Flat

 Lately it’s not uncommon, it would seem, for others to perceive me as any number of ways I am not feeling. On a call with my mom, she asked me if I’ve been angry with her; I don’t know how she came to that conclusion. Sometimes it’s down, distracted, pensive, or irritated. Usually what I’m feeling is nothing much - I’m just flat. 

 I don’t see it as a problem, mostly. It beats feeling badly about something. Often there aren’t really discernible thoughts accompanying the flatness, which is hard for people to accept. “What are you thinking about?” Nothing, I reply. And it’s true.

Millipede

 Do millipedes feel annoyance? It’s something I never really thought about. Today at the lake, I happened to witness an episode that makes me wonder. 

 At first I thought it was a worm, pink underbelly writhing and legs invisible against the dirt. When it flipped over and commenced its crawl, I recognized that it was a millipede. Then I noticed it had a passenger - a small fly or a gnat was lighting on the millipede’s back, inducing the aggravated flip onto its back and worm-like wriggling. The fly fell off, the millipede flipped back and began to scamper away, then it was back and the millipede repeated its process.

 I suppose it is more likely some sort of defensive instinct, but the crawler sure did seem irritated by the fly’s antics. 

In-Between Place

 I almost fell asleep on my lunch break today. There’s an interesting place between wakefulness and sleep where dreaming begins but you are aware. Strange thoughts flit about and ideas are connected, if only momentarily. I was there today, briefly, but all I remember is the feeling of it, not the content. 

Paying Forward

 The decision to buy the joel.land domain came from nowhere. I don’t recall exactly the chain of thoughts, other than the impulse curiosity to check whether .land was a thing yet. It was, and here we are. 

 Every once in a while I act on an idea without thinking it through, trusting my instincts without belaboring the point. It probably doesn’t work out at least as much as it does, but I’ve had some great results with this kind of thing. Case in point was the Apple Watch—not a total impulse buy, but in that direction. A purchase towards putting more effort into the daily exercise ritual. I’ve successfully fooled myself out of 10 lbs in the past couple of months, and have not missed a day of exercise since taking the plunge. Maybe this blog will be a similar catalyst to writing again, even if just some random thoughts here and there. 

 A recently painted miniature:

Bees

 How do you identify where bugs are getting in your house? Big, juicy yellow jackets that seem too big to squeeze through cracks (that don’t exist as far as I can tell) have made themselves known, this after a couple weeks where we were getting four to six bees a day. I preferred the bees.