Woke up around 6:50 in the AM to make sure our boy made it to the bus on time. Fixed some instant coffee (-like substance) and sat in bed reading Infinite Jest for awhile. I read before work every morning, which is usually the only time I get to actually sit and read anything not on a screen, so I figured I might as well do so this morning even without having to go to work. I’m almost done with the book; I’m into the 800s. After I read, I took my now-cool-enough-to-drink coffee outside to the balcony with me and I sat in the plastic chair with the metal legs and sipped from my Dia de los Muertos mug while having a smoke. The sky this morning is default daylight blue. No clouds. The promise of a hot day feels obvious. Like, there’s no need for an explicit promise; anyone from the neighbors to the bees could tell you it’s going to be hot today.

Sitting here now, the laptop is warm on my bare legs. A readout in the Menu Bar tells me the CPU is 131°F presently (actually, this temp keeps going up and down a degree or two by the minute).

I’ve not yet dived into the morning’s email. I subscribe to a few science-oriented emails via Google Alerts and ScienceBlogs and the AAAS, and every day I get at least six updates. Sometimes there’s nothing that really grabs me, or something grabs me but is over my head and I can’t therefore really get into what it’s saying even if the headline is intriguing. I wish I could be back at school, studying science and grokking even the nuances, but it’s like they say: if wishes were food, no one would go hungry.

So the reality is that my paycheck went to rent and fuel and necessities, and there’s less than $40 left to last from now until the mid-month paycheck. I’m not even considering the fact that, thanks to an untimely annual fee I didn’t see coming, I’m overdrawn in my secondary account. I console myself with the fact that at least I still have a job. My thoughts go out to those who have lost theirs, or who are still hanging on—after months, now—to some paltry unemployment check while they try to find work like the end of one particular thread in a ginormous bale of knotted strings. I don’t know what we’d do if I lost my job. As precariously perched as we are on the fence between emergent poverty on one side and safety on the other, the idea of being out of work is harrowing and stomach churning. Which is not to say that I am unaware that I am still living better than most people in the world, or that it is not without irony that I am sitting here with a MacBook and writing this post for my personal blog while science-oriented emails sit in my in-box as my partner of eight years sleeps beside me and our boy attends to schoolwork at his school. I mean, I may be worried about putting gas in it, but I have a decent car sitting out there.

So I’m in the strange position of being both under the sword of Damocles and grateful for my riches, wondering simultaneously how I’m going to parcel out my meager funds and what book I’m going to read next. This is, doubtless, a modern problem, the fruit of great wealth floating the boat of the nation like some huge swell so that even the poorest people often have cell phones even as they call a plastic tarp shelter a “godsend”.

And but so I’m thinking that I should probably re-read one of my Walter Kaufmann books, but maybe secondarily to one of the other books I’ve got that I’ve never read and have on my list. Reading takes me away from contemplating my pecuniary troubles while also serving to educate me further or enhance my understanding of the world. I prize anything that will better me, because it’s a worthwhile and never-ending goal that requires constant effort. And let us be clear here what I mean when I say that I want to better myself. I see bettering myself as one sure way to be better for others. I want to better myself so that I am better able to interface with the world, which is, for me, mainly made up of other people and their connections to others and possibly me. Actually, I find all this to be ethically necessitated by the social contract [see here and here; do not overlook Pateman's and Mills' invaluable critiques].

Ah… Well, the groundskeepers are here now. Leaf blowers and string trimmers are furiously abuzz and aggressively a-whine. My partner has pulled a pillow over her head. The tea kettle was heard recently to whistle downstairs. The day’s active phase is ramping up. But as for me, I’m already wanting to get back to the earlier quiet. A day off should have plenty of quiet, even if it’s not possible to keep the chatter down in the brain’s thought pool.