Preparing for the retreat. Planning whiskey. Purchased cigars — they arrive tomorrow — fifteen Rocky Patel Vintage 1990 Robusto Maduros. Went to get my blood drawn to check my iron levels to see if the last donation got my hemochromatosis under control. Potential business opportunity from an old friend. Subcontracting on a research and potential prototyping project. Money is good. Let’s see if we can’t make this happen. Everything is going well, and hey, I haven’t pissed in my own face today. But it’s not midnight yet… I sold another synthesizer today, which will help with some of the debt load as well as downsizing a bit, eliminating things I’m really not that interested in learning anymore. Here’s an off-topic thought pattern. What if your kinks, fetishes, idiosyncracies, etc., aren’t necessarily based on childhood trauma or neglect at all, but rather they are messages from the Great Beyond, invitations, guideposts, and the like? For example, what if it’s your body telling you something you’re too cemented in your current belief system to accept directly? What if it’s your family trying to rouse you out of the coma you’ve been in for the past two years? What if it’s your spouse waking you from a bad dream? What if it’s God? Yes, God, guiding you toward divinity and enlightenment through an irrational desire to wear high heels while being spanked and anally penetrated? It could happen. Nobody knows the objective truth. Lots of us think we do, but it’s all theories and perception, and how do you know that what you see is objectively true?

You should wait until you are old to tackle long-term projects, because time moves faster. When something takes several years to complete, and you are young, those years feel like an eternity. When you’re old and your children are grown, sometimes it feels like you can shit out three years in a heartbeat and not even blink. Term 1, nine weeks complete tonight. I don’t know where the time goes. It didn’t feel like nine weeks. Of course I can easily do this again for a few years. Will it be worth it? Time will tell. Two final exams this morning before heading off to work. I know I did well, but I don’t know how well, because the final exam window is open from Thursday through Sunday, and it doesn’t appear they will release the grades until the window closes. Until then I will abide.

There are certain things we endure that, maybe should not be endured. When something designed as a protective or preventive measure feels more like punishment, perhaps it’s time to fine-tune it yet again. What began as perhaps a sincere belief that technology could do the impossible, and morphed into a form of stochastic terrorism, has perhaps now morphed yet again into some sort of dystopian psych eval masquerading as a thing masquerading as yet another thing. But it’s there for a reason, and that reason is to gatekeep and weed out, and to keep you guessing. What are you? Are you a threat? Are you a bad person? Are you weak-kneed? Spineless? Uncommitted? Sneaky? We will find out. Meanwhile the children with good hearts come to the door and beg for sweets. There never was a trick, it was always just treats. Sometimes you don’t miss something because it’s gone, you miss it because it ended without explanation or discussion. A one-sided ending.