Time for electric Elevens. Yes, we’re on the 11th of Jan, 2023. Coming up on the month’s halfway point of the new year’s first month.

Little has changed for me and it feels depressing. I’m sipping coffee in hopes of elevating my mood. Don’t know why I’m down but I can speculate on reasons. Could be the fog, rain, and wind swirling around outside. Wind sounds like it’s planted someone right outside the window to make ghostly woooooo noises. Writing the first draft and working on it to improve the story could be depressing me because it feels like there’s so much more still to do. Maybe it’s just the news and its unchanging flavors of death and politics, and the ugly, jaundiced textures that infuse it. Or, it could be that I’m in a rut and it wearies me, looking up the rut’s same walls. Probably just my time of month, when hormonal changes bring out my dark side. I could also chalk up to SAD, one supposes. Reminder to self to not make any impulsively stupid decisions today, because this will pass, brother.

Wednesday has landed on us. The fog has moved back and up, so I can see more world. Chainsaws and chippers drone and sing, informing me of another tree’s demise. Outside, it’s 42 degrees F again though it feels like 33. Flat white clouds with a tincture of gray have overwhelmed the sun. Sunrise was same as yesterday, 7:39 AM, but sunset has inched a few minutes back and will now be at 5 PM sharp.

Two songs compete in the morning mental music scream stream. The Neurons have me hearing “Just My Style” by Gary Lewis & the Playboys from 1965. Okay. The other is “Self Esteem” by the Offspring from the middle of the 1990s. I can guess why The Neurons are doing this to me. The same lines keep repeating, from one and then the other. First we have the bass delivery, “Don’t you know that she’s,” followed by the rest of the band singing “Just my style,” from the first song. Then the Offspring sing, “The more you suffer, the more it shows you really care, right? Yeah.” Both have been featured in this space before. I’ll flip a mental coin for which one is today’s theme music.

Time to drink up this coffee and pretend it’s a day. Stay positive! Test negative. Rise above yourself, I tell myself. I’ll suggest the same to you. Let me end this whiney scree. Hey, look sunshine! Too slow — it’s gone. Keep an eye out; it’ll be back.

Cheers