I don’t play golf. Or Frisbee golf. Or tennis. I don’t go rock climbing or hiking. I don’t like jigsaw puzzles or board games. I go through phases where I am a daily walker, but I have stopped doing even that since I returned to Chicago from my sojourn to Texas in the spring of 2021. I don’t really have any hobbies to speak of, though this newsletter started as a place to catalogue new hobbies and pastimes. What a different time it was in those pre-pandemic years. I think King Solomon said it the best:
“I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” Ecclesiastes 1:14
I was trying to play guitar again with the goal of playing “Sultans of Swing” by Dire Straits within a year, but my hands are in dire straits themselves right now with De Quervain's tenosynovitis flaring up. I cannot draw or write, cook or do other activities of daily living without intense pain in my hands, so no guitar. Indefinitely.
Hopefully with rest and physical therapy I can pick it back up one day, but with my hands hurting more often as I age, I’m thinking that day may never come. I worked out a plan this week with my physical therapist to heal my hands. Katie has eerie witchy powers of healing—so I may have to think of other reasons not to practice my guitar soon. Don’t worry, I can always think of new excuses. It is one of my true talents.
So where does that leave me? Idle hands are supposedly the devil’s plaything, but I wonder if that extends to hands that need rest. I mean, I don’t believe in the devil, but I do need to stay busy or I will risk letting depression and its accompanying thoughts of worthlessness and hopelessness in. I believe very strongly in depression’s power to disrupt and impair my life, so I need to keep busy. I recently started working part-time from home (I will tell you all about it at some future date, so please do not ask me literally anything about it), but I need to do something else with my time besides doomscrolling, watching television, and playing mahjong solitaire online. (My real hobbies).
This year I have been doing more acting than last year. I was cast in three different student films in January and February. I unfortunately had to drop out of one of them because I was very sick with a throat infection that turned out to be viral in nature, and not the strep throat that I was certain that it was. But I had a blast acting in the other two films. I love being on the set of student films. The young people and their energy are truly a tonic. It is kind of a strange feeling to be the only person on the set old enough to remember 9/11, but the kids are invariably welcoming and kind to this old fossil. I feel both older than my forty-nine years and much younger while on set with peers that are more than young enough to be my children. I guess maybe acting is my version of playing golf now. I’ve given up entirely on it being my career, so now it is fun again. I remember why I took up acting to begin with, because I’m good at it and it can be a lot of fun. I make so little money as an actor (or writer) that I better have fun doing it, and so far this year, I am.
In one of the films, I play a writer who appears to be helpful at the beginning of the story, but is revealed to be absolutely unhinged at the end. The film is a really cool mix of black comedy and psychological horror written by a brilliant young woman who is also the director. The art department made a cardboard cutout of one of my old acting headshots for the purpose of the film, which you can see below. I’m wearing the same shirt by pure coincidence—it is the shirt that the costumer chose for me to wear out of my closet. It’s fun how these things work out some times, isn’t it?
When I am not acting, blogging, working, or taking care of my ADLs, I stay busy by being ill. I wish this was a joke, but I spent most of the last week so sick to my stomach that I could not function at all. What I actually had wrong with me remains a mystery; thank goodness that it seems to have passed. My digestive health has returned to its baseline of being fraught and delicate. Jennifer said my digestion was fragile the other day, and it really brought home how true that is. When everything that I eat causes indigestion, I just kind of eat what I want and hope for the best. Predictably, this is not a great way to live if you wish to not have your guts in constant turmoil. I have been putting off seeing a gastroenterologist for ages, because I know that they are going to make me do some sort of elimination diet where I learn that the only foods that I’m not allergic to or intolerant of are boiled turnips and ice water. I know that I am catastrophizing, but it feels very real. I know that I am being a fool by suffering actual pain and misery because I am too scared of what the unknown diagnoses or treatments may or may not be.
My brain is a fun place.
I did not ask to be an overthinker whose black and white thinking and raging anxiety makes every decision an uncut 4,000 line version of Hamlet. I promise that I will go see the guts doctor soon. Soonish at least. Until then, I will keep acting, working my new job, not playing guitar and otherwise resting my hands, writing this newsletter, and trying to keep my house from sliding into utter chaos. I’m keeping busy, y’all.
Thank you, as always, for reading.
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