the ocean

I don't think it's a secret that Chicago winters tend to be a bit brutal. Why, acclaimed actress cum queer woman Sophia Bush even cited the deleterious effects of the season as one of her reasons for leaving her classic role as Erin Lindsay on the hit NBC TV series Chicago P.D. But each year as the fine, warm days of June linger on, it's easy to forget the horrors that will definitely await one sooner than one thinks. And then, in the bitter, sunless days of January, one notices that one is, in fact, building a cocoon out of one's bedsheets and spending three straight days half watching, half hallucinating old episodes of Criminal Minds. In short, madness that way lies, with a certainty and severity that cannot be overstated.

All in all, this year's case has been relatively mild, thanks to the intervention of some low-grade pharmaceuticals and a new season of The Traitors. But I have found myself a little lower than usual on motivation and enthusiasm, even for things I normally love like Murder, She Wrote and vacuuming up dog hair. So I've been trying to give myself a little bit of grace, as people on social media seem to be saying, by not chastising myself to severely for my failures to, say, turn out the Great American Novel or develop my Khloe Kardashian revenge body. Also my failure to say much of anything of interest on here, I might add. If you want entertainment, watch people dance in thirty second bursts on TikTok as the Chinese expect of you, please.

Anyway, I'm here and frankly have little reason to really complain. Which is not to say that I won't do so. This is still America, after all.