One pretty much has to be wary these days given the state of the world; unease is pretty much the baseline existence. Even amidst pleasantness, I can be out enjoying some unseasonably warm weather, and then stop to think “Why is the weather unseasonably warm?”*

And yes, a lot of the constant wariness is political, but everything is political these days, from what you eat and drink, to what you read, to certainly my two most recent columns, whether I’m writing about Black History Month or the increasingly distressing killing spree of Johnny Murderface.

These remain the proverbial** “Interesting Times”, and certainly anyone following the news regularly is already exhausted and doesn’t need me to recite*** a litany of ways in which things are bad. I am attempting to stay afloat and find the good, which for me has largely been good food and video games. My mother reminds me that her method of finding the good is to do good, but she has always been a kinder person than I am.

Not that I never do good — indeed, I always hope that my columns might infinitesimally bend some people’s thoughts towards a better world — but I’m much more cognizant of the old airplane maxim****, “In case of high pressure, put your own mask on first”*****, and the global forecast continues to call for ceaseless high pressure for the foreseeable future.

But I’ve got Shepard’s Pie and a Gamepass subscription, so tonight I’m doing okay, and perhaps later this week I should try to do something pro-social.

* Insert your own meme picture of a goose chasing me while asking this.

** Is a curse a proverb? I can’t really call it curseal Interesting Times. I only wish they were cursory.

*** Unless I was doing it in rhyme or something. Maybe in April.

**** “Surely you can’t be serious!”

***** People’s refusal to put on their own mask on at all is another reason things seem high pressure