Greetings. It's Monday, May 4th, 2020. Or should I say it's whatever day, whatever month, 2000, whatever year. And I'm reporting to you live from inside my bedroom where I have moved a desk from the great

room and I get to look out a window and oversee this construction that's happening on the

building across the street from me.

I'm going to read you an excerpt from a story that published earlier this morning.

By the time that you hear this, it's going to be six days later.

So technically, I'm reading you a story that went up last Monday.

I will probably stop to annotate at some points, but, you know, the reason these audio dispatches started was because I was planning to use them as an alternative way to disseminate stories that I was already writing,

and then it kind of turned into something else.

And as an effort to go back to how this started, I'm going to give this a try again.

And if you don't like it, then I just won't do it again. If you'd rather hear me talking ad hoc, I can do that.

I'm just not sure that I have that much to say because things aren't really changing and I don't know how

much of the navel gazing you can handle. I don't know how much of the navel gazing I can handle.

And overall, if I'm being honest, I'm beginning to feel that I have to use this format to like

share hardship and I'm not really in the head to sulk in hardship.

I'd really rather try and focus on the positive and see some good stuff,

which either is or is not relevant depending on how you feel about that 1,200 words I'm about to read.

That's me getting ready.

Have you ever realized something fairly simple about yourself

and what feels like a very delayed amount of time?

Last week was the best and the worst.

It was the best because I'm emotionally steadier

than I have been since before Corona, i.e. the new BC,

...