I have only a few minutes left in this day before i have to sleep.

We’re deep in the rain season here in the PNW. It can be a time of absolute splendor; beauty beyond description. But it has its challenges. The sun begins to move toward the western horizon at an alarming rate by 3pm and being deprived of the sunlight can be challenging.

I found myself shutting myself in today. Part of it is this persistent pain in my right heel that flared up so badly last night ever step i took was excruciating. I damaged it during my very extended hike a few weeks ago at Artists Point. Unfortunately i don’t have health insurance right now and it appears that i won’t until 1 January of next year. The pain is significant enough to have stopped my trips to the gym. Sometimes the pain is bad enough to give me cold shivers. I thought it was healing but now i’m not so sure. I either fractured the bone in my heel or i tore some connective tissue there very badly.

None of this is why i’m here tonight.

Actually, i’m out of time. I’m going to have to come back and finish this entry tomorrow if possible.

Monday night.

Yesterday was drizzly and grey for much of the day but interrupted by this exceptionally beautiful, warm orange light. Looking up at the trees, orange splashed on pines, spruces and firs, it was as though i was part of a Maxfield Parish painting, if for only a few minutes.

Today has been very… un-Maxfield Parish. It’s been a solid slab of daunting grey. It’s been windy, grey and in the low to mid 40s. It’s been a very typical PNW autumn day in that sense; a contrast of beauty and austerity.

Good jacket weather, in other words.

Yesterday i began to write about Sundays. I still struggle with Sundays. I know this is stupid but years ago when i was with my ex, on the weekends we spent together, we’d have to go our separate ways on Sunday afternoons. In the early days of our relationship, i was glad for it. I’d spent a lot of years alone and it’s something i’m comfortable with and quite good at. As the years went on and i eventually fell in love with her, parting ways became absolute torture. I think it conditioned me to associate Sunday afternoons with loss and perhaps in an irrational- or perhaps a not-so-irrational-way, a reminder of how i wasted four and a half years of my life and, argueably, the last days of when i was a viable partner for someone.

To be fair, i did learn a lot in the process. That’s an ongoing entry that i’m not ready to share.

It’s Monday. I have a job with regular hours now. Every time i hear the rain and the wind at night, i realize how grateful i am for this job because otherwise, i’d be waking up at 10pm, at the refinery at midnight and spend the next 18 to 24 hours on the deck of a ship and going up shore tanks and then trying to sleep in my unheated car while shivering and gagging on what’s left of my uvula. If you’re just tuning into my journal, know that i lost more than a decade and a half to sleep apnea. Sleeping on my back isn’t just bad for me, it’s life threatening, ESPECIALLY if i don’t have my bipap on me.

It’s late. I have to sleep. Goodbye.