Tenth Circle of Hell

Imagine focusing on a repetitive task, like crushing rock with a sledge hammer: pick a point, swing the hammer, brace for impact, SMASH, recover, pick another spot, swing, repeat the process. Now add external factors like oppressive heat, insects buzzing your face, swamp ass, blisters, sweat running into your eyes, a small pebble in your boot. The physical pain of the task takes a back seat to the annoyance of the outside factors. All you want to do is ANY other task because you believe that is the only way to stop the annoyances. If you're breaking up rock all you want to do is shovel dirt. If you're shoveling dirt you just want to load trash into the truck. When you're loading trash you would give your right arm to be stacking lumber, and so on. Each task is so mind numbing and awful anything else becomes more appealing until you start that next task and you realize it's just as awful as the last one. The kicker is that you never think the next task can be remotely as bad as the current one. It can't be. It simply has to be better because the current task is the worst fucking thing you can imagine. It's the tenth circle of hell, the one Dante couldn't have dreamt of.

This is what the last three weeks of my life have been like renovating my new house. Often I didn't have the energy to walk up two flights of stairs to piss in the toilet and would just go in an empty water bottle laying around nearby. In those conditions sex is pretty far from thought, so I didn't have anything to write about even if I could muster the energy to type at night when I got home. But the project is over, the house is complete, and I'm back in action.