Weekly Update

The fingers have been healing nicely all week (and thanks for all the kind comments), to the extent that I was finally able to pick up a guitar yesterday and play reasonably well. The main problem there was being able to leverage the thumb against the neck comfortably (conventional grip #1), as well as draping the thumb over the top of the neck for certain types of runs and chords (conventional grip #2), where the side of the thumb that was injured rests directly on the top of the neck. But it's amazing what a week of ibuprofen and neosporin can do, the nail is growing back, and the hand is about 90%. Not bad.

Of course, there has been more than just the hand keeping me out, and that's not entirely a bad thing. In fact, it's more of a gathering array of good things -- the new job is going remarkably well, to the extent that many of the things my co-workers complain about are things I actually like (although, since time/crisis/process management is part of my skill set, I thrive on working with dysfunctional situations and finding ways to improve things); while I'm not playing guitar as much as I was while I was off, I get enough time in to feel like I'm getting my chops back (though they'll probably never be what they were when I was 25 and ripping Yngwie and Paul Gilbert stuff blindfolded, the taste and tone and melodic sense you pick up as part of the typical player's seasoning more than offsets the pure mechanics of shredding); I'm still reading everything I can get my hands on; and I'm fairly certain that I will be going for the MBA later this year. (Not to mention the Anvil doc. That is going to be freakin' sweet.)

Good thing I get by on five or six hours of sleep anyway, but there are only so many hours in the day, and so many areas of attention I can give proper diligence to. And politics and economics seem on the same ill-fated track they have always been, hence a lessened urgency to unfurl an epic jeremiad (though there is one of those in the pipeline) as often. With or without my input, the Big Flush goes on as it always has.

But writing is still therapeutic and enjoyable, so the blog will continue at least until the end of this year, and we'll see where things stand at the five-year mark. Worst-case scenario is I punt this over to a private domain name to preserve the archive and start up a guitar blog or something, but for the time being, probably one or two days a week of varying levels of activity.