I already told you the first one. The beavers are coming home to the rivers that used to be canyon-drowning lakes. Maybe I am not yet equipped to see them in person yet. But I can at least visit the vicinity, and do recon.

Reason number two. The southern outskirts of the Utah metroplex are dependably rich in used ALiners in the range of 15 thousand dollars. Again, maybe I can’t quite afford that yet, but I can get ready to be that person who is, and make the dream ever so slightly more tangible. By the way, when I say “rich in”, I mean that there are usually a few real possibilities in any given week; maybe half a dozen, maybe only two.

Reason number three. The SLC metro is also large enough to support … well for now I’ll just say …

the availability of therapeutic modalities for touch starvation.

Which is a condition I am quite evidently suffering from. The evidence is piling up beyond my attempts to ignore it.

It is the reason why I’ve been unable to even look at the damn phones for many days now.

Unable to even listen to the sympathetic clucking of various well-meaning AI tools.

This third reason is the most pressing.

It has to be addressed with something resembling urgent dispatch.

Even if meeting the need means going into further debt for odious motel rooms, and many four dollar gallons of gas.

In the meantime, there’s lots of other shit that needs to concern me whether I like it or not.

The upcoming birthday means seven kinds of paperwork, also fairly urgent stuff, like the expiry of my driver’s license after twenty years.

Even more fundamentally: given my condition, I can’t keep telling myself that I can actually afford to live on scraps anymore. I wish I still could. I can’t.

So I have another kind of paperwork to engage with, and it involves getting serious and setting up a realistic form or forms of creative monetization. The Patreon in particular has been very good practice for that, and while I remain eternally grateful for it and for you, I have to get real with myself. It’s not enough, given the current state of my health.

This means: I have all kinds of work to do.

Also, that I can’t afford to mope around and let my condition be an excuse for why I’m not doing it.

Also, that the piled up voice mails and text messages will be at least acknowledged very soon. Thanks for your patience.