the red and the black by stendhal

I thought I’d written most of a post about this last week, but I can’t find it anywhere and to be honest I’m pretty pissed off about that as I am keen to continue maintaining this blog but also doing all of the other things that I’ve committed myself to doing and though in the past it has tended to be the other things that get left behind and this blog that doesn’t here in 2020 it seems to be happening the other way around now and I have some thoughts on this because I think the reason why this is happening is because of the weather as I’m still reading a lot thank God because it’s my core joy the heart of my soul but I am still doing that reading as I have been doing for the last several years which is WHILE I WALK TO PLACES and I have refined this skill over years of practice so that not only can I read and walk but now living in Canada where the winter in freezing I’ve got myself able to walk through snow and slush while reading and able to walk through very light snow and read as it falls and it turns out the secret is to make sure to brush the snowflakes off the bottom of every page before you turn it and this is even possible to do and this is the revelation that I’ve been building towards is that not only can I read and walk through potentially icy paths without slipping but I can do so with fucking gloves on so that is my secret as to how I’ve continued reading while working sixty hour weeks and exercising and dog walking this secret is so simple because I can read while wearing gloves now but though I can read while wearing gloves and though I have multiple gloves that claim to have the functionality to do so I have yet to find a pair of gloves that I can use to effectively and error free type on my phone because what I’m lacking isn’t the time to get these blogs written it’s time when I’m sat in front of my computer at home when I don’t have other things to do for example the Queen mobs by TRUTHER PRESS poo anthology won’t edit itself and also I have a manuscript that has been tentatively picked up for publication by a cute little indie press so whenever I’m sat in front of my laptop at home and I’m not doing work for money over the last few weeks I’ve been getting increasingly antsy about getting the second draft of that manuscript finalised and sent to the publisher and also I’m in the middle of changing my meds but I’ve been told that for some reason I don’t really understand I get free prescriptions from work now but I was waiting to get the proof of this to show the pharmacist or whatever so I’m now a week into a lower dose of my previous medications without the new and more targeted medication that the doctors think I actually should be on and as a result of this I’m feeling very anxious and suicidal again even though things are kinda going great for me well sort of not great but they’re as good as to be expected if you compare it like with my life from before and the things I’ve been doing to make it go better over the last few years but the medication is fucking important and also my therapist is away for two weeks and there was like a group session I could have gone to this morning instead but I didn’t because I was tired so I had a little nap instead and now I’m walking to work via the place I go to do exercise and even though there’s snow everywhere it’s basically the warmest it’s been for probably like several weeks so I’m actually glove free and thus able to type and walk but it’s been like a week since I finished the Stendhal which I fucking loved and in the time since then I’ve been reading a novel that I haven’t fucking loved and I’ve set off to work today with a novel I’m not excited about reading to read on the way home from work in the dark in the night which is a stupid idea because if there’s one thing this long term onanistic blog project has taught me about myself is that it is lamely but irrevocably true that nothing affects my mood more than my enjoyment of the book I’m currently reading so I was much happier last week when reading the red and the black which is like an early 19th century French novel translated by Margaret R. B. Shaw which I read in this gorgeous vintage folio society edition which I was given by my ex’s mother and this also kept affecting me while I was reading the book because I don’t know if it was meant to be a bitchy jab because it’s a raunchy racy novel about a bibliophile bumpkin who fucks his way into affluence in post revolutionary France but then ends up executed so maybe she meant it almost as a threat or as a comment that someone like me is nothing but doomed to death when the rich are tired of fucking them but I would like to think that wasn’t the case but I honestly don’t know so the lack of a happy ending in inverted commas did diminish the ability of a good novel to transcend the methods and memories associated with its arrival into my possession but I will likely never know if it was meant as an insult or not no let’s say I will never know and I don’t want to spend any more time thinking about it and I’m going to stop typing this as I’ve reached the place where I exercise so I’m going to sweat on a crosstrainer for fifty minutes and watch an episode of deadwood then I’m going to go to work work work work work work work I’m a very bored individual tired of my shit dull normie productive good boy existence and every time I remember that in this insane city it is illegal to take a dog into a cafe or a pub but weed is legal it makes me angry and who wants to do that I’ve met more problematic stoners than I’ve met problematic dogs eurgh anyway