I finally succumbed (again) to a subscription to the Times Literary Supplement (TLS). I took it for several years several years ago but I had to give it up as time and the increasing amount of paper got ahead of me. Like the New Yorker, it is weekly and it’s a terrible responsibility keeping up with it. I know what I’m getting into but they kept sending me teasers online from current issues - one or two articles or reviews a week - and hooked me again. My first paper issue arrived today and it is lovely. And though I got a bargain buying the subscription, it’s going to be expensive. I kept circling the titles of books I must have. How can I go on withoutthem?

I’ve said before and I’m sure you say it, too, that we take in more information (and entertainment and trivia) in a day than people used to ingest in a month or longer. It’s enough to make me as a writer quit writing. I mean, who needs me?

Well, I do. I need me. You know that line – I’ve said that before, too – “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” Writers write because they want to find out what they think, to discover a meaning, to analyze an emotion, to assess the worth of an idea, all of this, and they have to do it for themselves, though they do read other writers’ work, too. So even though there’s so much out there. I have to put me out there, too. And also reel in what looks like a good catch. Like the TLS.

Oh dear.

I can't stand it. Why isn't anything ever easy? Why am I so stupid? Why was I born at the wrong time? That's it, that's the reason, that's why I am so inept at coping with the minutiae (I can spell!), of living today. I was not intended to be alive in this, or the last century . Who said, "Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour!"? (Note the impeccable punctuation.) William Wordsworth in the poem London 1802: "Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour" - I have need of thee. (It was really England who needed Milton in the poem but I need him more.)

There doesn't seem to be one thing I attempt to do, other than writing, on my computer(s) that doesn't turn into a vicious conundrum that I go around in circles and deletes and saves and options and help messages trying to solve. My computer is really a glorified typewriter for all I can do with it. I won't go into detail. Suffice to say that today started well until I got bogged down in a post and then in a search for a number (different project). Soon I have to tackle a play manuscript in its several incarnations, and find the most recent and relevant scenes and put it together and then figure out how to PDF it. (I never remember.) Oh, how I miss Stephen Leacock! Stephen Leacock, thou shouldst be living at this hour. He would understand my difficulty, I mean he wouldn't understand my difficulty but he would understand how I feel about my difficulty, He couldn't solve it either. I feel like the mother in Fry's The Lady's Not For Burning. Remember she said, "Oh, for a holiday in a complete vacuum." With my luck and lack of expertise I would have trouble finding the On-switch. Or Off.

Off would be good.