Dear Diary,
I'm sorry I've been silent for so long. It dawned on me that trying to revise part VI of the public library hours page, I was doing immense amounts of work without much way to catch mistakes, and not getting enough readers to justify it. I thought about hiking, and even had a ready-made target in the dashboard the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation has about restroom and water fountain availability, which spent the entire winter assuring everyone that most water fountains were still on. Well, the parks department seems to have noticed, and that water fountain page itself isn't currently available. But I talked myself out of hiking because I couldn't afford newspapers with which to date the photos.
Last fall I finished at long last the work on my storage unit that had been waiting since I got housed, boxing everything up. I also got most of my DVDs and cloth - not just clothing but also pillows, towels, sheets, etc. - out of storage. Most of my translations of books written more than a millennium ago. Most of my business papers. Most of my own writing on paper. So I've felt more fully housed, more fully connected to who I'd been before 2012, than at any time since that year.And I've had other things to do. Such as job hunting. But the evidence is getting pretty overwhelming that I can't assume I'll ever be employed again, which in turn means I can probably expect another long-term, possibly permanent, bout of homelessness.
Also, in recent months I've been unable to read much news, so maybe that's skewing my priorities. After months of not feeling much outrage on behalf of those still homeless, I wasn't sure I still had it in me to write in you, dear Diary. But it's a safe bet that if I become homeless myself again soon, that'll all reverse pretty quickly. Especially if the transition back to the streets turns out as badly as it looks like it might, and leaves me for the first time homeless without storage.
We'll see. Please don't expect me to tell you much in the near future, dear Diary, but maybe later this year; we'll just have to wait and see. Happy days and nights until then.
