A few surprises already have hit me in 2023. One is that the government may not be that incompetent. I sent in my Passport renewal (it expires in March) on December 10th, roughly. I am pretty sure I remember the date because I had a couple of other things to drop in the mail that day and figured since I was done I would put my application in and get the Passport back in February.

I wasn’t in my apartment from December 22nd all the way to the 28th, where I returned and checked my mail to find my new passport in there. That’s roughly 18 days total turnaround, which blows my mind. This is normal processing not expedited.

I sent the whole thing to Texas and got the new Passport from Boston and then the old one came from VA, so who knows? I guess at some point everything was at the State Department.

The second thing is that I got a great new gaming chair so I hope to spend more time on my desktop computer than laptop. It’s much more conducive to writing and recording than my other methods of writing have been.

Mostly that’s the office, where there are a lot of distractions and things to do that are not sitting around writing a post, and a lot of great conversations to be had. The office could be a better place to write with a few schedule adjustments. More on that in another post.

My dead couch (it bottomed out a few months ago) sits on the curb tonight waiting to be collected by the Sanitation department tomorrow morning. I am very glad to be getting a new one and starting 2023 sitting on something better than fabric and broken wood a few inches above the hardwood floor. It is surprising how important a couch really is.

Writing for me is more than important. It’s a way I have for discovering what I think about various things. As a practicing Sophist and a teacher of rhetoric, I find it essential to always be able to think about alternative points of view on any issue (please note that I did not say the other side, this is not Stranger Things or some derivative).

I’m hoping that the new couch, new chair, and new passport which arrived in the opposite order that I’ve listed here (couch still has not arrived, but is on schedule) will establish a bit of a better environment for writing things fit for reading.