It is all such a difficult endeavor for me.  I don't want to be bothered explaining, or complaining; I don't want to be bothered trying to tell some convoluted story (a true story) of unimportant detail which I pretend will, in the telling, exonerate me from the guilt of having chosen to live my life irresponsibly -- or more accurately, unresponsively.  As I write this, the quote up top, which is selected randomly when the page loads, says, "As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.  - Leonardo DaVinci". 

My sleep has not been easy nor has it come promptly.  Never was that more evident than immediately after I whacked my keyboard six weeks ago and killed my old computer.  That first night I actually cried.  No more did I have a soothing perception of connectedness to all of you -- strangers mostly, distant certainly, safe and comforting.  I was plunged into the dark space of my own life, which was not made dark by my giant, bright monitor; my life had been increasingly abandoned to the darkness by me.  I have easily ignored the darkening all about me by obsessing on this artificial light to which I have returned tonight.  I am here with ambivalence. 

While I was away, I rediscovered my apartment.  It was a mess.  I vaccuumed up the biggest piles of dirt, washed and scraped surfaces of ancient dust -- some of it had nearly fossilized -- and rearranged my living space around my tiny, one-person dining table, leaving the desk with its dark monitor like a relic of another time.  I started showing up at work much nearer to on-time than ever before.  I started spending quiet, no-stress time reading National Geographic before bed.  I re-employed my stereo system as a tuner -- rather than as a sound system for Winamp -- and I listened to NPR and the BBC's The World Today, finding the former almost as disappointing as I feared, while discovering that the latter is far better than I had expected.  I began to spend more time bathing and shaving and brushing my teeth.  I started buying fresh vegetables.  I did laundry, and folded it and put it away, all in the same day.  I cleaned the bathroom. 

"A well spent day brings happy sleep...".  I spent last night here, in front of this computer, indulging my addiction.  I went to bed at 8:00 AM this morning.  The first day I got this system (it is a new one, the old one is as yet irreparable) I was reluctant to resume my obsession.  I didn't write anything here for nearly a week.  I have always known there was something beyond the monitor -- mostly I have know that with fear and I immersed myself in this pool of light, hiding.  Now, I am newly curious of the unilluminated life behind the monitor, having returned to it briefly.  And now when I am in front of this monitor, I find myself leaning to the side and peering around it like Norman Rockwell peers out from behind his easel in one of his self-portraits. 

I hate this.  I have to sneak to work after hours to blog, and that pretty much sucks all the pleasure out of it.  The magician may have found a new board for my box -- it has a non-standard mainboard design, split in two, an I/O board where all the PCI, USB, drives, and stuff resides, and a processor board where all the memory and (you guessed it) the processor resides.  The I/O half is the fried half. 

I should know one way or the other some time before Spring -- tomorrow, I hope.  I expected it back within days when I left it there a month ago.  I miss my e-mail, my regular Web sites, and I miss my system.  I miss you.