My new website’s nearly done. It costs ~$100 for a year, and so does this. $200’s too much for people to read this nonsense and it’s far too much to keep an archive going. I’ve been going through and saving .html files of every post, which is taking -forever-. I can’t imagine what rehosting them would look like on squarespace. Someone better with computers could probably do it with some ease, but I’m not good with computers and I don’t want to bother anyone. 

The new website looks good. A bit boring, but good. It’ll serve. Well, I suppose it’s not that boring, it’s got a weird film-grain live-animation behind it that follows your mouse and reveals formerly hidden messages. That’s kind of cool and kind of fancy, too. 

I’m not the hardest working or most intelligent person in the world, but I do have a fairly consistent bent towards improving things in my life. It’s worked for me so far pretty well. More or Less. My lot has improved, at least. 

Abby’s the same way. We very rarely leave well enough alone, instead opting to make pains of ourselves and to ourselves by wanting to improve things. We make furniture and learn skills, we train the dogs and put our phones away. It’s done in fits and starts, it’s imperfect and never ending and uniquely frustrating, but it is a direction, and I’m thankful for that. 

The tough bit is that we don’t know when to turn it off, and it makes things hard to prioritize. Our dogs are a source of endless frustration as they run off, don’t come fast enough, beg, whine, and get up to all manner of other mischief.
They are phenomenal dogs.
Every time I spend time with someone elses dog I can’t help but think how much I appreciate mine. They listen, they’re kind, they’re not too insane. But the issue is that I almost never spend time with other dogs, just with them. So I only see their trouble, I don’t see them for how good they are. I lack perspective. 

I fear that I do that with other parts of my life. I worry about money immensely, I worry about work and creativity and purpose and God and friendship and Abby and Roby. There’s loads to worry about and improve. It’ll never end. But amidst that improvement I could do a better job of appreciating how damned nice things are. How wealthy I am, how incredible my job is, how creatively fulfilled I am by this blog and my writing hobbies, by the purpose I find in the forest and with the stones, and with my slow march towards that long haired freak that tells people to be nice to eachother. 

It’s really not so bad, and none of this grass is news to anybody who’s thought for longer than five minutes, maybe fifteen.