There’s noth­ing in this world you can’t turn into heroin.

  —Get Him to the Greek

At our last draft, Steph asked me what was new. It was weeks since we played, but noth­ing came to mind, and it felt strange to have no updates at all. It was only a few months ago that things fell apart. Things had been chang­ing quickly ever since.

And then, all of a sud­den, sta­bil­ity.

the hearth

The hearth.

Meanwhile, I’ve picked up an obses­sion with sort­ing my Magic cards. Darren came by a few weeks ago and he gave me his col­lec­tion, which we both started around high-school. I have about 8000 cards now, ordered by rar­ity, colour, block, and alpha­bet­i­cally, which took me the greater part of a week. There’s no deny­ing how sat­is­fy­ing it is to have a neat and orga­nized set, where I can quickly find a card instead of going through ran­dom handfuls.

I also started watch­ing Cops, sea­sons 20–24, non-stop. A strange addic­tion1 for a real­ity TV show that’s no doubt biased in favour of law enforce­ment and against low-income cit­i­zens, but not glo­ri­fied with a nar­ra­tor, a sound­track, or any mon­e­tary incen­tives. After watch­ing the same episodes a few times, I feel like I have some inti­mate insight into the peo­ple who choose to break the law, and those who make careers out of stop­ping them.

They’re signs that I’m a glut­ton now, hav­ing to lose myself in some­thing, whether it’s being pro­duc­tive or social or happy.

Love used to be my drug of choice, but nowa­days it’s any­thing I can get.

  1. I used to see an episode here and there when I was a kid, but it was never with any fre­quency, and I haven’t seen one in years. I have no idea why I find it so fas­ci­nat­ing now. [↩]