First off:

There’s four new Fidget Pens in the shop. If you’ve been watching my Instagram stories this week, you’ve probably seen the video of the exact four. There’s also a sale on a small handful of other Fidget Pens.

I have six Bebes in progress on the workbench currently. One is a request I promised to make from two months ago that I am just now getting on the lathe, so only five may make it into the shop. The Retrograde IS FINALLY in production. The first five have gone out to Patreon supporters, and now I’m prepping materials for the shop release. I will not jinx myself by giving a deadline or release date, but I am working as quickly as I can without jeopardizing quality. However, right now…

(and off we go)

It is one in the morning on a now-Wednesday. I am sitting at my desk in a bright red bathrobe, writing this to you while eating tuna and mayo out of the can, with a side of mini pickles I found in the fridge while looking for the mayonnaise. My cat is vehemently protesting my not being in bed yet. 

I had planned on writing this earlier, but when I quit working just before midnight, I was having a text conversion about the Just World Theory with my best friend, and we only just wrapped it up when I got out of the bath. The bath that was necessary after coming in from the workshop covered in aluminum and resin shavings. Then, getting out of the tub, I realized that I was now hungry and really needed to eat -because I’d skipped dinner to work when I hadn’t been hungry earlier. The tuna was because I was not cooking at one in the morning, and… well, here I am at one in the morning on a Wednesday, in a bathrobe, eating tuna and mini pickles out of a can, writing.

It’s almost funny how, when I explain how I got here, it doesn’t seem quite as eccentric as that first opening paragraph does initially. Explained, it’s obvious that I was just making the best choice I had available to me at each point in the circumstances at that time. I was not trying to end up sitting at my desk eating tuna from the can in a bathrobe.

Life is like that – the cumulative result of trying to make the best decision out of those available to us at the time. It often looks odd to others who don’t have the insight into the choices and circumstances we had available to us at the time. Like eating tuna in bathrobes at one am while your cat gets progressively more irritated with you for not being in bed already.

This is all to say: be kind to yourself and others if you find it tempting to judge or criticize why we each are the way we are. Most of us are making the best we can out of what we have available to us – and yes, that includes you.

Okay, I am losing the war for my keyboard with my cat, so I’ll wrap it up here.

A.Markov

PS: Best friend conversations are always a necessity.