For a week or two here I've been mentioning, off and on, how I was waiting for this quarter to end to unburden myself of some of the commitments I had last quarter. Today is April 1, the start of the new quarter, and I'm here to tell you: I woke up, the sun was shining, and I felt so, so much better.

All that threatened to derail when I turned on my work computer to log in to work, and the computer had one of its semi-regular fits and I had to restart it—a 15-minute ordeal to restart, on top of the 15-minute ordeal to start it the first time. I suppose that wouldn't be such a bad thing, but that second start ran right through an 8:00 meeting, and I was really stressed until I remembered... I hate meetings. What a gift. This new quarter was looking out for me and it would be a shame to waste it. After work I cooked dinner, and I moved dirt around the yard with a shovel and a coffee mug of Old No. 7, and I stared at my tomato seedlings in the basement, and I decided to be utterly unfuckwithable.

There are many flavors of the phrase "I don't care". Some are lazy. Some are mean. Some are wild. Some are flippant. For me, now, "I don't care" means: don't let the bastards get you down. Even with the bastard is yourself. Especially when the bastard is yourself.

Listen: I'm half-complaining and half-joking and half-serious about what a grind 2021 has been. I signed up for the things I signed up for based on what the outlook was like, and then the outlook changed underneath me—what was once a free quarter became a definitely-not-free quarter, but with all the filler I added into it hung around my neck like an albatross. Which is a long way of saying it's my own damned fault.

But hey—wake up in a different quarter, at a different time, wake up as a different person.