Written Thursday evening…
This was supposed to be the week where I got caught up. After the holidays, after getting sick, and after being stuck inside from yet another storm with the cats. Monday it didn’t rain, thank God. I went to the gym, came back, tidied up my front garden (with the help of my cats), made lunch, and sat down to eat while watching Knots Landing. It was a great start to the day. After lunch I would finish my gardening before focusing on writing stuff—mainly submitting Synth Noir Book 2 for a proof. You couldn’t ask for a better day.
Mid-lunch and mid-episode, a delivery guy dropped something off at the front door and my boy cat Rex, who had been curled up as cute as can be on one of my dining chairs, jumped up startled and totally freaked. Not entirely out of character, but kinda weird.
He scurried off to the garage, his body close to the ground, and my cat mom spidey senses got triggered. But I decided to let him be. He’s a cat. Just let him be, I instructed myself. About twenty minutes later I had to go in the garage for something and saw Rex perched very majestically on the cat tower I’ve been meaning to get rid of. I had to go over and pet him, of course. He looked so cute.
And that’s when he started acting really weird. Rex is a mama’s boy and never passes up pets, but this time he cried when I touched him and jumped off to the ground to get away from me.
Something was wrong. I knew it. But again, I let him be while an uneasiness began brewing inside of me. What else could I do? He’s a cat.
Eventually he came out of the garage into the house and I knew I had to figure out what the hell was going on. So I pulled out his favorite treats and tossed one right in front of me, so he had to come to me to get it. He didn’t move. He just stared at it, hunched over while letting out a desperate, whiny meow, and lifting his left paw. That’s all I needed to know. Since I’m a helicopter cat mom, I took him to the emergency vet right away and found out he had gotten into a cat fight and had two bite marks with puncture wounds. He was in a lot of pain, my poor little baby.
This also meant seven days of antibiotics, pain meds, and staying indoors to heal.
I have no idea if any of you have dealt with sick or injured cats, but it ain’t easy. Rex has been a pretty good patient and getting better day by day, but this morning he was determined to go outside—he’d gone from sleepy, healing cat to irritated, I hate my mom for keeping me indoors cat.
He also decided he was over the pill pockets and refused to eat his antibiotics tucked away in the chicken-flavored ones he usually loves. I spent over an hour this morning coercing him with treats, peanut butter, you name it. Nope. Finally got him to eat a crushed pill in a liquid treat which then went on to give him diarrhea about an hour later. Needless to say, he’s really not happy with me right now. And he will be even more unhappy with me in about thirty minutes when I have to give him his new liquid antibiotics via a syringe in his mouth. We have four more days of this.
Uneasiness.
That’s the feeling that I’ve been trying to push away as of late, and especially this week. Could be because I had been inside for over a week, and am now dealing with an injured cat. It could be the non-stop horrible news coming from all directions, that you can’t get away from. It could be that my little sabbatical will have to end at some point in the near future and that gives me mild anxiety. It could be that now that my book is out I have to turn into a social media personality and promote it (which I suck at). It could be that I’m in the latter half of my 40s, single, and in no way prepared for retirement. Whatever, the point is it could be a lot of things.
But one thing it definitely is I’ve realized (besides my sick cat), is the scrolling. The goddamn scrolling I initiate myself on this fucking phone that I can’t seem to stop. The podcasts, the never-ending commentary, the grandstanding posts on X, the indie lit drama that I have nothing to do with that fills my feed. Everything online at the moment seems a bit shitty and hopeless.
I feel very isolated in this digital world. Especially now as an author with a book to promote and realizing that I have to participate to be included in the algorithm. Most of the time it feels like talking in a cave where you only hear echoes of yourself.
Sometimes I think, oh maybe I’ll start a YouTube channel and become a video personality to find more readers. Um, ok… yeah right. Like that’s going to happen. I barely have the desire to take a selfie these days. Honestly, I’d really like to delete YouTube altogether because my feed on there is depressing as fuck. Unfortunately it’s where I go for news, and now that’s all I get. The fucking algorithm.
I stay on X because why exactly? I interact with like five people on there. I’m in indie lit Twitter, but I’m not really part of it. I could give two shits about Cormac McCarthy. I don’t know the majority of the players in the drama I see on there (as entertaining as it is sometimes). I love writing, but I really don’t want to tweet about the ins and outs of writing all day, and also I don’t have time to. I like shit-posting for fun because I’m a sarcastic fuck, but I’m not a nihilist. At 46, I don’t really give a crap or understand for that matter, I’d say about 88% of the stuff I see on X, most of which are dark, dark riddles of irony that leave me feeling empty and out of touch. I’m on the verge of deleting X too. Or maybe just stepping away. Idk.
I guess what I’ve been thinking about this week, barely into 2026, is which algorithms I want to participate in going forward. That I need to participate in. Real life is already hard enough—I don’t need the extra stress of knowing every horrendous event that happens in the world, or everyone’s drama, or new Gen Z words that I have to look up.
But I have an addiction. Don’t we all? I see people tweeting all day long, responding to hourly news stories, or constant discourse about Cormac McCarthy and the state of male literary authors, and I think to myself, where do you find the time? But even if I had the time, I don't want to do that.
I am happiest writing fiction. I’m happiest building my new Phoenix Ryder neocities website (Web 1.0, baby). I’m actually kinda happy writing this post. I want to spend my time creating a world, an escape for my readers, not just shit post on X—as much as that is fun sometimes—in hopes of getting noticed and perhaps a sale. It could be that I’m realizing I need to focus on what matters if I want writing fiction to be a career that pays the bills. But a lot of it is also wanting to feel sane like I did before we had these smartphones and apps. The computer was enough for me.
I dunno. Anyway, it’s 10pm in January and I’m dying for a crisp lime La Croix right now. And I gotta give my cat his antibiotics.
Get yours on Amazon.
Music Rec
I’ll be honest. I usually recommend something that I’m currently into week of, but this week, the only thing I’ve been listening to is the Calming Cathedral Chants playlist on Spotify—late at night while my battery-operated candles flicker over the fireplace.
But one group or artist I’ve discovered recently that I really like is Thought Beings. They’re a bit of a mystery, but I did find some information about that on Aztec Records:
Thought Beings are a collective of anonymous artists from California formed by lead singers Orion and Lemon. With music inspired by Afro-Caribean, Hawaiian, and Japanese influences mixed with Synthwave, Synthpop, and colourful 80s nostalgia, Neon Beach is the band’s third studio album, based on a short story written by the main producer.
I’m now realizing I need to go down the Aztec Records rabbit hole since they specialize in Synthpop, Retrowave, and Synthwave. One of their artists is Sunglasses Kid, which you may know from the song “Badge and gun.”
My Thought Beings favorites right now are the songs “Hazy” and “Sundown.” Enjoy.