Dearest Rachel –
Well, I think that’s taken care of things; with the Ultimate World Cruise (at least, the single leg I was on for) behind me, and a weekend’s worth of mostly bed rest, I think I’m ready to get back to my regular routine, after a fashion. Sure, I’ve promised myself that I would try to treat my home town like a port of call, and investigate its nooks and crannies more thoroughly (especially if I can scrounge up a partner in crime to check the place out with – theoretically, one can come up with directions to go that wouldn’t occur to the other, and in any case, there’s a certain joy in another person’s reaction that was missing from the entirety of the trip I’ve just returned from), but that’s not a pressing resolution to keep. For now, I have actual responsibilities to retrieve to, be they personal, filial or communal, and I think I’m able to take them on, now that I’ve woken up with clear sinuses at…
…one forty-five in the morning?
Okay, I clearly haven’t quite licked the whole jet lag issue just yet. That, or I spent too much time in bed throughout the weekend. In my defense, I will point out it was a pretty rough cold. Then again, when haven’t they been? You remember those days, I’m sure, as the patient spouse that you were; heck, you may have seen me fall ill a time or two back in college (it was an almost guaranteed annual event for me, after all, and I insisted on attending classes and the like as long as I was remotely ambulatory – times were different then, weren’t they?), so you probably encountered me at my worst, health-wise, as Sir Thomas More intended. And to think, you still said “I do” to that mess. God bless you, honey, as I’m sure He’s already doing now.
Still, the point remains that there’s so much I have to resume, now that I’m back ‘in my place,’ as it were. My regularly-scheduled life must go on as long as the days pass around me, and I can’t just sit on the sidelines as they speed past, any more than I could twelve hundred days ago.
Granted, I’m not egotistical enough to think that things couldn’t function without me; if I was, I wouldn’t have felt like I could have safely left town in the first place. Even the things that – for now – I feel like I’m the only one who knows how to do, I can at least take care of them remotely (thank heavens for the internet!), but I do admit that I prefer to be in a place where I can actually focus on the task at hand. The desk in my stateroom was quite adequate, and the light streaming in from my balcony made it that much nicer than my setup in the folks’ basement, I’ll not lie, but it did allow my mind to wander, even more so than the fact that the rest of the internet is at my fingertips in either place. Somehow, having this place to be grounded to – which makes it sound like I’m a kid being punished, especially when it’s at my childhood home; it’s not meant that way, but more along the lines of a power source being grounded – allows me to be a little more productive than I would be anywhere else, so it’s good to be back in that place.
Especially since I do have responsibilities to deal with, and deadlines to address. The elders meet this Thursday, and the whole church will be hearing about these numbers next weekend. The sooner I get this month completed, the better off we’ll all be. I think I can take care of it all today, but it takes my computer at the office a while of being plugged in and turned on before it recognizes me, for some reason, so in the meantime, I’m writing you about it. Not sure why I mention that – it’s one of these quirky things about this setup – and I thought you might find it amusing, especially since you might wonder why I’m writing you now, rather than dealing with this particular responsibility. Back in the day, after all, you would be literally the last person I would contact at the end of the work day, rather than the first; mostly because I wanted to let you know when you could expect me home.
Church isn’t my only responsibility, either; there’s also the fact that the folks need that much more assistance, and may have gotten used to that which my regular presence would provide. To be sure, Daniel stepped up manfully whenever asked – Dad in particular told me I should be proud of him, so I’m relaying that message on to you as well – and I gather that Jenn filled in from time to time as necessary (and I understand there were moments when it was necessary – I won’t say that Mom and Dad are more accident-prone, but if things happen, they do a lot more damage than they used to), but I think both of them are relieved to have me take on my share of the ‘being there’ responsibilities, even if there isn’t always much required out of me than that. Sometimes, just talking with them for an hour before heading downstairs and switching everything on does a world of good.
And, of course, there are those things that I want to accomplish at some point along the line. I’ve stepped away from the AI work, but I’ve been hearing rumors about how the technology has continued to expand. There are new artistic setups that I’d like to learn – and teach them to draw you – but it would also be nice to go back to some of the stuff I was looking into going back even before the accident, when I understood that certain programs were in the works to create ‘new’ works by long-gone musical artists. I’d still like to see if I could train a system to create something new by the likes of Mark Heard or the Call; something obscure like that, that no one else would have thought of. For now, the best I’ve been able to do was to find an online program that supposedly captured the idea of a butterfly pollinating azaleas for a clip I made in Kagoshima…
… but hasn’t gotten a lot of views; which is another thing I’m looking into. Not that I care about whether anyone watches it, really – it’s already served its purpose as a memento vivere to me – but I’ve actually seen the numbers go up and then disappear, followed by some fellow commenting on other videos that I’m apparently doing YouTube content creation all wrong. I suspect he wants me to employ him to help me ‘fix’ this problem, although I’ve checked his profile and found he has no content of his own and fewer subscribers than I do, so I don’t see how he could help me. Nevertheless, the fact that he holds himself out as an expert nags at me slightly. So it’s one more thing to look into, now that I’m back home.
And that, honey, is what my day, week and perhaps the foreseeable future look like for me at this point. So if you could continue to keep an eye on me, and wish me luck, I’d appreciate it, as I’m sure I’m going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 