Progress and Regress
Writing to Resist the Blues
I saw the ENT again today, and when he asked how I was doing, my first words were “Estoi depresso.” I am depressed.1
I have a number of physical things going on in addition to the vertigo, which I don’t care to enumerate, but they directly impact my ability to contribute to the household chores, which are still fairly substantial: we haven’t fully worked out a routine.
I’m also struggling a lot with computer tools. Go figure. I could go on a rant here about the bloat and dysfunction and commercial perversity of today’s computer technology — I am hardly alone in these observations — but it leaves me with the question of how much of my struggle is bad application design, and how much is my lack of practice, or even loss of mental edge.
In a fit of concerned techno-rage, I did a deep dive into protonmail a couple of days ago, and it was somewhat encouraging: I’d written my own RSA encryption algorithms back in the 1990’s, and that was all still there for me to draw on. I’ll do a full (practical) article on protonmail sometime soon: it’s something good people in the US should start thinking about.
There is the language barrier. I get to listen a lot, and I speak in small ways when I can. Pero hablo como un niño. A very young niño.
And then, of course, there is World War Three taking shape.
So, estoi depresso.
Expressing this has helped. Thank you for indulging me.
On a happier note, the curtains are up in the living room, and — as hoped — they have eliminated maybe 80% (or more) of the dog-barking. The dogs don’t see people moving around outside, and stay calm. We haven’t yet seen how the curtains do at cooling the room in the morning, since it continues to be cool and cloudy.
The curtains are also very well-made (my wife made them) and change the living room from an amphitheater looking out on the world, into a cosy home environment.
Today, I ordered a new pair of glasses. My distance glasses had a fatal accident, so I’ve been using my computer glasses, which are good enough for me to get around, but lack clarity. That doubtless also contributes to my mood. The new glasses will be ready in about two weeks.
My wife and I walked to the shopping center near us this afternoon, and got ourselves smoothies. The ice cream store doesn’t open until 2:00 pm — I don’t know if that’s first opening, or if also has morning hours — and rain was threatening when we arrived at 1:30, so we didn’t want to wait.
Which should have been “Estoy depremido,” but one of the issues of speaking like a child is that… well, you speak like a child. That can also be depressing if you aren’t careful.