It was just past midnight when rswfire turned the camera on again. He had already posted videos that day — statements made in daylight, with a certain finality to them — and something in the hours since had turned him back toward the lens. He opened the way he opens: hi fellow humans. Then he said he wanted to address some of the things he had talked about.
What he had done in the interval was think introspectively about how he was feeling about the lifestyle, and what surfaced was not a feeling but a variable. Forty-seven years, he said, spent living in his head — programming all his life, thinking all his life, not really living in this physical world of ours. He named it plainly and without apology, as a fact about the kind of person he is. And then he did the thing that the whole signal turns on: he identified that fact as an input to his judgment rather than a background condition of it. Everything is a challenge to him. That is going to color his perception of this lifestyle. Which meant the verdict he had been circling all day was contaminated at the source.
He had taken the question to ChatGPT. The answer came back as six months to a year, and the reason it gave — seasons — landed on him as something he had genuinely not accounted for. I didn't even consider that aspect. The model broke the seasons down for him, and when it described summer he recognized himself inside the description: the heat, the neighbors, all of it. Not a forecast but a mirror held up to the exact conditions he was standing in. He had been measuring against three months. The instrument had been wrong.
Bailey came into the frame around then, drawn by the sound of talking, and rswfire broke off mid-thought to greet him — hello Bailey, hello, would you like to say hello to everybody — the way he does every time, the interruption folded into the transmission rather than cut from it.
He came back and stated the position without softening the ugly half of it. Right now he is not enjoying this. That stayed true. But it is too soon to render it. He traced how the collapse had happened: he had been saying too soon for months, and at some point the repetition itself became a clock, and the clock said it had been long enough, and long enough said this sucks. He caught the substitution and reversed it out. What replaced it was a list of things not yet done — Nevada, stargazing, traveling, the road still unwalked. He would not say he had given this lifestyle a fair chance until those were behind him. He put it as a standard: you have to master a thing before you can truly say if it's right for you or not. A lot to learn, a lot to get accustomed to. The assessment window opened back up.
The other item he wanted to address was the clonazepam. He has quit taking it. He had discussed the withdrawal with JYB, who indicated it would not be very major given the low dose, and he stated it that way — accounted for, clinically bounded, unremarkable. What was remarkable to him was the reason. It restores his full autonomy over himself. Not relying on a medication, not needing medication. He said he felt the benefit when he stopped taking the tramadol, and this is the same journey — he wants to finish it, get it done and out of the way.
Then the frame loosened. New outlook, he said, and turned back to Bailey, who had made his entrance the moment the camera came on, as he always does — obviously he hears me talking, but he's just like oh, here's my opportunity. rswfire found it funny. He wished everybody a good night from inside the RV, past midnight, three months in, with the summer heat still in the walls and the timeline extended out ahead of him toward seasons he had not yet lived in it.