just found something out.
It was the last text you sent me before the one where you said you were dying. Okay, you never said you were dying. But you said that you were feeling unwell in a way that ultimately, though we didn't know it at the time, meant you were dying. “Just found something out.”
Those words took me a while to parse and I'm still not really sure what you meant. Guess I'll never be able to be sure now. Did you really find something out? I guess it's possible. But prior to that point, we had been talking about you asking me to write something about someone else's passing. Man, I really thought that'd be the worst thing to happen to me in 2025. But I digress.
The point is, I think you were trying to say “just pound something out,” as in, just get it done. I had asked you for guidance on what you had wanted me to write. Being known as “the guy in the family who can write” is nice (although I suppose this blog directly contradicts that supposed quality about myself in more ways than one) but when you're given zero direction it can be a bit daunting. Did I say daunting? Look, I'll be honest, it can be annoying.
I legitimately remember talking to my partner about it the night before, how vague your instructions were and feeling kind of annoyed. So I followed up in a polite way, asking for guidance. Basically saying, “sure, I'll write it, but what do you want it to say, roughly?”
That was your reply, “just found something out.” It must be “pound,” right? If I am known as the guy in the family who can write, you were definitely known as the guy who couldn't. Your texts were often incomprehensible, especially when you used voice dictation. Which you did fairly often. Basically, every message should have automatically included a “dictated, not read” disclaimer on the bottom.
In this case, I'm inclined to guess that's what you were doing. Maybe Siri just heard “_ound” and thought “just found something out” made more sense in context than “pound.” Because otherwise, the “F” and “P” keys are pretty far away on the keyboard, although autocorrect has been known to do worse.
Like I said, we'll never know. And I kind of hate that these were the last exchanges we had, at least the last in text form, that I can easily revisit and pore over.
It's Chinese New Year, or Lunar New Year, which is now culturally more appropriate to say. Supposedly. I grew up with CNY and LNY seems to be equally fraught in my mind but I'll just leave it at that. I want to be a stickler and keep calling it Chinese New Year but I am aware on some level that this is the same excuse older people used for why they couldn't give up overtly racist language. “That's just the way we talked back then.”
Actually, I wish I could discuss this topic with you, because it's exactly the kind of thing that I know would rile you up and also god only knows what bizarre take you would have on it. I didn't always agree with you about these things, but I also can't deny that you usually had something interesting to say about them regardless.
As I am currently nearing the end of my sixth consecutive day off from work, I'm also starting to feel really guilty. This is the one time of year that we get a guaranteed long break, and I always dream about what I'll get done when I just have days and days of free time. But now, I'm thinking about how I've really accomplished nothing, how I'm just going through the same daily routines, and then wasting the time I would've been working and at least appearing to be productive.
I think about how I haven't even written anything for this site nor any of my other writing projects. I tell myself, “just write here at least, it's a blog, you can just say what you did today or how you're feeling. No one's reading it, no one cares! It's personal, damnit.”
So I finally open the text editor. I stare at the blinking cursor. Totally bereft of ideas. Then it comes into my mind. “Just pound something out.”
I said I hate that it is was our last real text exchange. But maybe, in the end, old man, it was kind of perfect. The encouragement your idiot layabout son needed and needs. Constantly needs, especially when it comes to writing which I fancy myself as doing more than I actually do. Said in a way that is so uniquely you, and by that I mean nearly impossible to understand.
Thanks, dude. I did it. Today, at least.