Sometimes I give up on love, but sometimes I dream.

  Yeah, another day where I really don't have a whole lot going on. So we'll just fill up the white space until we reach word count. I'm not sure why I can't shake this dragging feeling. I know it's Seasonal Affective Disorder, but I've got plenty of sunlight. Who knows. The worst part about knowing you have chronic depression is also the best part. You know where the feeling's coming from just as you know there's really nothing you can do about it.

 I've been very discouraged about the writing thing lately. The fiction stuff seems to have dried up and I can't get any new Actual Paying Work. To be fair, I'm not really trying on the latter. This has been like pulling teeth for a couple weeks. The News has been going well, but that's easy to do.

 What's getting to me, though, is I'm going on a year-and-a-half of this and almost no feedback. I really don't believe the hits I get here anything more than web crawlers, and while it's nice to get a bit of acknowledgment when stuff's linked to Twitter, I know it's just people being supportive. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, and I appreciate it. But it is what it is, and I ain't going to bullshit myself.

 Someone suggested I do a Substack, which I almost took as an insult. I can't get any communication when I offer it for free, who in the hell would pay for that nonsense. I don't know. I guess I'm just dealing with a bad bout of the blues exacerbated because I've no way to get my head bad and step outside it. That and having no one to talk to, not really, except for the two head shrinkers once a month. And Momma, I suppose, but I don't like getting deep with her. She either looks for solutions, which she's awful at, or sees places where (she thinks) she messed up, which just isn't helpful at all.

 I'm not getting much joy out of anything right now. It's kind of a bummer because I know all I can do is just ride the bastard out. I suppose it's a benefit that I don't have any demands on my time these days. These were the times when I'd break down and cry before going into work, being thankful everyone was used to me coming in stoned. My eyes were always red.

 Maybe it's because I've been reading a bit of philosophy here lately. Nothing specific, just a fairly enjoyable intro-type book to brush up on some things. Like every now and then, I have to reeducate myself on logic because the concept is so used and abused by damn near everyone as of late. Gene Roddenberry probably had a lot to answer for in the Great Beyond.

 Beyond that, I don't know. I've been buying more stuff from eBay, something I hadn't done in years. I came across chromatic harps cheap, so I bought one of those and a tremolo harp. I never could talk myself into getting top-shelf versions of either, as a good one costs over a hundred bucks. Shit, I just Googled up one that was 17 grand. Someone needs their ass beat over that. My brother once noted that asshole yuppies spending too much money on guitars they rarely play meant the tools of his trade were priced out of his range. I never made a living blowing the harp, but that damn sure goes double for harmonicas. A straight-up Marine Band will run you at least 50 bucks. Makes me crazy to think that Junior Wells once went to court for stealing a really good one that was $1.50.

 Harmonicas are great, though. Better than guitars, I don't care what anyone says. I don't know you'd write a song using a harmonica, but there you go. Not just blues or rock, either. Country harp is great. Charlie McCoy, Mickey Raphael, Don Brown, Roger Crabtree, and my friend Rob Peck.  For the record, what he didn't teach me about harp wasn't much. Everything I've learned since has been building on that. I hope he's doing well.