So VB is retiring. Hell of a way to end a teaching career, in a pandemic. I can't say I still know how to multiply matrices or solve a bridge circuit. Or even used that dang textbook after the class was done. But my graphs always look bomb as hell and my significant digits are all under control. I'm sure I'll remember another lesson in a few weeks.


Maybe I'll wake up in a cold sweat, clutching my pillow like a lab notebook. My hand scrabbles across the nightstand for a pen but instead I just knock my ereader to the ground. "A toroid offers superior noise cancellation, but I can't wind the wire around the donut because my muscles are too small," I shout to Fefe. 

She blinks languidly at me from her chair, and goes back to sleep. The message is clear: can openers should be seen and not heard. 

I replace the ereader onto the nightstand. The lockscreen shows the current title as Magic's Pawn, not Fundamentals of Physics, 8th Edition. I settle myself back onto the mattress and draw the covers up to my chin, uneasy in my ignorance. "Nobody's gonna make you calculate magnetic flux again," I whisper to myself. "You're safe now. Faraday can't hurt you anymore." 

But the shadows of the trees flicker across the ceiling like a vector field... 


Also, it turns out that "anything worth doing is difficult" is a Roosevelt quote? But I've been thinking about it a lot over the last two weeks while trying to waffle up the motivation to start on Certain Things. The alternative is apocolocyntosis, after all, and I'm already 75% pumpkin nowadays. But I need to do these things. I gotta build things I care about. It is far too easy to give up and play video games all weekend.