I’ve wasted way too much time just trying to decide what an appropriate analogy would be to me posting this. Is it like surfacing for air after a long dive? Or is it more like taking a deep breath and diving after lounging on a raft in the sun? That’s the problem with analogies: under scrutiny they seldom remain analogous.

It isn’t that I haven’t tried to get back into some form of virtual interaction. For many years virtually the only social interaction I engaged in was virtual. But the old paths have grown over and the old haunts are either tangled with weeds or have been urbanized. My sorties into unexplored territory have been disappointing. So I’ve taken up new pursuits, most of which involve a television or a book and reading glasses.

While the magnification of the aforementioned reading glasses could probably be tweaked up a few percent, the remaining gauges of my progressing mortality remain remarkably static. That episode of liver rejection last year passed without doing any lasting damage, other than leaving me with a constantly changing PT/INR that needs to be tested weekly. The CTCL remains suppressed by the now-monthly PUVA. My BP is up (it read 200/95 at my cardiologist visit), which reminds me ... I've now added "cardiologist" to my accumulation of professional consultants. This brings the number of licensed medical professionals who have an active file with my name on it up to eight, although I probably shouldn't count the osteopath since we've discovered I really do have a sacrum after all. At this point all we need to do pour some milk on it and my medical history doubles as a bowl of Alpha-bits.

On a less narcissistic bent, the four girl-cats have gotten older. The passing months have been least kind to the Warrior Princess, who rather abruptly started showing her age this winter. Severe arthritis in her front legs has hobbled her activities. She turns out to be remarkably easy to pill, a fact for which I now find myself grateful on a bi-daily basis. The Little Grey Beast, ten years the junior to WP, has developed a small medical issue as well (cholecystitis), which is controlled by medication. There are days I feel like I've opened a small animal clinic. The medication schedules aren't all that bad, but my own aging grey matter requires that I post a check-off chart on the refrigerator so I can keep track of who gets what pill when. The Professor helps when he can, but WP nailed his finger a month or so ago when he was trying to pill her; he is now usually happy to leave the application of medicinal chemicals in my hands. In his defense, The Prof's fingers are substantially larger than mine, making pilling small cats a more challenging chore for him than for me.

There isn't much more to update. Work remains odious, with worse descriptions that I could apply but choose not to get into. I've discarded any delusions I ever had about making a difference large or small in the lives of many or few. This more realistic approach to getting a paycheck doesn't make the disillusionment in my career any easier to cope with, but it has evened out the manic-depressive swings of optimism/despair to a more steady-state of depression. I've read that we become our own worst enemies. I'm not sure that's entirely accurate. Rather than becoming our own worst enemies, I suspect that we always are our own worst enemies. We just take our sweet old time figuring that out.

And so, an entry. I throw it out into the void, just because. There will be another entry. Someday. Probably. But while I was off-line, changing, the virtual world was on-line, changing. Change seldom forgives those who it passes by.