Monday 12/30/24
Will get into more of this later, but this was an excellent month of art-making. I really produced. Every month is, but perhaps because this was the last month of the year it's on my mind in this fashion. People are slowing down, stepping away, and I've kept going and going and going. I went hard every day. I went hard on Christmas. Every day by four in the morning I was at the desk going hard.
I got up today and wrote something I was unlikely to be able to place given it would have had to run tomorrow but I wrote it anyway and then I placed it. Over this months we're talking fiction that blows everything else away, nonfiction about film, music, TV, and op-eds. Then this journal, which is what I do between things. What does it all do for me? Nothing. Not right now. What does it fix? Nothing. Again, not right now. Ups the hate. But in each of these areas it's the best stuff ever produced and it's not close and there's no comparison with anything anyone else has done. And I can say that on the first day of the year more new work will be completed. I'm looking to have a big day tomorrow. I can do so much better, effort-wise. Can't write better, though. It is impossible to do anything better than this writing.
Quite a few Everything wrong with publishing entries and prose offs coming in the next little bit as well. Some people are going to have their year started off right.
Saw something I'd never seen in a hockey game today. Slovakia was up 4-2 late-ish in the third on Kazakhstan when a kid on the latter took a dumb five-minute penalty which was longer than was left in the game. So: Game over, right? Not so fast. Kazakhstan scored two shorthanded goals to tie it up. They lost in OT, but still--you just don't see this. Spirited game. Lots of emotion and pride.
If I played hockey there is no way I wouldn't wear a neck guard. I would definitely be a neck guard guy.
It was sixty degrees today here in Boston.
Walked six miles yesterday, did 200 push-ups, ran five circuits of stairs in the Bunker Hill Monument. I've been inconsistent with my fitness this month but I'll right that ship. Standing in line outside the Monument yesterday a man who was with his son asked me if this is what I did after my workout to finish it off. I said, "This is my workout."
As with that woman a little while, he knew what I was there for. I wonder why. Well, I noticed there was steam coming off me. All of me. Even my hands with my ratty gloves. Why steam was coming off of me and no one else I am not sure. I guess because I'd been walking and stopping to do push-ups and that was enough exercise to produce the effect. I don't think it's a bad thing, though, that people assume I am doing something fitness-related even when it's just me standing and waiting next to them. You could say it's because I look like a tramp but people dress all kinds of ways and a sweatshirt and sweatpants is normal enough. Yesterday also marked 3094 days, or 442 weeks, without a drink.
Allowing that I work hard enough tomorrow and get enough done I will try and get to the Brattle and perhaps the Harvard Art Museums first. I'll have to be started very early for that, though.
How about a great photo? These are two of my favorite girls--my buddy Amelia and my mom! Isn't that awesome? My sister took this today at lunch.
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