The Bloody Doors Off

*peeks in*

Hi.

I’m Paul’s Anxiety.

You can call me.

Well, I don’t really have a name.

After Harold, Paul didn’t wanna give anyone else the same recognition.

So instead I sound like Tyler Durden. Or was it the scrawny guy, he’s not Tyler Durden. Only he is, because he’s essentially suffering from multiple personality disorder.

Anyway.

I’m the fat kid who was always picked last for middle school gym.

The first time I played D&D in high school, they suggested I name my Elven character.

Scrotum.

Maybe I should’a looked that up in the dictionary first.

Too bad we didn’t have cell phones with Wikipedia back then.

Anyway.

Paul was having a hard time focusing because he’s having one of those “shit, I’m fifty-five and I seriously need to up my game when it comes to building websites and shit because that’s another revenue stream I should be tapping into” nights.

After his wife pointed it out to him.

He’d been ignoring that potential for a while now. And the thought Paul’d gone this long refusing to evolve his game, is fucking criminal.

Makes him wonder what other possibilities he messed up.

And that brings me, Paul’s Anxiety, to the fore.

I know he doesn’t want me here.

Who would?

That’s not the only place he’s been lax. Paul’s had this long-held belief that he needed to be inspired before he could write something of worth. (Marlo pointed that out to him this evening, as well.) That maybe, they could set aside an hour a day of “writing time” and you just doodle with words.

Maybe that will provide the inspiration.

It’s so simple.

And that’s why he hates himself right now. Because, even though he’s pretty smart.

Paul can be really, and I mean really, dumb.

But we’re not supposed to talk about ourselves like that.

It serves no purpose other than to beat us down and dampen our potential.

Oh hey, speaking of Tyler Durden.

Did you hear the Chinese government, when they finally allowed Fight Club to be released in their country, the ending was cut and replaced with a black card with white text, saying basically “the authorities found the perpetrators and brought them to justice.”

And the author of the book? He’s okay with that.

So, why isn’t Paul? Why is he holding himself back?

Ask him. Next time you see him.

See if he has an answer.

Later.

*exits stage left*

Lemme tell ya about my new best friend, Phil.

Phil works at Contemporary Computers. And he was on call Saturday when I dialed them up, desperate for help. (Contemporary Computers initially helped me back in December when I needed to swap out my hard drive for an SSD (from a rotational) and add 8 gig of RAM.)

Quick backstory: I’d spent approximately 6-8 hours Friday evening updating my company logo and designing a brand new website. Just after 1am I’d finished, but there was one hiccup. When the page went live, everything was in black and white. And I couldn’t figure out the problem. But that was fine; I’d just get it sorted in the afternoon. I even fired off an email to WordPress Support asking for assistance because I was stumped. (But that’s another story entirely, which I may fill in after I get back on track with why I needed to call for IT help.)

Cut to Saturday afternoon. I was waiting on a response from WordPress, and decided I wanted to add my tagline to the cover image on the site. Not knowing a shit ton of website design (I basically was using a pre-existing template and then removing their shit and adding my own) I thought the best way would be to add it to the jpeg. So I went to Photoshop to load the image.

Which no longer was there.

In fact, the two folders, and ALL the content I’d created the night before, had disappeared.

I checked my recycle bin. Maybe I’d accidentally deleted them.

Nope, not there.

So I ran a search in File Explorer to find out where they’d been moved to. After an excruciating five minutes, it came up with a list of folder and file names. Only they were all listed as Shortcuts, not actual file locations. And if I tried clicking on the shortcut, the computer would inform me the file did not, in fact, exist, and asked if I would like to delete the shortcut.

Eight hours of design work, down the drain. If this had been for a client, I would have to eat the time redesigning from scratch.

After a monumental mental breakdown, in which Marlo patiently listened to me rant and nearly crumble into tears, she suggested in call Contemporary Computers for help.

But they’re not open on weekends. Just an emergency line for ‘managed clients’. Of which, I am not.

I pressed the button anyway, and pleaded with Phil to help. I accepted the hourly quote (which was in triple digits) because I couldn’t afford to wait until Monday to bring in the physical machine, partly because I was starting a new contract on Monday and needed to make sure there was nothing horribly wrong with my year-old desktop.

He remoted into my system, and started poking around. Phil saw the file explorer tab that listed the missing folders and files as shortcuts, but there was no obvious evidence that it had ever actually existed on my desktop. So he loaded some software onto my external drive and instituted a deep scan of my hard drive.

It took 90 minutes and found, you guessed it, absolutely nothing. Well, that’s not true. It did find the Adobe Stock photo I’d purchased last night for the website banner, sitting in my download folder. (Which wasn’t there when I looked earlier.) But it did confirm there was no corruption on my PC, no malware or hacks.

He said, if he hadn’t seen the shortcuts in my file explorer, he’d think they hadn’t been created in the first place. (But I did have an almost working website to also prove I had the original PNGs of the logo.)

I stumped the expert. But Phil offered a parting gift: he only charged me for thirty minutes of his time.

I spent the bulk of my Saturday on the website. WordPress had gotten back to me and said the black and white issue was built into the template I’d chosen; there were two identical templates and I needed to switch the current one out with it’s twin.

Yeah, only when I did that, II LOST everything I’d laid out on the page. Ka-blam. I had to start from scratch. So I spent a couple of hours attempting to rebuild the site. Finally got it done, with an issue with the background this time, there was white around the edges and I wanted a pure black background.

Close enough.

I did a final save and went live.

Only it WASN’T there.

The original template was there in it’s place.

Yet, when I went back to edit mode. Yup, voila, there everything was.

You know what I did wrong? I built it on a Page, but not the Home Page. And even though I could open the List View to see the breakdown, I couldn’t copy it over to the home page.

I had to recreate the website for a THIRD TIME. Only this time I fucking got it RIGHT.

And it only took me half an hour to recreate the logo (once I tracked down the icon I chose), and since I’d already embedded the new logo into my invoices, I was able to retrieve the HEX colours.

It is now Sunday, and I’m happy to report not only is the website live and functional, but the stuff I’d created last night is still on my computer.

And yes, I backed it up to my external hard drive. Just in case.

Had a tooth extracted today. And that was a bugger. Didn’t wanna come out. At all. When your dentist is grousing about its stubbornness, you know it ain’t good.

Thank the gods for nitrous. The only think that kept me in the chair.

Just wish I wasn’t in pain now. This sucker’s making its absence felt.

Jeebus, I haven’t written a single word since Monday.

Part of it writer’s block, I guess. But Tuesday and Wednesday I worked 8-10 hours which put my design brain to the test.

So, as I sit here watching a flashing cursor on my screen.

Maybe that ratio is more lopsided towards the former.

When was the last time I wrote anything other than in this blog?

If only I could shake free the ideas for stories I’ve shelved.

There was an initial spark; I just didn’t fan the flames.

You know how old that Idea was?

I hadn’t met Marlo yet.

The latest InDesign was CS5.5.

For eighteen months I was a writing machine. So many short play ideas sprang up. It’s tapered off these past six months.

I don’t like this.

I don’t like this.

And I don’t know how to self-correct.

(Author’s Note: This was written earlier this evening when I was balls-deep in… something. I can’t call it a panic attack. But I relayed this to my lovely wife and her simple act of listening lifted any fears I had for my sanity.)

(more…)

There are moments that truly surprise.

We (Marlo and I) have been struggling all week with the decision of whether to send the boy^TM to school on Monday. With Omicron rampant, and feeling that the provincial government hasn’t done enough to address the safety for our kids, we leaned towards remote learning.

We brought the boy^TM into the living room to discuss. We told him we were in favour of remote learning; he’s only going to be in this semester another nine days, and the grades (which can only be improved upon, says the Board) are locked.

He wants to go. At least for tomorrow. And reassess at the end of the day.

How fucking proud am I of this kid? He’s nervous, as anyone would rightly be, but he cares about school and wants to do good.

I guess that means I’m waking up at 6:30 am tomorrow to get things ready for the day, including making his lunch.

And I’m fine with that.

The good news is, I don’t have Covid.

I’m pretty sure I don’t have Covid.

Marlo’s tested negative three times now. We’re not going to waste one of our last rapid tests on me, not when we have to think of the boy^TM_.

But I’ve had headaches all week, and the sore throat comes and goes.

Plus, I’m going stir crazy in self-isolation.

I did go out the other day to pick up a package from the post office, and a few groceries from the market. And yes, I took every fucking precaution.

One of the things I picked up was a piece of veggie lasagne from European Delight. They didn’t have any meat ready (it had just gone in the oven) but they had a spinach and ricotta available. Me, loving lasagne almost as much as Garfield, gladly took it home.

I just took a bite.

Nope, can’t do it. Too much spinach. I promised Marlo a bite so she could see if she would enjoy it. I’ve given her the entire piece, and am heating up a TV dinner.

Because our order from Mister GoodMeats never arrived. (They allegedly deliver pre-cooked items you can reheat. I say allegedly because, as I mentioned, it didn’t show up today, and no one has answered our fucking email.).

And a panic attack just kicked in.

—–

Gosh, that was fun.

This week feels like a long series of minor setbacks. Not “throw you to the ground and knock the air from your lungs” moments. Just enough to feel like you ran a 5K marathon in your pyjamas.

—–

The food arrived this morning. Hadn’t heard the door knock. Don’t think it had been sitting outside the apartment long, as the contents were still very cold.

You know what? I’m gonna stop trying to squeeze out this blog post.

We’ll see how I feel later. ‘Cuz right now, it ain’t good.

I’m so into you
But I’m way too smart for you
Even my henchmen think I’m crazy
I’m not surprised that you agree
If you could find some way to be
A little bit less afraid of me
You’d see the voices that control me from inside my head
Say I shouldn’t kill you yet

Johnathan Coulton, Skullcrusher Mountain

It’s definitely a ‘dry’ January.

No ideas sparking in my brain. Blogging brings hours of staring at a white screen, begging for a subject.

The best I can muster is a mildly clever play on words for a title.

And I took two minutes to figure out whether it was ‘mild’ or ‘mildly’.

Still not sure, to be honest.

I’m pretty much symptom-free now; if it was Covid, I’ve burned it out of my body. (Though I’m pretty sure it was a head cold.) But Marlo is still under the weather, and we continue to self-isolate. I think I’m going a little squirrely. It’d be better if I had some work. Last week looked promising, but it’s the opposite today.

Goddamn this is boring. Gonna cut bait.

Might be back later.

Considering how fast the world is changing, my orbit feels impossibly slow today.

Third day of symptoms. The nasal drip has subsided, but I still have a raw throat and low-grade headaches.

A friend graciously offered to make a pharmacy run for my prescriptions. I held a Zoom call with Scott and Sam (collectively, “The Council of Guys^TM“), I emptied and stacked the dishwasher, washed the pots and pans, put away our groceries when they arrived. Even had time to watch Volcano (with what’s-his-fucking-name — oh right, Tommy Lee Jones — and Anne Heche) on TV.

And it’s only 6:40 pm.

This is gonna be one helluva night.

‘Cuz something is coming.

I can feel it in my bones.

But I won’t know what it is until it smacks me in the face.

Allow me to rant a little.

I am experiencing symptoms. Sore throat, headaches, runny nose.

According to the doctors, I must self-isolate, even though I cannot access a rapid test or obtain a PCR test (unless I want to pay upwards to $300.00). It’s possible I just have a cold. But without a test, I have to assume the worst.

So fuck you to the Ontario government for that.

I self-isolate. There is no choice.

However, I need two prescriptions. One for my diabetes, one for the issue with my tongue.

I called the pharmacy just now. They won’t deliver to our address, despite being one fucking kilometre away. (A compounding pharmacy at Sheppard and Leslie, where I have a nasal spray on order (because there are no compounding pharmacies downtown) has delivered here in the past.)

Therefore, I must venture out in public, possibly spread whatever it is I have.

Because I need my medicine.

And then inform them of the possible exposure.