Journal Entry for February 25, 2022

 

February 25, 2022

Here I am again, sitting, trying to write anything to get the words flowing.  So far, so good, although I could find myself stopped anytime.

My birthday was three days ago.  I didn’t get any presents or phone calls or anything, but I got loads of good wishes on Facebook, which means something.  My actual celebration will take part on Sunday late afternoon.  I will go out to eat with Andrey and Joan.  Andrey couldn’t make it on an earlier day because he and his wife went out of town on a well-deserved mini vacation for a few days this week.  I hope they had a good time and good weather.

Speaking of weather, we have miserable weather today, with snow and sleet.  I put in an Instacart order for some groceries and felt guilty about bringing my “shopper” out on a day like this.  I gave her an extra $10 in cash to add to her tip.  I also gave her a good rating and compliments and tried to make her look good to the Instacart people.  A shopper has to do something pretty wrong to get me to give less than five stars because I don’t want to make trouble for anyone on their job.  I guess I’m an old softy at heart, or I feel responsible for the world.  I’ll have to figure that one out.

I feel responsible for the world, and I think that is my old-fashioned Catholic school upbringing.  Catholic guilt has more than one facet to it, and I think this is one of them.  In addition to being guilty of sin and, therefore, guilty of causing Jesus to be crucified, we are responsible for the world.  It’s a lot to put on a person’s shoulders.

I have now gone over 300 words.  Three hundred words is not a magic sum, but I seem to have made it into a self-imposed limit because of the Corlear Gardens Newsletter, for which I try to write something every month.  To avoid making the newsletter too long, I limit my contributions to 300 words.  Besides that, I’m not sure the attention span of my building’s readers could stand more than 300 words, along with all the other stuff that goes into the newsletter.  I have no way of knowing how well or not well the newsletter is being received by the people of the building.  Nobody tells me.  I have to hear second-hand from Valerie or Jimmy, the people who work with me on the newsletter, when anyone says anything to them about it, which isn’t often.  Maybe I should conduct a survey and offer a prize, or something.  Nobody wants my George Forman grill when I offer to give it away, but perhaps if I make it an award, it will seem more attractive!

Again, I am not writing a masterpiece here.  I leave that to when I write something that I want to bother editing.

Until tomorrow.