The Trudge Report

      It's nearly the end of the summer, with Dr J's Own Private Hell Week nearing inevitably like a debutante to old money.   Summers, generally, are awful things, or they are for me because I seldom get to enjoy them at all (haven't in fact since 1997 or so; a very long time) and because I don't really function with the same sense of purpose that I otherwise do.   I'm also profoundly unproductive.   My brain becomes a steamed clam with the heat and the overarching sense of entrapment.   With each year that passes, I start to wonder if I'll ever be able to enjoy, truly enjoy, summer again, though I realize that's probably just disenchantment manifesting itself as fatalism.   So I've come to greet the end of summer with a sigh of relief rather than one of regret.   I can't say, though, that's going to be true this year.   So much for relief.

      Before the relief doesn't come, I have to trudge through the next week and a bit and just wait for it all to end as quickly, and hopefully as dolorlessly, as possible.   There's a very particular kind of dread that comes with the approach of this time of year, with knowing all too well what's going to happen and what it will be like and what the effects will be, especially as my increasingly addled mind is perturbed by questions that are, to say the least, disconsolate.   So, if this blog gets even darker in the next little bit than it already is, you'll know why; call it giving you all fair warning.   Near the end of August, Doctor J, as invariably as the sun, tends to start sounding like a character in a Sartre play.   It is always this way.   It likely always will be this way, though I fear probably a bit more intensely this year.   Just get through it tends to be my personal refrain.

      So, if the Not-So-Good Doctor tends to be, in the next little while, cranky, caustic, miserable, even down right acrid, or if he tends to be any or all of these things to a greater degree than normal, please forgive him.   This is the bile season, and it too shall pass, sooner or later, and then Doctor J will return to singing "Joyful, Joyful" all day long and demonstrating his chipper, effervescent sunshine-and-peanut-butter personality .   Er, okay, maybe not, but you know what I mean.   Until then, I'm just gonna pretend I'm this guy.   Oh, to have it so simple.