I wake up early, still dark outside, and suffer the horror of the night before the horror of the day, wasting an hour of wakefulness on pottering or otherwise masturbating that could’ve been spent on exercise, study, or work. On making things better, on accruing the health, skills or capital needed to flourish and prosper.

I’ve done this for years, decades, and the loss of life, liberty, happiness and so on such habits have caused me must be enormous, more than enough to make another world possible, even as one remains inconceivable.

And things can always get worse.