I don’t think our shrubs like being pruned with a chainsaw. Some look traumatized. Years ago when our landscaping crew pruned they made everything look like lollipops. We’ve now grown out of that and I do it myself. After being in front of my computer all day it’s nice to walk around the yard and see what I’ve missed. And to fantasize about being retired and having the time to fine tune it all.

If I’d gotten more contract work lined up I would have ordered new bark but now that I haven’t, I won’t. I was approached about two gigs but they wanted me to start right away, and a third gig fell through. Glad I didn’t cut my hair. So once again I face the prospect of being out of work come summer but not able to fully enjoy it knowing I’m not earning and need to keep hunting.

Some contractors never say no to work and take on multiple contracts at the same time. I probably should but it’s too much stress, I’d likely let people down, and it could hurt my reputation. None of that is good; only the money is. I’m already working this weekend and going a bit cuckoo with my current gig. The work is either too much or not enough. It isn’t the writing as much as the wrangling and complexity and pace, working inside the Microsoft sales and marketing engine, a company that’s bet the farm on AI, with no backup plan. So tensions are high, and that presses down on everyone.

At the end of the day it feels good to lay on the bed with just my socks on and nothing else. The cat lays in the windowsill by the open window watching for birds. His hearing’s so good he flinches when my stomach growls. Half a pizza and two scoops of caramel ice cream. A bachelor for the weekend, one non-alcoholic beer and an oil change. Life: get one Bill. (How about this one?)

Each time I eat hot pizza the same thing happens: I burn the roof of my mouth with scalding cheese and then the tender skin there feels withered, like our chainsawed shrubs.

Some woman sounding bored called from the hospital asking is this William and said the thing on my cheek isn’t cancer it’s a sun spot. So it’s not cancer?, I repeated. And she said no, it’s a sun spot.

We’ve never let our new cat Timmy outside and with this his first spring and the windows open he’s kind of tripping, watching for birds, cackling. He snorts when he breathes so it would be hard for him to sneak up on anyone. He stands and paws at the glass and makes an awkward squeaking sound like a dry squeegee that puts my teeth on edge as he keeps pumping his paws in a kneading pattern. TIMMY STOP.

Our last cat got taken by a coyote, owl, eagle—maybe the raccoon I saw loping across the road this morning with the dime-sized eyes, soulless. Always like the undead the way they look back at you in the headlights.

Someone in a corporate setting is dying for the accolades they’ll get by replacing an agency with agents. We even market agents ourselves, as a service: how we can help you train agents to do our kind of work (with our oversight). And funny to think about the words agent and agency. How we risk giving one up for the other: our human agency for agents.

I forget about the hole in my cheek each time I rub my face which is often. They said last time they measured it it was getting bigger. So what happens when my whole face is a sun spot?

Well past eight now before it gets dark. The din at the end of the day is not unlike the one at the start. When Dawn is away I spread out like a starfish and sleep like the dead, gone in an instant.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, journal writing, pacific northwest, prose