I’ve got an old song stuck in my head from a long long time ago. No idea why – it wasn’t even a song I really liked when it came out in 1978 (I was too young to understand much about nostalgia). Strange time for me then; I was 15, and that’s a strange time for anyone. lol

So, I’m sipping my coffee and watching the storm clouds, dark and threatening on the eastern horizon, and listening to this song (to get it out of my head), and wondering “what the hell?” A glance at the Billboard Top 100 from that year shows me songs that would do a better job of “taking me back”. This old Al Stewart track doesn’t even make that list. lol Why is it in my head? I don’t suppose that really matters – it’s gone now. 😀

The weather forecast says it’ll be another summer day. There’s no rain in the forecast, but I’m not sure how much I can (or should) trust the weather forecast these days, with all the recent indiscriminate staffing cuts in relevant government agencies. I watch the clouds begin to break up, revealing streaks of a clear robin’s egg blue sky beyond. Summer. It’ll probably just be hot, and maybe a little muggy (like yesterday). I lose interest almost immediately; I’m indoors, and the office has AC. I’ll return home in a vehicle that has AC, to a home that has AC. I sit with that thought awhile; I’m very fortunate. I take time for gratitude, and to consider how many places in the world suffer with terrible heat, and how many people must endure it without AC, or any sort of indoor climate control at all. I remember the stifling heat and humidity of my childhood (no AC) in Maryland – and that was years and years before people were seriously discussing climate change as a problematic force to be reckoned with (and “hot” was cooler than it is now). I’m fortunate to enjoy this good iced coffee, looking out on a hot day ahead from this comfortable place. Hell, I could be drinking my coffee hot and it wouldn’t feel like any sort of hardship or inconvenience at all – I’d still be enjoying the experience, and grateful to have coffee still available. My anxiety about that concern surfaces briefly; can we really expect coffee (and similar luxuries) to remain available in the face of profound climate change and bullshit government shenanigans that impair both the supply chain and the value of… everything? I feel certain that we are facing real potential that something as simple as a cup of coffee could become a luxury on the order of a fucking Birkin bag in the relatively near future… I try not to get spun up over it. It is A. not a thing yet, and B. not a thing I could directly change, even if it were imminent. I breathe, exhale, and relax. If my brain is going to attack me from the inside with my anxiety, it’s damn well going to have to work harder than that. lol

I skimmed the headlines this morning. Hilariously enough, it’s become unnecessary, generally, to bother with reading the articles. Many of the most reputable sources are behind paywalls, and I’m not going to pay for more subscriptions (can’t afford to be careless with such things these days), and the less reputable, more readily available sources often appear to be copying one single source with nearly identical articles (why bother reading that), others are clickbait (no thank you), and what is left over gives enough information in a headline that I often already know the basic facts and where I stand on matters that require an opinion at all. No point reading AI slop, or bad writing. I catch myself responding silently to the headlines – in some cases just correcting obviously poor grammar or poorly chosen words that don’t mean what the author intended (sometimes it’s obvious). I silently push back on the misuse of “how”, when the author clearly wrote about “why”; that sort of thing really vexes me for some reason. Funny thing about the internet and social media; it has tended to make most of us behave as though “the world” gives a shit about our dumb opinions on all manner of topics that we maybe don’t even know anything about (or not enough to have an opinion worth hearing). We earnestly want to be heard, and social media gives us an outlet to let ourselves feel that we are (whether anyone is actually listening or not). I include this, right here. Does my opinion actually matter, when I share it? Are we in silent agreement or silently arguing? I won’t ever actually know. I chuckle to myself for no reason. I don’t have solutions to these things, if they are problems to be solved at all.

I sit for a moment considering how little the small ripples on still water when a rock is thrown in actually matter when they reach the shore. I sip my coffee, content to be here, now.

The work day is planned and waiting for me. The clock is ticking. Condensation on my coffee cup drips down the sides like sweat and pools around the bottom. “You should put that on a coaster…” I think to myself with a sigh. There are things to do, and verbs involved, the future is not written, but I’ll become what I practice – eventually. The woman reflected back at me in the window smiles. It’s time to begin again. The day is waiting.