I starred at the wood siding of my basement for 5 minutes, 30 minutes ago. I gazed up around the couch, the shutters to a smaller window, and I wondered.

How did it all come to this?

I have five students who, to varying degrees, are competent, hard-working, and capable. I only want to fire one of them, but Academia dislikes firing. I have a literal horde of undergrads. I don't even know half of their names, and I don't care. They get assigned tasks, they do them for free, I eventually at some point write a letter of recommendation. I have written 12 million dollars worth of grants in the last year. Granted, I have gotten all of 20k so far, but most of them have not been reviewed yet.

Yet work is mostly a source of worry, and reviewers of articles are shitbeasts that expect me to send good word to fucktastic science journals, publishers I would not have pissed on in previous years.

I have a wife and child who, to varying degrees, love me. I only sometimes wish they would shut the fuck up. I spend lots of time with my son, who is equal parts lovely and infuriating. Every night when he goes to bed, J and I watch Game of Thrones, some other series, or sit and read books. We never have sex anymore. She has no libido unless I ask for it, and it feels strange asking for sex from someone who does not care either way. It's a decent enough family life.

Yet it is a source of more or less constant anxiety. Trying to remember various functions, taking time off work, figuring out how to thread needles and sew up days into a semi-functional rag doll to step over landmines. I also usually just do something wrong and get chewed out for it. Like Sunday. We rode bikes to a summer fair, enjoyed it, and rode back. The fair was forgotten in lieu of my riding out too far ahead, for which I got a 25 minute lecture while my son pretended to be doing something else about how biking is social time and--I'm too exhausted to even try recapitulating the argument. I played dumb because I was tired and could not believe it was a point of discussion that was seriously being pursued. J gets offended at the drop of a hat and has shatterglass self-esteem, a function of societal hatred for larger women and being too invested in the thoughts and connections of others.

I more or less go through my day periodically angry, sullen, lost in work related tasks through a sort of half-dazed contentment, and mindful of how precious quiet is.

I have one friend that lives locally, who I have interacted with about 5 times over the 3/4 of a year, and is a fairly inconsistent shitty friend because being a mom of 2, getting a Ph.D., and having a fiancee is a big lot.

I have...well...R is my only other friend. She has frequent headaches, is in constant pain, hates her life, but at least gets some marginal comfort when I try and trot out optimism. Her terror despair is different from mine, so I am not a complete fucking hypocrite. I am just dissatisfied in general with how I steered my life to this island, but have no idea how to get off or any marked desire to attempt to try.

I am content to get semi-frequently belittled, try to raise my son the best I can, only seethe occasionally when I see other families of acquaintance and wonder if I will ever have the daughter I wanted all along since I was young--

and in general live the same hollow, sad life a vast minority of men in this country life.

Quiet lives of desperation. It's a bumper sticker, but it's true.

You're all I've got left for a real friend, Daath. Even back when life was full of promise and terror of the unknown, I could trust you with anything. Now you're the corner of my world sheltered from the sandstorms of others, and the towering beasts that slip through the sandy earth to crash through the shitty makeshift sculpture gardens and living tableaus I make to garner meaning.

I'm a ray of sunshine.

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