I haven't been blogging as much this month

Compared to last month the blogging rate this month has been pretty dismal and I can't really account for it. Why should it be that during this particular calendar month I decide to let thoughts lie unexplored and mute inside my busy brain - because the quantity of mental activity doesn't change from month to month, just the output volume in word form - when last month it was frequently twice in one day that I would apply myself to stringing words together to describe the things that occurred to me?

An unwritten blogpost is a stillborn thing, inchoate, inexpressive, immobile, like a bud that refuses to flower. A blogpost that emerges in text is something that can talk to other people, can move hearts, animate other minds, that has a life of its own beyond the confines of my skull.

This month I have also been feeling somewhat listless and lacking in energy. I have been going through the motions to some extent, and life has consequently been unfulfilling and dull. I have been on the verge of unhappiness this month. The appearance of blogposts usually has this correlate in my life. To a certain degree I am beholden to the blogposts for my happiness, and have told people at times that the blog is like an index of my happiness. When I post it means things are going fine, when I do not post it means that things are not all that good.

Happiness is such an elusive thing. It may be the kind of existential quantity that defines our lives in profound ways. We may even explore the world and describe what we see there as bad when in reality what has happened is that we have just found ourselves to be unhappy and we have transferred this unfulfilled quality to the object of our endeavours. The old joke about ennui comes to mind here. There is just something that is unsatisfactory about the way that things transpire and this can colour our endeavours to such an extent that they can themselves turn out to be faulty constructs, badly-meshing gears in the machinery of life. The thing might not even move at all.

I have been feeling especially down in the evenings. Last night when I went to bed I felt depressed. (I have made it a point to stop saying "very" this or that, because the word "very" is a lazy way to create a sense of urgency.) I felt as though someone was in the apartment and so I got up in my underwear and went into the living room and turned on the computer. The operating system software had to finish installing itself and so I waited. Then I looked at social media for a few minutes and went back to bed. I fell asleep and slept fitfully until morning but I dreamed that I was setting up a new Australian rules football team. An old friend appeared in the dream and in the morning when I came to the computer there was a post he has put up on Facebook the day before at the top of the application's newsfeed. Strange how things play out in the "real" world.