Category: thinking

Whither Whisky Wind-down?

By far the most popular series I’ve written here is Whisky Wind-down.

The original, set in 2016, was my way of combining my love for whisky, my disdain for the events of 2016, and my fascination with advent calendars.

The result? 31 days of drinking, talking about random things, and really enjoying my own words again.

Through 2017, my writing tapered off again, but I got fired up at the end of the year, and I once again laid down a month’s worth of (almost completely consecutive) posts, even though I spent the last few days of that year traveling around Costa Rica.

Then the silence. I still haven’t explained that (and am perhaps inclined not to?) but for the next twenty months the newest post on the site remained 2017 Whisky Wind-down, 1: Life’s a Beach.

For all you knew, I had died on that beach. Or decided to live on it.

Anyway, I didn’t.

I spent the next year not writing here, and when December 2018 rolled around, a few people — I have fans! Tens of them! — wrote to me when Whisky Wind-down didn’t start that year. I told them (truthfully) things had been difficult but I still planned (honestly, I planned) to write a reduced 2018 Whisky Wind-down. At first I thought it would just have a late start. Then a late start became “maybe a top 10 list,” which became “maybe just one good, long post to wrap the year,” which became 10 months not writing anything at all here.

Well, I’m writing here again. And whether I ever get around to properly explaining the time I wasn’t writing here, I am, right now, enjoying myself again.

And I still drink whisky.

It’s my pleasure, therefore, to tell you to expect, in the coming days, Whisky Wind-down The Third: The Saga Continues, Following A Hiatus That Will Likely Not Be Elaborated Upon During This Series, Though You May Read With Eagerness Just In Case I Change My Mind, Or, Just, You Know, Read It Because You Like Reading Whisky Ruminations.

I’ll call it 2019 Whisky Wind-down, for short.

How My Brain Works: About An Hour in the Life of Jon

It’s about 11 a.m. on a Wednesday morning.

I am at my desk at home, ostensibly looking for work.

For me, this entails a mix of job search, review, and application. I get quickly bored and overwhelmed by this task, so between steps, I pop over to Facebook, where I have been passing messages with friends lately, doing my best to make up for being oh so bad at correspondence for, broadly speaking, a year or more, and, more generally, a lifetime.

In the course of one of these conversations I offer an old friend, who is planning a visit to the ATL, the opportunity to stay at my home rather than book a room. I quietly applaud myself for remembering to ask if stairs might be an issue, given that the guest room is upstairs.

Thus begins the following sequence:

The stair handrail is a bit loose where it is anchored to the wall at the second floor landing.

I should fix that, especially since I have told The Empress of Whisky that I’m up for doing this sort of thing, what with all the free time on my hands just now.

Get up from computer. Start walking downstairs, to utility closet where tools are stored.

Upon opening utility closet, where cat’s litter box is located, remember I haven’t scooped it today.

Realize I need to pee.

Go to bathroom. Pee. Skip hand-washing, due to next planned activity.

[Somewhere along here, this blog post begins forming in my mind.]

Scoop litter box.

Dispose of results.

Wash hands.

Return to utility closet. Acquire a wall anchor and the right screwdriver to use with it.

[The blog post is definitely coming together now, looking good in my head. I decide to write first, then attack the handrail fix.]

Reach computer. Phone beeps. Check messages.

As I am checking messages, I hear Cat meowing from hallway, outside bedroom. She does this, frequently, when I am home and The Empress of Whisky is not. I think, sometimes, that she thinks I have The Empress locked away in the bedroom. I think this because sometimes Cat will not stop meowing until I have gone to door, opened it, and shown her that The Empress is not, in fact, languishing in the bedroom. She has not mysteriously teleported there from her office downtown. All is well, Cat. Cat then usually rubs on some shoes belonging to The Empress and, thus appeased, leaves the bedroom.

Sometimes, though, and this is one of those times, Cat will instead come when I call and enter the office to sit upon my lap.

This makes work difficult because it is harder to reach things like the keyboard. Left-handed mouse work is okay, though, as is using my phone.

Wait, the phone beeped awhile ago!

Pick up phone, respond to texts while Cat is purring contentedly on my lap.

Just as I have done about all I can before getting back to the keyboard, Cat hops up of her own volition and goes off to either find a sleeping spot or re-investigate the closet I am, as of this morning (before the time-frame of the events described herein), sorting and rearranging. Possibly both.

Begin writing in earnest. Get as far as these words right here.

Realize phone has been beeping a bit while I have been in the flurry of writing this entire post.

Pause to appreciate, again, how wonderful it feels right now that the words are flowing and the rate of brain composition and my typing speed are matching up damn near perfectly, which has been a rare thing in the past but is really happening a lot more often lately and goddamn I feel fantastic about that.

My eyes are watering a bit, probably allergy-related. (This is not a euphemism for crying. I really do have irritating year-round allergies that mostly mean a runnier-than-average nose but occasionally mean watery eyes. This is all while medicated. Ugh.)

Appreciate, again, having switched to a higher grade of tissue (Kleenex Ultra Soft, rather than regular Kleenex). This was initially done, at my — later proved correct — thought that they would be kinder on the nose of The Empress of Whisky, who had been down with a cold until just recently. (Yes, she applied bourbon. We know our medicine.)

Answer more texts.

Also? I love my clackity-clack old school keyboard, with its nifty backlit keys.

Take note of just how many words — ATL, teleported, clackity, backlit / and later, vis — I have added to my personal dictionary in the course of writing this post. (I really loathe red underlines that aren’t actual typos. And. Yet. I. Keep. Adding. Words. To. My. Personal. Dictionary. Forever. And. Ever. Amen.)

Pause.

Review post so far. Adjust a few words. (But not many! Damn, they really are behaving  well for me lately.)

Note the time: 11:56.

Get up.

It takes about five minutes to realize this handrail fix isn’t going to work. Specifically, I realize this after inserting the base of the wall anchor, beginning to apply the screw that will attach the rail to it and bind the two tightly to the wall, when the whole anchor goes THWERTHUMP! and slips into the space behind the drywall.

(I did not add THWERTHUMP to my personal dictionary. The red line under it bugs me a lot, but that ain’t a word, so what to do? Leave it. Ignore it. You can do this, Jon.)

Realize someone probably tried this — or something like it — before, which is why the whole damn thing is loose in the first place.

Wash hands. (I have … a thing … about keeping my hands clean.)

Return to desk.

Sigh.

Write most of the rest of this post.

Facebook is dinging to let me know I have new messages, and my phone is beeping again. Ignore both because I am on deadline.

Recall how, just two days ago, My Friend The Former Lifestyle Editor Who Retired And Turned Mystery Writer told me something like, “I find deadlines very helpful.”

Remember how I used to always, for purposes of anonymity, refer to my friends in the manner such as My Friend The Former Lifestyle Editor Who Retired And Turned Mystery Writer and wonder whether I need to keep doing that.

Realize I am, in fact, running over deadline — think here, as always, of Douglas Adams and his statement: “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” — and that I may be in danger of overselling this whole piece.

Pause for editing. Quickly, now!

Reach for mouse to push the cursor toward that big red button in the top corner of my screen marked “Publish…”.

Worry whether anyone will realize I did not, in fact, fuck up grammatically — vis-a-vis quotation marks, accurately writing what that button says within them, and proper sentence-ending punctuation — in that last sentence.

Shrug.

Reach for mouse …