“Maybe you should read the room” from the band The Smile has been bouncing in my head. Maybe once I was better at reading the room, and matching an appropriate response. Or maybe it’s always just depended on what’s needed to be read, some things are more clear or apparent. I don’t want 32, but I also didn’t want 31. Day ten of no alcohol or pipe smoking (I am grandpa) has done nothing to help with this feeling. Only thing it’s given me is more feelings, and not in a good way. I think I sleep much better when I drink, I don’t just lay there, like I am now. I don’t wake up tired. I want to quit my job. I used to want to have my own radio show, back when I listened to particularly-not-good music. Dead air would just have to be part of the show. I don’t want to be a dumber John Cusack from High Fidelity, but I think I kind of am that. I want to love my chin and my hands and my nose and my forehead and my feet, but they all seem to have individual, conflicting agendas. I want to be able to catch a bus or train or metro to run errands. I’ve had a roller coaster of a time just trying to convince the powers that be to not cover the windows of the new buses we’re getting in town. Can you imagine? You order new buses only to cover the windows? The apathy and thoughtlessness is without a doubt doing me in. Mediocre white men strike again. I can’t keep this up. I think there’s unfortunately still a wide and powerful gap between left-leaning talking heads and activists and those who work in more blue collar and/or non-salaried positions. Organizing is tough at that level, because who has the damn time? And if those same people are close to retirement, even if they’ve put up with no guaranteed access to bathrooms (!) for nearly 20 years, why would they risk fighting for the new blood now? “It’s just how it works” is the apathy cry that’s slowly killing everyone in these environments. I heard another thirty-something died of pneumonia recently. If things go that way, I think I’d like to copy my grandma and go with “Blackbird” by The Beatles at my service thing. I would like to spend my days making art and sometimes good, sometimes bad music. I want a lover for a birthday or a holiday. I want to be able to say I never listened to Toby Keith. And I’d like to own my own small home, host gatherings and album listening parties. I just want to be hospitable and bring people together, I think. I don’t understand how Trump has been allowed to even make it this far in the election situation. My dark secret is I didn’t vote in 2016, I was too “third way Christian” for that. I will always regret this.