7/7/24

 Sunday, July 7, 2024

In bed at 9, PS at 11, moved to LZB at 1:10, and out to TV room at 1:40, unable to sleep.  Cleaned up the kitchen, unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher by 5 when I turned the light off and slept till 6:10. I nodded off at some point considerably later and woke at 9 and then later, waking at 12:55, sleeping in chunks.

Prednisone, day 56, 15 mg., day 20.   I took my pills at 6:20, followed by breakfast of cabbage borscht at 6:35.  CGM reading at 9:15 = 192.   BR 1 hour post meds =     135/78.

I'm grateful for having maintained this daily journal for almost two years.  On the other hand, . . .

A year ago today: "More curmudgeonry.  From yesterday's WaPo, an opinion piece by Charles Lane, "U.S. institutions are polling about as well as King George III did in 1776."  We are indeed coming apart at the seams, making one wonder if there are any 'seams.' 

Should I continue?  At the end of this month, I will have made entries in this journal every day for two years, except for the weeks I was laid low by polymyalgia rheumatica, a period from April 22nd until May 13th.  At the beginning of that span, I wrote "Is the journaling coming to an end?  Losing interest, losing energy, losing focus.  There is a broader significance to these losses."  The broader significance then was my nightly thoughts of suicide, a repeat of my experiences years ago with severe pain from Hunner's ulcers.  Now the ulcers are taken care of, at least for now, and the PMR is taken care of, at least for now, but I have that challenge of losing interest, losing energy, and losing focus, finding it hard to think of what to write about.  Or I think of topics, like the challenge of trying the Christian ethic and the impossibility of living it, or the moral challenge of living in the world we live in, with an economy based on the production and sale of billions of consumer goods filling merchants' shelves all over the 'developed' world, billions devoted to military budgets and the production and deployment of ever more lethal weapons with which to kill one another, the demands of climate change, etc.  How much do I sin taking a drive in the country?  using hot water rather than the cold water out of the tap for kitchen clean-up, keeping the thermostat up in the winter and down in the summer, maintaining a large lawn requiring mowing, fertilizing, and herbicides on .62 of an acre, and on and on.  Limousine Liberal, virtue signaling, phony baloney, hypocrite.

My writing has become like Joe Biden's and Donald Trump's speech: discursive, incoherent, meandering, and, as David Branch always reminded me, prolix.  Now I have Grammerly for Safari pointing out to me how wordy my writing is.  

Am I writing in this journal just to fill time, because I am otherwise so inactive?  Especially when I am up in the middle of every night?  Am I talking to myself?