In this season of Thanksgiving, i am most thankful this year for written words and language — they underlie most of the things i care about and keep me busy through most of my days.

One of the beautiful things about words and language is that people don’t often think about them; they just use them unconsciously and naturally, like the air we breathe.

Admittedly, i was an English major and studied linguistics in grad school; so i’m a little biased. And now I’m beginning to combine my interest in language with my interest in computer science through natural language processing. I have some catching up to do; my computer skills are a little atrophied.

But it gives me something to do, so i’m happy.

And in terms of math/science stuff, I am also thankful for Goldilocks data-sets — not too big and not too small, just right.

Made-up people and made-up problems — that’s comforting to me, especially when “real” life (on the news) is disturbing and my personal life is out to pasture.

I know i didn’t do an MFA in Creative Writing (though i’m still thinking about it), but i do enjoy thinking about plot & character & writing. Abstract humanity is more interesting to me than the real thing most of the time. And a computational approach to nearly anything is pretty much always my preference.

Computational Fiction — that’s what floats my boat, especially during this so-called “AI” craze, which touts a statistical model that is *far* from intelligent.

IRL people are more work than the fictional kind — an idea that seems to be becoming more popular with kids raised by/on smartphones.

Maybe i’m a fictional person myself.

I don’t share everything i want to — i cannot.

Most days i don’t have the courage; most days i’m struggling just to do the minimum.

So i don’t raise my hand; i don’t unmute my microphone on Zoom and share that my wife died a year ago. Part of me wants to, but the part of me that controls my actions stops me.

Like many people, i sabotage my own efforts to move forward; and i guess that i always have. If you know me, you will recognize the truth of this.

So i continue, slowly, as best i can.

I didn’t live up to the Horatio Hornblower ideal of a husband. Sandi was my Maria, and she did love me; but she wasn’t fooled — she knew i only loved her as much as i could.

Maybe real wives don’t expect too much from their husbands; maybe they’re realistic about it, and are just glad if their husbands make a reasonable effort (and don’t fuck things up too badly).

Maybe that’s why Sandi and i were a good match; we were realistic. She was patient with my doubts, we loved each other as best we could, and i was there for her when her health really went to shit. Sandi was already grown up when we met; but in some ways, i was still just a kid.

Youth, however you end up characterizing it (and it will change as you age) doesn’t last long. Middle age is the long one. By the time you realize (and accept) that you’re old, you’ll almost be dead.

My wife, Sandi Mrowka, died one year ago today.

I’m still just at the beginning of the journey of grief.

We had a little more than thirteen years together, 2011 to 2024.

She was a force to be reckoned with — those people she cared about, she really loved; but those people who mistreated her, she cut out of her life with the skill of a surgeon.

Sandi remembered people and the details of their lives with such clarity: the name(s) of their cats (and kids and spouses, etc), the way they wrote & spoke, and most of the words they had ever said to her.

She was a bit of a music savant, identifying artist & title within a few notes of hearing a song; and she knew the backstories of many of them.

I could go on for pages about Sandi, but it hurts too much to write any more right now. She was the love of my life, whether or not i always realized it at the time; and it will probably take thirteen years to heal, even if i never really get over losing her.

❤️❤️❤️

Cancer: it may not define you, but it may come to dominate your life. Do everything you can to complete items on your bucket list; don’t let rounds of chemo keep you from doing what’s important — living every second of life that you can. That’s what Sandi taught me.

“Putting up with irrationality is the foundation for every relationship.” ~James Wilson (on House, M.D.)

Things don’t last, so don’t expect them to.

People hear what they want to hear.
And people do what they want to do.

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Platitudes & Clichés — that’s mostly all people say.

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Am i wrong?
Please tell me your individual opinion, about anything!

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(I really am going to have to figure out formatting, huh?)

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Sure, maybe i’d thought about writing, or being a teacher, back when i gave a damn about life; but no more.

There isn’t any point, i see now. Nobody much cares about teaching or learning or writing. They just go on with their drab little lives and try not to pay any attention to inflation, corrosive politics, or the widening gap between the 1% and the 99.

I was glad to have been removed from the workforce, glad to have escaped the increasingly pointless rat race. Nothing means much anymore. It doesn’t matter as much anymore if you go to university, except as a wealth-marker. AI and robots will be doing most jobs soon enough. Existential despair is on the horizon.

People’s main jobs soon will be simple consumption and also watching over the machines that produce. No wonder the birthrate has fallen — who wants to bring more people into this mess?

I have a little voice inside me that every time i hear an English sentence or read an English sentence, it wants to correct that sentence if there are any “errors”.

It’s a curse.

I was an English major at Cornell University. Yes, a misfit one, but also with a long history of reading a lot of books. And then i took a variety of linguistics & more English classes at other schools — UNC Chapel Hill, Arizona State University, and Framingham State College.

Yes, my approach to language is more computational than others, partly because i was a Physics major before English, and partly because i’ve worked with computers for forty-some years.

Maybe it’s all the proofreading and editing i’ve done; maybe that’s the voice.

But i still have my own English-language idiosyncrasies, as you have probably noticed. I do not care; i like my English.

Rely on yourself, on your own conclusions. Other people generally don’t know what the hell they’re talking about, except in the specifics of their own lives. Trust yourself, always.

Being alone doesn’t have to be that bad.

My wife of 13 years died last year, and i’m alone now.

I was alone for much of my younger years, and i’ve gotten used to being alone again; it’s not so bad, doing what you want, when you want.

Do you have kids?
I don’t have kids. (And like me, my wife never wanted kids; so she didn’t have any either.)
Also, the rest of my family is mostly dead or far away; so i don’t have to worry about that.

It’s a nice quiet existence.

And it is easier, being alone. Not having to keep track of a whole ‘nother life; one is more than enough for me. Sure, nobody to tell stuff to; but when you’re older, there isn’t so much to tell anyway.

Life slows down, but time speeds up. The years go by, one after another.

Enjoy what you can.