m tired as fuck, and i still can’t maintain a coherent story line for more than a week or two. so why do i still do this? I have to admit, i’m kind of intrigued by the fact that i do still do it, even though there’s been a hell of a lot of gaps since thanksgiving break. Sheer cussedness? I tried throughout my 20’s and 30’s to cultivate the necessary sheer cussedness to just do something just because, and i failed over and over again. So maybe that’s part of it: just the plain old desire to have finally succeeded at something of my own internal volition. Just to be able to lie down and die when it’s time to lie down and die and be able to fill in the “yes” box for at least *one* item on the final questionnaire. You know? Maybe the product really *isn’t* the point. Maybe the process isn’t even the point. Maybe there really isn’t any point except just doing it. I hesitate to say *like climbing a mountain* but there, I’ve said it. good keyboard, shitty display. good keyboard, shitty display. that’s what he was thinking as he trudged up the mountain, in the dark, brilliant stars pinpointing the enormity of the lonely sky above. good keyboard, shitty display. that’s what he was thinking as his oxygen ran out and he took those last few stumbling steps. that was the unanswered question as he fell to his knees in the snow, and everything went black: “should i return this computer?” His last thoughts weren’t of his loved ones, the home hearth, fond memories of affection and hugs and dancing and eating lovingly prepared meals around the table with sparkling eyes and laughter and holding hands and the connections of friends and family. no, the thought that tortured him till the very end was *good keyboard; shitty display.* GOD DAMN YOU, APPLE. GOD DAMN YOU TO HELL. Obviously I could buy a computer that’s not a Mac at all. I could waste another few days of my life reading reviews of non-Mac computers. Which one has the best keyboard. How does it compare to Apple. Which one has the best display. Is it as good as retina. How’s the contrast. How’s the viewing angle. Are there enough equivalent writing and editing apps in Windows or god forbid Linux. Battery life. Weight. Build quality. Etc, etc. They’re going to all talk about processor speed and caching and oh yeah that reminds me is the SSD as good as Apple. And on and on. Then that would suffuse my brain for like a week. My brain would be like an overly fluffy pancake just drowning in the maple syrup of all that bullshit for several days straight, and then I would make a final-ish decision and return this and make a purchase, and then I’d spend the next month trying to set everything up and get used to a new operating system and my rate of real writing would be about three or four words per five hundred words spent on actual thoughts or imagination or magic or whatever else you want to call it, and the rest would be all stuff like OK, blah blah blah. So this is like this in Windows and there’s no this but I found this that might work, but then again there’s no this, and the problem with this is this, but then this is actually kind of better but then on the other hand this, and oh my god I just don’t even. So basically it’s keep this with its shitty screen, or deal with the shitty keyboard and have a good screen. Those are literally my only choices unless I get a used 2015. Am I going to do that do you see do you see how i keep my mind busy and occupied with this question, it’s been what, three days now, and that’s literally all i can think about? Is that mental illness? Not debilitating I suppose but definitely like going around with a cold or the flu. HOW THE FUCK CAN I MAKE IT STOP? Or is that the wrong question. Surely that’s the wrong question. I have to go now. I have shit to do. God damnit. I’ll see you later for another session of asking the exact same question over and over again and wondering why I’m doing this. There has to be a reason, or else I wouldn’t do it. Cuz god knows, left to my own devices I basically don’t do anything.