The other day I was in the car inching toward downtown Toronto in high traffic. To help pass the time, I listened to a youtube podcast by a guy whose name is Einzelgänger.

Typically, he quotes ancient philosophers rather than celebrities, but yesterday he quoted Robin Williams, who, if you recall, committed suicide some time ago which plunged the collective fan base into a state of surprise and shock. How could such a celebrated actor take his own life? A comedy actor, no less, who evolved into other, more serious roles after making his fans laugh as Mork?

The quote from Robin I’m referring to touches on a topic which became much weightier during the long years of lockdown at the height of the pandemic: loneliness.

I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is ending up with people who make you feel all alone.

Robin Williams

I am currently sitting in the city house where the family resides, only, there is no family here.

I live part-time with a senior. A very capable, strong-willed, kind, independent senior. She’s super mom and super grandma and she’s probably reading this right now and cursing me for talking about her. 😇

Disclaimer: Use at your own risk. I absolve myself from responsibility. 😉

A person holding a camera is standing in front of some stairs leading upstairs.

On each step sits a teenage boy, probably about 17 or so. They were told to sit in the middle.

The person filming them asked them a question with two possible answers. If they picked answer 1 they were told to move to the left, and if they picked answer 2, to the right.

These were some of the questions:

Why why why does the skunk need to spray the dog through the fence? There was no imminent danger to either wildlife or canine. They’re separated by planks of wood, each on their own turf. Could they have just entertained the idea of, I don’t know, minding their own business and going about their routine without causing epic chaos requiring several humans to deal with for two hours? 🤯

Here’s the short version:

I wanted a clean slate. A fresh start.

There is a way to export your WordPress blog so you can keep your words in a separate file, and re-set the blog to its original, blank state.

That was my plan.

So I exported my blog and it came back as a zipped XML file but it’s weird looking and I couldn’t read it.

I didn’t want to mess around and lose my entire 16 years of blogging, so I began to think.

And that’s when it all went to hell in a handbasket.