John Locke triumphs in self-publishing

My wife pointed out to me this morning that John Locke has sold a million copies of his self-published book for the Kindle.  At first I thought she meant the father of liberalism. But then I realized that this other guy just happens to have the same name.  He is a writer from Kentucky and one of only 8 authors who have breached the million mark. I didn't read any further.  Self-publishing seems to be the authentic new thing. I wonder if it will have the effect on traditional publishing that the digital revolution had on the music industry.  If so, then now would be the time to publish a book, not in two months, not in three months, not in ten....  but NOW...!!!!

I went to the doctor and he told me I have a stray piece of bone coming from my heel. This is why it is so painful to jog, and the reason that I have stopped. He told me that I'd be jogging again in "no time."  I have gained much weight and it is time to reverse the trend, to fight it off.

Here is a picture of the heel.  For those of you used to looking at foot x-rays you'll see the problem. For those of you not used to looking at them you'll notice a "hook" of bone near the underside of the heel (the dark region that juts out towards the center of the image). It is irritating the surrounding flesh (seen as a grey-ish halo around the bone). The image is of the right foot as if I myself was looking down towards the heel, with the foot held slightly to the outer side. The toes would be off the screen to the left, towards the bottom, etc.

Now that is self-reflexivity.  He gave me a shot of cortisone in the foot and it has done wonders to reduce the pain I've felt.  But the pain started coming back this morning, just barely. It has been almost a week since I saw him. 

I will be posting my entire medical file later for those interested. It includes all operations, hospitalizations, emergency room visits, and private counseling.  It is really something. 

Yesterday's post was incomplete, as all those type attempts inevitably are.  I went back and read it just now and saw the glaring flaw of omission. It is impossible to adequately convey your changing impressions of your father in such a way, over the course of a lifetime.  It was just a small attempt at documenting our changing relationship and my pleasure with those changes. 

One thing that I left out was that for most of my life I felt justified committing any manner of atrocity towards him, because I felt that he deserved it and I was the victim. But as I grew up I started morally re-evaluating myself and it turned out that whatever he had done to me was long ago.  I had many more recent transgressions... unexplainable emotional outbursts that were usually, if not uniformly, inappropriate.  

A victim never needs to morally evaluate themselves. They cloak themselves in the shield of victimhood and then act as they wish, with total self-justification. As I get older I see it everywhere around me. What shocks me the most is how unwilling people are to examine the behavior. To even suggest that a "victim" has responsibilities to also examine their behavior is a shock beyond comprehension.  Very little will generate as much anger as the suggestion that nobody gets to act with total impunity. 

I had written more yesterday but it had lost the vaguely humorous air that the first few paragraphs had, so I trashed them.  My father is not Scandinavian. He is Irish.  I confused a few people with that comparison; people who have long known me to be Irish, those who secretly suspect there is Polish blood in there too, partially explaining the shape of my head.

That is yet another subject that is addressed in my full medical records. 

I must stop deleting paragraphs from this site.  I'll never get my memoirs published on Kindle at this rate....