Ups and Downs
We've had contractors downstairs in our basement for a couple of weeks, doing some sprucing up and creating a space we've been fantasizing about for years. We turned what had essentially been storage, and a camping spot for my erstwhile buddy who moved in and wouldn't move out, into 1000 sq ft of living space.
It's a downstairs apartment, which is what it was always intended to be. It functioned instead as a home office plus rec room, and for a few years it was our master bedroom. The past decade or so, though, it got progressively messier and crowded, mostly with my unwelcome tenant's belongings, which also took over my garage.
Now it has new floors and carpeting, and paint and new fixtures, not to mention finally finishing the bathroom. It's a cool space now; I just walk around, luxuriating in the newness and all this space.
Now, of course, we need to reclaim our garage and the rest of the house from all the furniture and boxes, etc., we moved out of the basement for the construction. Upstairs is littered with basement stuff, which is loads of fun navigating for a guy with progressive balance issues. It'll be nice to get back to our new normal.
In a burst of I-dont-know-what, I decided to turn an old PC into a home server. It's a pretty recent one that I built from the motherboard up, designed for video production. I bought a Mac mini a few months ago because I just didn't want to deal with all the PC business anymore – I've been playing with these things for 35 years. I just wanted something that works.
We didn't need a home server. I just needed something to do, and as much of a nightmare as it was with my horrible memory problems, it was sort of fun to get hands-on again, messing around with terminal commands like the old MS-DOS days.
A lot of bugs have been worked out now, and I stuck it in a corner of our empty basement for a while, at least, where it should have no problems staying cool. If I want to store private State Department emails, I now have a way.
I seem to go through long periods when I can't concentrate enough to watch anything. Sometimes I watch old episodes of House while I eat something at my desk, but I only manage about 15 minutes (it's a dumb and predictable show that mysteriously lasted 8 seasons, but it requires no brainpower to watch).
Shows that I binged last year (Hacks, Foundation, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds) have new seasons out and I just can't. Yet. I'm sure I will. I think.
I did watch the first episode of the new King of the Hill, which is all I need to watch. I loved that show, and it was fun to see the characters 15 years later, but there was nothing that felt new to me, and it was kind of boring. Which is part of the charm, but not for me anymore, I guess.
What I have enjoyed is my virtual reality headset (Meta Quest 3). It sometimes seems a waste, since it was built for gaming and I don't do that, but I use it every day.
I have an app that lets me travel the world (via Google Earth) in an astonishing way. Sometimes I've just put on my own music and floated over the Alps for 30 minutes.
And speaking of floating...there's a VR app called Float, one of many meditation-type apps. I've tried a lot of these, but none of them really called me back until I found Float.
It is its name – there are a variety of experiences, depending on your mood (rest, imagination, energize, etc.), and then you just float, through space, through the ocean, through strange worlds that look familiar but really aren't.
I do 20 minutes of this and I'm in a different spot, believe me. Sometimes I'll jump back in for another 20. I put on the headset and lie on my back, and c'mon. It's amazing and it makes a difference.
And not a bad metaphor. This is how life feels most of the time now, as if I'm floating through my days, only barely connecting to the rest of the world. I don't want to slip away, but I sure like having options.
