Echo Chamber – 9th July 2023

The walls may be far away
But as words reverberate uninterrupted
The room collapses around my ears
Til their meaning becomes corrupted


Today I’m feeling:

I didn’t know how I felt this morning but by the afternoon I didn’t feel good. I feel sick without having any symptoms. I have low energy and motivation which seems to be a theme on weekends. I know I’m a little down after thinking about how Amy may not settle down here again but I feel like there’s something else going on. Dodgy guts aren’t helping things either.

Today I’m grateful for:

All the people who make things happen in order for me to order cat food from my phone and have it delivered to my house a couple of days later. As I was unpacking it I consider what a technological marvel this is that those born this century will take for granted. The global supply chain should be celebrated and not used for political machinations. It’s a great example of humans working together. It reminds me of the Bill Hicks line, if we can shoot rockets from far away and have them fly into specific windows to kill supposed terrorists, why can’t we use that technology to shoot food into hungry people’s mouths? Indeed.

The best thing about today was:

Unmotivated days like today don’t provide any high points but I did get a little satisfaction from pulling out weeds around the cactuses. 

What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?

One thing that may be affecting my mood is that last night as I was contemplating going to bed I saw a transaction come through for 4000 baht which was for my podcast hosting that I had planned to cancel by sending myself a reminder last month. The reminder didn’t work. I cancelled the account immediately but don’t get refunded anything. An expensive lesson. At least it didn’t happen at the end of the last month and fuck up my bank account for my visa. So I’m trying to spin it as a good thing though it’s not quite working I must admit.

Something I learned today?

I just went out to shut the gate and could see the shadow of a cat under the car so went to see who it was. It wasn’t our boys because they were both inside eating. As I bent down to look underneath I saw it climb up into the engine area and disappear! I always thought the engine was completely shielded from the ground but apparently not. I went inside to get the torch and key. I couldn’t see any obvious animal-looking thing inside and I started the engine to scare it out though maybe it had already decided to dash off before that. I wonder if it was the cat I saw this morning and if I had actually brought it home from somewhere! Seems unlikely but I hope my car doesn’t become an unsuspecting cat taxi.

What’s unique about where I live?

The unique thing about where I live is me.  I’m the odd one out. This is quiet jungle village life in a non-English-speaking tropical country and there’s a wild-haired white-skinned punk here. This nail has not been hammered down yet.

I took this picture because I had just let Tigger out the back door and remembered that Tangmo might still be at the front door so I went to check and found this visitor instead. She ran away in Tigger’s direction which wasn’t the wisest choice but she soon figured out an escape. She looked healthy and had beautiful swirling colour whilst slinking away. Never seen her before.

Let me know your thoughts