CW: there is a mention of loss of loved ones, which is integral to the story.

The titular metaphorical (or, perhaps, emotional) fever has broken. This time of year, really from mid-March up until now, is something of a void portal for me, and I think that concept is something that is important to talk about in a realistic and hopefully ultimately positive and grounded way.

For the backstory, my wife (we’d known each other 17 years and been married 12 of those) passed away three years ago this past April. On top of that, and almost a decade ago now, my mother passed away in early July.

The void begins to open in mid-March; that peculiar creeping sensation like liquid metal in some sci-fi horror movie, drawing all the heat and life out of my body as it climbs up from the pit of my stomach until it swallows me whole. She went into hospital at the end of March. The first two weeks of...

Early morning mist hung low between the buildings, draping everything with a thin layer of nature’s ambience. Tendrils hung over the sides of the Crossline as she moved effortlessly along it. The city had extended it several times over the years as new developments swallowed up the ground below. True ground level in much of the city was reserved for transportation and utilities these days, outside of the zone protected by the Act, with some parts accessible only by permit or a healthy disregard for your bureaucratic future.

Amy’s building sat not too far from the natural center, where the ‘Line and the Cross met. She’d already walked a couple of miles, gently sweating into her casual workout gear. The trick over the next few miles was knowing the right people, and by people, she really meant AIs.

The public Cross descended up ahead into a station for the W. Sure, you could take the...

I did something to my shoulder last week. I’m not sure exactly what, as I don’t remember any defined “oops” moment, but I had a mild neck ache over the weekend, which led into being barely able to move my left arm and dealing with constant shooting pains that made it hard to do anything. I couldn’t sit or stand, there wasn’t any comfortable position I could put my shoulder in. Driving was necessary but awful, my chest spasming with every slight turn of the wheel.

After a few hot showers and some prodding with a percussive sports therapy gun, I figured out that it’s mostly my chest and upper trapezius that are messed up, rather than the shoulder itself, which is honestly a relief, as those are simpler muscles to heal than a full-blown rotator cuff issue or really anything else with the shoulder joint itself.

Once I figured that out, and after a particularly painful drive to work this...

Scudding clouds paint grey streaks across the pale blue sky. Trees sway and bend in the breeze. Her ankle length black raincoat billows as she strides confidently along the Midline, glass and steel rising all around, threatening to swallow the heavens. She’s gloriously out of place, clad head to toe in black, gliding past teenagers in shorts and hoodies and women shivering their sundresses.

It’s the kind of rare Spring day that reminds her of when the world still had seasons and subtlety.

An impossibly handsome guy turns onto the ‘line and they exchange a flicker of noticing. She’s not a head-turner in a stereotypically bombshell way, but she’s athletic and her body makes you look twice if you’re into that sort of thing.

The sky darkens behind the grey and she opens up her stride, not quite breaking into a jog but taking full advantage of her legs.

Up ahead, a couple of teenagers on...

It’s Sunday evening, and this month has been fraught with preparation. There’s an upcoming safety inspection, one of the few times management requires access to my home, and I half-needed, half-wanted to finish the clearing of the excess left over from the life I led with my late wife. It’s been three years and a lot of internal growth, and I was close enough that it made sense to spend the time to focus and push through. A crew came a couple of days ago to take the last of the stuff. The inspection is on Wednesday. I’m done.

Emotionally I’m exhausted, but it was worth it.

I’m supposed to be doing a class on developing my intuition - or rather - I am doing a class on developing my intuition, it’s just that… the timing isn’t great. Or maybe it’s supposed to be this way, but every waking minute that isn’t work has been slammed into the clear-out push. The classes are at an awkward time...

I’m recognizing a pattern in my life, one which I feel could be helpful to talk about, but the conversation is probably going to weave in and out of loss, trauma, emotionality, self-reflection, and that sort of thing. If that feels too spiky then maybe skip this one.

The last few weeks have been the same: I start Monday with renewed hope after having an exhausting weekend, not because I did too much, but because my emotions were all over the place. I get to work Monday and it feels like some form of resolution happened over the weekend. The week progresses, the usual things happen, I have feelings, and then it’s Friday and I fall apart again.

To explain what I think is happening, I’ve started viewing my days in terms of both time and energy units, or rather, the relationship between the two.

Since we have 24 hours in a day, imagine also having 24 units of energy. In a balanced hour...

I grew up in the neon-drenched worlds of post-apocalyptic speculative fiction. These stories and worlds were as much a warning about the past and a meditation on the present as they were an attempt at predicting the future. I can’t find the exact William Gibson quote I’m thinking of now - although this one is pretty cool - but he said something in an interview that I’m approximating as basically that because the past has led up to the present, the future is in the present moment if only you could step outside of time to observe it.

The 80s was a particularly almost time. Technology was almost there. Concepts like AR, VR, and AI, which all feel ultra-modern were, in reality, explored in mostly theoretical discussion and incredibly clunky devices back then and even before, while the thing that would truly revolutionize society (the iPhone and the subsequent smart phone and...

I’ve been thinking a lot about friendship and connection lately. Actually, before I continue, a fair warning: this post is probably going to be about loss and discovery, about coping with loss and the process of trying to find myself on the other side of it. If that feels too prickly for you right now, it might be best to skip this one.

Disclaimer disclaimed, let’s continue.

I’ve been thinking about friendship and connection a lot lately. Growing up, life felt a lot like the old saying about running away from a bear: you don’t have to be faster than the bear, only faster than the slowest runner. But what if you are the slowest runner in this metaphor? Aside from dying to the bear, you learn to become invisible.

I never dated growing up - running far enough away from the bear to have time to don the invisibility cloak and then feeling invisible will do that to a person - and the woman...

It’s Friday evening and it’s raining outside. It’s been raining all day and I worked from home. I ran to the grocery store at lunchtime, sudden gusts of wind testing my skin’s ability to provide tactile feedback for my grasp reflex around the umbrella handle.

Aside: I tend to not hold things properly, I grip too lightly and have a tendency to accidentally drop things for no apparent reason. It’s possible that it’s an early warning sign of some sort of degenerative cognitive function disease, except that I feel like it’s more of a distraction thing. Sometimes I forget I’m holding something. Which, in itself, could also be an early warning sign of some sort of degenerative cognitive function disease, but let’s pretend we didn’t notice that.

I’m listening to three hours of woodland ambience, wrapped in my noise cancelling headphones, because the dull monotony of urban sounds puts me on...