Bicycle is the only thing. Please only keep remembering bicycle 

Van advice

When you aren’t sleeping in a van your life is less pure. Every day can be crisp and real ; stethoscope to the beating heart of earth. If you try a tent the cops might fuck it up.

start a business

Prone and alone. Lime green in a mean mist. 

I’m an emotional short circuit ; bent, ruined, almost ok

The plot is in the title. No preferred frequency shakes me. My feet will flatten 55 gallon drums. 

I finished my first table.

I need a new way to make money. I decided to double down on woodworking last year. Now I'm prying open my Roth IRA to pay off my credit cards, so the money had better start flowing in soon. I've put what amounts to a herculean effort (for me) into acquiring the skills and equipment that I thought would be necessary to start a new woodworking/table-making business. I've been dabbling in wood for years, but took it full steam ahead last August. I've been working steadily, and I have almost nothing to show for it. Except for this one table.

It didn't take me since August to make one measly table - I've been working on dozens of them. I get the table tops to a mostly finished stage, and then I put them in one of several stacks of mostly-finished table tops. Dozens. Some of them have an issue which needs to be corrected, but mostly I put them aside because of a spontaneous visceral need to start a new and different one.

The plan seemed so simple: build and sell tables. People do that. I can learn how to be one of those people. The goal still seems logical and achievable, but I have yet to gain any traction. What I do have are dozens of artistically rendered table tops; projects which can be re-kindled and completed. This is only the first one. 

I won 1500 bucks

I was in LA 32 days ago rolling off a two-day sober stint. They were supposed to roll tape two weeks earlier. Two weeks earlier, I was ready. I was practically wearing a bow tie and annunciating. But I got a last minute call that filming was on hold, and two weeks passed.

I ate that slim $12 burrito and watched planes land.

As the sun went to a beautiful low angle, I walked past a burnt out homeless encampment under a highway bridge and felt unsettled. An hour later I recognized that what I had seen was a mistake rather than an attack; the way the tents and equipment were arranged spoke of an accident. Why hadn’t I processed those telltale details before? They were ok.

I had a fuckload of margarita and a shitty quesadilla and then pasted a dispensary address into Uber. The dispensary was mid-level sketchy, and that would be a whole story, but I wiggled my way into the best blunt I have ever seen.

The next day I met Jay Leno and I won 1500 bucks,

in LA

Landed in LA a couple hours ago. My luggage is an Aldi shopping bag that fits the criteria for free and can easily fit my shit for three days. I dropped the bag at the hotel and walked toward the first taco tent I could find. 

The area I’m staying is in the middle of the airport industrial shit. I marched forcefully down the sidewalk like I might grab the day right out of itself and wear it like a shawl. 

I sat on a plastic bin set up for seating next to the taco grill. The whole setup was under two blue pop-up tents that billowed lightly in the breeze. I stretched that moment until it snapped. For that moment it was perfect. I might catch one more before I fly back, but more than likely I won’t.

A good damn line.

Stopped at Wawa for a coffee and a pre-made breakfast sandwich. When my card was declined twice, two separate people in line leapt forward to say “I got it.” Now that’s a good damn line.

big ugly nuts.

It was my first winter in Key West and by this time I had my bearings. I had the public resources mastered and a shady location to park and sleep in peace. I had a key card for the bathroom of a fancy hotel, and it was my favorite location to take a shit. The sinks were gold and the stalls were large. Best of all there was almost never any traffic. That is until the day I learned the design drawbacks of a black marble floor. As I sat on the can, the door burst open and a man rushed to the urinal while opening his pants like a barn door. On the floor directly in front of my stall, framed neatly in the space below the door, was a crystal clear reflection focused straight up under his big ugly nuts. I’ve never seen anything like it before or since.

about the electricity I felt when we touched.

It's June and everything is roses. How do you feel about that? When asked "how are you" I need to gauge my response because sometimes "excellent!" is too much. When appropriate, I chisel it down to a "great." I am cashing the checks and not asking questions; riding this wave to the crash.

Today I am imbued with the heat of the sun, but in similar circumstances we have been carved out hollow with limbs of dangling chain. It's chemicals and curiosity. If you look at us all and wonder, at most you'll see patterns, but conclusions and certainty are unicorns and grains of sand. The whims we are victim to are not seen in true form, and control is an illusion born from our misunderstandings about the nature of time.

If I speak vaguely in this manner, I hope you will relate. I am editing this carefully to cultivate connection. I am clicking and clicking and hoping for a spark. I want us to compare notes fluidly like when rain hits a lake - I want to pull out my guts and put them on your plate. I want to listen carefully when one of us shares, to catch a glimpse of the invisible threads which connect us, bind us, and pull us apart.

What I don't want is money or security, but I chase it like a deranged imbecile. "Just enough" is what we tell ourselves - as though the disease is desirable and we are in control. Almost nothing scares me anymore. An acute lack of certainty no longer causes vertigo so much as a deep exhaustion never to be slept off. Go outside and play.

I am on this planet to goof around, and my greatest disservice will be to have not goofed enough.

looking for places where I am supposed to be.

I woke up from the yearly depression ten days ago. There's been many centimeters of rain, and I never like the moist way we do it here, but these rains are the ones who signal the leaves what to do. 

The birds have been noising again, and I can hear the frogs again. The window is almost always full-open when this begins. The lights are an impossible god.

I joined the local makerspace in Wilmington. There is a fully functioning and completely equipped woodshop. I would type that sentence twice, but it barely matters. I found a home, I think. I am supposed to be there, I think.

I am looking for places where I am supposed to be.

Forks in trees.

I can't say what I see and how I feel. To do that with accuracy would sound grandiose. The use of 'grandiose' alone is the wrong shade of paint. Sunlight. Forks in trees.

The first time in many years.

First bicycle ride of the season. First bicycle ride in more than six months. My yellow-crated machine cruised slowly along the familiar roads beside the creek. On the first hill, the front derailer needed sneaker-assistance to drop to the small chainring for the first time in many years.

Try not to be a piece of shit.

I bought fifty bucks of 2x3s and now I'm listening pretty loud to the Dilly Dally live at SXSW set that i've been loving for a few years. I'm fifteen bucks worth of 2x3s short for the lumber rack i'm trying to slap together. I'm sorry, they/them are trying to slap together. What I meant to say is we/wham. Ah, fuckit, just try to be nice to people, and try not to be a piece of shit to them.

I'm going to make it work.

The garage has been a disaster forever. After my dad died, me and mom drove home in the middle of the night, leaving professionals to do whatever has to be done with bodies that are dead. We pulled into a garage full of two motorcycles, two Vespas, a trailer stacked with shit nobody wants to deal with, and shelves and cabinets packed with baggage of every kind. 

I'd like to end it there. 

Two years and something have gone by, and we got the motorcycles and Vespas out of there. And the trailer, and the stupid convertible are gone. It felt like it took forever, but now that stuff is gone. I poked at some of it with screwdrivers and wrenches, and tried my best to get good prices and make sure the vultures knew to fuck right off.

I've successfully taken one person's consumerism bullshit horde, and turned it into a new bullshit horde of my own. Finally there's a bandsaw. Either last month or tomorrow, I'm going to make it work.

The sum total of today.

Got a bacon bbq burger at Wawa and sat in the parking lot listening to NPR. Never seems to be a happy story out of those people. It's the station of breaking news about the fucking over of the defenseless, but it's the most consistent squawk on the dial, and aux-in has been broken for as long as I can remember. 

Wawa has burgers now. I had to pinch the patty to confirm that they'd done something to heat it up. Confirmed. It was slightly warmer than ambient temperature. Aside from puking, sweating, and watching shit on Netflix, that was the sum total of today.

What we are all doing.

Yes, yes, yes, I'm here. I can hear the frogs chirping in the pond which isn't far from the window in the room where I'm sitting on a mattress on a floor.

My name is Pixy now. Part of that is because it is an objectively better name, and I guess partly just to mix it up and see who blinks. Genderfluid they/them.

I'm $8000 in debt, but I have stocks worth like $30,000 that aren't convenient to sell to cover the cost of all the woodworking tools and alcohol I bought during covid. The plan is to sell books online to fix the problem, but really I'm waking up from smoking a half ounce of weed while binging Narcos for a week.

I got a lot of money from the covid shit and claiming self employed. Which, yeah, pretty much self employed.

Now it's time to march forward like a moron which is what we are all doing.

Daydreaming about engineering and water witchery

I'm fine, it's the seasonal depression that's hurting me. I'm still able to communicate with reality, but through a thick damp mist. Not drinking, but didn't quit. Smoking it up pretty good these days.

Here's what's going on. 

I'm daydreaming obsessively about gears and welding. I like to believe that my imagination is able to keep realistic physics in mind as I combine parts and build machines in my head. But imagination may not be enough anymore. I got some books on mechanical engineering - an older edition of a textbook that a student would use in an intro class, a book to dumb down the concepts to simple math, and another book that is specifically targeted at designing gear trains, and seeks to explain the more complex equations to "give a richer understanding" of the systems described within. If I can read some of that stuff and buy a MiG welder, maybe I'll make something. 

I'm thinking a lot about plastic recycling, and how the way we're doing it is illogical and inefficient in a way which almost stupefies the mind. I know what I would change and how, but I can't put the full force of my efforts into it right now. There isn't much of me to go around, and I am spread thin before I can even put on my pants. Big ideas, little to show. Desperate for a breakthrough.

I'm learning how to use spreadsheet formulas to sort data and reveal items that I can buy and then sell at a profit. This is what I'm currently most invested in emotionally as well as financially. I'm trying to get good at spreadsheets so I can use that skill to strike it rich. I do mean that I am literally attempting to find a way to "strike it rich" and I think I am plausibly capable of succeeding in that goal. Knowing how to get data from an API would be a big help. I barely know what that means, but I have to figure out how to communicate with a database. Oof. I'm trying to make this spreadsheet into a forked stick which I can wield like the water witch of profitable leads.

I'm not doing so well. I'm not doing so bad. That stuff is what I am doing.

Fight and nonsense left in me.

The best thing I can do for myself is to ride a bicycle. Once again, I took several months off. I was on sabbatical. Drinking a lot and waking up past noon. Got a nice new bong, but that's just bragging. 

During the month of August I got freshly excited about bicycles, and fortunately for me this coincided with a lot of money coming in from self-employed pandemic unemployment. Wow, they dumped a lot of money on me. I bought bicycle parts, a bong, and a new laptop that I'm typing on right now. I also paid off my credit card, which shouldn't have had a balance anyway (whoops), AND saved enough money to do another Trans-USA bicycle tour in 2021, variables permitting. ALL GOOD.

I gained 30+ pounds since this time last year by being a loaf and pounding down chips and wine. That'll do for awhile, but now I'm trying to reverse the tide. A bunch of other variables play into what-all I've been up to, but for the sake of simplicity, here's where it stands: I stopped riding my bicycle, now I am riding my bicycle again.

I'm still tired. I rode my regular loop earlier, and I'm starting to feel my body come back online after dormancy. That pandemic money also afforded me a Wahoo Roam GPS bicycle computer, and I can report that it is a device which enhances ride enjoyment. I get to race against my former faster self during sections of the rides which I revisit regularly. It's fun to get my ass kicked by myself while I'm out there by myself.

This bicycle I'm riding... a bicycle I only finished assembling for myself about a week ago... is excellent. I built up this one, and re-worked my Roberts road bicycle as well. I have other bicycles and projects in addition to that, but it's too much for the purview of this update, the purpose of which is to simply demonstrate that I am alive and I still have a little bit of fight and nonsense left in me.

Checking in

Checking in. Doing fine. Hard to know what to report when everything is in flux. Hard to know what variables are important - which changes might be important later in life. I'm seeing a new person, and it's going really well. I'm working on finding the right combination and dosage of medications to do... better. I'm still looking at improving my sewing skills as a bridge toward a different and better future. I'm currently freshly obsessed with bicycles, and trying to get more of my projects into an operational mode.

Living with my mom has been nice and pleasant and easy. We get along well, and we both have plenty of space in this big house. I'm trying something new. I've been transforming the room where I sleep into a place that is mine - making it match my style and what I want. In past times, I have always been too distracted with planning my next escape, leaving no time to arrange my surroundings to fit me, because what is the point if I'm just going to leave again? This time I am here for awhile, and for now this room is mine. 

In the same vein, I've set up another room as a big sewing room for me and mom. I built new tables with insets for our main sewing machines, and I built dedicated tables for cutting and ironing. I've been too distracted with bicycles to use and appreciate the sewing room, but the day is coming soon, and the room is very ready.

I have too much to share about thoughts and the specifics of the projects I've been working on. Maybe I'll get to that soon. At the heart of it all, I know that I am still just a little bit crazy, and I will probably always be searching for a way to fit myself into the framework.