Gentle reader, bear with me. This blog has fallen silent. Not for want of interest. But for want of patience. My spirit, or life continuity, recently collapsed, keeling over like a row of dominoes. Which mixes several metaphors. But, at least, uses them. Metaphors, words, the whole thing being suspect as of late. I have a book I keep rewriting. No, I don’t have a book. I have a manuscript I keep rewriting. I would like to have a book, that is the point. Or is it the point? The lack of point is one of my complaints these days. I don’t see a point. That’s my point.

Anyway, having fallen into the “failed writer syndrome,” my spirits kept plummeting. Eventually my health went. Meaning that I got a cold. I am a believer in psychosomatic colds. Thing is, the energy-sapping nature of a virus is quite incompatible with quadriplegia. Anyone with a cold experiences weakness. But I couldn’t get out of bed. Oh, I have complained about this before. But with the advent of a cold, it became acute. You can go on all you want about core strength. But an apple core has more strength than I do these days. Yes, even before the cold, getting out of bed was proving fraught. But in the wake of a viral search and destroy mission, there just wasn’t much to work with. My new approach to bed emergence involves grabbing a rope and hauling myself from supine to sitting. This became quite a neuromuscular chore. Enough said.

No, not nearly enough. For years I have been trying to write a book, in fact write everything, using the dictation built into the Apple operating system. The alternative, Dragon for Mac, drove me nuts when I bought it four years ago. But Apple’s dictation has been driving me nuts too. So, what the hell. I reverted to the Dragon, since evolved from version 2 to version 6. Which proved to be the right move. Suddenly, for the first time in years, I am dictating at high speed, verbally blasting along. The whole effect is like deciding to stop pounding a rusty nail into one’s head. After all, this blog began with a lamentation about writing and failure. Which is splendid, but there’s a level of failure, vis-à-vis frustration, built into, say, trying to do carpentry with a steak knife. Or trying to plant a vegetable garden with a soup spoon. You get the idea.

You can’t stop progress, they say. But I manage to, largely by doggedly pursuing failed techniques. Not failed projects, but ineffective approaches. So, okay, I’m back to being able to complain about my writing inability. Which is a distinct improvement. I’m used to stubbornly putting up with difficulty. Disabled life is composed of one frustration after the next. But it’s important to surface now and then to think. After all, technology has made me employable. Voice recognition does keep getting better. So, okay, my neurology is sliding in one direction…but technology is sliding in the other. And that, to a large extent, is my life.