*if this is the first post you’re seeing, in which I return to writing after months of silence, please feel free to assume that this is the first

You see? That’s the great thing about time. It passes whether you use it or not. Father Time doesn’t need me. He is a strong, confident barista! (bastard) And he drinks most of the coffee that he makes, which explains the hazy, groggy, cranky feeling I’m left with when it’s time to put in work.

I haven’t made any progress on With the Mighty Ones, because I haven’t been writing. Worse, I haven’t done anything foolish and international, because I am unwealthy. Purely by coincidence, I happen to be going back to the Bering Sea for a few of these beautiful incoming summer months.

True. The pay only computes to about $12 an hour. But, working an average of 16 hours per day for seven days a week months on end, I might just set my finances up for getting into trouble. South American trouble if I’m lucky. South African if I’m not. Financially, the possibilities are invigorating.

Maybe I’ll even be able to stock up on the texture necessary to bring With the Mighty Ones to a tolerable conclusion. You know, the texture of an 80mph wind in my teeth. Perhaps the salt water grit, as the entirety of a 15 foot wave courses down the back of my foul weather top. Or, fish scales.

But, first and foremost, I will have time. Consider the last time you were without internet for three months. You probably had time to finally work on your Arabic penmanship; tear through your long ass reading list. Perhaps you even wrote a fiction novel.

Or at least you would of if you hadn’t been nine years old at the time. So yeah.

I’ll spend the summer channeling all the surplus time and misery into things more positive than counting the veins in my eyeballs with a mechanics mirror. Until then, I’m gonna write blog posts consistently. Without fail, with regularity; I will turn out literary masterpieces just like this. And burgers; I will eat so many burgers.

This one time in Chiang Mai, I was sitting across a table from a friend in a small restaurant. On the table sat a small bowl of ground chile peppers (famed among spice extraordinaires and nuclear physicists). Now what are the odds that I , knowing the dangers, might scoop up a spoonful and eat it straight? Pretty slim, wouldn’t ya say?

Well, though most of my hair has grown back and that nasty facial twitch has long since vanished, I did in fact defy the odds and amuse the locals by ingesting the freshly harvested seeds. So, once again, let us assume that I will be posting here at least once a week. It’s not such a long shot.

And like I’ve said, I only have to keep it up for like ten weeks. There’s no internet on the Bering Sea.