These days it's difficult to do anything without having intrusive thoughts about not being able to do it anymore.

I ask a lot of the everyday aspects of my life: I want them to remain as they are, forever, without needing much in the way of maintenance. I don't understand why we can't make computers and appliances that run without needing replacement or any kind of substantial upgrades for decades.

I'm not resigned to the fact that shoes which used to last ten years now last two, or that all household goods seem to have gotten shoddier over time, or that every single system or software upgrade to any of the computers and computing tools I use for the last twenty years has made them worse. (Seriously, name the last time an app or an OS took an update that made it better. I'll wait.) But at least with those things I know why: capitalism, which is in its dying thrashing stages of "the only things we can do at this point to squeeze out those last few pennies are all destructive ones."

Then we have the stuff where I'm partly guilty because of neglect; things that I know should probably be maintained, but never have the time nor the inclination to do so.

I turn a tap in my house and wonder if this is going to be the day it comes off in my hand or the faucet breaks and spews water all over the kitchen. I'm adequate at home plumbing -- I installed that kitchen faucet and it's held up well over the years -- but I can no longer lie on my back in a confined space under that sink, not unless I want to feel it for a week afterward. I have to call in somebody.

Our house is falling apart in numerous ways. For some of them, we can probably afford repairs, but there are all kinds of ancillary problems that make us reluctant to fix them because of the temporary upheaval (e.g. if my spouse has a not-working toilet for more than about ten minutes she gets very very anxious; if we make repairs to the front steps, we can't use the front door while that's happening and I'm not even sure where the keys to the back door are ... problems like that). There's antique wiring in the attic I worry about all the time. The list is huge.

The grift-based obsolescence is bad and worrying, the sins of omission are bad and worrying ... but the things that really get to me are the ones where, once what we have no longer works, I may not be able to get anything to replace it.

When my coffee maker inevitably dies, I am no longer going to be able to get one of comparable quality. They just aren't made anymore. This is true of a lot of things. I still have an original flavor 3DS and I use it just about every day. When it finally breaks, there will be nothing to replace it.

I was doing a large Perl install yesterday (how large? I'll probably be working on it for at least two more days) and I noticed that CPAN, the Perl library repository, was behaving a little strangely. I mentioned it to a friend who has serious Old Perl Hand cred, and has been a Perl maintainer, and knows these things, and he said the whole Perl infrastructure was deteriorating because people who know the systems are dying off or moving on, and there doesn't seem to be a new wave of people to take the reins. I've been working primarily in Perl for thirty years. I just can't imagine it becoming unusable for me at this point. I'm hoping I can hold the pieces together enough to keep my code running until I die.

The render computer, which is the focus of my creative existence at this point in my life, which means it's the focus of the best part of my existence, is about to have to get frozen in time: there's a chain of software upgrades (to upgrade one thing, I have to upgrade a different thing, and that means I have to upgrade a different thing) which leads me somewhere I don't want to go, and the only conclusion I've come to is to not do any of it and say "OK, it's working exactly the way I want it the way it is now, I am simply not going to upgrade any of it and I'm going to carry on with this as long as I possibly can." If I come to a point where I can't stay frozen, a few years from now, I may just have to give up doing renders. It will not be sustainable. I don't know what I'll do then. Go back to writing text stories no one reads, I suppose.

And of course there's all the evidence every day of things which our criminal-in-chief and his cronies are destroying irrevocably ... not just things where the damage will take a lifetime to repair, but things we are never going to get back. They don't care what they wreck; the future is not their concern.

Every day. All the time. Big and small, minor and crucial. Sometimes in the most unlikely places. When this is gone, there will be nothing to replace it. It's a constant drumbeat.

We won't mention the nights when I suddenly get locked into thoughts of death -- my own, sure, my spouse's, absolutely ... but also a lot of other people whom I don't have any in-person contact with, which is the majority of my friends these days. I worry that you're going to die and I'll never find out about it and I'll wonder what happened to you and no one will ever be able to tell me.

It's all running down. It's all running down so fast. I don't feel that I'm running out of time so much as I feel that every single thing around me is. I don't want to die -- I would give anything I have to never die -- but on the other hand, why struggle for longevity if existence is going to be a heap of rubble and trash everywhere I look?