Shipwrecked & Comatose

When I started blogging in the good old days of MySpace, I would write any old thing that popped into my head.  Everything that happened to me was a potential blog post subject.  I would treat every interesting thought and every life experience as something "for the blog" in the same way young people today need to snap a photo "for the 'Gram".   Life went on and I got out of that habit after I moved Shipwrecked & Comatose from MySpace to Blogger.  Blog posts became less frequent and more long-winded.  I had a hard time focusing on a single topic.  I suppose social media ruined my attention span for writing in the same way it ruined my attention span for anything else.   Every once in a while I decide I need to reinvigorate this blog and try to find new reasons to do so.  I find I write more often when I spend less time on Facebook (something I am actively trying to do) because I am more likely to make "slice of life" posts when I'm n...

                                                                                     I don't think the modern United Kingdom is a particularly violent country, but sometimes I feel like its inhabitants are obsessed with murder.  Think of how many murder mystery books and TV shows come out of the UK.  We have the classics like Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie.  In more modern times we have Midsommar Murders, Vera, Unforgotten,   Shetland, Broadchurch, and the list goes on.  Is it the gloomy weather that makes everyone there so obsessed with death? I know Americans love violence and death and TV shows about crime, but I think the Brits are way ahead of us.              ...

At the beginning of 2021, Facebook gave me a rare useful idea.  I was scrolling through my feed when I saw a post suggesting a way to preserve the best memories from the the coming year.  Every time a happy event happens, write it down and put it in a jar.  Then at the end of the year, open the jar and gain some perspective on how the year was.  With COVID still raging and restrictions still keeping us from enjoying life to the fullest sometimes, it's easy to think of 2020 and 2021 as "bad" years.  When we open the jar, we see it wasn't as bad as we thought. I decided to try this.  I didn't have a good jar, but I had this charming wooden box that wasn't being used for anything else at the time. Throughout the year I made my best effort to write down every happy event and good day we had.  I would use any little scrap of paper I had on hand at the time.  On New Year's Eve I opened the box and went through it with Kevin before we went out to dinner....